The New Backlash

In my previous article, I argued that the differences between the two main factions of the political left are too dramatic for them to fully reconcile any time soon. However, to follow up with something encouraging after publishing that somewhat negative piece, I'll now make the case for something else that I believe will happen  throughout the next few years: the emergence of a left-wing backlash during Trump's term which will be more powerful than the right-wing backlash that occurred during Obama's term.

The latter movement, as we know, has made a serious impact on American political history. After the Democratic sweeps in 2006 and 2008, grassroots conservative activists-mainly the ones on the far right-wasted no time trying to regain their dominance over politics. In the months after Obama's inauguration, the political vacuum of right-wing populist anger that had appeared was filled by the Tea Party, Fox News demagogues like Glenn Beck, and far-right groups like the Oath Keepers.

And while the Tea Party peaked early in Obama's presidency, the former followers of it and lesser right-wing populist movements that appeared around that time have since enormously influenced government. Tea Partiers managed to get a considerable amount of their representatives elected in 2010, and later elected their ideological heir Donald Trump to the presidency. They've also turned the tables on the Democrats, with the Democratic Party now being in worse shape electorally than Republicans were in 2008.

This all would seem to vindicate the post-election celebrations of Trump supporters. But the hidden weakness in the political structure that the far right has built in the last eight years is that not that much of the electorate helped build it. Specifically, around 26% of Americans were involved in the construction.

"The full backlash wasn't really 47 percent," wrote Will Bunch in his 2010 book The Backlash: Right-Wing Radicals, High-Def Hucksters, And Paranoid Politics In The Age Of Obama, referring to the percentage of the vote that John McCain received in 2008. "As the first weeks of the Obama administration dragged into months, the parameters of the hard-core resistance emerged, with a figure that was attached to 26 percent, maybe less. These were the 26 percent of Americans, according to Newsweek, who still approved of George W. Bush in the waning days of his presidency; the 26 percent who in 2009 said they'd like to see Sarah Palin as Obama's successor in 2012, according to CBS; the 26 percent who reported to Fox News they were outraged when President Obama bowed to the Japanese emperor; the 26 percent who believed Obama's 2008 election was not legitimate, that the much ballyhooed antipoverty group ACORN had somehow swooped down and 'stolen' the contest by recruiting new voters in the heavily black and Latino communities."

And when you look for the polls that show how big the similarly radical left is, the figure is more than two times bigger than 26 percent. It's 52 percent of Americans who believe in high taxes on the rich to redistribute the wealth; it's 59 percent of Americans who supported Occupy Wall Street; it's 56 percent of Americans who have consistently believed throughout the last 30 years that the wealth should be more equally distributed; and it was 53 percent of Americans who would have voted for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 general election had he been the Democratic nominee. None of this is surprising, seeing as even more than 52 to 59 percent of Americans generally support the goals of Sanders and Occupy, if not Sanders and Occupy themselves.

In other words, left-wing populists outnumber right-wing populists by 2 to 1 at the least. And thus during the Trump era, I believe we are going to witness a backlash to the backlash which far surpasses the former one in its strength and impact.This belief of mine is supported by the fact that unlike was the case with the right-wing backlash just a month after Obama's 2008 election, the left-wing counterrevolution has already started.

Bernie Sanders has emerged in the weeks since the election as a dynamic figure in the effort to organize a progressive backlash, participating directly in the anti-oil pipeline protests in Standing Rock, North Dakota, calling for an overhaul of the Democratic Party's corporatist leadership, and holding public events that resemble his campaign rallies. He's just one of the many progressive leaders who have been working towards such a movement in the past month, among them Michael Moore, who's advocated for an anti-Trump resistance "that will dwarf Occupy Wall Street."

And if public opinion polls and the behavior of Americans so far after the election are any indication, he'll get one. In addition to all of this, donations to organizations that oppose Trump's agenda have surged, with the fundraising of the ACLU, for just one example, having gone up by 7000 percent within the first 24 hours after the election.

Even Trump's supporters have admitted that his presidency will provoke massive resistance, such as when Rush Limbaugh said in July regarding the political dynamics that would be put into motion in the event of a Trump victory on a Election Day, "I want you to think: What’s going to happen that night? What’s going to happen the next day? What’s going to happen every day there after? What’s going to happen the day Trump gets inaugurated? What is the left going to do? They’re not going to just sit idly by and accept this."

No, we are not. Throughout Trump's presidency, it's reasonable to assume that there will be a constant series of protests, victories in electoral politics, and pressure put upon political leaders on the part of the left. And as progressives build this new political structure, the quarter or so of the population that built the old one will not only be rendered largely apathetic due to Trump's reassuring presence, but will be shrinking due to an increase in millennial and nonwhite voters.

In short, whereas Donald Trump and the Tea Party took control of the American political steering wheel in the age of Obama, Bernie Sanders and whatever Occupy-esque movement that emerges during the coming years will do the same in the age of Trump. And in this case, I suspect, the new driver will retain their role as the defining force in politics for quite some time.

But this movement will not just be in opposition to the new president. It will be going up against every leader and institution which defends the current economic paradigm of predatory capitalism, the Democratic Party being no exception. Unless Democrats soon start genuinely representing their base, the New Backlash will most likely become centered around an alternative political organization that's capable of addressing their needs, be it the Green Party or something else.

Whichever party or individual becomes the leader of this movement, though, every factor points to its success. And by the time it's likely gained control of the government four years from now, those on the left will be the ones saying that they've taken their country back.

Progressives will have some big opportunities throughout the next four years. Let's get to work on taking full advantage of them.

Why A Third Party Is Our Only Chance To Defeat Neoliberalism

In my previous article, I attempted to address a pressing issue facing the future of American politics: reactionary populism may be what succeeds instead of progressive populism. To restate what I said in that last essay more succinctly, the political revolution that Bernie Sanders started has a few obstacles ahead of it.

In response to the massive wealth inequality that's appeared around the globe in recent decades, the lower classes in many industrial nations are revolting against their traditional political leaders. But perhaps out of human nature or some other factor, in nearly all cases, these populations are gravitating towards a brand of populism that blames their woes on immigrants, racial minorities, and other scapegoats. Though the economic elite would of course best like no kind of revolt at all, they find this preferable to one that promotes the democratic socialist policies which would actually hurt their interests.

In other words, the populist anger of the masses is being redirected in a way that keeps the centers of power intact. And if the movement's trajectory isn't changed towards something positive and sane, the problem of inequality will only get worse.

So how do we reverse this dangerous trend? As I also said in my last article, it's more or less reversing on its own. More than 60% of Americans think the distribution of wealth is unfair, 61% think that the rich pay too little taxes, there's a majority consensus that free trade deals are bad for America, 78% want Citizens United overturned, and in the clearest sign that Trumpist politics won't be able to win without a fight, 72% think that undocumented immigrants have a right to stay in the U.S. And with millennials expected to make up 40% of the electorate in time for the next presidential election, a group that regressive politicians do even worse with, those poll numbers are guaranteed to grow bigger.

But most Americans have held these views for a long time. And as we've seen, the Democrats, the party that's supposed to address these concerns, has failed to.

This puts the country in a very dangerous position.

Despite having experienced a large drop in the polls in the last few weeks, Donald Trump has now officially regained his competitiveness with Hillary Clinton. This says a lot about the state of American politics. Clinton, the embodiment of everything wrong with the Democratic Party, is at risk of losing to the American manifestation of the worldwide reactionary phenomenon Donald Trump. However clownish and lacking in charisma Trump is, he's managed to wield this dark new power, and up against someone like Clinton, it's more or less worked.

And whether Trump actually wins or not, this dynamic is destined to repeat itself. In future elections, we can expect a newly-in-demand breed of Republican candidates who run on the same degenerate form of populism as Trump to succeed when running against Clintonist Democrats who fail to energize the leftist base. And as John Feffer describes in his prophetic piece The Most Important Election Of Your Life Is Not This Year, this could turn into something quite scary.

The real change will come when a more sophisticated politician, with an authentic political machine, sets out to woo America B [conservative America]. Perhaps the Democratic Party will decide to return to its more populist, mid-century roots. Perhaps the Republican Party will abandon its commitment to entitlement programs for the 1%.
More likely, a much more ominous political force will emerge from the shadows. If and when that new, neo-fascist party fields its charismatic presidential candidate, that will be the most important election of our lives.
As long as America B is left in the lurch by what passes for modernity, it will inevitably try to pull the entire country back to some imagined golden age of the past before all those “others” hijacked the red, white, and blue. Donald Trump has hitched his presidential wagon to America B. The real nightmare, however, is likely to emerge in 2020 or thereafter, if a far more capable politician who embraces similar retrograde positions rides America B into Washington.

Do we really want to let it come to that?

To tie together this seemingly incoherent series of subjects I just had you read, the neoliberal order has found a way to preserve itself by letting proto-fascist demagogues keep the revolting public distracted with xenophobic scapegoating, and while the left-wing opposition to such divisive politics is strong and growing, it will fail to mobilize as long as it's being asked to unite around a deeply corrupt Democratic Party that doesn't represent its values.

As David Harvey said about the place the political system has currently been forced into by inadequate representation of liberal goals, "I think much of the Left right now, being very autonomous and anarchical, is actually reinforcing the endgame of neoliberalism. A lot of people on the Left don’t like to hear that."

The solution is clear: build another party, based on principles of peace, compassion, social and environmental justice, and getting money out of politics, which the coming majority of young and politically independent voters can rally around. The 2016 election has reflected the future of American politics in this way as well; Bernie Sanders, the candidate who upheld all of these goals, was shown to defeat Trump by a far wider margin than Clinton, precisely because he had the ability to energize and inspire the far-left majority.

And while Sanders himself was forced out of the picture, the stage has been set for a future showdown between Sandersism, Clintonism, and Trumpism. In 2018, 2020, and beyond, we'll see a contest between far-right Trumpist candidates who are trying to turn the public's dissatisfaction with the system towards fear, middle-of-the-road Clintonist candidates who are trying to convince their ever-shrinking group of followers that the system works, and far-left Sandersist candidates from a third party who will try to get the vast liberal population, along with Clintonist and Trumpist voters, to believe that a better world is possible if they embrace the politics of love rather than fear or indifference.

This shift in the game is inevitable, but Sandersism winning the game is not. The forces of cynicism and divisiveness have the backing of the entire establishment, and we'll need to battle them with everything we have to come out on top. As James Kunstler said about the uncertainty of the outcome of America's changing political landscape, "Who knows what comes out of this vacuum, what rough beast slouches towards Washington."

You are this beast. You are the voting public, who will decide which direction our country takes. For your own sakes, use your power wisely.