Quarterly Essay 63 Enemy Within: American Politics in the Time of Trump by Don Watson

Author:Don Watson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Schwartz Publishing Pty. Ltd
Published: 2016-08-28T14:00:00+00:00

8.

You know what you did? You embraced the insanity you were telling us about.

– Don DeLillo, Great Jones Street

In the wake of the spectacular Democratic convention it seems unreasonable even to hint at the possibility, but if Trump were to win in November, Hillary Clinton might be the deciding factor. Such speeches! Such enthusiasm! Such ideals! Such drama and emotion! Such a pseudo-event! But a woman nominee – such a moment. And one to make Trumpland look ridiculous. Even that old lizard Bill Clinton was poignant in his way.

But Bill Clinton is the author of NAFTA and the president who ended Glass–Steagall. Hillary Clinton is going to the fight with Trump on a promise to at least look again at NAFTA and reintroduce an equivalent to Glass–Steagall to keep the banks in line. Thanks to Bernie Sanders, that’s in the platform. So is a resolution to break up the banks that Congress bailed out – and didn’t punish for their sins. Hillary is also now committed to scuttling the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which her new pal President Obama badly wants because it’s a big part of his geopolitics. Hillary Clinton has a platform that really isn’t hers. The Democrats are proceeding as one party, but in truth there are now two – one subscribes to neoliberalism and the other foreshadows its demise – and she has to represent both of them. Philadelphia was a beautiful and moving thing, and Democrats can only hope that all those tears of joy and love were enough to wash away the contradictions.

This might be unfair. Whether she was driven there by Bernie Sanders or has chosen to renew her old Methodist vows to the poor and meek, Clinton is running on a progressive ticket now, and she might decide to make that the colour of her presidency. She promises to invest heavily in the cities to lift people out of poverty; to invest in infrastructure, create jobs, revive manufacturing and raise the minimum wage. The platform promises comprehensive immigration reform, an end to student debt, paid family leave and much else. It is very likely what Sanders said it was – the most progressive platform in the party’s history.

Listening to her now, you might think that after years as a member of the supply-side economics church, Hillary Clinton’s joined the revived and steadily expanding demand-side one. Could she in eight years reverse the engines of inequality and corruption, bridge the divides and enliven the democracy? Could she desegregate the cities? Could she get her country leading the world by example to save the planet from global warming? Could she do something about the lobbyists, the power of money in Washington that is destroying American democracy from within? Take on Wall Street? Make the effort on behalf of public decency and ordinary justice that was not made after the financial collapse? Could she get the public interest represented in Washington again? Could she do something about guns? In Chicago on the Memorial Day weekend, sixty-nine people were shot.

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