Don�t mourn Hillary�s loss
Solly Rakgomo | Friday November 11, 2016 15:25
The groping. It’s finally over. Time to exhale. Election Day has come and gone and we are now sitting in an ugly new era, stunned that the Trump revolution won, and won big. Hillary Clinton and whatever she actually stood for, lost. And lost badly. Far worse than any polls suggested, even the few that had Trump squeaking out a victory.
There will be plenty of blame flying around in the weeks and months ahead. Yet, no matter what stupid excuse Democrats come up with for Hillary’s historic embarrassment, they have only themselves to blame. She lost because she deserved to lose. She ran an awful campaign, mired in controversy, and was unable to excite voters to the polls. She believed neoliberalism could carry the day, but she was wrong. The DNC was wrong.
The establishment lost because the establishment deserved its fate. Hillary has always been an underside of the new neoliberal oligarchy. Her warmongering record in places such as Libya, Iraq and Syria to name but a few has always angered the poor Americans who saw her as a front for Military Industrial Complex who have profited handsomely from the misery of war. Her corrupt relationship with Wall Street oligarchs (Goldman Sachs) have turned her into a lame puppet of the financial elites who pushed her to turn the Democratic Party from the centre left to the right.
Mind you it is estimated that for the past few years she has received more $30million as ‘speaking fees’ at many Wall Street functions who had the evil intention of influencing policy behind the scenes once she occupied the White House. She became so power drunk with neo liberalism to some extent that she embraced it as godly sent.
The poor masses ( 99%) who have been strangulated by endless austerity rejected her and found solace in Trump who cunningly fed on their seething anger and despair shouting a shrill rhetoric of pseudo-nationalism to make “America great again.”
By no means does this mean Trump will overthrow the status quo, it only means the outsider Trump was better able to exploit the boiling rage of the middle class of America; all the workers who were undercut by Bill Clinton’s NAFTA.
The hundreds of thousands that never rebounded from the Bush recession. Trump provided an outlet of hope for these lost souls, a fabricated hope no doubt, but hope nonetheless, wrapped in rage. His mastery of social media, of vindictive and racist rhetoric, helped him gut the provincial electorate. Against all odds, against allegations of sexual misconduct, against corporate mainstream media, against common sense, being anti-Trump wasn’t enough to get Hillary elected.
In many ways, Hillary was her own worst enemy – a poor campaigner, a flat platform and only an ounce more personality than her VP pick Tim Kaine (and that’s not saying much). With no ground game, far less money than the Democrats, nearly zero endorsements from Hollywood and the media, Trump still prevailed. Somehow he understood a fair portion of the American psyche better than Hillary ever could.
It seemed she learned little from the branding genius of Barack Obama or the accessibility of her husband Bill. By night’s end it was clear she gleaned nothing from Bernie Sanders’s movement and cared little about his searing critiques of Wall Street and our corrupt political system that’s left so many behind. Being against Trump, in the end, was not nearly enough.
The years ahead will be telling. How will Democrats respond to a Trump presidency? Will they view it as an opportunity to reimagine themselves in a progressive light, or will they continue to believe neoliberalism and identity politics are enough to win elections? Don’t hold your breath. In the end, progressives shouldn’t be depressed by this election’s outcome.
They should be invigorated. They should be ready for a fight. Where they left from drone strikes to the dreadful Obamacare, perhaps progressives have failed to oppose the most sordid policies of the Obama administration, be awakened under Trump’s reign and fill the streets in disgust at every turn. One can only hope. Hope and rage against the new machine.
Catch Solly Rakgomo @ 72850881