THE 2016 ELECTION AND ITS AFTERMATH

There is no doubt that Trump is shaking up Washington. It is equally clear that a shakeup was overdue, given government’s unresponsiveness to the needs of the people in its slavish efforts to serve the interests of the donor class.

The 2016 election offered us 3 main choices: Trump and Sanders as agents of change, ostensibly in the service of “the People,” and Clinton, as an agent of continuity. Given the prevailing hunger for change within the electorate, it should have been a contest between Trump and Sanders. Had that been the case, we would have been given a choice between Trump’s ersatz and Sanders’ genuine appeals to the working classes. However, the machinations of the Democratic National Committee, among other things granting Clinton an insurmountable lead in “super-delegates,” resulted in a presidential contest between a Republican agent of change and a Democratic agent of continuity at a time when the electorate demanded change. And they got it.

Trouble is, Trump misrepresented himself as a champion of the working class, when in fact (and not surprisingly), he represents the interests of his fellow plutocrats. Every executive order he has signed, and every legislative initiative he has endorsed favors the rich and corporate America to the detriment of the working classes he inveigled to elect him. If his budget, tax and health care initiatives become law, we will witness yet more extreme inequality of wealth/income with its attendant financial and economic calamities and social discontent. Lord only knows where his loose-cannon foreign policy will lead.

So far, his base remains loyal, reveling in the discomfort Trump inflicts on the political establishment and the mainstream press, oblivious to the reality of Trump’s betrayal of working class interests and his inability to deliver on their hot-button issues like the wall, the Muslim ban, “good-paying” blue-collar jobs, etc.. It will be fascinating to see a) when his base finally awakens to the fact that they have been hornswoggled and b) how they react to that realization. I suspect it won’t be pretty for Mr. Trump and the Republicans. However, assuming Washington does not succumb to Trump’s autocratic tendencies, I expect the political equivalent of Newton’s 3rdlaw of motion will produce an “equal and opposite reaction” in the direction of liberal policies devised to reorient government to serve the interests of the People, much as occurred in 1932 with the election of F.D.R.. My money is on Elizabeth Warren.