Re: <nettime> What is the meaning of Trump's victory?

["Michael Gurstein" <gurstein@gmail.com>]

The emerging explanation for Trump seems be of the misogyny or racism of
a significant portion of the US population.  That may or may not be true
(I rather think that a portion of those voting for Trump were
racist/misogynist but by no means all).

What is overlooked in all of this discussion looking for the villain(s)
in the Trump election piece is that Progressives scored a number of huge
victories with the recent election with the resounding rejection of
neo-liberalism and its counterpart in an overt reaction to elite
control; the evident defeat of the TPP; the rejection of austerity and
an apparent shift to Keynesian economics with the Infrastructure
program; even the re-opening of the seriously flawed Obamacare.  

That these were all done as a result of a response to pressure from the
US working class should equally please US (and other) progressives. The
problem of course is that the wrong guy is able to take credit for this
and to steer it in his perverse and dangerous direction and of course
the other elements of baggage of his deeply flawed personality and the
repugnance of many of his backers.

If (and I know how difficult it is) we were able to remove the obnoxious
personality of Trump from the circumstance many of us would be
celebrating unreservedly at the shattering of the ideological hegemony
that has been strangling popular developments throughout the world. 

Of course, Trump and his neo-fascist compatriots are an extremely
dangerous political reality but that reality should be seen for what it
is the wrong set of pilot fish leading an analysis and social forces
which could and should more appropriately have come from the Left rather
than the Right.  

One immediate lesson to draw from this I think is that rather than
mourning and celebrating Hillary and  the folks in the DNC one should be
recognizing the fact that it is a direct result of their failures and
egoism that Trump is the beneficiary rather than someone like Sanders or
more importantly popular movements and that our responses to Trump and
actions into the future should be done in full recognition of this.

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