The Democrats Reinvigorate Their Party and American Democracy

While there is much to despair about American democracy these days, there are also rays of hope, at least in the Democratic Party. If I had been an American during the 2016 election, I would have been an unhappy voter. Obviously, I couldn't vote for the buffoon, but Hillary Clinton didn't exactly inspire me either. She was often referred to as the bankers' candidate, or the Wall Street candidate, and rightly so. During the election campaign, she rejected calls to release the transcripts of speeches she gave at Goldman Sachs and other banks. Considering the bankers were the guys who had brought down their own companies along with the financial system and a large part of the economy as well, thereby creating misery for millions of ordinary people, I would very much have liked to know what she was promising them.

Meanwhile, she never seemed to connect with those white blue-collar and rural voters who suffer from the effects of globalization, mergers and automation, and who are deeply uneasy about the economic, cultural, and demographic trends of a changing society. She seemed to take traditionally Democratic states for granted and never grasped the intensity of the grievances or the anti-elite nature of the sentiment. Trump did, and responded with demagogic fervour that convinced the discontented he was on their side.

Her husband, Bill Clinton, helped shift the Democrats off course by collaborating with Republicans to rend the social safety net and with Joe Biden to implement a crime bill that resulted in mass imprisonment of minorities.

Obama offered a partial correction, but the Democrats may now be putting themselves fully on a progressive track. Their presidential nomination race includes a number of candidates who are attuned to the growing inequalities of economic and political power, to say nothing of the climate crisis, candidates such as Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris. And then there is that group of new faces bringing vigour to Congress, people such as Ilhan Omar, Jahana Hayes and that wonderful young lady Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, youngest woman ever elected to Congress, and perhaps the most vivacious.

Will this bring the disaffected to the Democrat Party? Not all, certainly. Trump has a fervent base of anti-abortion, anti-gay and anti-minority followers who do not much like a liberal society at all. But the Democrats are preparing to offer real solutions for inequality, immigration and climate change as opposed to the demagoguery currently issuing from the White House. In 2020, Americans should have a meaningful progressive choice and that will be good for their democracy.