Photo by David | CC BY 2.0
It has turned out that the Democratic Party is the party that would fall apart after Trump’s election, although, like the odds on the election itself, most pundits pictured the Republican Party destroyed by Trump’s election.
It was always in the cards that a mogul president, regardless of how quirky, would meld with Republicans intent on keeping the oligarchy flourishing. It was also in the cards that without the Rust Belt working class in the Heartland, the Democrats were left with the margins and so at the margins of any electoral victory.
One aspect of marginal lives is that their personal life difficulties drown out any interest in politics or any sense of gratitude to the politicians fighting to bring “equal justice” to them. The long range bet is that eventually a Latino minority will pay back the Democrats for all they have done for them. However, some 25% did not feel that obligation in the 2016 election and voted for Trump. This may very well be a meritocratic, professional Latino class identifying not with ethnicity but with class status. Also, 64% of non-college aged white women and 45% of college aged white women voted for Trump, apparently not much affected by Trump’s predatory, sexist behavior nor by Hillary’s sex.
A cultural left focused on equal rights for minorities and women, the so-called identity politics, can be traced to a deep rooted love of individual freedom, a freedom always threatened by a societal order…