The countdown to revolution will no doubt slow its pace under a president such as Hillary Clinton, who is effectively a continuation of a long Neoliberal/Neoconservative legacy. That being said, please hear my plea, ye of the much-coddled Swing States... before you vote, consider that the alternative to this year's Corporatist Democrat is a true Fascist demagogue.
Donald Trump takes shit far beyond the usual racist or sexist dog whistles; the guy literally quotes Mussolini in Twitter posts, and re-tweets Hillary-bashing memes featuring a "Sheriff's" Star of David (the Nazi identifier for Jewish people en route to Auschwitz and other concentration camps). With every week exposing new horrors from the Trump campaign, the parallels to late-1930s Germany are piling up. At this point, anyone who denies a certain uncanny resemblance to Adolph Hitler's rise to power either lacks a basic grasp of world history, or is a party loyalist who will say anything to get another Republican elected. (I'm looking at you, six-figure earners. Ye know exactly what ye do, just like those times you voted for Dubya because he promised to cut your taxes in half).
For the record: if Donald Trump was a potential spoiler along the lines of Ross Perot, Ralph Nader, Jill Stein or Ron Paul, I'd vote for him (in a blue state, mind you). I'd love to elect a president who offers specific constructive, outside-the-box suggestions for reform, even if s/he actually couldn't get a whole lot done due to the incumbent-driven, gerrymandered, pay-to-play culture in Washington politics. Even if the corporatist firewall rendered such a president politically impotent, as they did with Jimmy Carter, I would consider it a fair trade-off if it means electing a national leader who challenges Business-as-Usual Politics in key areas that the corporatocracy refuses to address.
Sad to say, Trump is hitting on a lot of those key issues as the most authentic voice in the room, rightly criticizing a "rigged" two-party system run by special interests. In doing so, he has drawn the ire of both party establishments, which has worked almost entirely in his favor. I'm not saying that Donald Trump is "honest" or has good intentions for the United States or the world, but sometimes, he is spot-on in his candid observations about systemic failures. This is the ace up his sleeve, and he is clever enough to use it to full advantage. Leftist pundits are making a grave error when they portray both Trump and all of his supporters as either the ruling class, or bigoted white working class morons.
Yes, Trump has galvanized a large mob-like constituency of racists, which is funded by the rich folks who rule the world, but he is also appealing to a huge number of people who are sick of hearing the same party lines and find his brash statements on the Iraq war or Wall Street domination of the political process quite refreshing. In Trump's world view, the Democratic National Committee is one arm of a single Corporatist Party which spans the center-right and center-left of American politics... is this less true than the conventional wisdom in which Democrats are supposedly anti-corporate bleeding hearts who protect civil rights at all costs? The Iraq Military Authorization, Patriot Act, and many other 21st Century pieces of "bipartisan" legislation beg to differ, as do the bipartisan attacks on regulations and antitrust laws.
In lieu of Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump has filled a populist void which Hillary Clinton and her DNC cronies have left wide open. Though his motives are highly suspect, that is beside the point, because a lot of people will take him at his word. The scary truth is that Trump may just become our next President because Hillary and the Democratic National Committee refuse to stand up to corporatist domination. This sets Trump up to boldly call out the Democrats on issue after issue, from voter disenfranchisement, to Wall Street campaign donations, to her onetime support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which is conveniently the next extension of Bill Clinton's support for the job-killing NAFTA initiative. Hillary Clinton officially withdrew her support of the Trans-Pacific Partnership as of a February 2016 debate with Bernie Sanders, but it is quite telling that all of her DNC Policy Committee picks voted in favor of the TPP while all of Sanders' picks voted against it. The Democratic National Committee, as a Hillary Clinton proxy, is handing Trump a treasure trove of talking points which will not only solidify his hold among the far right, but will also attract many disenfranchised people in the Bernie-or-Bust movement.
While mass media focuses on Donald Trump's role as a prominent right-wing ideologue (without ever really calling him out on it), the buried lead is that Trump is winning over over thousands of voters from many other ideological constituencies. His messaging actually ranges all across the board, and includes hugely popular vignettes such as "Bring the jobs back," "End corporate corruption of politics," "Stop Wall Street from buying out politicians," "Incumbent career politicians have to go," "U.S. elections are rigged," "Attacking Iraq was a huge mistake that led to more terrorism," and "The mainstream media only works for the interests of the ruling class." All of these messages, on their face, are completely correct, and the two ruling political parties are at Trump's mercy because none of their own leaders have the courage to call out the corrupt pay-to-play system that gets them reelected year after year. It's their funeral: if they continue in the status quo of total obstinacy when it comes to the more oligarchical elements of U.S. government, they will face a sloppy, cataclysmic revolution rather than the more manageable kind where none of them end up in jail.
Donald Trump is now well-positioned to take advantage of his own party's internal resistance and the Democratic leadership's flagrant cronyism, declaring both sides of the aisle hopelessly corrupt. Along with securing a large part of the Independent vote, this seemingly anti-corruption message will be catnip to the more gullible progressive voters who are fed up with a rigged political game run by transnational corporations. Trump has styled himself as an "outsider" who wants to make the system work for everyone, when the plain truth is he is an anti-government nationalist who will serve the interests of the richest and whitest Americans. He is shaping up to be a fascist ruler in the league of Hitler or Pinochet... and with every concession to Corporate America, the DNC is encouraging his rise to power.
