Center-left parties in America and Europe are struggling. They are struggling for three reasons: First, they have failed to offer a credible response to the period of prolonged income stagnation and growing inequality; second, they have become part of the political-business-elite accommodation that the public views as corrupt; and third, they have been indifferent to the disruptive effects of globalization and loath to show immigration needs to be controlled.
Donald Trump’s improbable and tragic victory has now shown painfully and unnecessarily how important are those factors in the United States too. It would have been better had we been spared this American experiment, but we can at least learn from it, and quickly. CONT.
Stanley Greenberg (Greenberg Quinlan Rosner), Democracy: A Journal of Ideas