did a big deep dive into trump and trumpism

and i feel a lot better about it all

not saying he is not dangerous and going to do horrible things

but first, after feeling despair about how people could support such a political movement,

and then reading around a lot of the history of republican presidents and commentary about trump,

i could hold the two contradictory thoughts i originally had about trump in my head:

• in some ways, yes, it is true that trump has uncorked some sort of new genie of political power

• but, he is not without weaknesses--he is not all-powerful, and we can do something about him

what am i talking about? look at the exit poll statistics: the demographic categories that voted for and against trump were almost perfectly divided: married people, religious christian people, and white men lacking a university education overwhelmingly voted for trump. everyone else overwhelmingly voted against him.

this does not represent the received wisdom on how to win an election under neoliberal capitalism. election strategies should, so it is said, primarily focus on swing voters. what trump has done is changed the meaning of what a swing voter is.

before, the two party system got along just fine with the definition of a swing voter as someone who could be wooed to neoliberalism.

up until now all two party systems had both parties fighting over these same people. the content of their election policies were also usually quite similar. the point is not that trump 'offered an actual/substantive alternative' to neoliberalism. this is is an effect of trumpism, not a cause.

only certain sections of society are rushing towards him. the republican party is now no longer the party of free trade and laisse-faire capitalism. it is now the party of far right authoritarianism.

trumpism is a winner-takes-all strategy. he is marshalling a subset of the united states against itself. this was my explanation for myself.

the 'what is to be done' question can then be answered after this: the concept of winner-takes-all was inherent to neoliberal electoralism. the concept of which person counted as a swing voter was just different.

at this point you can take the broad or the narrow approach: narrow--we counterpose some other, new definition of a person potentially wooed to the left. broad--we refuse to play winner-takes-all completely, and radicalise what it even means to try and defeat trump.

the first would be playing trump at his own game. the second would be a radically different idea of democracy.