One thing that lets me sleep at night is the fact that demographics have shifted in the US and they do not favour Donald Trump. Still, I felt rattled after the second presidential debate, when a man from Georgia called CSPAN to say he had voted for Bill Clinton and nothing changed. He believed it was time to try something new. Something different.
I had heard this before — right before millions of Filipinos voted for Rodrigo Duterte. I went over the demographics again, like rosary beads.
Much has been made about how Republicans had initially benefited from the 'birther' campaign and the Tea Party. It suited them to have proxies undermine the executive branch. In Congress, they twice engaged in brinkmanship over the debt ceiling. In other words, the political right only has itself to blame for the nihilism which now engulfs it — and potentially, the nation.
But the failures of the left also bear examination. While Clinton's current lead cannot be attributed entirely to her virtues, the polling gap between her and Trump should have been much wider, earlier. She is fronting a man with no qualifications, no scruples and no restraint.
Clinton's (post-primary) policies target those who feel let down by government. Debt-free college, a living wage, paid family and medical leave for up to 12 weeks, tax relief for small business, closing tax loopholes that serve the wealthy, campaign finance reform, dropping the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Yet these have not penetrated certain pockets of America. Why?
The answer holds relevance for other countries where a progressive, policy-based approach to solving problems has meant jack-all. At the last Philippine elections, there were presidential candidates who ran on issues rather than bombast. Grace Poe was noted for her strategic approach to poverty alleviation, as well as the calibre of her advisers. She came a far third in the tally.
In Australia, a disciplined, idea-driven campaign against the Coalition (which had wobbled through the first half of the year) did not deliver government for Labor. In fact, some of its natural constituents gave their first preferences to other parties, including the Greens and One Nation. Its primary vote was the second-lowest in 70 years.
How could the left have lost its capacity to sell a progressive vision? Because it sold out.
"The left has tended to make more concessions than the other side. It adopted the language of market and capital, and sought to appease conservative anxieties, and ceded 'rationalism' to the right."
In the late 1990s, third-way politics became orthodoxy. Bill Clinton and Tony Blair peddled a fusion of economically liberal and social democratic objectives. People took to it. Maybe the old ideological segments no longer held, or maybe people genuinely believed that a centrist path could reconcile disparate goals.
The incompatibilities held, however. Julia Gillard, though aligned with the left, presided over the publication of NAPLAN results when she was education minister. It was essentially a market lever for lifting school performance, with parents as consumers choosing between competing brands. It has not been proven to benefit students themselves.
As prime minister, she pushed ahead with welfare cuts that saw single parents slide off parenting payments to Newstart — a policy later disowned by Bill Shorten and Anthony Albanese during their contest for leadership. Gillard also legitimised concerns about 457 visas being misused at the expense of locals. At the height of boat arrivals, she said that border anxieties were not racist and that 'people should feel free to say what they feel'. At a union gathering, she carved a distinction between the party of labour and a party that is progressive and socially democratic.
In other words, the left has tended to make more concessions than the other side. It adopted the language of market and capital, and sought to appease conservative anxieties. It ceded 'rationalism' to the right, as if inequality was not a drag on growth, which would be pragmatic to address.
This capitulation leaves us worse off, with none to tame neoliberal excess. Welfare reform under Bill Clinton exacerbated poverty, with family caps that targeted women of colour and devolution to the states that saw them shrink cash assistance for the needy. In the UK, the Labour Party under Ed Miliband failed to detach itself for some time from Tory-led austerity policies and the damage these wrought, until it was too late.
When the left recovered some of its values this year — like structural fairness — they were not as potent as they should be. People had moved on. As the man from Georgia said, it was time to try something new, something different.
This has hollowed out the right as much as the left, of course. The right must reckon with its insipid response to its own destructive elements and find something constructive to say if it is to remain relevant. The job for the left is to earn back credibility among those who look to it to blunt the impact of the economic forces that affect their lives. It needs to speak in its own voice and exercise its own authority, rather than mimic the right.
Perhaps 2016 will prove to be a purgative when it comes to opting for rogues, a line in the sand that says policies still mean something after all. This can only come from differentiation.
Fatima Measham is a Eureka Street consulting editor. She tweets @foomeister .
Donald Trump image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr