How Donald Trump Got Elected - Or How the Neoliberal Moderate Left Led to America's Downfall

In the past few months, all the way through the American presidential elections, the world has been shocked by one man: Donald Trump. How a racist, xenophobe, wall-preaching so-called businessman, who has gone bankrupt a staggering four times, managed to become the leader of the free world is a question people all over the world have been asking themselves ever since the last ballots were drawn. 


When the right seems like the anti-establishment party to the people, it is almost a guaranteed win: the middle class overwhelmingly votes moderate anti-establishment, which is exactly what Trump has been preaching, while the higher ups will stay with Trump, who will only make the future more enjoyable for the rich. Add to that that Trump is a bona-fide celebrity under Republicans and his name is associated with money, success, and casinos - a level of brand awareness that Trump has spent years building - while Hillary Clinton is associated with Bill Clinton's scandals and has ties to Wall Street. When a republican candidate wins the middle class, the vote is decided. 

Almost no-one seriously considered that this man could become the republican nominee until he won the nomination. Even after his shock victory over the other republican candidates, it always seemed clear that this clown could never actually become president. Well now we have Donny in the oval office and it’s important that we understand how this happened. Donald Trump isn’t the problem, and neither are the people that voted for him. They are symptoms of a much larger problem, just as Bernie Sanders and his supporters are symptoms of the same problem. Bernie & co, lying on the other extreme of the political spectrum have been without doubt the more enjoyable symptom however. 

The problem I’m talking about is, of course, that American politics has become a mess of identity politics, resentment and confused political ideologies. It is traditionally the role of the left to promote an anti-establishment candidate, to shake up the system and promote radical social change. The modern neo-liberal moderate left under Clinton, however, has taken on the role of the pro-establishment, pro-wall street, politically correct party, while being leftist on social issues, assuming a much more centrist or even conservative stance on economic and political issues. This is a problem, because now the right, under Donald Trump, the glorified wall-builder, is the anti-establishment party, or at least that is their party line. 

There is one thing however, that we can take away from this, and that might help us avoid disasters like this in the future: Don’t forgo party ideology in the most important elections in the world and don’t put the candidate with the lowest approval ratings in DNC history up against the one with the lowest approval ratings in GOP history, because in a two-party system that’s how we get President Trump.

By Oskar Diry