The Electoral College’s selection of Donald Trump as 45th president of the United States continues to shock on many levels. A transition from the first African American president to someone who made racism a cornerstone of his campaign is one element. Another is that Trump triumphed against what appeared to be a solid “popular front” of most of American business, the media, the political establishment, and liberal activists lined up behind Democrat Hillary Clinton. Despite all of these factors—or perhaps, more accurately, because of them—the dysfunctional U.S. political system delivered the world’s most powerful office to the loser of the national popular vote for the second time in sixteen years.
US Politics in the Age of Uncertainty is a smart and compelling reader, written by socialists, that delves into different aspects of US politics in this era of transition from Obama to Trump. These essays are offered with the knowledge that the social forces that drove the 2016 election remain with us today, and thus helps set a course for the left to project its true power in a way that can offer a real alternative for the working-class majority.
Contents
Introduction
Lance Selfa
Chickens Coming Home to Roost for the Democratic Party? How Neoliberalism Quietly Devastated the US Working Class
Sharon Smith
We Got Trumped!
Charlie Post
Who Put Donald Trump in the White House?
Kim Moody
The Great God Trump and the White Working Class
Mike Davis
Choosing or Refusing to Take Sides in an Era of Right-Wing Populism
Neil Davidson
From Hope to Despair: How the Obama Years Gave Us Trump
Lance Selfa
Black Politics in the Trump Era
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
The Misogynist-in-Chief: The Stakes for Women’s Rights in the Trump Era
Elizabeth Schulte
Trump, Islamophobia, and US Politics
An Interview with Deepa Kumar
From “Deporter-in-Chief ” to Xenophobia Unleashed: Immigration Policy under Trump
An Interview with Justin Akers Chacón
The End of Progressive Neoliberalism
Nancy Fraser
Publication date: January 9, 2018
“To successfully wage political struggles, we must first understand the terrain on which we stand. This collection contains everything we need to understand the world that gave us Trump, and to arm ourselves for the battles to come.”—Sarah Jaffe, author of Necessary Trouble: Americans in Revolt.
“This brilliant collection shows how the dismal neoliberalism of the corporate Democrats combined with the dark genius of the right to put a malignantly narcissistic, racist, sexist, and nativist white-nationalist mogul in the White House. The contributors point the way to an independent and genuinely Left politics beyond what contributor Nancy Fraser rightly calls "the Hobson's choice between reactionary populism and progressive neoliberalism.” —Paul Street, author of They Rule: The 1 Percent v. Democracy
Praise for The Democrats:
“Lance Selfa’s The Democrats reveals the many ways in which the establishment Democratic Party has not just dashed progressive hopes over centuries but served as a distraction from the desperately needed business of making real change in this country. Writing dismal history like this is dirty work, but somebody’s got to do it and Selfa’s straight talk actually lifts one’s spirits.”—Laura Flanders, host of The Laura Flanders Show
Renowned activist-scholar Mike Davis assesses the coronavirus crisis and discusses the urgent need for international solidarity to end this (and future) pandemics. Watch the video.
Edited by Lance Selfa
