In his column yesterday for the Washington Post, Eugene Robinson contends that the triumph of the tangerine in the Republican Primary and Senator Sander’s unexpectedly strong showing in not his party’s primary possibly signals a fundamental realignment of political forces in the nation that neither Party has come to terms with….
“Leaders of both major parties are wrong to think of the 2016 election as some kind of fluke. I believe a political realignment is underway, and those who fail to discern its outlines could end up powerless and irrelevant.”
Robinson does not dismiss Hillary’s assessments of why she lost the election - in such a close contest, he says, any number of things could have contributed to the disaster.
But he has a theory for why Trump defeated his field of 16 establishment Goppers and Sanders resonated with Democrats who were not wedded to the Party line:
“Look at the issues on which Trump and Sanders were in basic agreement. Both doubted the bipartisan consensus favoring free-trade agreements, arguing they had disadvantaged U.S. workers. Both spoke of health care as a right that should be enjoyed by all citizens. Both pledged to strengthen, not weaken, entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare. Both were deeply skeptical of U.S. involvement in foreign wars, vowing to do their nation-building here at home. Both advocated mammoth, job-creating investments in infrastructure. Both contended “the system” was rigged to favor the rich and powerful at the expense of everyone else.
Leave aside for the moment the fact that Trump has not fulfilled his promises. The overlap in what he and Sanders said they would do is striking — as is the contrast between what Clinton and Trump’s GOP rivals were saying.”
Sure, at the Convention the Party adapted many of Sander’s position, but were the mass of voters even aware of this, and among those who were, did the Road to Damascus moment resonate?
Robinson ends his piece with a warning to those who think that politics as usual will carry the day in coming elections.
“But I see no evidence yet that either party is engaged in the kind of fundamental rethinking I believe is called for. So it is a mistake to assume that Trump is necessarily a one-term president or that Sanders is done politically. You know the saying: In the land of the blind, a one-eyed man is king.”