Diari De Les Idees

Diari de les idees

Núm. 29

Especial eleccions americanes

(7-11 de novembre 2016) RESUM D’IDEES

Pour comprendre Trump, il faut revoir “Citizen Kane”. Le chef-d'œuvre d'Orson Welles est le film préféré du candidat républicain. Mais en a-t-il bien saisi toutes les implications?

Jean-Marie Pottier, Slate.fr, http://www.slate.fr/story/127457/pour-comprendre-trump- il-faut-revoir-citizen-kane

If Hillary Clinton could just admit she's a terrible candidate, people might vote for her instead of Donald Trump.

Mark Steel, http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/hillary-clinton-just-admit-terrible- president-candidate-donald-trump-vote-voting-times-election-a7395921.html

Why millennials’ age demographic is not the defining trait for how they’ll vote - When it comes to understanding the voting bloc, it turns out to the 18-to-34 age bracket has limited value – it’s the ethnic makeup that can be a determining factor.

Mona Chalabi, ―Why millennials‘ age demographic is not the defining trait for how they‘ll vote‖, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/us- news/2016/sep/30/millennials-voting-bloc-demographics-2016-election

I don’t know how we go forward from here. Is America a failed state and society? It looks truly possible. I guess we have to pick ourselves up and try to find a way forward, but this has been a night of terrible revelations, and I don’t think it’s self-indulgent to feel quite a lot of despair.

Paul Krugman, Our Unknown Country, New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/cp/opinion/election-night-2016/the- unknown-country?smid=fb-share

Would Bernie Sanders have done better against Trump than Clinton? Many people thought Sanders would do worse because of his very progressive ideology. But perhaps ideology isn’t as important a factor in voters’ minds. Given Trump’s victory, being an outsider may have trumped an ideology that some might see as extreme.

Harry Enten, FiveThirtyEight, http://fivethirtyeight.com/live-blog/2016-election-results- coverage/?ex_cid=extra_bannerhttp://fivethirtyeight.com/live-blog/2016-election- results-coverage/?ex_cid=extra_banner

At times, politics seems focused on tangible questions: Who can manage the economy, or how should we tax different groups? At other times, it seems to hinge more on symbols. Symbolic politics is emotion-laden and often grounded in questions of group status; as a result, it is often zero- sum. To make sense of this election, I’ve found myself returning frequently to a chapter by David Sears on symbolic politics. From a wall on the Mexican border to discussions of “deplorables,” from email security to paying for college, so many of the issues that have been foremost in our minds have been less realistic policy proposals and more symbols of group status. The question before us is how do we translate such a symbolic campaign into the concrete guidelines for governance.

Dan Hopkins, FiveThirtyEight, http://fivethirtyeight.com/live-blog/2016-election- results-coverage/?ex_cid=extra_banner

Hillary Clinton, like it or not, est une ploutocrate. Une représentante du monde libéral et capitaliste contemporain. Hillary, sociologiquement et politiquement, était déphasée, et singulièrement devant le populisme.

Claude Askolovitch, La mort de la ploutocratie, Slate.fr, 9 de novembre 2016, http://www.slate.fr/story/128240/hillary-clinton-nous-abandonne-face-donald-trump

Et voilà comment on en est arrivé à un résultat que les experts en tout et en rien n’ont pas vu venir, car eux-mêmes vivent dans une bulle. Tout comme ils ont été incapables de prévoir le Brexit, ou quelques années plus tôt la victoire du non au traité constitutionnel européen en 2005, il était inconcevable à leurs yeux qu’un homme aussi détestable que Donald Trump puisse l’emporter. Toutes proportions gardées, c’est la même cécité qui les conduit à ne rien comprendre au phénomène Le Pen en France, lequel n’est pas sans analogie avec l’effet Trump. Face à la colère qui conduit nombre de citoyens déboussolés à se tourner vers le FN, ils se contentent encore trop souvent de condamnations morales, sans prendre en compte un mouvement de fond qui se joue des barrières de la diabolisation.

Jack Dion, Pourquoi ils n‘ont rient compris au phénomène Donald Trump, Marianne, 9 de novembre 2016, http://www.marianne.net/pourquoi-ils-n-ont-rien-compris-au- phenomene-donald-trump-100247707.html

2 has adopted an economic plan that would, among other things, slash tax rates for rich people like himself. But a politician does not have to live among people of modest means, or even tout policies that would boost their incomes, to articulate their grievances and gain their support. Win or lose, Trump has tapped into a deep vein of distress and resentment among millions of white working- and middle-class Americans.

Michael Kazin, Trump and American Populism, Foreign Policy, October 6 2016 https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2016-10-06/trump-and-american- populism?cid=soc-fb-rdr

Pour comprendre Trump, il faut revoir “Citizen Kane”. Le chef-d'œuvre d'Orson Welles est le film préféré du candidat républicain. Mais en a-t-il bien saisi toutes les implications?

Jean-Marie Pottier, Slate.fr, http://www.slate.fr/story/127457/pour-comprendre-trump- il-faut-revoir-citizen-kane

OUVERTURE AU NOIR – TRUMP TOWER

Un travelling vertical balaie le gratte-ciel de bas en haut. La caméra pénètre, par une fenêtre, dans le bureau d'un Donald Trump très vieilli. Tenant à la main les résultats de la présidentielle 2016, il s'effondre en lâchant un seul mot, sa bouche filmée en gros plan: «SAD!».

D'outre-tombe, Donald Trump serait sans doute flatté que son futur biopic commence par ce genre de scène imitant le prologue de son film préféré: Citizen Kane. Le milliardaire a fait part à de nombreuses reprises de son goût pour le premier long métrage d'Orson Welles, élu à plusieurs reprises meilleur film de tous les temps par un panel de critiques. On ne parle pas là d'un titre lâché pour faire cinéphile en pleine campagne présidentielle, mais d'une affection durable pour le cinéaste et sa vision «captivante» et «énigmatique»du pouvoir. Dès 2005, Trump en faisait part à un de ses biographes, dans des termes peu châtiés qui ont déclenché le courroux de la famille Welles:

«J'adorais Orson Welles. Il était complètement paumé. Un véritable chantier. Mais songez à ses femmes. Songez à ses réussites. Il était cet immense génie qui n'a jamais réussi passé 26 ans. Il est devenu totalement impossible. Il pensait que tout le monde était un crétin, était ceci, était cela; quand on lui donnait un budget, il le multipliait par vingt et détruisait tout.»

«Citizen Trump»

Si Trump aime autant Citizen Kane, c'est bien sûr parce qu'il s'est reconnu dans son héros Charles Foster Kane, et qu'on l'y a reconnu. Dès septembre 1987, alors que couraient déjà des rumeurs sur une candidature à la présidentielle, Newsweek publiait une longue enquête titrée «Citizen Trump» où l'on pouvait lire que «aux yeux de ses ennemis –et il en a en abondance–, son flirt avec la politique confirme leurs pires soupçons: ils le voient comme un Citizen Kane qui aurait traversé l'écran, un tycoon arrogant dont l'ambition insatiable le pousse à convoiter le pouvoir politique».

Le personnage de milliardaire imaginé par Welles était nourri de plusieurs personnalités réelles, dont le magnat de la presse William Randolph Hearst, qui représenta quatre ans New York au Congrès et échoua, en 1904, à obtenir l'investiture du Parti démocrate pour la présidentielle. Hurst a inspiré Kane, et Trump ressemble à Hurst: «Ils sont tous les deux des outsiders, qui cherchent à se faire élire à travers des partis établis, expliquait récemment le spécialiste des médias W. Joseph Campbell. Ils affirment parler au nom d'une classe laborieuse défavorisée ou négligée. [...] Ils sont tous les deux décrits comme inaptes aux hautes fonctions politiques et ils inspirent des critiques véhémentes.»

Pas étonnant, donc, que les parallèles sautent aux yeux à la revision de Citizen Kane, et notamment de la fausse bande d'actualités qui ouvre le film, «News on the March»: «Voici un homme qui aurait pu être président. Qui a été plus aimé, haï et a fait parler de lui que n'importe qui de notre époque.»

Trump comme Kane ne sont pas partis de zéro, mais sont des héritiers. Kane est connu pour ses journaux, mais possède aussi «des épiceries, des fabriques de papiers, des complexes immobiliers, des usines, des forêts, des paquebots», tout comme Trump a apposé son nom sur une grande variété de produits. Kane affirme qu'il «est, a été et ne sera qu'une chose: un Américain», tout comme Trump n'a que ce mot à la bouche. S'agissant des personnalités publiques, Kane commence souvent par «dénoncer», puis par «soutenir», comme Trump avec Hillary Clinton. «Peu de vies privées auront été autant publiques» que celle de Kane, comme celle de Trump. Et entre la Trump Tower et le complexe immobilier de Mar el-Lago, le candidat républicain a ses propres Xanadu.

Poursuites et scrutin truqué

Un des ses biographes a raconté que, un jour qu'il regardait Boulevard du crépuscule dans son avion, Donald Trump s'était penché sur son épaule pendant un monologue de Norma Desmond («Ces idiots de producteurs! Ces imbéciles! [...] Ont-ils oublié à quoi ressemble une vedette? Je vais leur montrer. Je vais revenir au sommet!») et lui avait lancé: «Scène incroyable, n'est-ce pas?» C'est cette même volonté d'acier qui fascine Trump dans le personnage de Kane: il n'y voit pas seulement une fortune, mais quelqu'un qui rêve de plier le monde à sa vision («Les gens penseront ce que je leur dis de penser») et à la conviction qu'il est le meilleur.

Et si les urnes disent l'inverse, c'est que l'adversaire est un escroc et un tricheur. Une séquence de Citizen Kane a ainsi acquis un statut prophétique dans la campagne actuelle, à pile un siècle d'écart. En 1916, Charles Foster Kane se présente, en candidat indépendant, au poste de gouverneur de New York, et lance à propos de son adversaire:

«Tous les sondages indépendants montrent que je serai élu. [...] Mon premier acte officiel en tant que gouverneur de l'État sera de nommer un procureur spécial pour mener les poursuites, l'inculpation et la condamnation du boss Jim W. Gettys.»

Mais une semaine avant l'élection, son rival obtient des preuves de ses infidélités conjugale et les fait fuiter à la presse. Le soir du scrutin, la rédaction du journal de Kane, le New York Inquirer, est obligée d'abandonner la une qu'elle avait prévue, «KANE ÉLU»,pour une autre, «KANE BATTU. FRAUDE ÉLECTORALE!» – comme quand le candidat Trump dénonce à l'avance un scrutin truqué.

«Trouvez-vous une femme différente»

Dans ces passages, Welles montre clairement la vision paranoïaque et manichéenne de son personnage. Trump l'a-t-il saisie? Rien n'est moins sûr. En 2002, le candidat a accordé une fascinante interview sur le film au documentariste Errol Morris, qui voulait, pour un projet resté inachevé, faire parler différentes personnalités de leur film préféré. La chute laisse pantois:

«Si vous pouviez donner un conseil à Charles Foster Kane, que lui diriez-vous? –Trouvez-vous une femme différente.»

Quand on l'interroge sur la chute de Kane après son divorce avec sa deuxième épouse, Trump explique que:

«Citizen Kane est un film sur le fait d'accumuler des choses et à la fin de ce processus, vous voyez ce qui se passe et ce n'est pas forcément totalement positif. Kane apprend que la richesse n'est pas tout car il l'a, mais il n'a pas le bonheur. [...] Dans la vraie vie je pense que, en fait, la richesse vous isole des vrais gens. [...] Il y a une grande ascension dans Citizen Kane et un modeste déclin, pas financier mais personnel, mais un déclin quand même.»

C'est évidemment vrai, mais Trump passe à côté d'une autre signification du film, qui va au-delà du simple dicton «L'argent ne fait pas le bonheur»: ce n'est pas tant sa fortune qui a isolé Kane que son orgueil, y compris son obsession à vouloir faire le bonheur des autres malgré eux. Comme quand il construit un opéra et force son épouse, chanteuse médiocre, à s'y produire, ou comme quand il s'improvise champion des travailleurs, s'attirant une réplique de son employé Jedediah Leland, qui lui explique qu'avec des syndicats, ceux-ci n'ont pas besoin de lui (le film est sorti pendant la présidence de Franklin D. Roosevelt, dont Welles était un admirateur).

«D'une certaine façon, il s'identifie clairement à Kane. Kane est Trump. Et ce n'est pas le genre de parallèle que je voudrais faire si j'étais lui, expliquait récemment Errol Morris. Vous voyez, un mégalomane amoureux du pouvoir et écrasant tout sur son passage, incapable d'avoir des amis, incapable de trouver l'amour?»

Quel est son «Rosebud»?

Dans son interview, Morris interroge Trump sur le sens de «Rosebud», le mot mystérieux proféré par Kane avant d'expirer, dont on apprend au dernier plan qu'il s'agit du nom de la luge avec laquelle il jouait, enfant, quand son tuteur est venu le chercher dans le Colorado pour l'installer dans la richesse à New York. «Je pense que sa signification est de ramener une figure assez triste et solitaire à son enfance», répond le milliardaire.

Quel est le «Rosebud» de Trump? Certains, en plaisantant, ont dit qu'il s'agissait de la défaite de son émission «The Apprentice» aux Emmy Awards, dont il semble ne pas bien s'être remis plus d'une décennie plus tard. En septembre 2015, l'essayiste Arthur Goldwag avançait une piste plus romanesque, et plus wellesienne. En 1964, Trump, tout juste majeur, avait assisté, avec son père, à l'inauguration du pont Verrazano-Narrows, qui relie Brooklyn à Staten Island, et s'était étonné de ce que les élus figurent au premier rang et l'ingénieur responsable du pont à l'écart. De là serait née sa conviction qu'il faut se faire respecter et apposer son nom partout. «Citizen Trump» était né.

If Hillary Clinton could just admit she's a terrible candidate, people might vote for her instead of Donald Trump.

Mark Steel, http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/hillary-clinton-just-admit-terrible- president-candidate-donald-trump-vote-voting-times-election-a7395921.html

Can't she just level with them and say: 'Look, I know I’m a creepy lying sleazebag who can’t be trusted. I know I backed the Iraq War, and make up so many lies I accidentally claimed I was under fire in Serbia when I meant to say I wandered across a car park – but come on'?

Now it‘s desperate, as if our daughter is going out with a crack dealer for a gang called the Stab Everyone U Meet Crew. You want to say to America, ―Look, we‘ve tried being nice in the hope you‘d see sense, now just bloody listen. You CAN‘T have anything to do with this lunatic. Go to your room and we‘re not letting you out until after the election.‖

Normally a candidate is finished if he‘s caught avoiding a parking fine, but Trump could be filmed trafficking children and he‘d say, ―That‘s smart business. Hey, we‘re teaching these kids the value of honest work.‖ Then he‘d go up two points in the polls. He could admit his favourite way to relax was spending all Sunday walloping dwarves with a shovel, and be recorded heating up heroin on a naked Vladimir Putin‘s arse, and his rallies would be even bigger, with crowds holding placards saying: ―We all back the man who takes smack from a Russian crack‖.

The opinion of tens of millions of Americans appears to be: ―He may be a sociopathic misogynist who would delight in destroying the planet, but he sends his emails from the right account so that‘s the main thing.‖

This could become a standard defence. The stigma will be taken from serial killers, who will at last feel free to stand in elections for the board of governors at a primary school, saying, ―I may have a collection of heads in my fridge, and doesn‘t Mrs Nesbitt go on and on about it, because she‘s afraid to talk about the important issues. But my opponent Mr Puddleton might have sent an email from somewhere that wasn‘t his normal email thingy – is THAT the sort of monster we want in charge of our children?‖

Even if he doesn‘t win he‘ll say he won, because he‘s already declared the establishment has rigged the vote against him. Of course it has; he‘s had to struggle all his life as the outsider against the establishment. The media is so biased against him they only made him a reality TV star and not head of Nasa. City planners conspired against him and only let him build one tower in New York City named after himself. Has he ever been awarded the Nobel Prize for marine biology or been invited on to Dictionary Corner on Countdown? No, because THEY don‘t want common folk like him.

It‘s because he speaks the truth others dare not say. For example, since the banking crash, wages have fallen and working hours have gone up. And who caused that? Mexican immigrants, that‘s who, by sneaking over the border at night and forcing building companies to lower their wages while firing guns in the air and screaming ―Yayayayayaya!‖ in the way Mexicans do.

Meanwhile, establishment figures get away with not paying taxes, and who caused that? Muslims did, by calling out tax avoidance schemes from mosques. We think they‘re singing ―Come to prayers and praise Allah‖ but they‘re actually wailing ―Form a subsidiary company and place its assets in Belize where there‘s only a tax rate of two cents‖ in Arabic.

Trump, however, did his best to bravely expose the way billionaires avoid paying tax by being a billionaire who avoided paying tax.

The exciting prospect is to imagine what he‘ll be like when emboldened by becoming president. He‘ll put Nero in the shade, convinced he can do whatever he likes. The White House lawn will be turned into a golf course, he‘ll make it illegal for Mexicans to own a fridge, he‘ll launch a war against Kyrgyzstan for being too hard to spell, and women will have to cluck like a chicken all day if he thinks they‘re overweight.

Even more dramatically, every mini-Trump round the world will be encouraged. It will be standard to refer to Mexicans as rapists, and any father attending a parents evening will at last feel comfortable telling the teacher, ―My daughter may be failing at geography, but she‘s a great piece of ass.‖

Banning Muslims will become a normal custom, so if Strictly Come Dancing wishes to adopt a similar policy, on the grounds that it has to be sure none of the contestants explode during the Charleston, they will only be following the ethics of the US President.

Everyone will think it‘s the way to win support. Tim Farron will announce on The Andrew Marr Show: ―The Liberal Democrats back a thorough examination of Article 50 with a soft approach to Brexit, and may I just add, Andrew, I‘ve grabbed many a woman‘s pussy after a hard day at a conference on rural transport policy.‖

The problem may be that there are millions of angry people in America, who have become cynical as their living conditions decline, and Hillary Clinton is the ultimate symbol of the banks, businessmen and politicians that have run the country while that‘s happened. So her most effective strategy may be to announce: ―Look, I know I‘m a creepy lying sleazebag who can‘t be trusted. I know I backed the Iraq War, and make up so many lies I accidentally claimed I was under fire in Serbia when I meant to say I wandered across a car park.

―I know I‘ve been so carefully trained as a politician that I smile and yell, ‗Hey, it‘s great to be here in Wisconsin!‘ during an orgasm. I expect there‘s something to do with my emails that are dodgy as everything I do is dodgy.

―I know almost any random human being would be a better candidate against Trump than me, including people who think they‘re from Jupiter.

―But this bloke will incinerate the lot of us. So please, pretty please, don‘t f**k about like this anymore.‖

If you have been around for a sufficient number of years to indulge in this experiment, compare yourself at 18 to yourself at the age of 34. Perhaps your ambitions and attitudes have changed over that time, and maybe your voting behavior has too.

Contemplating the first 16 years of adulthood, leads to a pretty obvious question: how useful is the term ―millennial‖ anyway? When it comes to understanding whether people will vote and how they‘ll vote, it turns out the 18-to-34 age bracket has limited value.

That‘s not just because people change. It‘s also because the defining trait of millennials (from a demographer‘s perspective at least) is diversity. For every 100 millennials, 44 are part of a minority race or ethnic group according to the Census Bureau‘s latest figures. For every 100 Americans age 85 and over, just 11 aren‘t white. And, since race is one of the best predictors of voting intention in the US, it might make a lot more sense to slice up this demographic rather than treating it as one, uniform voting bloc.

But that‘s not how polling works. If you only have about a thousand people to try to predict national voting behavior, you can only interpret basic information. Imagine the alternative: if you used a survey to understand how 20-year-old, college-educated black women in America will vote, at best you‘d probably be anticipating the behavior of tens of thousands of women based on just one person‘s answer. Not great.

Once you average out all the nuanced differences between millennials, polling still reveals a difference between them and other age groups. According to analysis from the LA Times (which has its limitations), Americans of all ages are more likely to think that Democrat Hillary Clinton will win this election than believe Donald Trump will (currently, 50% expect a Clinton win compared to 45% who think Trump will win). But those views are weakest among millennials – polling suggests this age group is almost evenly split over who they think will win.

That could be because Americans aged 18 to 34 are more likely than older voters to consider a third-party alternative (many were forced to reconsider their options after their first-choice candidate, Democrat Bernie Sanders, dropped out of the presidential race). There‘s good news and bad news for Clinton.

The good news: because age groups are more evenly distributed across the country than racial groups, millennials might not be able to swing a bunch of states.

But the bad news is that some millennials might be telling pollsters that they doubt a Democratic win because they don‘t quite tell the truth in other survey questions about how they‘ll vote or whether they‘ll vote. If young Americans don‘t feel comfortable telling a stranger that they want to vote for Trump or don‘t plan on voting at all, then Clinton could be in even deeper trouble in November than first appears.

Paul Krugman, Our Unknown Country, New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/cp/opinion/election-night- 2016/the-unknown-country?smid=fb-share

We still don‘t know who will win the electoral college, although as I write this it looks — incredibly, horribly — as if the odds now favor Donald J. Trump. What we do know is that people like me, and probably like most readers of The New York Times, truly didn‘t understand the country we live in. We thought that our fellow citizens would not, in the end, vote for a candidate so manifestly unqualified for high office, so temperamentally unsound, so scary yet ludicrous.

We thought that the nation, while far from having transcended racial prejudice and misogyny, had become vastly more open and tolerant over time.

We thought that the great majority of Americans valued democratic norms and the rule of law.

It turns out that we were wrong. There turn out to be a huge number of people — white people, living mainly in rural areas — who don‘t share at all our idea of what America is about. For them, it is about blood and soil, about traditional patriarchy and racial hierarchy. And there were many other people who might not share those anti- democratic values, but who nonetheless were willing to vote for anyone bearing the Republican label.

I don‘t know how we go forward from here. Is America a failed state and society? It looks truly possible. I guess we have to pick ourselves up and try to find a way forward, but this has been a night of terrible revelations, and I don‘t think it‘s self-indulgent to feel quite a lot of despair.

Claude Askolovitch, La mort de la ploutocratie, Slate.fr, 9 de novembre 2016, http://www.slate.fr/story/128240/hillary-clinton-nous-abandonne-face-donald-trump

Hillary Clinton, like it or not, est une ploutocrate. Une représentante du monde libéral et capitaliste contemporain.

Dans les décombres de mon Amérique, la détestation que j‘éprouve pour Madame Clinton ne s‘adresse pas à elle. Elle est celle que l‘on voue aux généraux vaincus, quand les barbares envahissent la cité. Elle est celle que l‘on voue à une civilisation décadente, quand celle-ci s‘effondre et nous laisse nus. La barbarie a pris l‘Amérique –ne la décrivons pas, tout ce que l‘on a dit sur Trump et les siens, leur sous-culture de viol et de violence, leur haine de l‘inconnu, leur inconscience climatique, tout est vrai. Mais si les brutes triomphent, c‘est qu‘une armée a été défaite, que sa générale a failli. Et si elle a failli, c‘est que profondément, elle ne pouvait que faillir.

Madame Clinton, ploutocrate de gauche, qui pensait que l‘amour de Beyoncé et l‘affirmation de sa vertu la conduiraient au sommet du monde, nous abandonne face à Donald Trump, pour quatre ans, au moins. Elle a perdu parce qu‘elle devait perdre; parce qu‘une gauche de l‘argent blanchi par la morale ostentatoire et les artistes flamboyants a épuisé son droit à l‘existence; elle est plus détestée que le fascisme est redouté.

Hillary Clinton, like it or not, est une ploutocrate. Une représentante du monde libéral et capitaliste contemporain. Elle ne fut pas toujours cela, sympathique activiste des années soixante, mais enfin, sérieusement! La question de sa fortune –la sienne et celle de Bill– a été posée depuis des années. Ce n‘est pas parce qu‘on a un peu de bien qu‘on ne peut pas avoir une pensée honnête, disait Cripure, ce professeur malheureux inventé par le romancier Louis Guilloux dans Le sang noir… Mais il est une limite, au-delà de laquelle le ridicule vous emporte, ou l‘indécent. L‘indécence, ce vieux mot puritain…

Hillary, sociologiquement et politiquement, était déphasée, et singulièrement devant le populisme. Elle a fait campagne en s‘évitant elle-même. Elle préférait rappeler, si on l‘oubliait, la malignité de l‘adversaire. Tout au long de sa campagne, elle a mis en avant ceux et ce qu‘elle devait défendre: le féminisme, les minorités, la dignité des êtres, étaient sa chair à canon. Elle envoyait au front des femmes violées, comme si leur souffrance devait interdire le chemin aux barbares. Elle n‘avait pas d‘autre argument. Elle a cru, un moment, que sa victoire était certaine, quand Trump s‘enfonçait dans ses vieux marécages. Ce n‘était pas elle qui triompherait, mais l‘Amérique décente qui vomirait l‘homme qui attrapait les femmes par le pussy… « Est-ce le Président qe nous voulons pour nos filles ? », demandait-elle? Un clip, des jeunes filles et tout était dit? Quand elle a glissé dans les sondages, tout près de la ligne d‘arrivée, elle a relancé l‘argument moral. Trump était impossible. Mais elle, était-elle envisageable?

Connait-on son programme? On savait sa sociologie, et son excuse. On sait sa défaite. Elle n‘a fait qu‘exciter la bête, exposer des blessures, et finalement désespérer un peu plus celles qu‘elle disait protéger. C‘est elles qui sont battues, ces femmes déjà bafouées. Imagine-t-on leur souffrance? Si seulement Madame Clinton s‘était battu sur ses options économiques et sociales, sur elle-même, elles auraient été épargnées. Elles n‘étaient que sa dolente barricade, finalement balayée.

La faillite des gauches Morales

Ceci est la faillite des gauches que l‘on dit morales, qui en fait ne le sont pas. Elles brandissent la morale pour protéger leur jouissance. Ce n‘est pas la morale qui est à combattre. C‘est que la gauche soit la jouissance qui ne fonctionne plus.

On discute et disserte -ici, chez nous, et là-bas- depuis des années sur la gauche et le peuple, les élites et la réalité sociale, et d‘éminents auteurs en concluent à la fracture, la belle affaire. Ils en tirent souvent la conclusion que la gauche devrait, pour enrayer la rage des peuples, adopter le discours de l‘ordre et de l‘autorité. Face au fascisme, l‘ordre rose, en somme. On y va.

Plaisanterie. Ce n‘est pas la morale qu‘il faut jeter par-dessus bord. Ni la compassion, la bienveillance, l‘aide aux migrants, le partage, le mariage gay et toutes ses conséquences, le multiculturalisme et le respect. S‘abandonner est vain, en plus d‘être déshonorant. C‘est le social qu‘il faut retrouver. Une cohérence sociale, dans sa pratique, son programme, son mode de vie, sa gestuelle, son évidence. Si les ploutocrates moraux échouent, ce n‘est pas à cause de leur morale. C‘est la ploutocratie qui est à banni.

La gauche, cette coterie d'aimables bourgeois

La seule perte est ici. Quand les tenants du progressisme sont devenus des allant-bien, des allant-mieux que les autres, et on masquant cela par leur indignation, la dénonciation de l‘ennemi, et se sont drapés dans la culture, les valeurs, l‘art, l‘élevation, pour attester leur belle âme. Les artistes, comme les femmes violées, sont les armes du désespoir des gauches assiégées. Ce fut, là-bas, Beyonce ou Bob de Niro, sublime de rage en attaquant Trump. Mais Bob ne pouvait pas convaincre, si sa rage protégeait l'un des membres de la famille de Wall Street. Aurait-il eu pour champion le farouche Sanders, qui parlait de socialisme et défendait l‘égalité contre la jungle, qui récusait le capitaliste et que le capitalisme ne voulait pas, aurait-il eu quelque chose de réel à défendre, il aurait, alors, eu une chance de détruire Trump, lui qui jouait si bien les prolétaires dans Cimino… Mais avec Hillary, il n‘était adossé à rien. Que les marchés dévissent avec la défaite des démocrates, illustre l‘impossibilité de l‘équation. Si la bourse se confond avec la décence, comment combattre ses dérives?

Dans les médias, après la victoire de Donald Trump à l'élection présidentielle américaine, c‘est la sidération, comme si rien ne laissait prévoir ce résultat. Pourquoi une telle cécité ?

Dans les médias, il n‘est question que de séisme, de tremblement de terre, de 21 avril à l‘américaine, voire de « 11-Septembre politique », comme on peut le lire dans Mediapart. Certes, nul ne peut se réjouir de l‘élection de Donald Trump, un homme qui est à la politique ce que Bernard Tapie est aux affaires, DSK au féminisme, ou Jérôme Cahuzac à la morale. On a beau avoir connu, avec Ronald Reagan, un ex- cow-boy de l‘écran à la Maison-Blanche, puis avec George W. Bush, un président capable d‘envahir un pays (l‘Irak) au prix d‘un mensonge d‘Etat, on ne pouvait imaginer qu‘il était possible de tomber plus bas.

Eh bien c‘est fait, malheureusement. Mais si Donald Trump l‘a emporté alors qu‘il avait contre lui les médias, les experts, les marchés, les sondeurs, les intellectuels et les vedettes du show-biz, c‘est en raison d‘un séisme que toutes ces bonnes âmes ont préféré ignorer, à quelques exceptions près, dont Bernie Sanders et ses supporters, ce qui n‘est pas rien.

Le retour du réel

Sur les ondes de France Inter, quelques heures après l‘annonce de la déflagration, on a entendu l‘éditorialiste du journal Les Echos, Dominique Seux, lancer sur un ton attristé : « Qu'avons-nous fait pour en arriver là ? » Ce que l‘« on » a fait, c‘est que l‘on a écouté trop longtemps sans réagir Dominique Seux et ses clones, ces gens qui répétaient en boucle que la crise n'était plus qu'un mauvais souvenir aux Etats-Unis, que la croissance était repartie de plus belle, que le modèle américain pétait la forme, qu'il était temps pour les autres de s'en inspirer, et que pour toutes les raisons susdites, Hillary Clinton ne pouvait que gagner. On connaît la suite. Elle s‘appelle le retour du réel.

Le réel, c‘est un pays en proie à la plus grave menace d‘éclatement social et culturel depuis les années 30. Le réel, c‘est une explosion sans précédent des inégalités. Le réel, c‘est l‘abîme qui sépare les privilégiés et les élites mondialisées. Le réel, ce sont des usines fermées, des entreprises délocalisées, des emplois raréfiés, des salariés déprimés, et des électeurs frustrés.

Le réel, c‘est une immigration massive (11 millions de clandestins sans doits et sous- payés !) encouragée par le patronat pour accentuer le dumping social et la guerre des pauvres contre les pauvres. Le réel, c‘est le bide de l‘ère Obama à l‘exception de l‘Obamacare, qui a joué de son image pour faire oublier un bilan se ramenant à un grand vide. Le réel, c‘est le rejet de la famille Clinton, considérée à tort ou à raison comme le symbole de l‘entre-soi, de l‘arrivisme et du copinage. Le réel, enfin, c‘est un candidat qui a surfé sur toute ces frustrations pour l‘emporter alors qu‘il est lui-même le représentant type de l‘Amérique du fric.

Clinton, un discours convenu et rejeté

Le réel, c‘est un Donald Trump que l‘on a réduit à ses propres outrances - ce qui n‘est guère compliqué - en oubliant que sur nombre de sujets (la folie du libre-échange, les délocalisations, la misère ouvrière, le rejet de l‘élite), il a su développer une démagogie d‘autant plus efficace qu‘en face, Hillary Clinton s‘est contentée de reprendre un discours convenu, attendu et rejeté. Cette dernière est même allée jusqu‘à traiter les électeurs de Trump de personnes « pitoyables », étalant ainsi un mépris de classe qui n‘a sans doute pas été pour rien dans sa déroute. Sans doute n‘en serait-on pas là si Bernie Sanders avait été le candidat démocrate, mais l‘Histoire en a décidé autrement.

Et voilà comment on en est arrivé à un résultat que les experts en tout et en rien n‘ont pas vu venir, car eux-mêmes vivent dans une bulle. Tout comme ils ont été incapables de prévoir le Brexit, ou quelques années plus tôt la victoire du non au traité constitutionnel européen en 2005, il était inconcevable à leurs yeux qu‘un homme aussi détestable que Donald Trump puisse l‘emporter. Toutes proportions gardées, c‘est la même cécité qui les conduit à ne rien comprendre au phénomène Le Pen en France, lequel n‘est pas sans analogie avec l‘effet Trump. Face à la colère qui conduit nombre de citoyens déboussolés à se tourner vers le FN, ils se contentent encore trop souvent de condamnations morales, sans prendre en compte un mouvement de fond qui se joue des barrières de la diabolisation.

Mieux vaudrait s‘en apercevoir avant qu‘il ne soit trop tard.

Donald Trump is an unlikely populist. The Republican nominee for U.S. president inherited a fortune, boasts about his wealth and his many properties, shuttles between his exclusive resorts and luxury hotels, and has adopted an economic plan that would, among other things, slash tax rates for rich people like himself. But a politician does not have to live among people of modest means, or even tout policies that would boost their incomes, to articulate their grievances and gain their support. Win or lose, Trump has tapped into a deep vein of distress and resentment among millions of white working- and middle-class Americans.

Michael Kazin, Trump and American Populism, Foreign Policy, October 6 2016 https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2016-10-06/trump-and-american- populism?cid=soc-fb-rdr

Trump is hardly the first politician to bash elites and champion the interests of ordinary people. Two different, often competing populist traditions have long thrived in the United States. Pundits often speak of ―left-wing‖ and ―right-wing‖ populists. But those labels don‘t capture the most meaningful distinction. The first type of American populist directs his or her ire exclusively upward: at corporate elites and their enablers in government who have allegedly betrayed the interests of the men and women who do the nation‘s essential work. These populists embrace a conception of ―the people‖ based on class and avoid identifying themselves as supporters or opponents of any particular ethnic group or religion. They belong to a broadly liberal current in American political life; they advance a version of ―civic nationalism,‖ which the historian Gary Gerstle defines as the ―belief in the fundamental equality of all human beings, in every individual‘s inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and in a democratic government that derives its legitimacy from the people‘s consent.‖

Adherents of the second American populist tradition—the one to which Trump belongs—also blame elites in big business and government for undermining the common folk‘s economic interests and political liberties. But this tradition‘s definition of ―the people‖ is narrower and more ethnically restrictive. For most of U.S. history, it meant only citizens of European heritage—―real Americans,‖ whose ethnicity alone afforded them a claim to share in the country‘s bounty. Typically, this breed of populist alleges that there is a nefarious alliance between evil forces on high and the unworthy, dark-skinned poor below—a cabal that imperils the interests and values of the patriotic (white) majority in the middle. The suspicion of an unwritten pact between top and bottom derives from a belief in what Gerstle calls ―racial nationalism,‖ a conception of ―America in ethnoracial terms, as a people held together by common blood and skin color and by an inherited fitness for self-government.‖

Both types of American populists have, from time to time, gained political influence. Their outbursts are not random. They arise in response to real grievances: an economic system that favors the rich, fear of losing jobs to new immigrants, and politicians who care more about their own advancement than the well-being of the majority. Ultimately, the only way to blunt their appeal is to take those problems seriously.

POPULISTS PAST AND PRESENT

Populism has long been a contested and ambiguous concept. Scholars debate whether it is a creed, a style, a political strategy, a marketing ploy, or some combination of the above. Populists are praised as defenders of the values and needs of the hard-working majority and condemned as demagogues who prey on the ignorance of the uneducated.

But the term ―populist‖ used to have a more precise meaning. In the 1890s, journalists who knew their Latin coined the word to describe a large third party, the Populist, or People‘s, Party, which powerfully articulated the progressive, civic-nationalist strain of American populism. The People‘s Party sought to free the political system from the grip of ―the money power.‖ Its activists, most of whom came from the South and the West, hailed the common interests of rural and urban labor and blasted monopolies in industry and high finance for impoverishing the masses. ―We seek to restore the Government of the Republic to the hands of the ‗plain people‘ with whom it originated,‖ thundered Ignatius Donnelly, a novelist and former Republican congressman, in his keynote speech at the party‘s founding convention in Omaha in 1892. The new party sought to expand the power of the central government to serve those ―plain people‖ and to humble their exploiters. That same year, James Weaver, the Populist nominee for president, won 22 electoral votes, and the party seemed poised to take control of several states in the South and the Great Plains. But four years later, at a divided national convention, a majority of delegates backed the Democratic nominee, William Jennings Bryan, who embraced some of the party‘s main proposals, such as a flexible money supply based on silver as well as gold. When Bryan, ―the Great Commoner,‖ lost the 1896 election, the third party declined rapidly. Its fate, like that of most third parties, was like that of a bee, as the historian Richard Hofstadter wrote in 1955. Once it had stung the political establishment, it died.

Senator Bernie Sanders has inherited this tradition of populist rhetoric. During the 2016 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, he railed against ―the billionaire class‖ for betraying the promise of American democracy and demanded a $15-an-hour minimum wage, Medicare for all, and other progressive economic reforms. Sanders calls himself a socialist and has hailed his supporters as the vanguard of a ―political revolution.‖ Yet all he actually advocated was an expanded welfare state, akin to that which has long thrived in Scandinavia.

The other strain of populism—the racial-nationalist sort—emerged at about the same time as the People‘s Party. Both sprang from the same sense of alarm during the Gilded Age about widening inequality between unregulated corporations and investment houses and ordinary workers and small farmers. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the champions of this strain of thought used xenophobic appeals to lobby Congress to bar all Chinese and most Japanese laborers from immigrating to the United States. Working- and middle-class white Americans, some of whom belonged to struggling labor unions, led this movement and made up the bulk of its adherents. ―Our moneyed men . . . have rallied under the banner of the millionaire, the banker, and the land monopolist, the railroad king and the false politician, to effect their purpose,‖ proclaimed Denis Kearney, a small businessman from San Francisco with a gift for incendiary rhetoric who founded the Workingmen‘s Party of California (WPC) in 1877. Kearney charged that a ―bloated aristocracy . . . rakes the slums of Asia to find the meanest slave on earth—the Chinese coolie—and imports him here to meet the free

American in the labor market, and still further widen the breach between the rich and the poor, still further to degrade white labor.‖

Brandishing the slogan ―The Chinese Must Go!‖ and demanding an eight-hour workday and public works jobs for the unemployed, the party grew rapidly. Only a few white labor activists objected to its racist rhetoric. The WPC won control of San Francisco and several smaller cities and played a major role in rewriting California‘s constitution to exclude the Chinese and set up a commission to regulate the Central Pacific Railroad, a titanic force in the state‘s economy. Soon, however, the WPC was torn apart by internal conflicts: Kearney‘s faction wanted to keep up its attack on the Chinese ―menace,‖ but many labor unionists wanted to focus on demands for a shorter workday, government jobs for the unemployed, and higher taxes on the rich.

Yet populist activists and politicians in Kearney‘s mold did achieve a major victory. In 1882, they convinced Congress to pass the Chinese Exclusion Act—the first law in U.S. history to bar members of a specific nationality from entering the country. Two decades later, activists in the California labor movement spearheaded a fresh campaign to pressure Congress to ban all Japanese immigration. Their primary motivation echoes the threat that Trump sees coming from Muslim nations today: Japanese immigrants, many white workers alleged, were spies for their country‘s emperor who were planning attacks on the United States. The Japanese ―have the cunning of the fox and the ferocity of a bloodthirsty hyena,‖ wrote Olaf Tveitmoe, a San Francisco union official, who was himself an immigrant from Norway, in 1908. During World War II, such attitudes helped legitimize the federal government‘s forced relocation of some 112,000 Japanese Americans, most of whom were U.S. citizens.

In the 1920s, another predecessor of Trump-style populism rose, fell, and left its mark on U.S. politics: the Ku Klux Klan. Half a century earlier, the federal government had stamped out the first incarnation of the KKK, which used terror to try to stop black men and women in the Reconstruction South from exercising their newly won freedoms. In 1915, the Methodist preacher William Simmons launched the second iteration of the group. The second Klan attracted members from all over the nation. And they not only sought to stop African Americans from exercising their constitutional rights under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. In the 1920s, they also charged that powerful liquor interests were conspiring with Catholic and Jewish bootleggers to undermine another part of the Constitution: the recently ratified Eighteenth Amendment, which prohibited the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages. ―The enemy liquor gang— angry, vindictive, unpatriotic—is seeking the overthrow of the highest authority in the land,‖ claimed The Baptist Observer, a pro-Klan newspaper in Indiana, in 1924. ―They can count on the hoodlums, the crooks, the vice-joints, the whiskey-loving aliens, and the indifferent citizen to help them win. . . . Can they count on you?‖ Like Kearney‘s party, the second KKK soon collapsed. But with nearly five million members at its peak in the mid-1920s, the Klan and its political allies helped push Congress to pass strict annual quotas limiting immigrants from eastern and southern Europe to a few hundred per nation in 1924. Congress revoked this blatantly discriminatory system only in 1965.

Like these earlier demagogues, Trump also condemns the global elite for promoting ―open borders,‖ which supposedly allow immigrants to take jobs away from U.S. workers and drive down their living standards. The Republican nominee has been quite specific about which groups pose the greatest danger. He has accused Mexicans of

19 bringing crime, drugs, and rape to an otherwise peaceful, law-abiding nation and Muslim immigrants of favoring ―horrendous attacks by people that believe only in jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life‖—a stark truth that the ―politically correct‖ Obama administration has supposedly ignored.

AMERICA FIRST

American populists have tended to focus most of their attention on domestic policy. But foreign policy is also a target. Trump, for example, has condemned international alliances, such as NATO, and populists from both traditions have long worried about nefarious foreign influences on the country. In its 1892 platform, for example, the People‘s Party warned that a ―vast conspiracy against mankind‖ in favor of the gold standard had ―been organized on two continents‖ and was ―rapidly taking possession of the world.‖ Of the two strains, however, populists in the racial-nationalist tradition have always been the most hostile to international engagement. In the mid-1930s, Father Charles Coughlin, ―the radio priest,‖ urged his huge broadcast audience to defeat ratification of a treaty President Franklin Roosevelt had signed that would have allowed the United States to participate in the World Court at The Hague. That court, Coughlin charged, was a tool of the same ―international bankers‖ who had supposedly dragged the nation into the slaughter of World War I. The resulting torrent of fear-driven mail cowed enough senators to deny Roosevelt the two-thirds majority he needed.

In 1940, the America First Committee, an isolationist pressure group, issued a similar warning against U.S. intervention in World War II. The group boasted some 800,000 members and stitched together a broad coalition: conservative businessmen, some socialists, a student detachment that included the future writer Gore Vidal (then in high school) and the future president Gerald Ford (then at Yale Law School). It also enjoyed the support of a number of prominent Americans, Walt Disney and the architect Frank Lloyd Wright among them. But on September 11, 1941, its most famous spokesperson, the celebrated aviator Charles Lindbergh, took the antiwar, anti-elitist message a step too far. ―The three most important groups who have been pressing this country toward war are the British, the Jewish, and the Roosevelt administration,‖ he charged in a nationally broadcast speech. ―Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our government.‖ By then, Hitler‘s conquest of most of Europe had put America First on the defensive; Lindbergh‘s anti-Semitic slurs accelerated its downfall. The group quickly disbanded after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor three months later.

In recent decades, however, several prominent figures on the populist right have revived America First‘s brand of rhetoric, although most avoid overt anti-Semitism. In the early 1990s, Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition (a lobbying group for conservative Christians), warned darkly of a globalist cabal that threatened American sovereignty. ―The one-worlders of the . . . money trust,‖ he warned, ―have financed the one-worlders of the Kremlin.‖ A few years later, the conservative political commentator Pat Buchanan proposed building a ―sea wall‖ to stop immigrants from ―sweeping over our southern border.‖ In 2003, he accused neoconservatives of plotting the U.S. invasion of Iraq in order to build a ―new world order.‖ This year, Buchanan has defended the reputation of the America First Committee and cheered Trump‘s run for the White House. For his part, the Republican nominee vowed, in a major address last April: ―‗America First‘ will be the major and overriding theme of my administration.‖

He has even led crowds in chants of the slogan, while feigning indifference toward its dark provenance.

WE THE PEOPLE?

Although Trump‘s rise has demonstrated the enduring appeal of the racial-nationalist strain of American populism, his campaign is missing one crucial element. It lacks a relatively coherent, emotionally rousing description of ―the people‖ whom Trump claims to represent.

This is a recent absence in the history of American populism. The People‘s Party and its allies applauded the moral superiority of ―the producing classes,‖ who ―created all wealth‖ with their muscles and brains. Their virtuous majority included industrial wage earners, small farmers, and altruistic professionals such as teachers and physicians. For prohibitionists who backed the KKK, ―the people‖ were the teetotaling white evangelical Christians who had the spiritual fortitude to protect their families and their nation from the scourge of the ―liquor traffic.‖ Conservatives such as Senator Barry Goldwater and President Ronald Reagan asserted that they were speaking for the ―taxpayers‖—an updated version of the ―producers‖ of old. In his 1968 presidential campaign, the third-party candidate George Wallace even described the people he claimed to represent by naming their occupations: ―the bus driver, the truck driver, the beautician, the fireman, the policeman, and the steelworker, the plumber, and the communications worker, and the oil worker and the little businessman.‖

While vowing to ―make America great again,‖ however, Trump has offered only vague, nostalgic clichés about which Americans will help him accomplish that mighty feat. His speeches and campaign website employ such boilerplate terms as ―working families,‖ ―our middle class,‖ and, of course, ―the American people‖—a stark contrast to the vividness of his attacks, whether on Mexicans and Muslims or his political rivals (―little Marco,‖ ―lyin‘ Ted,‖ ―low-energy Jeb,‖ and ―crooked Hillary‖).

In Trump‘s defense, it has become increasingly difficult for populists—or any other breed of U.S. politician—to define a virtuous majority more precisely or evocatively. Since the 1960s, the United States has become an ever more multicultural nation. No one who seriously hopes to become president can afford to talk about ―the people‖ in ways that clearly exclude anyone who isn‘t white and Christian. Even Trump, in the later months of his campaign, has tried to reach out, in a limited and somewhat awkward fashion, to African American and Latino citizens. Meanwhile, the group that populists in the racial-nationalist tradition have historically praised as the heart and soul of the United States—the white working class—has become a shrinking minority.

Yet progressive populists have also failed to solve this rhetorical challenge. Sanders made a remarkable run for the Democratic nomination this year. But like Trump, he was much clearer about the elite he despised—in his case, ―the billionaire class‖—than about who exactly would contribute to and benefit from his self-proclaimed revolution. Perhaps a candidate who drew his most ardent support from young Americans of all classes and races could not have defined his ―people‖ more precisely, even had he wanted to.

In the past, populists‘ more robust concepts of their base helped them build enduring coalitions—ones that could govern, not just campaign. By invoking identities that voters embraced—―producers,‖ ―white laborers,‖ ―Christian Americans,‖ or President Richard Nixon‘s ―silent majority‖—populists roused them to vote for their party and not merely against the alternatives on offer. Neither Democrats nor Republicans have been able to formulate such an appeal today, and that failing is both a cause and an effect of the public‘s distaste for both major parties. It may be impossible to come up with a credible definition of ―the people‖ that can mobilize the dizzying plurality of classes, genders, and ethnic identities that coexist, often unhappily, in the United States today. But ambitious populists will probably not stop trying to concoct one.

PLAYING WITH FEAR

Trump will struggle to win the White House. Despite the manifest weaknesses of Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee—including a lack of public trust and an awkward speaking style—her opponent has earned a reputation for vicious harangues against minority groups and individuals rather than statesmanlike conduct or creative policies. For much of his campaign, his slogan might as well have been ―Make America Hate Again.‖ Such negativity has seldom been a sound strategy for winning the presidency in a nation where most people pride themselves, perhaps naively, on their optimism and openness. And overt racial nationalism is no longer acceptable in national campaigns.

Yet it would be foolish to ignore the anxieties and anger of those who have flocked to Trump with a passion they have shown for no other presidential candidate in decades. According to a recent study by the political scientist Justin Gest, 65 percent of white Americans—about two-fifths of the population—would be open to voting for a party that stood for ―stopping mass immigration, providing American jobs to American workers, preserving America‘s Christian heritage, and stopping the threat of Islam.‖ These men and women believe that most politicians ignore or patronize them, and they feel abandoned by a mass culture that prizes the monied, the cosmopolitan, and the racially diverse. They represent roughly the same percentage of their country as do the French who currently back the National Front and only about ten percent less than the British who voted for a British exit from the EU.

But so long as neither of the two main U.S. parties addresses their concerns in a serious and empathetic way—by severely limiting undocumented immigration and providing secure employment at decent wages—they will likely remain open to politicians who do make such an effort, however ill informed he or she might be. If he loses, Trump may never run for political office again. The tradition of populism he has exploited, however, will endure.

A NECESSARY EVIL

At its best, populism provides a language that can strengthen democracy, not imperil it. The People‘s Party helped usher in many of the progressive reforms, such as the income tax and corporate regulation, that made the United States a more humane society in the twentieth century. Democrats comfortable with using populist appeals, from Bryan to FDR, did much to create the liberal capitalist order that, despite its flaws, few contemporary Americans want to dismantle. Even some populist orators who railed

22 against immigrants generated support for laws, such as the eight-hour workday, that, in the end, helped all wage earners in the country, regardless of their place of birth.

Populism has had an unruly past. Racists and would-be authoritarians have exploited its appeal, as have more tolerant foes of plutocracy. But Americans have found no more powerful way to demand that their political elites live up to the ideals of equal opportunity and democratic rule to which they pay lip service during campaign seasons. Populism can be dangerous, but it may also be necessary. As the historian C. Vann Woodward wrote in 1959 in response to intellectuals who disparaged populism, ―One must expect and even hope that there will be future upheavals to shock the seats of power and privilege and furnish the periodic therapy that seems necessary to the health of our democracy.‖