There is a clear warning here for Hillary Clinton. She is the quintessential establishment candidate, having been in Washington for the last 25 years. She has presented herself as a continuation of the Obama years. Her experience and expertise are universally acknowledged. But she is the candidate of the status quo at a time when people are looking for change.
Our political and economic elites tend to be in denial. They profit from globalization, take pride in the exercise of American power abroad, live in affluent communities, and often are closer to their international peers than to their poorer neighbors. They don’t see the America that has been ravaged by our ruinous trade policies. They avoid the killing streets of our impoverished urban neighborhoods. They were shaken by the Great Recession but largely have recovered. They don’t see that most Americans have lost ground over the course of this century. They simply don’t understand the scope of their failure to make this system work for working people—for the majority of Americans.
The Brexit vote showed that it is not enough to scorn the lies, exaggerations and divisive racial appeals of a demagogue. The Remain vote in Britain was explicitly a status quo vote—the EU isn’t great, it seemed to say, but it is what we’ve got and our elites and experts say change would be catastrophic. But when people feel that the elites have failed them, that the system has been rigged to favor the few, that things are getting worse, the invocation of authority in defense of the status quo loses force. People want to know what you will do to make things better. You’ve got to be able to tell a more convincing story that explains how we got where we are, who is to blame and what can be done about it. This is a lesson that Clinton surely understands.
The Brexit vote also reveals the comparative strength of the Democratic coalition here in the United States. Young people in Britain voted overwhelmingly against leaving; young people here will not vote for Trump. Minorities and immigrants—a much smaller portion of the population in Britain—voted against leaving; minorities here will not vote for Trump’s racist politics. The question is only whether the young and minorities will turn out in large numbers or whether, uninspired, they will stay home in large numbers. Turning them out also requires a campaign that gives them hope for a change, not simply a promise of more of the same.
Brexit is a warning. There will be a reckoning. A divisive demagogue like Trump can profit in such times, but the politics of inclusion can beat the politics of division—but only by offering people a new deal that gives them hope.
(Jesse L. Jackson Sr. is founder and president of the Chicago-based Rainbow PUSH Coalition. You can keep up with his work at www.rainbowpush.org)
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