Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

The Democrats are on course to be Corbynised

Donald Trump’s approval ratings have dropped in every single state. He has failed to repeal Obamacare, build a wall or move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Trump has also lost his chief strategist, chief of staff, deputy chief of staff, four communications aides, three security advisers, an FBI director, a US attorney, a cabinet secretary, and his ethics director. After the torch-lit rally in Charlottesville, he managed to stick up for white nationalists, distance himself from them, and stick up for them again in the space of 48 hours. So what all-conquering, gravity-defying, poll-shifting political machine could possibly get this president re-elected? Step forward, the Democrats.

The New York Times reports that the party’s liberal old guard is desperately fighting off new, populist-left grassroots set-ups that want to haul the Democrats in a more radical direction. Following Trump’s improbable victory last November, a rambling creature calling itself ‘The Resistance’ sprang up to oppose his presidency. Not yet a movement, this group included those who challenged the legitimacy of the election, those who believed Trump could be prevented from taking the oath, and those who were more realistic and took to the streets on marches. The left has tapped into these sentiments and the desire among Trump opponents to do something more than spend their time weeping and gnashing their teeth. 

The megabucks liberal advocacy groups are looking leftwards too. One of these, the Democracy Alliance, used to fund what the Times calls ‘pillars of the Clinton-aligned establishment, like the think tank Center for American Progress’. Now, the Alliance wants to capitalise on the progressive activism that has surged since Trump’s election, and help turn this ‘anti-Trump energy into electoral wins’. The talk, says the Times, is that just as Trumpian Republicans are threatening to oust incumbent senators and congressman insufficiently loyal to the president, leftist Democrats could take out moderate legislators and substitute more ideologically committed figures in their places.

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