US election: Danger in the age of political disruption

Hillary Clinton celebrates on stage at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia after accepting the party’s nomination.

She lacks the charisma of Barack Obama, the persuasion of Bill Clinton, the rapport of Joe Biden, but Hillary Clinton stands on the brink of history — she enjoys the immense power of the Democratic establishment in her quest to defeat that wild card Donald Trump who has stolen a shocked Republican Party.

America is a bitterly divided nation. The Democratic and Republican national conventions in recent days belonged to different nations. Anger and hatred is in the air. In the culture war this contest is the ultimate between Clinton as insider and Trump as outsider who denounces the political class for betraying America.

Not since World War II have the American people been offered a more dramatic and polarising choice than that presented by Clinton and Trump.

Obama was right when he told the Democratic convention: “Fair to say, this is not your typical election. It’s not just a choice between parties or policies; the usual debates between right and left. This is a more fundamental choice — about who we are as a people.”

These divisions are deep: Clinton and Trump are symbols of the huge rift in US politics and society likely to endure far beyond this coming election. In her acceptance speech yesterday Clinton said of Trump: “He wants to divide us — from the rest of the world and from each other. He’s taken the Republican Party a long way — from ‘Morning in America’ to ‘Midnight in America’. He wants us to fear the future and fear each other.” She depicted their contest in terms of “love trumps hate”.

Clinton offers an uplifting message, yet the feral source of her party’s unity is to conquer what it sees as Trump’s threat to the republic and to the entire package of progressive interests and values that have flourished under the Obama presidency.

Her appeal yesterday was for Americans to unite in troubled times and become “stronger together”. Clinton depicted herself as a safe president as opposed to Trump, a man without the “temperament” to be president and commander-in-chief because “a man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons”.

But the Democratic Party is also being transformed — at the end of the Obama presidency it is moving further and decisively to the Left — and Clinton is following the trend. Identity politics is its mantra. The party is far removed from that of Bill Clinton a generation ago. Seeking to hold her voting coalition together, Hillary Clinton’s speech revealed the aggressive new norms that define the Democrats: big-spending social programs, trade protectionism, income redistribution, an inclusive, culturally progressive America.

In truth, the agendas of both candidates raise cause for grave concerns, but these concerns are different.

Trump poses as a demagogue seeking to dismantle the norms that have guided America in the post-war era. The risk he poses is more elemental and fundamental.

Days earlier, in his acceptance speech, Trump luxuriated in his status as an outsider: “Our convention occurs at a moment of crisis for our nation. The attacks on our police and the terrorism in our cities threaten our very way of life. Any politician who does not grasp this danger is not fit to lead our country. Big business, elite media and major donors are lining up behind the campaign of my opponent because they know she will keep our rigged system in place. She is their puppet and they pull the strings. I have joined the political arena so that the powerful can no longer beat up on people that cannot defend themselves.”

Trump is neither a true Republican nor a true conservative. He is a demagogue, cunning and reckless, a unique American product from the current age of economic and cultural disruption. He exploits the anger of people, making them only angrier still. His targets are immigrants, Mexicans, Muslims, free trade, political correctness and progressives. His pledge is that of demagogues down the ages — to dismantle the rigged and rotten status quo. And he promises this will be easy.

“I am your voice,” he says to the disillusioned and grieving. He presents as “the law and order candidate” and the leader who will “put America first” by opposing globalism and delivering safe streets, secure borders and better paid jobs. His populism is powerful and appeals to both Right and Left. It is folly to think Trump cannot win.

The Republican Party has been broken, with its convention boycotted by the former Bush presidents. True conservatives know it is time to stand on principle — against Trump as a danger to America and the world.

The likely Republican tragedy is that Clinton is beatable but their candidate will overreach and contribute to a Clinton victory that will see the US move further away from the ideas that used to define the Republican Party.

Clinton leaves her Philadelphia convention with great momentum, humanised by her husband Bill in his speech and enthroned by Obama as the most qualified candidate in history “man or woman” to serve as US president.

In her speech Clinton invoked a universal benefit from her aspiration to be the first woman as president: “When there are no ceilings, the sky’s the limit.”

Yet the doubts about Clinton cannot be purged. Every conventional measure says Clinton will win, but conventional wisdom is being trashed in this age of political disruption. Clinton has two problems — she is distrusted and disliked across wide sections of US opinion, and she is the ultimate symbol of an elitist, insider, privileged, progressive power structure detested in much of the country.

In her acceptance speech Clinton moved left to embrace much of the economic agenda of her Democratic opponent, Bernie Sanders; depicted herself as a national security hawk far more reliable than Trump; pitched to women voters as their champion for a compassionate America; and tried to cure the doubts about her character by accepting the nomination “with humility, determination and boundless confidence in America’s promise”. She said “our economy isn’t working the way it should because our democracy isn’t working the way it should”. Sounding like Sanders, she declared: “I believe Wall Street can never, ever be allowed to wreck Main Street again.” She pledged to say no to unfair trade deals, moving towards a protectionist bipartisanship with Trump, a stance that should alarm Australia.

The big-spending social programs for the underprivileged and the middle class were extensive. Clinton promised to make college tuition-free for the middle class and debt-free for all, a pitch to the youth vote. She pledged a better balance between work and family, affordable childcare, more paid family leave, a better deal on the minimum wage. It is a powerful appeal to Middle America’s hip pocket.

Her spending agendas will be financed by higher and redistributive taxes. “Wall Street, corporations and the super-rich are going to start paying their fair share of taxes,” Clinton said. “And if companies take tax breaks and then ship jobs overseas, we’ll make them pay us back.” She will target the top 1 per cent and redistribute to a middle class under strain. This is a war chest of benefits for the middle class that constitutes a formidable agenda to combat Trump.

On social and cultural policy Clinton tried to present as an agent of viable yet ideological reform. She said: “We will defend all our rights — civil rights, human rights, and voting rights, women’s rights and workers’ rights, LGBT rights and the rights of people with disabilities. And we will stand up against mean and divisive rhetoric wherever it comes from.”

Make no mistake, the Democratic strategy is to build a coalition of interest groups based on identity, the Obama method. This is now the heartland of US progressive politics. Aware that this exposes Trump, Clinton fingered his rhetorical blunders, recalling that he called women “pigs” and mocked a reporter with a disability. Trump, she implied, was an agent of “bigotry and bombast”.

On guns, Clinton said America could not “stand by and do nothing”. She wanted to find “common ground”. “I’m not here to take away your guns,” she said. “I just don’t want you to be shot by someone who shouldn’t have a gun in the first place. We should be working with responsible gun owners to pass commonsense reforms and keep guns out of the hands of criminals, terrorists and all others who would do us harm.”

Clinton’s strategy is to appeal to the better angels of the American character, offer a stack of bribes to the middle class, parade as a better war leader, play the identity-politics card and knife Trump as a self-obsessed danger to the republic. Frankly, she has plenty of material. If Clinton cannot win the election with such advantages she is truly as bad a Democratic candidate as many of her critics fear.

Trump is a wild card in the age of disruption. He had defied the conventional wisdom so far. At a time when most elections in the West are close, the prospect of a close US election cannot be ruled out. The power and cunning in Trump’s rhetoric is chilling.

After reviewing Clinton’s record as secretary of state, he said: “This is the legacy of Hillary Clinton: death, destruction and terrorism and weakness.”

His narcissism is almost beyond belief. Trump said in his own acceptance speech: “Nobody knows the system better than me which is why I alone can fix it. I have seen first hand how the system is rigged against our citizens, just like it was rigged against Bernie Sanders. He never had a chance.

“I have a message to every last person threatening the peace on our streets and the safety of our police. When I take the oath of office next year I will restore law and order to our country.”

Trump lives off the defects of the Obama presidency. He should be taken seriously and his promises must be taken seriously, at home and abroad where his contempt for the US alliance system is manifest. These are difficult and unpredictable times for America. The nation is not in the crisis that Trump depicts but neither is it in the splendid condition that Obama pretends. There is no outstanding candidate at this election. The real task is to avoid descent into greater danger.