In order to avoid unnecessary arguments, I will agree that corporate globalization – and let’s not forget financialization – and the retreat from class by the dominant makers and shakers in the Democratic Party over four decades do figure into any analysis of the elections and its outcome. But they don’t explain everything as some of the economic populists and people on the left seem to suggest. Many other factors bear on the outcome, especially the role of racism, sexism and misogyny, nativism, xenophobia, homophobia, and the mischief of the right wing, the media, and FBI. Political (or if you like class) formation, understanding, and unity are constructed on more than the economic level. Indeed, the “economic” doesn’t stand apart in all of its grandeur untainted by everything swirling around and through it. Nor does it decide everything “in the last instance.” It has a considerable role to play for sure, but it doesn’t wait until the final curtain is about to fall to have its say.

That said, tomorrow I will post some observations that make the case that it wasn’t globalization at all (if by that we mean the abandonment of capital from domestic sites where it has long been sunk in favor of other sites in far flung regions of the world) that set the stage for the overperformance of Trump in huge swathes of rural and small town America. Instead it was its opposite, that is, the inward and massive penetration of agro-and commercial capital – Walmart anyone – into these same parts of the country that did. But I would add that the transformative and thoroughly disruptive changes that this movement of capital brought in its wake only set the stage for Trump’s overperformance on election day in rural and small town America. Who then orchestrated it, besides Trump himself? It was, simply put, the sustained intervention of an organizing element and right wing extremism, whose rise and ascendancy coincided with these underlying economic and social transformations, assiduously performed that role in this election, and long before.

Globalization and Hillary’s “retreat from class” has become the overarching explanation for Trump’s victory on the part of some left and progressive analysts. In this telling, right wing extremism and its mass constituency – by no means a new phenomenon – go largely unmentioned. Nor do the actions of the FBI in the final weeks of the campaign figure much, if at all, in their analysis. Ditto Wikileaks. Media equivalency of the two candidates doesn’t see the light of day either. Voter suppression, which held down turnout, is also a no-show

And you will have to dig deep to unearth even a hint that millions of white voters might have been motivated by their resistance to President Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s vision of an inclusive, multi-racial, multi-cultural, egalitarian society.

Nor does the left’s strategically flawed analysis – and here I include Bernie Sanders and his team – of the elections that resulted in most of the left sitting on its hands this fall merit a word. (What could be worse, after all, then to have one’s radical credentials sullied by any association with the neoliberal, hawkish, bourgeois feminist Hillary Clinton. She will get my vote, but I hold my nose, while doing it. And don’t expect me to say anything positive about her or canvas for her, so went the narrative.)

Noticeably missing as well is any acknowledgement of sexism, misogyny, and the myriad ways that they invaded this year’s election.

Finally, any suggestion that Trump’s politics of hate figured in the voting decisions of white workers, including those who supported Obama in earlier elections, is either rejected out of hand or minimized. In this rendering, globalization, which lately has become a catch all to explain just about everything, is what exclusively or largely framed their thinking and determined their vote. That a white, masculinist, and nativist frame may have been a significant factor in their voting calculus is given short shrift. Indeed, it is argued that to harp on the latter is nothing but participating in the “blame game.” And who needs that at this moment? Lift up “class” (and economic issues) and all will be right in the world, so we are instructed!

Seems like I heard that before.

Trump, to me, is more akin to a White Redeemer of yesteryear than a modern day Deal Maker. The Redeemers of the post-Civil War South broke the back of a brief experiment with multi-racial egalitarian democracy in the Civil War’s aftermath and imposed a new harsh regime – Jim Crow – of racist oppression and exploitation. Trump and the cast around him seem to have similar ambitions, updated to our times and conditions.

Moreover, he seems willing to embrace the same mix of force, violence, disenfranchisement, legislation, and racist and other backward ideologies in new and old forms as his forebears did in their time to realize his ambitions.

Feels like we’re at a pivotal moment and advantage is for now in the hands of the forces of reaction and worse. Never before have I worried so much about the future of our country and all the beautiful things about it – beginning with its mosaic of peoples and cultures. But to paraphrase FDR, we can’t let fear paralyze us.

That said, analogies – all of them – suffer in different ways. And this one is no different. What strikes me in this regard, first of all, is that the scale, infrastructure, understanding (including anti-racist understanding), media resources, and maturity of the contemporary democratic movement is on an entirely different level to resist and turn back Trump and gang than the freed people and their allies were in the years after the Civil War.

The left in these circumstances can play a major role in assisting this process if it sets aside time worn sectarian habits of thinking and doing, if it realizes that the point of departure – not the end – of any serious politics of the left isn’t what we think or are ready to do, but what much larger numbers of people think and are ready to do.

A common criticism from the left is that President Obama speaks only the language of universalism – the framing of social problems and articulation of political solutions that apply across the population to the neglect of a targeted focus on specific forms of injustice and discrimination that are embedded in the daily experience of particular peoples and communities.

But in thinking about the outcome of this election, it seems clear – to me anyway – that many white voters processed the words, actions, and images of the Obama presidency very differently than many on the left did. What jumped out at them wasn’t the language and practice of universalism. It was something very different. In their reading, they believed the country, with the president as maestro-in-chief, was squarely on a forced march to a multi-racial, multi-cultural, politically correct, egalitarian society. And for them, this was anathema – a direct challenge to “America,” as they knew it and their place in it.

When the president spoke – and he did on many occasions, the last time at the Democratic Party convention – of an “America” that is inclusive and generous of spirit, rights past and present wrongs, guarantees everyone an equal place at the table, acknowledges shameful episodes in our past, and celebrates a mosaic of people and cultures, it rattled the heads and hearts of many white people. Or when images of multi-racial and multi-cultural events at the White House filled their televisions screens, these same people flinched. Or, when President Obama challenged policing practices that wantonly stole away the lives of African Americans, or berated the National Rifle Association for its resistance to the most modest gun control measures, or defended Planned Parenthood in the face of scurrilous, right wing attacks, or lent support to marriage equality, fury at the president grew.

If he spoke – and he did often – of universalism and universal solutions to society wide problems, such as jobs, wages and income inequality, economic stagnation, and health care, either their ears didn’t hear his message. Or, worse still, they considered it a sleight of hand to conceal his main agenda.

Latecomers to this motley crew were a significant number of white workers across the Midwest who once supported and voted for the president, but sometime in the past four years they decided to hitch themselves to this nasty opposition. And though there was nothing they could do about their earlier votes, they were not without means to make up for their “screw up.” With a presidential election around the corner, they vowed not to vote for that “crook,” that “liar,” that “criminal, and “that nasty woman” who, if given the chance, would continue the transformation of the country that the president set into motion.

On election day they carried out their vow, enough so at the margins that Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin swung the election Trump’s way, albeit with the help of the archaic and anti-democratic Electoral College.

What made this switch easy, writes Slate political writer Jamelle Bouie, is that their vote for Obama [in 2008 and 2012] “didn’t signify a change of heart. At most, he wasn’t George W. Bush. At best, he was “one of the good ones,” someone they could respect, even if they viewed his group with fear and suspicion. And four years later, he wasn’t Mitt Romney, a man who embodied plutocracy in approach, affect, and attitude. These Americans voted for Obama and kept the white racial frame that shaped their understanding of their place in this country.”

But in this election the choice was different. In Trump, they found a candidate who took delight in his political incorrectness and crude anti-democratic sensibilities, who activated their “white racial frame.” When he spoke of “Making American Great Again,” what these and other Trump voters heard wasn’t simply a commitment to fix unfair trade agreements or rebuild crumbling infrastructure. To believe so is naive to say the least.

What also registered was a commitment to put the brakes on any further movement toward a robust, multi-racial, multi-cultural, and egalitarian society as well as an equal determination to restore “America” to its glorious past – a past in which everyone had a place in a society deeply riven by vast inequalities, unrelieved exploitation, and violence.

What they didn’t see in Trump is that his first loyalty isn’t to them, but to the moneybags on Wall Street and Main Street as well as a nasty collection of authoritarian ideologues in his circle and himself.

Is it there any mystery really why a section of white workers voted for Trump? Or why he overperformed in small towns and rural communities?

This isn’t to say that all white people in general or all white workers in particular shared this point of view; they didn’t. A substantial minority were of a different mind and cast their votes for Hillary, which when added to other votes gave Hillary a two and a half million advantage over Trump.

Nor is it an argument that economic discontent didn’t figure into their thinking; it obviously did for many. But even here, it seems fair to say that these discontents, real as they are, were cognitively and emotively filtered through and modified by the lens of whiteness, maleness and masculinity, nativism, an idealized past, and cultural resentments generally.

Finally, major sections of the working class – a fact that is either ignored or goes unanalyzed by most left populists – despised Trump and everything he stood for.

All of which leads me to these conclusions:

First, this election in the minds of tens of millions was a contest of competing visions of our country.

Second, the two candidates embodied in imperfect ways these competing visions as well as the larger political clash between contending and powerful class and social forces and coalitions. But one would never know this from the near singular focus of too many progressive and left people on the “flaws” of Hillary that left them sitting on their hands this fall and holding their nose when they voted for her.

Third, the broad democratic movement is on the defensive, up against what looks like an authoritarian and reckless President and a right wing dominated Congress, for the foreseeable future. In these circumstances, only the elaboration of a strategy that soberly assesses the current alignment of class and political forces, systematically enhances the organizational wherewithal, political capacity and geographical reach of the Democratic Party, labor movement, and other major social organizations, accents unity and mutuality in its mulitiple forms, lifts up the importance of Congress and the 2018 elections as critical sites of struggle, extends solidarity to the new social movements, attends to the struggle for peace and against militarist aggression and, defends every inch of democratic space will begin to move us to a new political landscape.

Fourth, an overarching task is join the defense of peoples who have been and remain the target of the  of the aggressive words and actions of Trump, the alt-right, and the mini-Trumps that pox too many communities.

Finally, it is hard to overstate the imperative of complicating the notions of class and class struggle. What the new economic populists haven’t absorbed is that – call it what you want – other forms of oppression or issues of identity or democratic rights broadly understood are organic to class formation, consciousness, and unity, not to mention broad democratic and popular alliances and coalitions. These categories of analysis and struggle are interactive and interconnected. Giving primacy to class and turning everything else into secondary, lower order phenomena is a recipe for defeat. It will never withstand the Trump offensive. We can and must do better.

Below is an excerpt from a longer post that will appear on my blog tomorrow.

In thinking about the outcome of this election, it seems clear – to me anyway – that the way many white voters processed the words, actions, and optics of the Obama presidency over two terms figured prominently in their political calculus this year. In contrast to many on the left, it wasn’t the administration’s language and practice of universalism – the framing of social problems and articulation of political solutions that have general application across the population to the neglect of a focus on specific forms of injustice and discrimination that are embedded in the daily experience of many peoples and communities – that commanded their attention.

What did was something very different. In their reading, they believed the country, with the president as maestro-in-chief, was squarely on a forced march to a multi-racial, multi-cultural, politically correct egalitarian society. And for them, this was a direct challenge to America as they knew it and their place in it.

Moreover, in Hillary Clinton, that “nasty woman,” that “crook,” that “liar,” and that “criminal,” they saw someone who would continue the transformation that the president had set into motion.

This isn’t to say that all white people in general or all white workers in particular shared this point of view; they didn’t. A substantial minority were of a different mind and cast their vote for Hillary.

Nor is it to suggest that economic discontent didn’t figure into the thinking of Trump supporters; it obviously did for many. But even here, it seems fair to say that these discontents, real as they are, were cognitively and emotively filtered through and modified by the lens of whiteness, maleness and masculinity, nativism, an idealized past, and cultural resentments generally.

If the above captures the election’s dynamics, then the main turf on which this election was contested was one of clashing visions of tens of millions.