Lift up class and all will be right in the world … Really?

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.