Evil Returns

I don’t like giving the orangutan any coverage but can’t ignore Trump’s reelection in the US – how on earth did a felon and rapist manage to convince so many Americans?? Michael Roberts is one of my favourite bloggers and has a good account here

As the FT put it: “In the end, it wasn’t even close. A presidential 

election long forecast to dance on a knife’s edge very quickly turned 

out to be a rout for Donald Trump.” Trump polled 73.4m votes or 50% 

of the those who voted, while Harris polled 60m or 47.7% of the vote. 

Third party candidates mustered just 1.6%. Trump’s 4.3m lead was more 

than Biden had in 2020, or Hillary Clinton had over Trump in 2016 (in fact - 

as of 13 Nov - Trump had 3.2 million more votes than Harris).
Trump’s vote did not rest on small margins in a handful of swing states, as was the 

case when he won in 2016. Instead, he gained support across the electoral map in 

states both red (Republican) and blue (Democrat). Even in his birthplace of 

New York state, one of the bluest strongholds in the country, Trump winnowed a 

23-point gap down to 11.

The biggest caveat to Trump’s voting victory is that contrary to the usual hype of a 

‘massive voter turnout’, fewer Americans eligible to vote bothered to do so compared 

to 2020. Then over 158m voted, this time the vote was down to 143m. The 

voter turnout of those eligible fell to 58.2% from the high of 65.9% in 2020. 

Around 40% of Americans registered to vote did not do so. And the number of 

Americans who failed to register rose to 19m from 12m in 2020. So, although 

Trump got 51% of those who voted, he actually got only 28% support of Americans 

of voting age. Three out of four Americans did not vote for Trump. The real 

winner of the election was (yet again) the ‘no vote’ party. Indeed, Trump polled 

fewer votes in 2024 than he did in 2020. But Harris lost around 11m votes compared 

to Biden in 2020.

An interesting article has a sceptical look at some of the conventional 

explanations 

Donald Trump has won, and most shockingly, he won the popular vote. Unlike in 

2016, which could be explained as a rejection of Hillary Clinton concentrated in 

the crucial mid-western states, this year he won convincingly. He has increased 

his share of the vote, as a percentage of the overall national popular vote, in each 

of the three elections he has run.
One explanation for Trump’s victory is an across-the-board collapse in turnout 

and increased apathy caused by an unpopular presidency, an uninspiring president 

and an ideologically spent brand of liberalism. There is some merit to this, but 

on closer inspection, it’s not why Kamala Harris lost.
First, it’s important to note that counting votes in the United States takes a 

very long time. By the time it’s all said and done, it’s quite likely Trump received 

more votes in 2024 than he did in the record turnout 2020 election, probably 

millions more votes.

The second flaw in this idea is that the turnout change wasn’t uniform, nor was the 

change in voting behavior. In most swing states, turnout was actually up from 2020, 

setting records. In the states that decided the election, Democrats got their base 

voters to the polls and had the electorate they needed to win (and even did win in 

many cases in the Senate and down the rest of the ballot). The problem was she 

lost on persuasion: many voters who chose Joe Biden four years ago and even voted 

for other Democrats this year chose Donald Trump.
However, problems with persuasion weren’t the only issue: Democratic turnout did, 

in fact, collapse in the less competitive states, especially in blue states. 

This is a unique shift in voting behavior nationally and can’t be explained obviously 

by most existing theories of the electorate.
Another explanation is that Democrats have become the party of college-educated 

voters exclusively, and shed working-class voters, especially working-class voters 

of color. There is some truth to this, especially over the long term. But this 

explanation is also flawed. Trump did better consistently with every demographic 

almost everywhere in the country, including college-educated white people and 

women. While these numbers were more pronounced with young voters, Latinos 

and men, it was only slight. Most highly-educated areas that had swung consistently 

against Republicans in 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022 moved back toward Trump this 

year. His victory was not with any one demographic. It was total.
As with any massive election loss, recriminations have been swift, and factions 

inside the Democratic party are jockeying to make their narrative about the 

election the conventional wisdom that shapes the future of the party, while 

Republicans are claiming a sweeping mandate for reshaping society in a darker, 

more authoritarian way. However, conventional ideological explanations also don’t 

stand up to scrutiny.
One of the most common centrist takes has been: Democrats have become too 

progressive and “woke” on social issues and obsessed with identity politics, and 

Democratic staffers and consultants live in a bubble and speak in alienating ways 

that have made them seem radical and off-putting to the median voter. 

The solution is a relentless focus on bread-and-butter issues and moderating, 

mostly ignoring culture war issues, besides abortion, and aggressively playing up 

moderate and bipartisan bona fides.
It seems quite likely this narrative will win out among Democrats. It has already 

been expressed by elected officials and influential Democratic pundits. The key 

problem with this narrative is that while it may have had merit in 2020 or 2022, 

the Democratic party has, over the last few years, aggressively purged “woke”

-sounding language from their messaging and policies from their agenda. 

The Harris campaign was almost monomaniacally focused on projecting moderation 

and bipartisanship and on basic, kitchen-table economic issues. 

They relentlessly hunted the median voter with targeted messaging. 

They ran the campaign the popularists wanted, and lost.
This theory is also belied by the fact that the most well-known progressive and 

radical politicians mostly did better than Harris. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez also 

won more votes than Harris. Understanding why thousands of people might vote 

for Trump and an avowed democratic socialist and vocal supporter of “woke” 

causes like trans rights is a key to understanding the election.
Progressives see the flaws with the centrist analysis and also have an explanation, 

typified by Bernie Sanders: Democrats lost by abandoning the working class and 

unions. Like the centrist narrative, it is an outdated explanation that was once 

true and may be true on a generational scale but is inadequate to capture what 

happened in this specific election fully. While Democrats have, over the last 

50 years, shifted away from unions and redistributive politics, allowing inequality 

to grow, and this is the correct explanation for Clinton’s loss in 2016, it doesn’t 

quite fit here. Joe Biden actually did shift to the left on economic issues after 

winning the primary in 2020, largely due to the mass movement that formed around 

the Sanders campaign. And while, in the past, this may have been lip service, the 

Biden administration, for all its shortcomings, did follow through in real, measurable

 ways. Income inequality, the central theme of the progressive movement in the 

2010s, decreased under Biden. The poorest workers were better off. 

Biden also pursued aggressive pro-labor and pro-consumer policy through the 

executive branch. Biden was the first president to walk a picket line, and put 

political capital on the line to bail out union pension funds.
For many years, it was easy to explain why workers would leave the Democrats: 

they were making less money and losing rights. But, while the Biden administration 

should have been far more assertive in redistribution and class-war policy on 

ideological and moral grounds, it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny that workers moved 

right because of an ideologically neoliberal or austerity-focused policy. 

Though Democrats have mostly abandoned class as a mode of communication, 

and struggled to name an enemy and construct a compelling economic narrative, 

the material explanation for Harris losing votes among the working class and union 

members doesn’t hold as it may have in the past.
The right has its own explanation, seeing a sweeping mandate for the culture war. 

But Republican candidates who made their campaigns into referenda on culture war 

issues have uniformly lost or underperformed, in the past, and also this year. 

Trump is the only candidate who ran aggressively on the persecution of trans 

people, for example, and also did better than the partisan baseline.
And the idea that this is why voters flocked to Trump is just not compelling. 

Fifty-four percent of voters thought Trump was “too extreme”, 65% were 

pro-choice, and, even on immigration, 56% of voters supported a pathway to 

citizenship rather than mass deportations. Millions of voters voted for Trump 

at the top of the ticket and Democrats down-ballot to check his unpopular agenda. 

It would be a mistake to think Trump has a mandate to remake society in a 

hard-right, socially conservative image.
So why did people vote for Trump? Most voters still actively dislike him personally 

(53% of voters had an unfavorable opinion of him) and most of his policies. 

The obvious explanation is that people trust him more to handle the economy. 

Although voters didn’t like his presidency, they felt like they were better off four 

years ago. This is true, but also so obviously true as to be facile. 

More interesting is why, materially, voters trust him more to handle the economy.

I propose a different explanation than inflation qua inflation: the Covid welfare 

state and its collapse. The massive, almost overnight expansion of the social safety 

net and its rapid, almost overnight rollback are materially one of the biggest policy 

changes in American history. For a brief period, and for the first time in history, 

Americans had a robust safety net: strong protections for workers and tenants, 

extremely generous unemployment benefits, rent control and direct cash transfers 

from the American government.
Despite the trauma and death of Covid and the isolation of lockdowns, from late 

2020 to early 2021, Americans briefly experienced the freedom of social democracy. 

They had enough liquid money to plan long term and make spending decisions for 

their own pleasure rather than just to survive. They had the labor protections to 

look for the jobs they wanted rather than feel stuck in the jobs they had. 

At the end of Trump’s term, the American standard of living and the amount of 

economic security and freedom Americans had was higher than when it started, 

and, with the loss of this expanded welfare state, it was worse when Biden left 

office, despite his real policy wins for workers and unions. 

This is why voters view Trump as a better shepherd of the economy.

The American journalist/historian, Thomas Frank, (also the editor of the 
Baffler) is perhaps the best person to consult about all this. He anticipated 
the first Trump victory in 2016 – not least in an early book What’s the Matter 
with Kansas? How Conservatives won the heart of America (2004) and had just 
written this piece -
Twenty years ago I published a book about politics in my home state of Kansas 
where white, working-class voters seemed to be drifting into the arms of right-wing 
movements. I attributed this, in large part, to the culture wars, which the right 
framed in terms of working-class agony. Look at how these powerful people insult 
our values!, went the plaint, whether they were talking about the theory of evolution 
or the war on Christmas.
This was worth pointing out because working people were once the heart and soul 
of left-wing parties all over the world. It may seem like a distant memory, but not 
long ago, the left was not a movement of college professors, bankers or high-ranking 
officers at Uber or Amazon. Working people: That’s what parties of the left were 
very largely about. The same folks who just expressed such remarkable support for 
Donald Trump.
My Kansas story was mainly about Republicans, but I also wrote about the way the 
Democrats were gradually turning away from working people and their concerns. 
Just think of all those ebullient Democratic proclamations in the ’90s about trade 
and tech and globalization and financial innovation. What a vision they had: All those 
manifestoes about futurific “wired workers” or the “learning class” … all those speeches 
about how Democrats had to leave the worker-centric populism of the 1930s behind 
them … all those brilliant triangulations and reaching out to the right. 
When I was young, it felt like every rising leader in the Democratic Party was 
making those points. That was the way to win voters in what they called “the center,
” the well-educated suburbanites and computer-literate professionals whom 
everybody admired.
Well, those tech-minded Democrats got exactly what they set out to get, and now 
here we are. At the Republican convention in July, JD Vance described the ruination 
visited on his working-class town in Ohio by NAFTA and trade with China, both of 
which he blamed at least in part on Mr. Biden, and also the human toll taken by the 
Iraq War, which he also contrived to blame on Mr. Biden. Today Mr. Vance is the 
vice president-elect, and what I hope you will understand, what I want you to mull 
over and take to heart and remember for the rest of your life, is that he got there 
by mimicking the language that Americans used to associate with labor, with liberals, 
with Democrats.
By comparison, here is Barack Obama in 2016, describing to Bloomberg Businessweek 
his affinity for the private sector: “Just to bring things full circle about innovation 
— the conversations I have with Silicon Valley and with venture capital pull together 
my interests in science and organization in a way I find really satisfying.”
I hope Mr. Obama finds his silicon satisfaction. I hope the men of capital whose 
banks he bailed out during the financial crisis show a little gratitude and build him 
the biggest, most expensive, most innovative presidential library of them all. 
But his party is in ruins today, without a leader and without a purpose.
It would have been nice if the Democrats could have triangulated their way into 
the hearts of enough educated and affluent suburbanites to make up for the 
working class voters they’ve lost over the years, but somehow that strategy rarely 
works out. They could have gone from boasting about Dick Cheney’s endorsement 
to becoming a version of Mr. Cheney themselves, and it still wouldn’t have been 
enough. A party of the left that identifies with people like Mr. Cheney is a 
contradiction in terms, a walking corpse.

For a short time in the last few years, it looked as if the Democrats might actually 
have understood all this. What the Biden administration did on antitrust and 
manufacturing and union organizing was never really completed but it was inspiring. 
Framed the right way, it might have formed the nucleus of a strong appeal to the 
voters Mr. Trump has stolen away. Kamala Harris had the skills: She spoke powerfully 
at the Democratic convention about a woman’s right to choose and Mr. Trump’s 
unfitness for high office. Speaker after speaker at the gathering in Chicago blasted 
the Republicans for their hostility to working people. There was even a presentation 
about the meaning of the word “populism.” At times it felt like they were speaking 
to me personally.
At the same time, the convention featured lots of saber-rattling speeches hailing 
America’s awesome war-making abilities. The administration’s achievements on 
antitrust were barely mentioned. There was even a presentation by the governor 
of Illinois, an heir to the Hyatt hotel fortune, in which he boasted of being a real 
billionaire, not a fake one like Donald Trump supposedly is, and the assembled 
Democrats cheered their heads off for this fortunate son. Then, once Ms. Harris’s 
campaign got rolling, it largely dropped economic populism, wheeled out another 
billionaire and embraced Liz Cheney.
Mr. Trump, meanwhile, put together a remarkable coalition of the disgruntled. 
He reached out to everyone with a beef, from Robert Kennedy Jr. to Elon Musk. 
From free-speech guys to book-banners. From Muslims in Michigan to anti-
immigration zealots everywhere. “Trump Will Fix It,” declared the signs they waved 
at his rallies, regardless of which “It” you had in mind.
Republicans spoke of Mr. Trump’s persecution by liberal prosecutors, of how he was 
censored by Twitter, of the incredible strength he showed after being shot. 
He was an “American Bad Ass,” in the words of Kid Rock. And clucking liberal pundits 
would sometimes respond to all this by mocking the very concept of “grievance,” as 
though discontent itself was the product of a diseased mind.
Liberals had nine years to decipher Mr. Trump’s appeal — and they failed. The 
Democrats are a party of college graduates, as the whole world understands by 
now, of Ph.D.s and genius-grant winners and the best consultants money can buy. 
Mr. Trump is a con man straight out of Mark Twain; he will say anything, promise 
anything, do nothing. But his movement baffled the party of education and innovation. 
Their most brilliant minds couldn’t figure him out.
I have been writing about these things for 20 years, and I have begun to doubt 
that any combination of financial disaster or electoral chastisement will ever 
turn on the lightbulb for the liberals. I fear that ’90s-style centrism will march 
on, by a sociological force of its own, until the parties have entirely switched their 
social positions and the world is given over to Trumpism.
Can anything reverse it? Only a resolute determination by the Democratic Party to 
rededicate itself to the majoritarian vision of old: a Great Society of broad, 
inclusive prosperity. This means universal health care and a higher minimum wage. 
It means robust financial regulation and antitrust enforcement. 
It means unions and a welfare state and higher taxes on billionaires, even the 
cool ones. It means, above all, liberalism as a social movement, as a coming
-together of ordinary people — not a series of top-down reforms by well
-meaning professionals.
That seems a long way away today. But the alternative is — what? To blame the 
voters? To scold the world for failing to see how noble we are? No. It will take 
the opposite sentiment — solidarity — to turn the world right-side up again.
Further Reading
Listen, Liberal – or whatever happened to the party of the people? Thomas Frank (2016)

Thank God for the Social Media

Twitter, in particular, has been losing a large section of its customers due to the idiocy of its owner – in anticipation of its eventual demise, even I have taken out a (still dormant) sub to bluesky, where I have the handle bluesky @nomadron.bsky.social

The MSM refuses to give any coverage to police raids on journalists who 

protest against the Palestinian genocide – the Crispin Flintoff show is 

gloriously alone in the space it gives such brave people. Another rebel channel 

is Electronic Infada which exposed the police raid on the home of Asa Winstanley,

 seizing – as is their wont – all his electronic devices. As Media Lens explains, 

not a single MSM deigns to let the public know of this gross infringement of our 

basic rights.  

Propoganda Blitz – how the corporate media distort reality D Edwards and D 

Cromwell (2019) is a useful update, 40 years later, to Manufacturing Consent 

– the political economy of the mass media Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky 

(1989)

Most journalists imagine they set the public record straight and check the excesses of power, which Edmund Burke called a ‘fourth estate’. The BBC goes further and ordains itself a divinity on earth, ‘speaking truth to power’: an exquisite nonsense that has endured since its founder secretly wrote propaganda for a Tory prime minister during Britain’s General Strike.

Driven from the ‘mainstream’, Seymour Hersh had to publish his work outside the United States. Robert Parry set up his own independent news website where, in a final piece following a stroke in December 2017, he wrote, ‘Whether they would admit it or not, [Western journalists] believe in a “guided democracy” in which “approved” opinions are elevated – regardless of their absence of factual basis – and ‘unapproved evidence is brushed aside or disparaged regardless of its quality.’

The US channel Consortium News is one of the few which offers a truly independent view on what’s going on in the world and had this to say about Britain’s war on independent journalism. Just a couple of examples of where Twitter has given me news that MSM doesn’t

Palestinian academic wins her case against Sheffield Hallam University

another pro Palestine journalist raided pre-dawn - Asa Winstanley 17 October 2024 and all electronic equipment siezed

The Expandable Book

One of my favourite television watching is Seinfeld which ran for almost a decade from its 1989 start and has 180 episodes. One of them has Kramer, the goofy neighbour, sell the idea of a coffee book with a small nestling table attached and duly appearing on a television talk-show to explain the idea. In that same spirit, I offer you the concept of the “expandable book”. This is a book which expands into larger versions. At the moment Dispatches to the Next Generation is just over 150 pages but it links in turn lead to what must be several thousands of pages of reading. So it’s a huge resource.

It lists and comments on the hundreds of books which have been written in recent decades about “the crisis”. In that sense, it has something in common with the “50 Classic” series by Tom Butler-Bowen although I can give only a tantalising sense of the worth of the books I reference - compared to the 5 or so pages which Butler-Bowen’s books average for each of his 50.

Before we start even flicking a book, however, we need to have some questions in mind. This will help us quickly identify where (if at all) the text actually tries to develop answers. Typically, I found my exercise producing a list of statements viz

• Western liberal capitalism has legitimacy as long as its political and economic systems work

• The economic system (capitalism) has always had its critics – but the global financial crash of 2008; climate change; and Artificial Intelligence have made the case for radical change unassailable

• For the second half of the 20^th century, the political system (democracy) seemed free from such challenges - but has recently come under fire for its failure to make its citizens feel that it represents any more their interests

• Political parties have indeed surrendered almost all of their functions – which I once described as representation, manifesto implementation, extension of public insight and protection – and are left only with the selection of elites.

• Most of the terms used in discussions – such as neoliberalism, inequality, populism, identity – are useless slogans which don’t contribute to anyone’s understanding of what’s at stake

• It was 1979 when Christopher Lasch produced his The Culture of Narcissism – American Life in an age of diminishing expectations which anticipated the present focus on self

• The present situation suits “Individualists” down to the ground

• “Egalitarians” are at a loss – having lost their capacity to believe in solidarity and the engine of union pressure

• The rest of us are utterly confused

• The structure of power is basically out of balance – as Henry Mintzberg’s Rebalancing Society – radical renewal beyond left, right and center so clearly set more than a decade ago

• But argument alone will not bring down the walls of privilege

• The lesson of history is that force (or its threat) is needed to effect social change

• Although history also tells us that it has to be non-violent

• Where – in the absence of the labour movement - do we find and harness such force?

• People power does not seem to have much lasting traction

Books about ”the global crisis or crises” are normally written by self-confident people who are trying to persuade us that their line of argument is correct. And they will therefore not spend much time on the arguments of their opponents. This author is not that sort of person. I’m only too aware of the tenuous nature of perceptions – that’s why I’m proud to call myself a ”sceptic”. A summary of each chapter follows -

1. Critical junctures identified

History is written by the victors – and the sycophants who surround them. Events were generally much more finely balanced than their versions admit. There’s too much fatalism around. Rec reading Covid 19 as a Critical Juncture and Out of the Belly of Hell

2.Trespassing is good for you

Intellectual specialisation has made it difficult for us to understand how the world is changing. Most leaders of organisations are in the grip of groupthink and need countervailing mechanisms of accountability to help them see new realities eg Janis, t’Hart, Syed

3. Putting Economics in its place

This intellectual discipline is deficient and yet has too much power. It needs to be brought down a peg or three. See Steve Keen, Brian Davey’s ”Credo”

4. The Blind men probe the Elephant

Talk of capitalism and post-capitalism is too loose and reified. There are various equally legitimate ways of perceiving the “beast”. See the table on 57 Varieties of Capitalism

5. A new social goal is sought for the commercial company

Shareholder value ignores other dimensions. Cooperative and social enterprises employ more people than we think – but have to struggle for legitimacy - see Paul Hirst, Colin Mayer, Ed Mayo, Charles Handy

6. Lessons of change explored

So much protest fails and few social enterprises have a multiplier effect. How do we create winnable coalitions? Appendix 2 lists the key books on both change and social change – more than 100.

7. The Search for Common Ground

Progressives are good at sounding off – and bad at seeking common ground. Change agents and coalitions sought. See Common Ground – democracy and collectivity in an age of individualism by Jeremy Gilbert

8. Conclusion - which explores the concepts of countervailing power; social enterprise

Almost 100 posts are incorporated into the little book which, at the moment, is 169 pages long. These can be viewed here

Down the Sewers with Right-Wing writers

They say that we should get out of our “bubbles” and be open to alternative voices. And the BBC certainly these days gives access to the entire spectrum of opinion from Tommy Robinson, Nigel Farage, Wes Streeting et al – particularly with interviews on such programmes as Political Thinking with Nick Robinson. Yesterday I steeled myself to listen to Matt Goodwin on this programme. 

But who, you might ask, is Goodwin? He was a political scientist who co-authored 

in 2018 a book I enjoyed National Populism – the revolt against liberal democracy 

but has since left academia to become a political advocate for the causes 

he previously only analysed. 

The discussion between Robinson and Goodwin became quite heated as he 

tirelessly rehearsed the usual arguments about excessive immigration 

(with which I partially agree), Muslims and this curious fixation on a “new class” 

which also figures in the current Conservative leadership contest.

Recommended Reading
The Routledge Companion to Fascism and the Far Right ed P Davis and D Lynch  (2002) 
Fascists  Michael Mann( 2004) Mann is one of the most interesting sociologists
The Road to Somewhere – the populist revolt and the future of British politics David 

Goodhart (2017)
Whiteshift – populism, immigration and the future of white majorities Eric Kaufmann 

(2018) https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/eric-kaufmann/ 
National Populism – the revolt against liberal democracy R Eatwell and M Goodwin (2018)

National Conversation on Immigration (Hope not Hate 2018)

The New Faces of Fascism – populism and the far right  Enzo Traverso (2019)

https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2020/09/demons-and-demos.html 
The Roots of Populism – neoliberalism and working class lives Brian Elliott 2021
America’s Cultural Revolution – how the radical left conquered everything Christopher 

Rufo (2023)
“Values, Voice and Virtue – the new british politics” ; Matt Goodwin - review (2023)
Taboo; How making race sacred produced a cultural revolution; Eric Kaufmann (2024) 
Conservatism in Crisis – the rise of the bureaucratic class (2024) with an 

introduction by Kimi Badenoch, the current favourite in the Conservative leadership 

race which refers to the current labour government as being “left-wing” – a real joke 

since most of us view it as simply continuing the neoliberal policies of the previous 

government.