These forces aren’t new, as John Judis notes in his book, The Populist Revolt. Trump’s angry voters were foreshadowed by the Tea Party, and earlier by Pat Buchanan’s “peasants with pitchforks” campaigns; Bernie Sanders stunning surge came after Occupy Wall Street. And they won’t go away when the last vote is cast this November. Sanders and allies are already driving reforms and running candidates at the local and state level. Trump’s legions will spark a civil war within the Republican Party, with some likely to self-organize into more threatening formations.
None of this is a revelation. Yet elite Washington still doesn’t get it. The establishment has still not acknowledged the scope of its failure. President Obama is rolling out his legacy tour, pointing with pride to the recovery from the Great Recession, 20 million more with health insurance, record months of private-sector job growth, low unemployment, and the first signs of wages’ beginning to inch upwards. America’s alliances, foreign-policy experts intone, continue to “keep the peace” across the world. Our global economic strategies are touted as vital to our prosperity. This is, the president assures us, the “greatest time to be alive.”