Americans have seen living standards stagnate, habits of neighbourhood co-operation undermined, job opportunities reduced and their sense of moral equality with the new American educated class decline. The establishment grasps as much, but only Donald Trump stands poised to exploit it.
Australians and New Zealanders, like most people outside the United States, have been gazing with a kind of bafflement, amused or horrified according to taste, at the early results in America’s season of primaries and caucuses. Donald Trump’s dominance in the Republican early primaries, though shaky, seemed to be spreading to more and more groups in the broad Republican coalition; and Senator Bernie Sanders won the first primary and tied in the first caucus against the well-funded but scandal-haunted favourite, Hillary Clinton, by drawing high levels of support from white progressives and young voters with a campaign rooted in undiluted socialism.
Both party leaderships (or “establishments”, as it has become fashionable to call them) have been rattled and undermined by these results. Mrs Clinton enjoyed the barely concealed backing of the Democratic machine, but it was unable to deliver the votes it once did. It modestly compensated for this failure by giving her most of New Hampshire’s Democrat office-holders as “super-delegates” to the Convention. Having been beaten better than sixty-to-forty by Sanders, Clinton left New Hampshire with more delegates.
Carnage was far greater on the Republican side. Most of the establishment’s starting candidates—governors, senators, CEOs—did so badly that they pulled out of the race before and after New Hampshire. The most establishment candidate, Jeb Bush, who is also the best-funded one, struggled to remain fourth or fifth in the polls and has now called it quits as well. And the two self-proclaimed anti-establishment candidates, Trump and Texas Senator Ted Cruz, between them have about the same support as all the other candidates put together.
All this could change, of course, as different states hold primaries. But the big picture remains a kind of stable instability. Sanders is pulling even with Clinton nationally, buoyed by polls that show his supporters and half the Democrats believing in socialism. Trump seems to be consolidating his lead (and Cruz his second place) in a field divided among too many moderate opponents for any single one to challenge the leaders effectively. And political certainties are crashing with every poll release:
• Does money dominate US politics? Candidates in both parties who spend the least are winning the most. Clinton is embarrassed by her ties to Wall Street and high lecture fees. And the moderate GOP candidates who stuck with liberal immigration reform in obedience to “the donor class” (another variant of establishment) watched helplessly as Trump soared past them by responding to long-ignored voter concerns on the scale and illegality of immigration. Money has insulated the political class from the voters.
