The Electoral College’s selection of Donald Trump as 45th president of the United States continues to shock on many levels. A transition from the first African American president to someone who made racism a cornerstone of his campaign is one element. Another is that Trump triumphed against what appeared to be a solid “popular front” of most of American business, the media, the political establishment, and liberal activists lined up behind Democrat Hillary Clinton. Despite all of these factors—or perhaps, more accurately, because of them—the dysfunctional U.S. political system delivered the world’s most powerful office to the loser of the national popular vote for the second time in sixteen years.
US Politics in the Age of Uncertainty is a smart and compelling reader, written by socialists, that delves into different aspects of US politics in this era of transition from Obama to Trump. These essays are offered with the knowledge that the social forces that drove the 2016 election remain with us today, and thus helps set a course for the left to project its true power in a way that can offer a real alternative for the working-class majority.
Contents
Introduction
Lance Selfa
Chickens Coming Home to Roost for the Democratic Party? How Neoliberalism Quietly Devastated the US Working Class
Sharon Smith
We Got Trumped!
Charlie Post
Who Put Donald Trump in the White House?
Kim Moody
The Great God Trump and the White Working Class
Mike Davis
Choosing or Refusing to Take Sides in an Era of Right-Wing Populism
Neil Davidson
From Hope to Despair: How the Obama Years Gave Us Trump
Black Politics in the Trump Era
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
The Misogynist-in-Chief: The Stakes for Women’s Rights in the Trump Era
Elizabeth Schulte
Trump, Islamophobia, and US Politics
An Interview with Deepa Kumar
From “Deporter-in-Chief ” to Xenophobia Unleashed: Immigration Policy under Trump
An Interview with Justin Akers Chacón
The End of Progressive Neoliberalism
Nancy Fraser