Perry Anderson, the UCLA historian who probably knows more about world history from antiquity until now, in virtually every corner of the globe, has written an important analysis of the recent election and the Obama legacy as well as a bit about Trump. The part about Obama is the most important and it tries to do what few want to--separate the charisma and path-breaking election of a black candidate, from his performance in office. The latter is seen as essentially not any different from the Carter--though he doesn't mention him--and Clinton: a big business and Wall St. friendly conservative Democrat approach to solving problems. Hostile to labor; opting for market-friendly solutions to problems; hostile to mass mobilization for social change; intent on rescuing banks and indifferent to homeowners in 2008; mainstream foreign policy; deporter-in-chief; persecutor of whistleblowers, not torturers from Bush Administration etc. etc.
He also says that the hatred towards Trump from everyone, including many establishment Republicans and virtually every Democrat, masks the real differences in political ideology that should not be forgotten when it comes to rebuilding the Democratic Party.
While he doesn’t pretend to have answers, he raises important questions.
Note: In order to get the diary a bit more more attention I originally used the term “worship” and as you can see from the comments it brought a torrent of criticism and accusations that I was a right-winger (comment number 1) or a die-hard for Bernie that probably sat out the election and thought Clinton and Trump were the same. While it’s true that I was for sanders i realized early on that the race was over and spent a good deal of time trying to convince a few people I knew that there WAS a huge difference between Clinton, warts and all, and Trump. I knocked on doors in Philly and voted for her. So, perhaps this and the title change will lead to more people reading Anderson and not finding an excuse to avoid it by focusing on me.
https://newleftreview.org/II/103/perry-anderson-passing-the-baton