Goldberg: Leftists for Trump–insufferable nihilists

Michelle Goldberg at Slate bashes the notion that Donald Trump is an alternative for Sanders’ supporters.

On Wednesday, [Christopher] Ketcham published a piece in the Daily Beast titled “Anarchists For Trump—Let the Empire Burn.” Ketcham, who writes that he donated hundreds of dollars to Bernie Sanders, now plans to support Donald Trump in the general election. “What’s needed now in American politics is consternation, confusion, dissension, disorder, chaos—and crisis, with possible resolution—and a Trump presidency is the best chance for this true progress,” he writes.  “This is a politics of arson. I’d rather see the empire burn to the ground under Trump, opening up at least the possibility of radical change, than cruise on autopilot under Clinton.”

This is a more forceful rendition of the argument that Susan Sarandon floated on MSNBC in March, when she said, “Some people feel that Donald Trump will bring the revolution immediately if he gets in, things will really explode.” It’s a jejune version of the Bolshevik slogan “The worse, the better,” which meant that deteriorating social conditions would radicalize the populace and empower the left.

A few seconds’ reflection is enough to realize that this isn’t how American politics work. When the right is in power, the political center of gravity moves right as well. Bill Clinton’s hated style of triangulation was a reaction to eight years of Ronald Reagan followed by four of George H.W. Bush, a period in which liberalism came to be seen as a massive electoral liability. During George W. Bush’s administration, the most visible left-wing counterweight was the Netroots, which was basically a movement of centrist Democrats. The left flourishes when Democrats are in power, raising people’s political expectations. The Bernie Sanders movement is possible because, for young people, the notion of a liberal, urbane black president is a starting point rather than a miracle.

Ketcham is, naturally, blithely uninterested in reckoning with the human cost of the political apocalypse he fantasizes about. There’s not a word in his piece about the immigrants who would be rounded up and put into detention camps under Trump’s plan, or the people of color who would be terrorized by a total breakdown in the norms that make even an imperfect multiethnic democracy possible.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.