Elections v K

Link

Cede the Political link

Their vacuous alternative fails to change anything and
creates a space that will be filled in by right wing
politicians like Trump
Lisandro Claudio, 7/1/2016, professor of political science at Manila University,
"Intellectuals have ushered the world into a dangerous age of political nihilism",
qz.com/721914/intellectuals-have-ushered-the-world-into-a-dangerous-age-ofpolitical-nihilism/ //AZ

On the surface, it would seem that intellectuals have nothing to do with the
rise of global illiberalism. The movements powering Brexit, Donald Trump and
Third-World strongmen like Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte all gleefully
reject books, history and higher education in favor of railing against common
enemies like outsiders and globalization. And youll find few Trump supporters among the

intellectuals are accountable for

the rise of these movementsalbeit indirectly. Professors
largely left-wing American professoriate. Yet

have offered stringent criticisms of neoliberal society. But they have failed to
offer the public viable alternatives. In this way, they have promoted a

political nihilism that has set the stage for new

movements that reject liberal democratic principles of
tolerance and institutional reform. Intellectuals have a long history of
critiquing liberalism, which relies on a philosophy of individual rights and (relatively) free markets.
Beginning in the 19th century, according to historian Francois Furet, left-wing thinkers began to arrive at a
consensus that modern liberal democracy was threatening society with dissolution because it atomized
individuals, made them indifferent to public interest, weakened authority, and encouraged class hatred.

For most of the 20th century, anti-liberal intellectuals were able to come up
with alternatives. Jean-Paul Sartre famously defended the Soviet Union even when it became clear
that Joseph Stalin was a mass murderer. French, American, Indian, and Filipino university radicals were

The collapse of
Communism changed all this. Some leftist intellectuals began to find hope in
small revolutionary guerrillas in the Third World, like Mexicos
Subcomandante Marcos. Others fell back on pure critique. Academics are now
hopelessly enamored of Mao Zedongs Cultural Revolution in the 1970s.

mostly gadflies who rarely offer strategies for political

change. Those who do forward alternatives propose ones so vague or
divorced from reality that they might as well be proposing
nothing. (The Duke University professor of romance studies Michael Hardt, for example, thinks the
Such thinking
promotes political hopelessness. It rejects gradual change as cosmetic, while
patronizing those who think otherwise. This nihilism easily spreads from the
classroom and academic journals to op-ed pages to Zuccotti Park, and eventually to the
public at large. For academic nihilists, the shorthand for the worlds evils is
neoliberalism. The term is used to refer to a free market ideology that forced globalization on
people by reducing the power of governments. The more the term is used, however, the
more it becomes a vague designation for all global drudgery. Democratic politics in
the age of neoliberalism, according to Harvard anthropologists Jean and John Comaroff, is
evils of modern globalization are so pernicious that only worldwide love is the answer.)

something of a pyramid scheme: the more it is indulged, the more it is required. They argue that our
belief that we can use laws and constitutional processes to defend our rights is a form of fetishism that is

the University of Chicago literary theorist Lauren Berlant,

the democratic pursuit of happiness amid neoliberalism is nothing but cruel
optimism. The materialist things that people desire are actually an obstacle to your flourishing, she
writes. According to this logic, we are trapped by our own ideologies. It is this
logic that allows left-wing thinkers to implicitly side with British nativists in
their condemnation of the EU. The radical website Counterpunch, for example,
describes the EU as a neoliberal prison. It also views liberals seeking to
reform the EU as coopted by the right wing and its goalsfrom the
subversion of progressive economic ideals to neoliberalism, to the
enthusiastic embrace of neoconservative doctrine . Across the Atlantic, Trump
supporters are singing a similar tune. Speaking to a black, gay, collegeeducated Trump supporter, Samantha Bee was told: Weve had these
disasters in neoconservatism and neoliberalism and I think that he [Trump] is
an alternative to both those paths. The academic nihilists and the Trumpists
are in agreement about a key issue: The system is fundamentally broken, and
liberals who believe in working patiently toward change are weak . For the
ultimately chimerical. For

Portuguese sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos, indifference is the the hallmark of political

Santos writes, they have no permanent

proposes that the world needs to revive the friend/foe
dichotomy. And in a profane way, it has: modern political movements pit
Americans against Muslims, Britain against Europe, a dictatorial government
against criminals. 1 1 Unfortunately, academic anti-liberalism is not confined
to the West. The Cornell political scientist Benedict Anderson once described liberal democracy in the
liberalism. Since liberals balance different interests and rights,
friends or foes. He

Philippines as a Cacique Democracy, dominated by feudal landlords and capitalist families. In this
system, meaningful reform is difficult, since the countrys political system is like a well-run casino, where
tables are rigged in favor of oligarch bosses. Having a nihilist streak myself, I once echoed Anderson when
I chastised Filipino nationalists for projecting hope onto spaces within an elite democracy. Like Anderson,
I offered no alternative. The alternative arrived recently in the guise of the Duterte, the new president of
the Philippines. Like Anderson and me, Duterte complained about the impossibility of real change in a
democracy dominated by elites and oligarchs. But unlike us, he proposed a way out: a strong political
leader who was willing to kill to save the country from criminals and corrupt politicians. The spread of
global illiberalism is unlikely to end soon.

As this crisis unfolds, we will need

intellectuals who use their intellects for more than simple

negationprofessors like the late New York University historian Tony Judt,
who argued that European-style social democracy could save global
democracy. Failing that, we need academics who acknowledge that liberal
democracy, though slow and imperfect, enables a bare minimum of tolerance
in a world beset by xenophobia and hatred. For although academics have the
luxury of imagining a completely different world, the rest of us have to figure
out what to do with the one we have.

The answer to Trump is politics

David Brooks, 2/26/2016, Writer for The New York Times, "The Governing
Cancer of Our Time", www.nytimes.com/2016/02/26/opinion/the-governing-cancer-ofour-time.html //AZ

We live in a big, diverse society. There are essentially two ways to maintain
order and get things done in such a society politics or some form of dictatorship. Either
through compromise or brute force. Our founding fathers chose politics. Politics is an activity in
which you recognize the simultaneous existence of different groups, interests
and opinions. You try to find some way to balance or reconcile or compromise
those interests, or at least a majority of them. You follow a set of rules, enshrined in a
constitution or in custom, to help you reach these compromises in a way everybody considers legitimate.

The downside of politics is that people never really get everything they want.
Its messy, limited and no issue is ever really settled. Politics is a muddled
activity in which people have to recognize restraints and settle for less than
they want. Disappointment is normal. But thats sort of the beauty of politics,
too. It involves an endless conversation in which we learn about other people
and see things from their vantage point and try to balance their needs
against our own. Plus, its better than the alternative: rule by

some authoritarian tyrant who tries to govern by

clobbering everyone in his way. As Bernard Crick wrote in his book, In Defence
of Politics, Politics

is a way of ruling divided societies without undue violence .

Over the past generation we have seen the rise of a group of people who are against
politics. These groups best exemplified by the Tea Party but not exclusive
to the right want to elect people who have no political experience. They
want outsiders. They delegitimize compromise and dealmaking. Theyre willing to trample the customs and rules that give
legitimacy to legislative decision-making if it helps them gain power. Ultimately,

they dont recognize other people. They suffer from a

form of political narcissism, in which they dont accept the
legitimacy of other interests and opinions. They dont recognize restraints. They
want total victories for themselves and their doctrine. This
antipolitics tendency has had a wretched effect on our democracy. It has led to a series of overlapping

antipolitics people elect legislators who have no political

skills or experience. That incompetence leads to dysfunctional government,
which leads to more disgust with government, which leads to a demand for
even more outsiders. The antipolitics people dont accept that politics is a limited activity. They
downward spirals: The

make soaring promises and raise ridiculous expectations. When those expectations are not met, voters
grow cynical and, disgusted, turn even further in the direction of antipolitics. The antipolitics people refuse

The absence of accomplishment destroys

public trust. The decline in trust makes deal-making harder. Were now at a
point where the Senate says it wont even hold hearings on a presidential
Supreme Court nominee, in clear defiance of custom and the Constitution .
Were now at a point in which politicians live in fear if they try to compromise and legislate. Were now
at a point in which normal political conversation has broken down. People feel
unheard, which makes them shout even louder, which further destroys
conversation. And in walks Donald Trump. People say that Trump is an unconventional candidate and
that he represents a break from politics as usual. Thats not true. Trump is the culmination of
the trends we have been seeing for the last 30 years: the desire for outsiders;
the bashing style of rhetoric that makes conversation impossible; the decline
of coherent political parties; the declining importance of policy; the tendency
compromise and so block the legislative process.

to fight cultural battles and identity wars through political means . Trump
represents the path the founders rejected. There is a hint of violence undergirding his campaign. There is
always a whiff, and sometimes more than a whiff, of Id like to punch him in the face. Sign Up for the
Opinion Today Newsletter Every weekday, get thought-provoking commentary from Op-Ed columnists, The
Times editorial board and contributing writers from around the world. I printed out a Times list of the

Trumps style is bashing and

pummeling. Everyone who opposes or disagrees with him is an idiot, a moron
or a loser. The implied promise of his campaign is that he will come to
Washington and bully his way through. Trumps supporters arent looking for
a political process to address their needs. They are looking for a superhero. As
insults Trump has hurled on Twitter. The list took up 33 pages.

the political scientist Matthew MacWilliams found, the one trait that best predicts whether youre a Trump
supporter is how high you score on tests that measure authoritarianism. This isnt just an American
phenomenon. Politics is in retreat and authoritarianism is on the rise worldwide.

The answer to

Trump is politics. Its acknowledging other people exist. Its taking pleasure in that
difference and hammering out workable arrangements . As Harold Laski put it, We
shall make the basis of our state consent to disagreement. Therein shall we ensure its deepest harmony.

Political nihilism that refuses to choose the lesser of two

evils ignores the material violence Trump would bring and
does nothing to further revolution
Goldberg 6/9 Michelle Goldberg is a columnist for Slate and the author, most recently, of The
Goddess Pose. Leftists for Trump: What Is to Be Done About These Insufferable Nihilists? 6/9/16
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/06/leftists_for_trump_what_is_to_be_done_ab
out_these_insufferable_nihilists.html)///CW
Last month, the left-wing writer Freddie de Boer tweeted his desire to see a liberal Democrat writer in the
media write a piece making a good faith effort to consider liberal attacks on the left. The challenge

Im aware of my own antipathy to many types of left-wing

affect, and I often feel guilty about it and wonder if it's a rationalization for my
own smug complacency. (Liberals, unlike leftists, are given to neurotic questioning of their own
stuck in my mind, because

motives.) After all, I would like to see America move toward Scandinavian-style social democracy, and

Why, then, does the leftthat is,

people who want revolution rather than reformregularly infuriate me? Im
thats not going to happen without serious left-wing agitation.

willing to stipulate that part of it is that leftists make me feel bad about my own bougie accommodation to

radical
movementsthat treats politics as a realm in which to enact revenge on society for its own alienation
the status quo. Another part, though, is that I recoil from a personality typenot uncommon in

and to claim a starring role in history. That is, people like Christopher Ketcham. On Wednesday, Ketcham
published a piece in the Daily Beast titled Anarchists For TrumpLet 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. Whats needed now in American politics is consternation, confusion, dissension,
disorder, chaosand crisis, with possible resolutionand a Trump presidency is the best chance for this
true progress, he writes. This

is a politics of arson. Id 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

Its a jejune
version of the Bolshevik slogan The worse, the better,
bring the revolution immediately if he gets in, things will really explode.

which meant that deteriorating social conditions would radicalize the populace and empower the left. The
Bernie movement is possible because, for young people, a liberal, urbane black president is a starting

A few seconds reflection is enough to realize that this

isnt how American politics work. When the right is in power, the political
center of gravity moves right as well. Bill Clintons hated style of triangulation was a reaction to
point rather than a miracle.

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. Bushs 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 peoples 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. Theres not a word in his piece
about the immigrants who would be rounded up and put into detention
camps under Trumps 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. This is not surprising. What is surprising is that Ketcham, as well as the
likeminded people he quotes, are so forthright about seeing politics purely in terms of personal catharsis.
He cites an editor of a major progressive website who is a covert Trump supporter, and who says, To the
extent that voting for president matters at all, it is merely to give a certain secret pleasure to the voter in

Ketcham thinks hes

shocking the bourgeoisie by opening a window into a nihilist demimonde .
the privacy of the booth. You get the sense, reading the piece, that

Travelling across the country, I keep meeting people who voted for Sanders in the primaries but mutter
under cover of night and a few drinks that theyll vote for Trump in November, he writes. Friends out in
the wildlands of the intermountain West, hard gun-toting anarchist redneck Amy Goodman progressives,
say so. Big-city journalists, too. I suspect that the left-contrarian, anti-Hillary, pro-Trump arsonist crowd is
larger and wider-spread than the cubicled creatures in the Clinton campaign have accounted for. I have no
idea if this is true. But insofar as it is, it confirms every stereotype that supercilious liberals have about
self-styled radicals. I suspect that is why the Daily Beast published Ketchams piece in the first place. (Well,
that and the clicks.) Top Comment Why do anarchists and other leftists irritate liberals so much? I think
it's because they come off as either: a) Psychopathic. More... 2.2k CommentsJoin In Im not interested in
berating people who feel this way into changing their votes. Clinton can win without mobilizing the armed
anarchist listeners of Democracy Now! People who believe that it would be clarifying if the republic
degenerates into tyranny, as Ketcham does, probably should pull the lever for Trump; they are his natural
constituency. I know these cosplay revolutionaries, to paraphrase Dave Weigel, dont represent the real

Theyre certainly not the heroic people organizing fast-food workers or

agitating to head off climate cataclysm . But a softer version of Ketchams
sentiment is out there among the Bernie-or-Bust crowd; in March, the Guardian
heard from 500 Sanders supporters who were considering voting for Trump
over Clinton. Its there, too, in the people on the left who are furious about the prospect of Elizabeth
left.

Warren joining Clintons ticket. Increasingly, a vocal part of the left is marked by its contempt for
liberalism. The feeling is often mutual.

Leftwing link
The 1ACs approach to civil society and the state a refusal
of mechanisms of reform like the electoral system which
writes out the possibility of creative modes of
engagement in electoral politics---the electoral system is
not just a site of state domination but rather a symbolic
and subject-creating space thats open to reversal by
radical movements
David Langstaff 3-25, radical organizer, member of the International Jewish
Anti-Zionist Network, has also organized with Sins Invalid, the International Solidarity
Movement, Olympia BDS, the Block the Boat coalition, the Stop Urban Shield
coalition, and the Third World Resistance Contingent for Black Power, 3/25/16, Voting
Matters: the Radical Left and Epistemic Impasse,
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/03/25/voting-matters-the-radical-left-andepistemic-impasse-2/

For radical leftists those who variously strive toward a world against and beyond
the socio-ecological disaster that is modernity within a loosely
common tradition of resistance electoral politics present an enduring and often
vexing problematic. As the 2016 U.S. Presidential election edges closer, we
find ourselves increasingly caught up in the familiar material and discursive
winds of this nominally democratic arena, in all of its exaggerated tempestuousness and
familiar torpidity. Less familiar perhaps, are some of the specific features of this quadrennial event most
notably the unexpected success of avowedly socialist Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders in mobilizing
liberal-progressive popular sentiment in the first half of the primaries, alongside the equally unanticipated
success of Republican candidate Donald Trump in both stoking and exploiting an already ample reactionary

For the radical left, the

Sanders-Trump phenomena has elicited predictable (and predictably polarized)
recapitulations of what are by now well-rehearsed analytical positions and
affective performances, with little alteration of their respective forms or content. While the
populism and in heightening the contradictions within the GOP.

passion and conviction with which these left positions are reiterated is indicative, at least in part, of

these left debates have reached an

epistemic impasse and are badly in need of radical renewal . In the
preliminary comments that follow, I hope to revisit the issue of electoral politics
with the kind of critical curiosity that might enable us to pose novel , even
revolutionary, questions. For as afro-pessimist Frank Wilderson III
provocatively suggests in an altogether different yet intimately related context, the power to
pose the question is the greatest power of all . Left Gridlock Broadly speaking,
honorable intentions, I want to suggest that

contemporary left debates concerning electoral politics tend to pivot around two political positions, each
figured as if in diametric opposition to the other. I will be speaking of these positions in ideal-typical terms,
with all the violence of abstraction that implies. While the actually existing landscape of left discourse is
undoubtedly more nuanced and complex, for the purposes of this short article, this level of generalization

The first position is what one might call pragmatist. Whether advocated by
that, although U.S.
electoral politics is indeed mostly a contest between fractions of the elite and marked by significant
institutional barriers to the practice of anything remotely resembling meaningful democracy, it is also a
process with significant material consequences for the bulk of the population
should be sufficient.

socialists, anarchists, or multi-tendency non-sectarian radicals, this position asserts

and a terrain of struggle that cannot be ignored . If the left is to be anything more than a
marginal, self-referential group of ideologues, the argument goes, electoral politics is a site of struggle that

rejectionist

must be taken seriously. The second position is what one might call
, and it
tends to be associated with anarchists or other anti-authoritarians, though it could also be applied to
communists and nationalists of various stripes.

This position asserts that electoral

politics are irredeemable, fundamentally mired in the

exercise of state and capitalist power, and that participation
in elections is effectively consenting to and perpetuating relations of domination
and exploitation. In its most basic form, this position can be summed up by the quip often attributed
to Emma Goldman: If voting changed anything, it would be illegal. Ironically, though each position

both seem to be caught in a kind of

non-generative codependent relationship with the other . The pragmatist position
regards the other with a kind of moralizing disdain,

builds its self-understanding and orientation by way of (implicit or explicit) critique of the naivet,

the rejectionist position builds its selfunderstanding and orientation by way of (implicit or explicit) critique of the liberalism,
accomodationism, or opportunism of the pragmatists . To some extent both
positions, in their contemporary incarnations, can be understood as inadequate
responses to the crisis of revolutionary theory that has been one of the signature features
insularity, and dogmatism of the rejectionists, just as

of the neoliberal period. As Immanuel Wallerstein, Giovanni Arrighi, and Terrence K. Hopkins argued in
Antisystemic Movements, from the latter half of the nineteenth century to roughly 1968 left movements
across the globe, whether socialist or (anti-colonial) nationalist in character (or both), more or less agreed
upon a basic theory of revolutionary strategy: acquire state power, either by electoral means or through
armed struggle, and then use state power to revolutionize society. There were of course those who took
exception to this strategy (most famously, anarchists), but on balance they did little to fundamentally shift
its hegemonic position among the left over this period. Since 1968, however, for a variety of interrelated
reasons insurgent challenges to the (racist/colonial/heteropatriarchal/ableist) exclusions and limitations
of the old left; the internal contradictions and failures of socialist and (anti-colonial) nationalist
movements that nominally succeeded in attaining state power; the crisis of the U.S led Fordist-Keynesian
world-economy and the rise of neoliberal globalization; and, several decades of brutal counterrevolutionary
reaction against left and other radical movements this revolutionary paradigm has fallen into disarray
and disrepute. For those of us who reject the old left revolutionary strategy on both theoretical and ethical
grounds, its dissolution may not be regarded as any great tragedy. Nevertheless, at least in the Global

the radical left currently has no coherent theory

for linking short-term struggles to long-term visions of collective liberation by
way of some medium-term revolutionary strategy. Thus, the question of electoral
politics sits uneasily with the broader left commitment to grassroots
movement-building, in the absence of a clear trajectory of change that each are building towards,
North, the fact remains that

independently and in conjunction. To the extent that the pragmatists speak to the role of electoral politics
in left strategy, they generally confine their propositions to resisting the continued assaults from the right,
defending what social democratic protections remain, and expanding social democratic infrastructure
both for its own sake and pursuant with the contention that this expansion inherently builds or increases
the space for organized left power (precisely how these types of reforms build or increase the space for
organized left power, however, remains significantly under-theorized). There are still some who retain the
old left faith in the two stage revolutionary strategy (acquire state power, then change society), but they
rarely declare that allegiance openly and uncompromisingly, for fear of being viewed as sectarian or

the rejectionist position remains a consistent and

seasonally trumpeted refrain, but, for the most part, similarly lacks a theory of
anachronistic. Meanwhile,

how this tactic or principle of rejection fits into a longerterm trajectory of systemic transformation. To be clear, I am
emphatically not suggesting that recent decades have been devoid of radical rebellion or left movement
activity. On the contrary, in the U.S. the 1980s were marked by new forms of international solidarity and
environmentalist organizing, the 1990s gave birth to the alter-globalization movement, the early 2000s

witnessed a bourgeoning if short-lived anti-war movement, and the post-2008 crisis period saw the
emergence of the Occupy movement, reinvigorated campus organizing, and new waves of black and
indigenous rebellion, activism, and organizing. Nor am I suggesting that these upsurges have been
characterized by a lack of dynamism or innovation works such as the Team Colors Collectives Uses of a
Whirlwind and Chris Dixons Another Politics have tried to synthesize some of the unique strengths and
creative interventions of recent movement constellations. Rather, I am suggesting that, for better or

recent left movement history has been characterized by the absence of

the kind of hegemonic theory of revolutionary strategy to which the left had
hitherto laid claim. Furthermore, I am arguing that the left has yet to fully acknowledge or
worse,

sufficiently theorize this change, and that this failure has contributed to the ambiguity and inadequacy of
its articulation of a praxis in relation to electoral politics. Epistemic Impasse As my preceding comments

the crisis facing the radical left is as much epistemic as it is

material. Insofar as segments of radical movements have identified in this crisis
an opportunity to critique the epistemic violence upon which modernity has
been built and to embrace, as Boaventura de Sousa Santos puts it, new critical theory
and new emancipatory practices[which, c]ontrary to their predecessorsstart from the
suggest,

premise that the epistemological diversity of the world is immense as its cultural diversity and that the
recognition of such diversity must be at the core of the global resistance against capitalism and of the

However, insofar as
the left has been unable to wrest itself from the reigning neoliberal malaise
and resist the temptation to look upon its past failures with romantic nostalgia, it is fair to say that the
left is equally ensnared in what Max Haiven refers to as a more general crisis of
formulation of alternative forms of sociability[,] the crisis has been productive.

imagination. From the alter-globalization movement to the Occupy movement, there has
experimentation with practices of horizontalism and radical
democracy, even if the shortcomings of these experiments have also been substantial. However, it
certainly been inspiring

has not done very much to advance our

debates around electoral politics, and, at present, the leftist pendulum
seems that this experimentation

seems to be shifting from imaginative experimentation back to realpolitik . Left

epistemic impasse with regard to electoral politics can be thought about at two levels that of critique and

left thought has

tended to formulate its criticism in overwhelmingly negative terms:
that of practice. At the level of critique, whether pragmatist or rejectionist,

electoral politics as a space of exclusion, as the incomplete or inadequate

exercise of democracy, or left participation in electoral politics as
evidence of moral concession or strategic failure. Rarely, outside of
has left critique focused on electoral politics as an
eminently productive space: a site for the (re)production of
subjectivity and (im)material relations. Yet it is precisely in its (re)productive
capacities that elections reveal their centrality in the broader
scholarly works,

operations of power. The black insurgent poet-scholar Fred Moten puts it this way: U.S.
democratic politics is a mode of crisis management whose most conspicuous and extravagant rituals
elections and inaugural celebrations and protests that each in its way confirms them operate at the level
of the demonstration. Elections in the United States are meant, finally and above all, to demonstrate that
an election took place a central consideration for structures of authority that depend on the eclipse of
democratic content by the ritual animation of supposedly democratic formsthe United States is the land

Elections, in other words, are (re)productive of a certain

kind of political imagination which forecloses dangerous radical democratic or
communistic potentialities. This political imagination, I would argue, is that of the
liberal, individuated and self-possessed, (white/settler) citizensubject, a
subjectivity which has as its condition of possibility a specific historical
of formal democratic enclosure.

conjunction of foundational violences. As Wilderson and other afro-pessimists

the most salient dimensions of this foundational violence are
black social death and, as Nicholas Juarez puts it, the genocidal clearing of
indigenous peoples. Slavery, settler-colonialism, and racial capitalism , in other
words, are constitutive elements of the political ontology in which liberal
democracy, civil society, and the liberal subject which regards these domains as
his own, are embedded. One could name other constitutive elements, such as white supremacy,
have forcefully argued,

imperialism, heteropatriarchy, and ableism. As Lisa Lowe writes in The Intimacies of Four Continents, the
genealogy of modern liberalism is simultaneously a genealogy of the colonial divisions of humanityin
which race, geography, nation, caste, religion, gender, sexuality, and other social differences become
elaborated as normative categories for governance under the rubrics of liberty and sovereignty. The
subjectivity of the self-possessed liberal individual, and the broader political ontology in which it finds
coherence, emerges through [t]he operations that pronounce colonial divisions of humanity settler
seizure and native removal, slavery and racial dispossession, and racialized expropriations of many kinds
[all of which] are imbricated processes, not sequential events; they are ongoing and continuous in our

As one of the
quintessential processes of liberalism rhetorically, spectacularly, and substantially
elections are a necessary site for critical inquiry, but for this inquiry to yield
truly revolutionary knowledge, it must explore the relations between electoral
contemporary moment, not temporally distinct nor as yet concluded.

politics and social totality. To

the extent that the left views

elections as simply exclusionary spaces of elite
contest, which may or may not be efficaciously submitted to popular pressures via formal
participation, we miss the opportunity to interrogate their
important productive role in subject-formation , and
thereby overlook potential sites for interrupting or escaping the endless
repetition of horrors that, to borrow Saidiya Hartmans turn of phrase, these scenes of subjection
instantiate. Turning our attention again to practice, the left epistemic impasse leads to
thinking electoral engagement primarily in terms that resemble quantitative
reasoning: do we or do we not participate? If we do, how do we strategically mobilize
masses of people towards the election of this or that candidate, towards passing this or that piece of

But this zero-sum game reasoning falls into the trap of thinking
electoral politics on its own terms. In other words, we are unable to think
legislation?

an infinite number of qualitative modes of engagement or

the refusal of engagement. There are no doubt ample historical examples of
more imaginative modes of engagement, which we would do well to
revisit with fresh perspective. For instance, when the Student Non-Violent Coordinating
Committee engaged in voter registration campaigns in the Deep
South in the early-to-mid 1960s, organizing alongside poor black
sharecroppers, they were engaged in a campaign that was far more

revolutionary than simply mobilizing potential electoral

power. SNCC had chosen, as historian Barbara Ransby puts it, to organize within the belly of the
beast of southern racism rather than on its safer margins not simply because these were untapped
reservoirs of potential voters, but because they understood that, in the context of Jim Crow era racial
apartheid, organizing in the Deep South offered a qualitatively different opportunity for grassroots

In the course of these voter registration campaigns , and the violent

SNCC and those they
organized alongside were engaged in dynamic transformations of
movement-building.

reactions from the white power establishment they predictably provoked,

consciousness and the renewal of radical imagination . Ultimately these

qualitative dimensions of their engagement with the electoral arena
represented a much more fundamental challenge to white
supremacy than the quantitative votes that were mobilized. The same principle
holds true for the refusal of formal participation in electoral politics. More than a decade following their
spectacular emergence onto the stage of world politics on January 1st 1994, the Zapatista Army of
National Liberation (EZLN) launched La Otra Campaa (The Other Campaign). The Other Campaign was a
means of putting into practice the Zapatistas call in their 2005 Sixth Declaration of the Lacandn Jungle
to develop a different way of doing politics, a national program of struggle from the left, and a new
Constitution. Refusing the narrow political horizons of the electoral arena, including those of the nominally
left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), The Other Campaign included widespread engagement with
actors from across Mexicos social geography, including, as noted by Hermann Bellingham and Gloria
Muoz Ramrez, leftist political organizations, landless peasants, the families of murdered women,
repressed teachers, forsaken fisherman, exploited sex workers, jobless or underpaid workers, youths at
risk, ostracized gays, lesbians and transgender persons, and a long list that covers the entire spectrum of
Mexico from below. Rather than simply abstaining from the electoral process, the Zapatistas enacted a
creative refusal of politics from above that was at once a discursive intervention and a material

If the radical left is to overcome

our internal gridlock with regard to electoral politics and
chart a truly revolutionary path forward, we must learn from critical theories
and insurgent practices such as these in order to move beyond our
prefiguration of a more imaginative revolutionary praxis.

present impasse and embrace more radically imaginative

political possibilities. Old Wine, New Bottles Let us return once more to the present
conjuncture and the questions raised by the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. Left discourse has primarily
focused on three concerns: 1) the unanticipated dynamism of the Donald Trump campaign, its impact on
the GOP, its relationship to the specter of reactionary populism, and the implications of its possible
success; 2) critique of Hillary Clintons faux-progressive politics; and, 3) the surprising levels of support
that self-described socialist Bernie Sanders has mobilized in the Democratic primaries, and whether the
left should rally around him in the interest of a united front. I have little to add to the second of these

The Trump campaign has indeed garnered

remarkable levels of support and stoked popular reactionary passions. Trump
has used his celebrity status and vitriolic rhetoric to create an overtly racist,
concerns, and here will focus on the first and third.

heteropatriarchal, anti-immigrant, Islamophobic spectacle

catered to masses of working class and petty bourgeois white settlers who have historically formed the

These white settlers have felt their psychic and

material privileges, security, and status being squeezed under the dual
pressures of, on the one hand, anti-racist, anti-colonial and other liberatory
movements and the societal changes they have effected over the last half century, and, on the
other, an enduring economic crisis which is continuously eroding the material
basis of their implicit class/racial compact with elites . Trump has successfully tapped
base for reactionary populism in the U.S.

into this reactionary anger and resentment and has been putting fuel to the fire. This much most of the left
can agree upon.

Differences arise, however, when it comes to determining

what kind of response the rise of Trump does or doesnt

demand. For a significant portion of the left, the possibility of Trumps electoral success must be
resisted at all costs, principally by electoral means. Most of this discourse has been limited in at least two

there has been a general failure to theorize Trumps rise

as a specific instantiation of a more general swelling of fascistic movements
and tendencies across the globe over the past couple of decades. This failure is compounded
interrelated respects. Firstly,

by a tendency to imagine that fascism must necessarily take the forms of Interwar European fascism with
which the term is classically associated. However, as critical globalization scholar William I. Robinson
points out, a twenty-first century fascism would not be a repetition of its twentieth-century predecessor.

The role of political and ideological domination, through control over media and the flow of images and
symbols, would make any such project more sophisticated and, together with new panoptical surveillance
and social control technologies, probably allow it to rely more on selective than generalised repression.
These and other new forms of social control and modalities of ideological domination blur boundaries, so
that there may be a constitutional and normalised neo-fascism (with formal representative institutions, a
constitution, political parties and elections), all while the political system is tightly controlled by
transnational capital and its representatives. Robinson does not go so far as to declare the U.S. has
become a full-fledged fascist state, but it is important to note that the above description already
corresponds to the present U.S. regime. Noting this should give us pause, and ideally some intellectual and
emotional distance from the panicked urgency from which many on the left seem to be assessing strategic
options. This crisis mode response to Trumps rise is the second limitation of the electorally focused left
discourse. As Chris Dixon writes in his important survey of anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist movements
in North America, crisis mode organizing is a good recipe for lots of frenzied activity linked, at times, to
broader struggles. However, its a poor recipe for achieving long-term transformative goals.

While

acknowledging the crises around us, then, we have to allow ourselves

to pause, reflect, and become more intentional and visionary. We need
strategy. In the context of Trumps rise, this tendency towards crisis mode organizing, compounded by the absence of deeper
theorizing which is often its counterpart, has contributed to many on the left declaring electoral participation as a strategic and moral
imperative, in the absence of any clear trajectory of transformation of which this would form a part. The other side of the electoral coin, of
course, has been the unexpected success of Bernie Sanders in garnering liberal-progressive popular support and the sudden possibility that he
could actually triumph in the Democratic primaries. Setting aside, for the moment, the question of the likelihood of his victory in the primaries,
I want to take up the left pragmatist position that we ought to rally behind his campaign. Joe Allens comments from In These Times are as
good as any: We should be thinking big. Bernie made socialism attractive and relevant in a way that the long-established broad Left in the
United States hasnt accomplished in many decades of hard work. Something has changed in U.S. politics, and the [rejectionist] Left seems
woefully behind the times. Notwithstanding liberal-progressive celebrations of Bernie and pragmatist left nods of approval (whether
enthusiastic or begrudging), there have been a number of left commentators who have enumerated the significant limitations of Sanders
actual politics: his choice to embrace a progressive economic populism predicated upon a misguided nostalgia for the Golden Era of (racist,
colonial, heteropatriarchal) social-democratic class compromise rather than to advance truly radical critiques of capitalism; his record of
support for the expansion of the carceral state (e.g. voting for Clintons three strikes legislation); his failure to meaningfully challenge the basic
premises of imperialism; his commitment (whether pragmatic or ideological) to liberal Zionism; and so on. Others have drawn attention to the
ways in which the Sanders campaign can be understood as an attempt to capture and recuperate the popular spirit of anti-capitalism and
radical democracy that animated the Occupy movement. Most concerning, in my view, is left pragmatist support for a candidate who has not
only failed to garner much support among black voters, but who has generally refused to challenge racism, anti-blackness, and settlercolonialism in any substantive respects, in spite of the fact that his campaign comes in the wake of some of the most powerful and important
black and indigenous rebellions and upsurges in North America in decades. In this regard, his initial irritated and dismissive response to being
challenged by Black Lives Matter (BLM) activists at the Netroots Nation conference in Phoenix, AZ in mid 2015 was telling, and consistent with
his generally post-racial approach to economic inequality. While the pragmatist left has tended to downplay these shortcomings, others have
been advancing more forceful critiques. Though eventually he ended up endorsing Sanders, black journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates, for instance,
asked why Bernie Sanders refuses to support reparations for racial slavery, a criticism that earned him an avalanche of denunciations from
both liberals (who denounced him for his radicalism) and the pragmatist left (who denounced him for his liberalism). The virulent response of
the latter is, in many respects, more concerning than Sanders actual position, which was predictable. Against the reigning left pragmatism,
BLMs refusal to endorse any presidential candidate during the 2016 election cycle has been heartening. BLM co-founder Alicia Garza
explained this refusal thusly: What weve seen is an attempt by mainstream politics and politicians to co-opt movements that galvanize people
in order for them to move closer to their own goals and objectivesWe dont think that playing a corrupt game is going to bring change and
make black lives matter. BLM activist Melina Abdullah later elaborated: [W]e are pushing the real revolution. We know that the revolution wont
come at the ballot box and the revolution wont be televised. The revolution will be on the ground, when the people rise up and demand
something better, something more imaginative and something more visionary. Another powerful refusal of the pragmatist position has come
from Samaria Rice, whose twelve-year-old son was murdered by Cleveland police in 2014. Her fierce indictment of the entire system of racist
policing, and the politicians who help reproduce it, is worth quoting at length: While Ive continued to push my states officials towards real
changes, several Presidential candidates have said my sons name in their mouth, using his death as an example of what shouldnt happen in
America. Twelve year old children should never be murdered for playing in a park. But not a single politician: local, state or federal, has taken
action to make sure it doesnt happen again. Instead of plans for justice and accountability, I have been shown several plans for criminal
justice reform, none that address my experience of the entire system being guilty My experience has let me know that the system is working
just the way the people in power want it to. That is why I refuse to accept plans or support politicians that offer what they propose as
solutions, not informed by us, the community. Its why I wont accept plans for more community police as positive solutions when it was the
police that killed my son. I cannot settle for partial solutions and lip service. I know we need real action, and I refuse to endorse any candidate
that offers less. Indigenous critics of Sanders include the writer, filmmaker, lawyer, activist and member of the Blackfoot Nation, Gyasi Ross,
who wrote an article entitled A Few Notes For Native People About The Presidential Elections: Neither Democrat Deserves Our Vote (Yet), in
which he tempers his individual support for Sanders with the recognition that he hardly represents a departure from the normal operations of
U.S. settler-colonialism: Make no mistake about it, in presidential elections Native people are an afterthought. Meaning: as much as you (or I)
may be invested in Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, theyre simply not thinking about your Native ass Despite my support for Sanders the
truth is that neither candidate has really said anything or done anything for Native people or for our communities We have to require more.
In recapitulating these critiques, my objective is not to build a case against the Sanders campaign per se, but rather to challenge the
pragmatist position which effectively asserts there is no alternative to participating in the electoral arena on its own terms. Indeed, if
Sanders fails to win the Democratic nomination, as many have predicted he will, there is a substantial portion of the pragmatist left who will
propose cynical left support for Clinton, notwithstanding their own visceral critiques of her devotion to elite power. David Broder has called this
lesser-evilism politic the anti-fascism of fools. I would call it symptomatic of left epistemic impasse, a tragic recourse that sounds the death
knell of the radical imagination. Renewing the Radical Imagination Nearly a century ago, in his remarkable Theses on the Philosophy of
History, the cultural critic Walter Benjamin offered an admonition that we on the radical left would do well to heed in our present historical

I fear
that we may drastically underestimate both our own susceptibility to powers
relentless efforts toward the foreclosure of radical imagination and our own
capacity to creatively resist such foreclosures in ways that can open up and
moment: In every era the attempt must be made to wrest tradition away from a conformism that is about to overpower it. For

sometimes prefigure other, possible worlds. As Fred Moten and Stefano Harney
so beautifully put it:

We have to love and revere our survival, which is (in) our resistance. We have to
love our refusal of what has been refused. But insofar as this refusal has begun to stand, insofar as it has
begun to seek standing, it stands in need of renewal, now, even as the sources and conditions of that
renewal become more and more obscure, more and more entangled with the regulatory apparatuses that
are deployed in order to suppress them. At moments like this we have to tell the truth with a kind of

To the extent that our engagement is structured

by the imperatives of narrow pragmatism, left participation in electoral
politics comes more and more to resemble what critical/queer theorist Lauren Berlant calls
cruel optimism, a relation in which something you desire is actually an obstacle to your
viciousness and, even, a kind of cruelty.

flourishing when the object that draws your attachment actively impedes the aim that brought you to it

Yet moralistic rejectionisms

that are more concerned with the performance of ethical purity
than with kindling the radical imagination are equally bereft.
initially. Left pragmatism is a politics of entrapment.

Our tradition stands in need of renewal. While there are no blueprints to the forms this
renewal might take, there are, at least as far as electoral politics is concerned,
contemporary forms of experimentation from which we might learn . At the
level of active engagement with the electoral arena, the work of black
organizers and communities in Jackson, Mississippi appears to be a powerful
example. Supported by the leadership of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM) and the New
Afrikan Peoples Organization, and rooted firmly in the black radical tradition and the fight against racial

the Jackson-Kush Plan combines targeted electoral strategy with

dynamic grassroots movement-building, experiments in radical democracy (Peoples
capitalism,

Assemblies, which will serve as instruments of dual power to counter the abusive powers of the state and

and collective economic selfmanagement ([a] Solidarity Economy, which will be anchored by a network of cooperatives and
the economic and social domination of the forces of capital),

supporting institutions to strengthen worker power, worker democracy, and wealth equity in the state). It

in the context of this larger radical program that the successful mayoral campaign
of Chokwe Lumumba was undertaken. Although Lumumba sadly died after only seven months of
holding office, because his election was always a part of a broader, deeper, and more
imaginative strategy, the work towards radical social transformation in Jackson and
was

Mississippi continues.

The call for disengagement because of a lack of access

cedes politics entirely to the political right.
Foran 12 31 15 - associate editor at The Atlantic [Clare Foran, A Year of Black Lives Matter,
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/12/black-lives-matter/421839/]
Along the way, the movement provoked backlash, and experienced growing pains. As protestors shout and struggle to
make their voices heard, a national conversation of equal intensity is emerging over who belongs in American society

When Donald Trump supporters attacked a Black Lives Matter

protester at a November rally, the Republican presidential candidate responded:
Maybe he should have been roughed up. Activists are disturbed by the dark
turn the election has taken. But backlash against Black Lives Matter is virtually guaranteed to
and who doesnt.

galvanize support for the movement. Videos of deadly encounters between black men and police officers
have fueled calls for reform. In much the same way, reports of racial slurs at Trump rallies make it difficult
to deny the problem of racism in America. Its terrible, but I dont think its anything different than whats
been happening in this country for a long time. This hatred has been normal for a while, its just been in
the shadows, Alicia Garza, one of the co-founders of #BlackLivesMatter, an organization that shares a

The challenge, for the movement, is

to stem the tide of violence against black men and women while working to
name with the movement it helps support, said in an interview.

fix what activists believe is a fragmented and broken society . Its an ambition that
wont be easily achieved. But as the movement evolves and expands, it has forced change.
Over the summer, activists began publicly, and unapologetically, disrupting
presidential candidates at events and campaign rallies. The strategy got results. Democratic
candidates Bernie Sanders and Martin OMalley rushed to release detailed criminal-justice platforms after
high-profile clashes with Black Lives Matter activists. In August, Hillary Clinton convened a meeting with

The
confrontations signaled the start of increasingly highprofile political engagement for the decentralized movement. They also laid bare
activists who showed up at a New Hampshire campaign event intending to disrupt it.

the complicated and tense relationship between the movement and the progressive left. Liberal Americans
often assume that voting Democratic and espousing a belief in equality are adequate proofs of solidarity in

Some progressives
questioned the logic of targeting politicians who claim to be sympathetic to the
the fight against racism. In the past year, Black Lives Matter challenged that idea.

cause. What that criticism seemed to miss is that the confrontations were designed to push candidates
further than they had been prepared to go. The protests were also a reminder to progressives that

simply believing in something isnt sufficient to change

the status quo. Part of what we need people to understand is that their silence, their
complicity, is part of the problem, said Ashley Yates, a Black Lives Matter activist who
helped plan and carry out a protest at Netroots Nation, a conference where Sanders and OMalley were
slated to speak in July. Theres an absurd quality to the idea of people telling you to be calm and
controlled in your pain. To whisper quietly as youre being killed. As Black Lives Matter becomes
increasingly intertwined with mainstream politics,

activists have found people in high

places ready and willing to listen to their demands. But that creates new

challenges, as activists attempt to engage with a political

system they want to change without compromising or capitulating. It would be
naive not to realize that there is some kind of desire for mutual benefit when candidates agree to sit down
and speak with us, said Brittany Packnett, a protester and activist with Campaign Zero, a policy-focused
group affiliated with Black Lives Matter, who has met with Sanders and Clinton. But

if we dont

take the fight everywhere we wont win. It just means we have

to be that much more clear about our intentions, hold that much more integrity when we
engage in those spaces. Deep distrust of established political power has made many in the
movement wary of any kind of engagement with either Republicans or Democrats.

Still, many activists believe that the election is important.

When President Obama leaves office, it will mark the end of an era.

over what happens next.

There is a sense of urgency

Young people link

Unique linkyoung people will vote for Clinton now, but
their strategy of political abandonment means Trump wins
David S. Bernstein, 5/27/2016, Writer for Politico, "How Hillary Loses",
www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/2016-election-hillary-clinton-campaignloses-defeated-donald-trump-213924 //AZ

Millennials, being both more numerous and less cynical than their Generation
X predecessors, once seemed likely to usher in a substantial advantage for
Democrats among young voters. Except then they stopped turning out . In 2012,
the number of 18-to-29-year-old voters dropped by 1.8 million from the previous presidential election year.
It seems likely that the observed young-adult voting surge of 20042008 was temporary, a U.S. Census
study concluded, and not representative of a permanent shift towards greater young-adult engagement in

In 2016, this is likely to affect Clintons performance in

several college-heavy states that have had relatively high turnoutand high
Democratic voting ratesamong those age groups. That includes swing
states such as Iowa, North Carolina, New Hampshire and Virginia. Just look at
what happened in the past cycle. In Iowa, for example, 18-to-29-year-olds
dropped from 17 percent of the 2008 vote to 15 percent in 2012and were
less likely to vote for Obama. The result was a net loss of close to 30,000
votes, in a contest Romney lost by less than 90,000 votes. And that was with
Obama, who did far better than Clinton with young voters. During primary season,
Sanders took a stunning 84 percent of the under-30 vote in the Iowa caucuses. Many of these
young Sanders voters may come around to support Clinton over Trump in the
generaljust as Clintons bitter supporters eventually came to support
Obama in 2008. The question is, though: How many? Maybe not enough . As
presidential elections.

Jennifer Duffy of the Cook Political Report notes, there is a big difference between 2008 and 2016: Then,
Clintons so-called PUMA die-hards were mostly middle-age suburban women, with long-standing ties to
the Democratic Party. In other words: likely voters. Most young Sanders voters, on the other hand, are not
yet regular voters, and certainly not the kind of committed Democrats Clinton can count on; her campaign
will need a significant get-out-the-vote effort to persuade them to show up in November. That will be more
difficult the more she takes the conservative path, pivoting to the center for the general election, and
focusing on messages geared toward her coreoldervoters .

To see how much young-voter

turnout matters, look at North Carolina. In 2008, Obama had a net advantage
there among 18-to-29-year-olds of 368,000 votesand eked out a 14,000vote victory overall. In 2012, with dampened enthusiasm, Obamas
advantage in that age group dropped by 120,000, and Romney coasted to a
92,000-vote win. Whats more, those young voters are especially likely to be
swayed to third-party alternatives, whichsee belowcould become more
enticing this time around.

Race Link
The 1AC views civil society and the state as inevitably
reflecting white supremacy, and responds with an insular
view of black politics that has the effect of foreclosing
institutional struggles and engagement with the electoral
process. Instead, vote negative to invest the ballot in the
slow-going work of reforming institutions and winning
political victories. Beating Trump wont bring about
radical social change on its own, but failing to do so will
definitely make more radical transformation impossible
Cedric Johnson 16, Associate Professor of African American Studies at the
University of Illinois-Chicago, 2/3/16, An Open Letter to Ta-Nehisi Coates and the
Liberals Who Love Him, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/02/ta-nehisi-coates-casefor-reparations-bernie-sanders-racism/
Ultimately, the historical narrative that underpins the reparations claim,

a view of history that

emphasizes racial conflict as primary, white supremacy as

hegemonic and immutable, and black politics as insular and
unitary, can only leave us with a fatalistic view of political
possibilities that neglects the rich, diverse history of interracial left
political struggle. Contrary to the arguments offered by Coates and others, interracial social
movements, universal social policy, and an expanded public sector created
the contemporary black middle class as we know it. Even as the slogan of white supremacy
united various reactionary Southern elements and restored the power of the merchant-landlord class,

interracial organizations fought to secure black freedom and create

greater equality for black and white workers. The Readjuster Party in Virginia worked to
unite workers against landed interests, and pressed for debt relief, lowered property taxes on farmers,
chartered unions, established a black college, expanded public services, and removed the poll tax. Other
organizations at the end of the nineteenth century posed a different interracial, left vision of American
society organizations like the Populist Party of the 1890s, the Knights of Labor, and the Citizens

Throughout the twentieth century, struggles to expand

labor rights, universal suffrage, and civil rights, and to abolish
inequality, drew together diverse publics, creating concrete forms of
social justice (albeit sometimes short-lived and imperfect). Whites who realized that their
fates were intimately connected to those of southern blacks supported
struggles against racism. Jim Crow segregation the historical system of racial apartheid that
Committee of New Orleans.

was legitimated at the federal level by Plessy v. Fergusons separate but equal doctrine in 1896, codified
by the states, and strictly enforced through violence and intimidation began a long but certain death

While contemporary forms of inequality in wealth, housing,

and criminal justice may bear a strong resemblance to Jim Crow, these
injustices are classed in ways that the ascriptive status of
blacks in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century were not. Contemporary
forms of oppression are not propelled by the need to subjugate black labor to
the interests of Southern planters and industrialists, but as a means of
managing a growing class of Americans who are not exclusively black
after the Second World War.
schooling,

but have been made obsolete by hyper-industrialization , the large-scale introduction

of automation and cybernetic command, just-in-time production, and other strategies of flexible
accumulation in US farms and factories. We continue to reach for old modes
of analysis in the face of a changed world, one where blackness is still

derogated but anti-black racism is not the principal

determinant of material conditions and economic mobility for many African
Social exclusion and labor exploitation are different problems, but they are
never disconnected under capitalism. And both processes work to the
advantage of capital. Segmented labor markets, ethnic rivalry, racism,
sexism, xenophobia, and informalization all work against
solidarity. Whether we are talking about antebellum slaves, immigrant strikebreakers, or
undocumented migrant workers, it is clear that exclusion is often deployed to advance
exploitation on terms that are most favorable to investor class interests . In
Americans.

other words, the most impoverished and dispossessed are hyper-exploited, placing downward pressure on
wage floors, worsening conditions and undermining worker power in specific sectors and throughout
society. Liberal

antiracist discourse further isolates the conditions of

the most excluded segments of workers, separating their experiences

from those of other workers, and their labor from the broader processes at work,

instead of

emphasizing the empirical and potential political unity of the

laboring classes. Respect for difference is valued in todays multicultural
milieu, but the mobilization of different sub-strata of the working class against
one another has long been a cherished strategy of capital. In our own times, this
has been a vaunted campaign strategy of the New Right since the presidential
campaigns of Barry Goldwater, George Wallace, and Richard Nixon in the sixties. Throughout that decade
and into the early seventies, each man contributed to an ever more expansive repertoire of anticivil rights
and antiNew Left rhetoric, tugging the exposed, fraying threads of the New Deal coalition. In his bid for
the Republican presidential nomination,

Donald Trump has reached for the

same playbook the New Right has used for decades, speaking in vile tones about the alleged
criminality of Latino immigrants, talking openly about building a fence along the Mexican border, and

such racist patter

has resonated among some alienated white rural and suburban voters , and
calling for a US travel ban on all Muslims. As it has in previous election cycles,

those in less populous states, who find it easier to bash minorities, the alleged liberal media, or left
intellectuals than to contest the power that neoliberal politicians, multinational corporations, and the
investor class wield over their lives.

Only in those historical moments when working-

class and popular movements organize against these

differences and around common predicaments and interests has
society lurched toward greater equality. Many contemporary
antiracist liberals have lost sight of this historical truth . And we will

continue to lose if we follow their lead. While the currency of the antiracist
position offered by Coates stems in part from the post-racial debates of the Obama age, it is also rooted in
the longer, established role of the black intellectual interpreter to white publics and the transformation of
the public intellectual enterprise due to the advent of social media networks and consumer-communication
niches. As much as I resisted the incessant comparisons between Coates and Baldwin at first, I am starting
to think they may have some value. Baldwin rose to prominence as a commentator on the crest of the
struggle to defeat Jim Crow segregation, and he was an eloquent spokesman, one who called out the
racism and liberal hypocrisy of Cold War America. His words rattled the affluent society and awakened
American publics to the poverty and segregation in their midst. Unfortunately, the arrival of the black
intellectual as gadfly and conscience of the nation in the television era bore a new set of problems. Too

many well-meaning whites mistook their guilt and pleasure of self-flagellation for genuine unity with blacks

That problem of
replacing politics with public therapy endures to this day, and it
flourishes in a context where social media linkages surrogate other historical
forms of social interchange and collective action. Antiracist liberalism thrives in a
context where the performance of self-loathing, outrage, and concern are
easily traded public currency, instead of the more socially costly
politics of public sacrifice and the redistribution of societal resources . Like
and authentic antiracist political commitment in other words, solidarity.

Baldwin, I think Coates fulfills a similar historical role in assuaging white guilt. What we need instead is

I do not have any illusions about what Sanders or any other

presidential candidate can accomplish, especially given the Republican control of Congress.
solidarity.

Popular struggles and mass pressure have been the most effective means for advancing the most
progressive changes in American society.

But Im also not so young and nave to

think that elections do not matter. We cannot expect to achieve greater equality
through an election cycle, but

elections can shape the political arena in meaningful

ways and create openings for progressive social movements.

Having a pragmatic, mainstream left candidate who is gaining traction by
making the case for social-democratic reform is historic and

consequential. Like the formation of the Labor Party in 1996, the anti-globalization movement
of the late Clinton years, the mass protests against the Bush administrations war on terror, the Occupy
Wall Street demonstrations, the Wisconsin protests against Governor Scott Walkers budget cuts, the 2012
Chicago Teachers Union strike, antipolice brutality struggles, the Fight for 15 campaign, and so forth, the

a gathering tide of social struggles over the past two

decades that have fought against neoliberal austerity, and circulated popular
criticisms of the market forces and reactionary political choices that have
created more material hardship, social angst, and debt for millions of Americans. Public-sector
employment has played a powerful role in building the black middle class. Perhaps the best case
against Coatess criticisms of universal, social-democratic public policy is the
Sanders campaign is part of

progressive history of black workers and the United States Postal Service.
Beginning with the Great Migration, which saw thousands of blacks leave the South for northern cities, the
post office has long been a major employer of blacks including Clyde Ross, the chief protagonist of
Coatess study of housing discrimination and the Contract Buyers Club in North Lawndale. The progressive,
integrative role of the postal service and the public sector would only expand in the latter half of the
twentieth century with shifting urban demography and the organized power of blacks in society writ large.

The neoliberal project has decimated the public sector and

harmed black workers, rolling up what had been a means of stable, unionized, livable
wage employment. Moreover, the US Supreme Courts forthcoming decision on right to work will likely
weaken the organizing capacity of public unions by removing payment requirements for union dues. This is
but the latest campaign in a broader class war, one where black workers stand to lose like all others. More

the 2016 Democratic presidential primary has

provided us with a clear set of alternatives, a choice between the failed New Democratic
than any other contest in recent memory,

policies of neoliberalism and social-democratic policies that might revitalize the public sector like
guaranteed housing; free, quality education; and health care to all regardless of their ability to pay all
issues that have value among black constituencies.

If we cant take advantage of

this opportunity and win a majority behind this kind of

politics, anything more radical beyond it will remain just a
fantasy.

Black political mobilization is at a vital crossroads--theres a movement building for pushing electoral politics
explicitly towards a black radical agenda, but the plans
method of refusal and political nihilism saps the energy
from that effort
Sean Posey 15, The Hampton Institute, a working class think-tank, 9/27/15,
What Time Is It?: Black Lives Matter, the Gary Convention and Electoral Politics,
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/32978-what-time-is-it-black-lives-matter-the-garyconvention-and-electoral-politics

One comment in particular, made during the Black Lives Matter Freedom Ride, seemed to
crystallize the sentiments of many and point a way towards the

moment the movement faces now in 2015. "Even though we're gathering for
Mike Brown, we've got to think about what that means for other black folk-black women, black queerfolk,
black transfolk," activist Benjamin Ndugga-Kabuye said. " We

can't just think

[theoretically]. We put together the language. Now we've got to

practice a politic that encompasses all black people."[2] As
the 2016 presidential race begins to heat up, the question now
is: what forms will that language take? Black Lives Matter activists
surprised a host of political commentators when they recently confronted presidential candidates Bernie
Sanders and former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley at Netroots Nation, an annual progressive political
convention. The demonstrators demanded answers to a series of questions regarding structural racism,
and both Sanders and O'Malley foundered badly when pressed to respond. The confrontation drew intense
criticism from white progressives, who largely argued that Black Lives Matters was only harming itself by
interrupting a candidate like Sanders. Things escalated even further in August when protesters interrupted
Sanders again at a rally in Seattle. After demonstrators successfully won a moment of silence for Michael
Brown, Sanders left the stage, and the rally came to an end. At this point, a sustained assault from
progressives ensued, which included pointed threats to individuals associated with the movement.[3]
Some saw the activists as a tool of Hillary Clinton, and others viewed them as unwitting dupes for the

was the movement ready to enter the world

of electoral politics? Activists recently met with candidate Hillary Clinton, and in the process got an
Republicans. But another question lingered:

introduction to Realpolitik. When pushed to address her husband's "get tough on crime" policies from the
1990s, Clinton vacillated. "I do think that there was a different set of concerns back in the '80s and the
early '90s. And now I believe that we have to look at the world as it is today and try and figure out what
will work now," she said. "And that's what I'm trying to figure out and that's what I intend to do as
president." Clinton also disagreed with the activists' assertions that her husband's criminal justice policies
constituted a racially prejudicial platform. All this despite the fact that Bill Clinton, who once presided over
the execution of a mentally retarded black man, supported the controversial "three strikes and you're out"
law and also put forward the 1994 Omnibus Crime Bill (supported by then Senator Joe Biden, the lead
sponsor of the bill and now a possible Democratic presidential candidate) which radically escalated the
drug war and the growth of the prison industrial complex. [4]

Clinton, however, did offer some

advice to Black Lives Matter at the same time. "Look, I don't believe you
change hearts," she said. "I believe you change laws, you change
allocation of resources, you change the way systems operate." The
former senator's comments, oddly enough, echo those of some on the Black Left who
have criticized the movement, accusing the group of "wanting access to the ruling class and to
the servants of the ruling class" while failing to "challenge the system by making demands," as Glen Ford
of the Black Agenda Report phrased it.[5] Black Lives Matters headed off any potential accusations of
collusion with the Democrats by dismissing the party's recent endorsement of the movement. This
seemingly wise move is giving some hope that the organization will not be co-opted; however, it leaves
open the question of whether or not they will enter the world of electoral politics. There are compelling

arguments as to why they should avoid direct participation and instead focus on institution building. Still,

could Black Lives Matter attempt to create a comprehensive black

policy agenda? Could a genuine third party spring from the movement? If so, it would pay to
revisit the history of the 1972 National Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana, and the later formation

In the spring of 1972, eight thousand people

arrived in the steel city of Gary, Indiana, to adopt a unified political
of the National Black Independent Political Party.

agenda for African Americans-one that could create a front against what was seen
as the indifference of both major parties to the plight of blacks. The Gary Convention was, in many ways,
the culmination of the Black Power era. It tapped into the spirit of black self-determination that pervaded
the early 1970s, and it focused attention on a wide variety of ills plaguing the black community. The
Reverend Jesse Jackson later reflected on the importance of the convention: "For the first time ever, really,
in a political sense, this was a really major, somewhat unorthodox, political convention. People were there
from all over the country and the Caribbean. And even without Internet, Facebook and high technology,
people came. Getting the right to vote in '65 was the beginning of a process, but the convention in Gary

Black
delegates from every state descended on Gary, a majority black city whose mayor,
Richard Hatcher, was one of the very few in the nation to offer to host the event. Convention goers
were treated to blocks festooned with Pan-African flags and filled with citizens
raising the Black Power salute. But a lack of unanimity ended up
solidified the sense of focus. This convention was overwhelming. It could not be turned around."[6]

plaguing the convention. Some black leaders loyal to the Democratic Party boycotted
the event, as did the NAACP. (The Congressional Black Caucus also later disavowed the convention's
platform.) White journalists were denied access, thus giving an opportunity to the black press to cover the
event in their own words.

The struggle over whether or not to push for a

black united front within or outside of mainstream electoral

politics also continued with no resolution. Nonetheless, the agenda that
was produced seems as relevant to today's world as it was in 1972. What Time Is
It? We come to Gary in an hour of great crisis and tremendous promise for Black America. While the white
nation hovers on the brink of chaos, while its politicians offer no hope of real change, we stand on the edge
of history and are faced with an amazing and frightening choice: We may choose in 1972 to slip back into
the decadent white politics of American life, or we may press forward, moving relentlessly from Gary to the
creation of our own Black life. The choice is large, but the time is very short. Other passages from the
declaration also mirror today's realities: Our cities are crime-haunted dying grounds. Huge sectors of our
youth - and countless others - face permanent unemployment. Those of us who work find our paychecks
able to purchase less and less. Neither the courts nor the prisons contribute to anything resembling justice
or reformation. The schools are unable - or unwilling - to educate our children for the real world of our
struggles. Meanwhile, the officially approved epidemic of drugs threatens to wipe out the minds and
strength of our best young warriors. Economic, cultural, and spiritual depression stalk Black America, and
the price for survival often appears to be more than we are able to pay. On every side, in every area of our
lives, the American institutions in which we have placed our trust are unable to cope with the crises they
have created by their single-minded dedication to profits for some and white supremacy above all.... The
challenge is thrown to us here in Gary. It is the challenge to consolidate and organize our own Black role as
the vanguard in the struggle for a new society. To accept that challenge is to move independent Black
politics. There can be no equivocation on that issue. History leaves us no other choice. White politics has
not and cannot bring the changes we need.[7]

The convention, however, failed to

produce a united front, as Ronald Walters writes: The (Gary) Convention produced a
national black political agenda, a document that reflected the militant and substantive issues of the
convention, as the basis on which black and white voters bargain for black votes. This process, however,
was not followed, because part of the leadership bolted prematurely in the direction of the George
McGovern during the 1972 presidential campaign, leaving the agenda an almost meaningless instrument
of political strategy.[8] The National Black Political Assembly, which emerged from the convention in Gary,
held successor conventions in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1974 and Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1976. However, both
were less influential and less well attended. Still, the NBPA remained as a mouthpiece for "independent
progressive black politics," according to Ron Daniels.[9] Eight years after the convention in Gary, an effort
got underway from the NBPA to form an independent political party for African Americans. The party's
formation was heavily influenced by the 1980 Miami riots, which brought the staggering issues facing

blacks in American cities to the fore again. In November 1980, two thousand people attended the
formation of the National Black Independent Political Party in Philadelphia. There were attendees from
twenty-seven different states and delegates from South America, Africa, and the West Indies. The party's
charter voiced demands that, like the Gary Convention, almost perfectly echo the issues facing African
Americans today: Demand 1: Massive employment programs specifically targeted at the Black community,
to alleviate the disproportionate levels of unemployment among our people and especially among Black
youth... Demand 2: Free and low-cost education training for job opportunities for all our people... Demand
3: An end to plant closings and runaway shops. Demand 4: Full unemployment compensation for all who
are laid off and unemployed. Demand 5: Increased funding and improved administration for social security
and other income maintenance programs for those unable to work. Demand 6: An end to "right to work"
labor laws. Demand 7: Tuition-free education and open admissions to all institutions of higher learning as
well as special technical and professional schools. Demand 8: Full financial support by the federal
government for Black colleges and universities, commensurate with the tax dollars now given to Harvard,
Yale, University of California and other institutions of higher education... Demand 9: A national
comprehensive health care services program to make quality health care free and available to all who
need it regardless of social status or income... Demand 10: That the FBI and CIA be abolished, as they are

the party's
platform, which sought to counter a rightward moving Democratic Party and a
Republican Party beginning to pursue a policy of not-so-benign neglect of
incapable of being reformed to act justly. An additional thirty other demands rounded out

American urban centers. And the NBIPP's opposition to "imperialism, sexual

oppression, and capitalist exploitation" put it decidedly at odds with the two major parties.

Chapters

quickly spread in cities across the country . Local chapters often called for "selective buying
alerts," which encouraged African Americans to not shop at retails outlets without "any or enough black
faces."[10] Establishing rape crisis centers, opening consumer cooperatives, and starting voter registration
drives were high atop the list of priorities. When asked about the party's initiatives, party theoretician
Manning Marable did not obfuscate: "We are not replicating the errors and contradictions of the
Democratic and Republican parties." [11] When questioned about the subject of electoral politics at the
1981 NBIPP convention in Chicago, Professor Barbara Sizemore said, "We are out to build institutions that
will represent the interests of blacks in the social, economic, and political arena. Our purpose is simply not
to engage in electoral politics. The running of candidates may in some instances become one of our
activities, but this is not the purpose of the establishment of the party." [12] Indeed, while members did
run for office, none actually ran on the NBIPP ticket. Additionally,

the party failed to

develop a nationally coordinated program. Various initiatives developed

from local chapters in an ad-hoc manner. The party's most organized efforts focused on "public
information." [13] This method of spreading political information via the party's organs concentrated on
international and domestic issues of concern to African Americans and blacks in the Diaspora. The NBIPP
only lasted six years. Jesse Jackson's 1984 bid for the Democratic nomination drew more support back into
traditional party politics. Even Angela Davis, who was then running for president under the Communist
ticket, encouraged voters to embrace Jackson's candidacy. Yet Jackson's campaign failed to significantly
influence the Democratic Party's platform, and The Crisis, among others, argued that Jackson might have

The Gary Convention,

the NBPA, the NBIPP, and campaigns of Jesse Jackson, are all important
chapters in the history of recent black politics, and they all have
done better to run as an independent candidate in both 1984 and 1988.[14]

something to teach the Black Lives Matter movement. While

it is clear that policing is
connected to a whole host of issues facing black communities throughout the
country. Will Black Lives Matter seek to move into electoral
politics under a new party banner? Will it focus instead on institution building in hard-hit
they are primarily concerned at this moment with police accountability,

communities? As the political season progresses, Bernie Sanders is gaining ground on Hillary Clinton in
both Iowa and New Hampshire, but regardless of the outcome, the recent history of the Democratic Party
leaves little reason to hope that Black Lives Matters can win significant concessions from any candidate.

the legacy of black movements from the recent past still beckons.
Although the movement today considers itself a decentralized organization,
the need for a comprehensive policy agenda for African
Yet

Americans seems as relevant as it was in 1972 or 1980, if not more so.

And through either electoral politics, or through grassroots institution building,
some new organization or set of organizations must step in to fill

the vacuum before rage and nihilism fill the void .

The direction of black political mobilization in 2016 is up
for grabs---short-term black electoral participation is vital
to prevent a Trump presidency---the plans method would
cede the terrain of electoral politics which guarantees
dominance by the white supremacist right
Ryan Lizza 3-21, the Washington Correspondent for the New Yorker, 3/21/16,
The Great Divide, http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/03/21/bernie-hillaryand-the-new-democratic-party

Any populist Democrat who follows Sanders in a bid for President will
have to win over nonwhite voters no matter their age. In 2008,
African-Americans represented fifty-five per cent of South Carolinas primary
electorate; in 2016 that figure was sixty-one per cent. And the nonwhite percentage
will only continue to grow. Sanders is running a left-wing campaign at a moment

black activist left is experiencing a renaissance, and polls

show that young blacks, like young whites, are more likely to support
when the

Sanderss message of economic populism and political reform. But that

appeal has its limits. The black left is mostly non-electoral and

sometimes even anti-electoral, Van Jones, a former adviser to

President Obama and a longtime African-American organizer, told me. Its very

strong on principles and very weak on precincts. So what you see is a

lot of protests and a lot of critique, but they dont know how to turn

out voters. You can have two hundred Spike Lees versus one James Clyburn and
still lose. Render said of his friends, Their mantra is Dont

be a part of the
political process at all. Youre leading our people into a
burning house. Activists tend to make their way into electoral politics
over time. Opponents of the Vietnam War in the nineteen-sixties bolstered George
McGoverns Presidential campaign in 1972. McGovern lost in a landslide, but a
number of his young campaign aides, including Gary Hart and Bill and Hillary Clinton,
became the next generation of Democratic leaders. DeRay Mckesson, one of the

most prominent activists from Black Lives Matter, is now running for mayor
of Baltimore. In 2010 and 2014, the Democrats suffered major

losses in Congress and at the state level, including many of the

Partys more moderate and centrist members. With Sanders winning young voters
overwhelmingly, his campaign may eventually be seen as an incubator for the Partys

To prevail in the coming general election, the

Democratic nominee will most likely need to meet or exceed the level
future politicians.

of support that Obama had among nonwhites. When I asked Sanders

about his lack of appeal to African-Americans, he pointed to his relative strength
among younger nonwhite voters. Its not so much a racial divide but a generational
divide, he told me. He said that we may have won the Latino vote in Nevada and
Colorado. (The data are unclear.) I think were doing very well with younger people
in the African-American communitywhether its fifty per cent or more, I dont
know.

Messages of hope and belief in political participation key

to high voter turnout
Fulwood 14
Sam Fulwood III, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and Director of the
CAP Leadership Institute, Center for American Progress, November 6, Race and
Beyond: Why Young, Minority, and Low-Income Citizens Dont Vote, Race and
Beyond: Why Young, Minority, and Low-Income Citizens Dont Vote
That certainly seemed to be the case in this midterm election. Say what you will
about President Barack Obamas political skills or acumen in the White House, but as
a candidate in 2008 and 2012, he encouraged remarkable turnout among
unlikely voters, especially those who are young, minority, and poor . That was

because voting is an expression of hope, a belief that a citizens

input into the system will yield social dividends. As a New York
Times video documents, without hope, citizens doubt anything
they say or do will change the world for their benefit. Or
viewing it from another perspective, politicians rarely offer disillusioned citizens

Lacking hope, those voters dont show up at

the polls because they believe nothing politicians say or
do makes life better for them. As far as political theories go, Campbells
reasons for optimism.

and Knights ideas are as good as any. But having observed the political process for
quite some time, I have a theory of my own design. I call it the reflex of rational
nonvoting behavior.

Low turnout turns the aff causes more anti-black

governments
Roth 14
Zachary, national reporter, MSNBC, August 14, Fergusons lack of diversity goes way
beyond its cops, http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/ferguson-lack-diversity-goes-waybeyond-its-cops
No one collects data on turnout by race in municipal elections. But the overall
turnout numbers for Fergusons mayoral and city council election are
discouraging. This year, just 12.3% of eligible voters cast a ballot, according to
numbers provided by the county. In 2013 and 2012, those figures were even lower:

the lower the turnout, the

more the electorate skews white and conservative. I think
11.7% and 8.9% respectively. As a rule,

there is a huge distrust in the system, said Broadnax, a Ferguson native. Many
blacks think: Well its not going to matter anyway, so my one vote doesnt
count, she said. Well, if you get an entire community to

individually feel that way, collectively weve already lost.

Link Race Cynicism

Political cynicism decreases voter turnout stats
Opdycke et al. 13
Kelly, Adjunct Communications Professor @ Cal State University Northridge, Colloquy,
Vol. 9, Fall 2013, pp. 75-97, The Effects of Political Cynicism, Political Information
Efficacy and Media Consumption on Intended Voter Participation,
http://www.calstatela.edu/sites/default/files/users/u2276/opdycke_segura_vasquez_es
say5.pdf
Although not quite as strong as political information efficacy, the results also
supported the hypothesis that political cynicism affected likelihood to vote.

The results show political cynicism as a negative predictor of voter turnout.

This supports the findings of Pinkleton and Austin (2004), but contradicts the study of
Fu et al. (2011) on political cynicism in relation to its positive effects. The finding of

political cynicism as a negative predictor in likelihood to vote does not

support their argument that political cynicism leads to critical thinking on the
issues and candidates. Instead, political cynicism may be driving

voters away from polling booths.

Apathetic politics decreases political involvement
Pinkleton and Austin 4
Bruce E. Pinkleton and Erica Weintraub Austin, School of Communication @
Washington State University, Mass Communication and Society, Vol. 7, Issue 3, p.
319-337, Media Perceptions and Public Affairs
Apathy in the Politically Inexperienced,
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1207/s15327825mcs0703_4

In this study, apathy was much more strongly associated with

involvement, and to a somewhat lesser extent, efficacy; both of these
relationships were negative. Involvement, in fact, explained 21% of the variance in
apathy, whereas efficacy explained another 6%. These results show that
individual motivations and the belief that participation can make a difference
comprise fundamental barriers to apathy. This result again points to the potential
importance of information source use, which increases as motivation and efficacy
increase and also demonstrates the potential to decrease apathy. As a contributor to
informed decision making for young adults, the motivation to seek information from
sources beyond entertainment media is critical. When citizens are high in
involvement, their information source use is a natural outcome of their public affairs
engagement. Involvement and efficacy enjoy a strong, supportive relationship,
which ultimately contributes to political participation (Pinkleton & Austin, 1998).
Together, involvement and efficacy appear to motivate informed public affairs

decision making among politically inexperienced citizens, helping to

overcome tendencies toward apathetic inaction.

Youth trust in government key to avert political apathy

and low turnout
Pimienta 1-26
Alberto, Reporter, VOA, Millennials the New Majority But Still Less Likely to Vote,
http://www.voanews.com/content/millenials-the-new-majority-but-still-less-likely-tovote/3163854.html
A trust problem Millennials do not trust politicians and government institutions.
In the latest poll of millennials political views by the Institute of Politics of Harvard
University only 37 percent of 18 to 29-year-olds trusted the president. Only 25
percent trust the federal government and only 17 percent trust Congress.
America's millennial generation, the largest generation in American history,
has an opportunity to play a huge role in any election in particular, the 2016
presidential. However, young adults have a mistrust for today's Washington
and are dubious politics can achieve real results , said Esten Perez,
Communications Director of Harvard's Institute of Politics. This

lack of trust,

Farrington said, also results in apathy. Young people, like a lot of others in
our country right now, are fed up with both parties and don't think anyone can

implement positive change. When people decide no one can help, why

vote? he asked.
Lack of trust in government decreases turnout and
increases support for 3rd party/non-traditional candidates
Peterson and Wrighton 98
Geoff Peterson, Professor and Chair of Political Science @ the University of WisconsinEau Claire with a PhD in political science from the University of Iowa; J. Mark
Wrighton, PhD in political science from the University of Iowa and former Dean of the
College of Public Affairs and Professor @ the University of Illinois @ Springfield;
Political Behavior, Vol. 20, No. 1, Expressions of Distrust: Third Party Voting and
Cynicism in Government, http://people.uwec.edu/petersgd/research/trustpap.html
Conclusions and Suggestions for Future Research The role of trust in government

has implications for the democratic process. Low levels of trust may be a
major factor when third party candidates decide whether or not to run for office.
Low levels of trust, combined with the rigidity of the two party system, may make
voters increasingly frustrated with the political system as a whole. The desire
for change was made apparent through the support for both Ross Perot and Colin
Powell, yet Perot (and potentially Powell) supporters found themselves thwarted by a
rigid, inflexible, electoral system that made a third party candidacy virtually
impossible. Given the choice of two parties, both of whom seem unable to correct

many distrustful
voters may choose to abstain from the process altogether.
the fundamental problems in the structures of government,

They may view both parties as conducting "business as usual" without any
showing a real desire to change the process itself. There are almost too many
examples of this problem, but we believe the public's desire for fundamental
structural change can been seen in the term limits movement, the pressure to reform

lobbying and funding practices, and the balanced budget amendment. In these three
cases, the public is demanding change that would affect the basic organizational and
structural processes in government. It is also worth noting that all three of these
issues are, in many ways, non-partisan. The public does not seem to see one party as
supporting all of the changes and the other as opposing them. Rather, they see
individual politicians from both parties supporting and opposing the changes they
desire. Abstention from the process may, in turn, promote a "cynicism from
without." These cynics could register their disdain by occasionally voting for
those rare (every twelve years or so by our sampling) candidates that are able to
capture and to channel such angst into a presidential campaign. According to
the 1992 ANES, over 20% of Perot voters said they would abstain rather than vote for
either Clinton or Bush.

Link Race Black Turnout Key

Clinton will win but Minority turnout is key. Political
abandonment means Trump wins
Alan Rappeport, 6/20/2016, Writer for The New York Times, "New Poll Shows
Hillary Clinton Holding Edge on Donald Trump",
www.nytimes.com/2016/06/21/us/politics/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-monmouthpoll.html?_r=0 //AZ

Broad support from women and minority voters has

helped Hillary Clinton open an early lead over Donald J.
Trump nationally, according to a new poll released on Monday . A Monmouth
percent of registered voters back Mrs. Clinton, the
presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, while 40 percent support Mr.
Trump, the Republican Partys standard-bearer. The survey is the latest in a
succession of recent polls that show Mrs. Clinton having an advantag e, as Mr.
University survey found that 47

Trumps campaign has sputtered amid internal strife and an array of provocative public comments.
Clinton

has the advantage as the general election campaign kicks off,

particularly in key swing states, said Patrick Murray, director of the
Monmouth University Polling Institute, in a statement. However, all signs
point to 2016 turning out the most polarized electorate in memory . The

lack of diversity that comprises Mr. Trumps core

supporters has become a problem for his general election
prospects. The poll found Mrs. Clinton drawing the support of
72 percent of minority voters and 57 percent of female
voters. Mr. Trump holds more modest leads among men and white voters . Mrs.
Clinton is also winning in swing states that were decided by less than seven points in 2012. In those 10
states, she is leading by an average margin of 47 percent to 39 percent. During the primary campaign,
Republican voters saw Mr. Trump as the strongest candidate to handle the economy and terrorism. But
when pitted against Mrs. Clinton, he lags in both categories. The poll comes as Mr. Trump fired his
campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, on Monday, and it follows a response to the Orlando massacre
this month that many viewed to be erratic. Mr. Trump doubled down on his call for ban on Muslim
immigration, expanding the idea to include countries with a history of carrying out terrorist acts against
the United States, and has said that he wished the people in the gay nightclub that was attacked were
armed with guns. But 70 percent of Americans oppose Mr. Trumps proposed barring of Muslims from
entering the country, according to the Monmouth poll, and 52 percent would like to see a ban on assault
weapons such as the one used by the terrorist in Orlando.

The poll had a margin of error of

plus or minus four percentage points.

Clintons numbers are high with minoritiesproves

turnout is key
Priscilla Alvarez, 6/29/2016, assistant editor at The Atlantic, "Voters Are Divided
Over Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump",
www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/06/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-nationalpoll/489287/ //AZ

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have sharpened

their attacks toward one another, delivering remarks on the economy,
national security, and, of course, temperament. Still, ahead of the July
conventions, American voters are almost equally divided on the presidential
candidates, according to the most recent Quinnipiac University national poll. The poll found that 42
percent of registered voters back Clinton, compared with Trumps 40 percent .
NEWS BRIEF Over the last few weeks,

Its a slight drop for the former secretary of state, who at the end of last month led Trump by four points.
The newly released Quinnipiac poll surveyed 1,610 registered voters nationwide from June 21 to 27. The

White voters tend

to flock to Trump, while minority voters back Clinton . According
to the poll, Trump raked in a large share of support among white voters, at 47 percent, while Clinton
earned the support of 91 percent of black voters and 51
percent of Hispanic voters. Only 1 percent of black voters and 33
results align with trends previously seen throughout the primary season:

percent of Hispanic voters said they backed Trump . Across the board, however, voters
dont think either Clinton or Trump would be a particularly good commander-in-chief: 58 percent of voters
say Trump will not be a good president, while 53 percent say the same about Clinton, according to the poll.
Such underlying, deep-seated concerns should worry each candidate. For example, voters find Trump more
trustworthy than his Democratic rival, but voters also believe Clinton has higher moral standards. And on
issues like the economy and immigration, the findings coincide with previous polls: Trump finds more
support on the economy compared with Clinton, but voters think she can better handle immigration.
Generally, voters are discontent with the Republican and Democratic presumptive nominees. A Washington
Post/ABC poll last month found that Clinton and Trump were largely viewed unfavorably. According to the
Post, Never in the history of the Post-ABC poll have the two major party nominees been viewed as harshly
as Clinton and Trump. The Quinnipiac poll also found that 61 percent of American voters think the 2016
election has increased the level of hatred and prejudice in the U.S. It would be difficult to imagine a less
flattering from-the-gut reaction to Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, said Tim Malloy, the assistant
director of the Quinnipiac University poll. The results change slightly with the addition of third-party
candidates. Clintons support fades to 39 percent while Trumps spikes to 37 percent. Eight percent of
voters support Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein receives 4
percent, according to the poll.

Black vote key turnout historically secures Dem

presidential victories
Kumar et al. 3-7
Anita, Reporter, McClathy DC, Race politics: Clinton vs. Trump being written in black
and white, http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politicsgovernment/election/article64631712.html
So far, Clintons strength among African-Americans has been a huge boost in
her nomination battle against Sen. Sanders, an independent from Vermont. She
lost by a landslide in nearly all-white New Hampshire and fought to a tie in Iowa. But
in states with more moderate white voters, and large black populations, shes
trounced him. In South Carolina, Clinton won 86 percent of the black vote and 54
percent of the white vote. That pattern repeated itself last week,where she rolled up
similar numbers among whites and blacks in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee,
Texas and Virginia. In November, the Clinton strategy will make sense , said
Florida-based political strategist Steve Schale. Blacks accounted for about 13

percent of the 2012 presidential vote, and they could provide at least onefifth of the votes Clinton would need to win this year. Trump has written off

African-American voters, said Brad Coker, managing director at Mason-Dixon

Polling & Research in Jacksonville, Florida. Coker said he thought Trump would
motivate more Democrats, particularly African-Americans, to go out and vote
for Clinton in a general election. But, he said, Trump will bring in new white
voters. Coker said Clinton should still be able to turn out moderate white voters as
she moved to the middle in a general election. Thats the sort of coalition the last
two Democratic presidents, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, built with black
voters. And a Quinnipiac University survey last month found Clintons efforts among
blacks are paying off: She would top Trump among black voters by 83 to 12
percent.

African-American turnout secures swing states for Dems

preventing declines in enthusiasm are key
Taylor 2-25
Goldie, Editor-at-large, the Daily Beast, How Black Voters Could Help Donald Trump
Win, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/02/25/how-black-voters-could-helptrump-win.html
There is no clear state-by-state polling data available just yet that breaks down
potential voting behavior by race for the November election. But, notwithstanding

turn-out numbers, a double-digit total could be enough to turn

swing states like Florida, Ohio and Virginiaall delegate rich with strong
actual

African-American electorates. While it also remains difficult to discern probable

turnout and split for Hispanic voters, soft support and a lack of enthusiasm
for the current Democratic field has already resulted in lower than expected voter
participation in early primary states. There is no indication that Trumps appeal
among conservative Hispanics in the Nevada caucus will translate to wins among
that demographic this fall, when the vote is expected to be younger and more liberal.
Trump appears to be betting his billions on persuading and energizing black voters. In
the interview with Tapper, Trump said he will do great with the African Americans
and said he believes he will get a tremendous turnout. Sen. Barack Obama

benefitted from extraordinary voter engagement numbers and 96 percent of

the black vote in 2008. And, in congressional races, African Americans have
sometimes supported Democrats by margins as high as 9-to-1. One might contend
that the margin slimmed because President Obamas racial heritage proved to be an
attractive lure for black voters. But that dismisses a second, though entirely related,
factor. Republicansboth during the 2008 campaign and noware much more
strident in the age of Obama. Add to this that Trump is certainly no stranger to
stoking the racially charged fears of his political base. His candidacy, arguably, is the
direct rebuke of an African-American president. For now, Trump appears to be holding
on to a sliver of the pie. There is no telling if or how long that will last. Until now, he
has not been challenged on black issues in any meaningful way. Without question, if
he wins the primary, his Democratic challenger will reach into a stockpile of
opposition researchincluding newspaper headlines and cable news interviews.
Appropriately litigated, Trumps own words could come back to haunt him. However,
the fact remains that there is no Obama on the ticket this time and

small shift could make the difference.

even a

Maintaining high black turnout secures Dem victory

preventing disillusionment key
Clement 15
Scott, Political Reporter, Washington Post, June 11, How black voters could determine
the 2016 election, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/thefix/wp/2015/06/11/how-black-voters-could-determine-the-2016-election/

African-American voters turned out at unprecedented levels to support Barack

Obama in 2008 and 2012. But in 2015, my colleague Robert Samuels found in
Jacksonville, Fla., that some blacks are disillusioned that Obama's election hasn't
noticeably improved their lives. They are also skeptical of Hillary Clinton's 2016
candidacy. Among their comments: What was the point? asked Motley,
23, a grocery store clerk. We made history, but I dont see change. Hillary
needs to prove to us that shes genuine and really true. And I'm not even sure that
would help. Weve been snakebitten too many times before. Samuels's story hits on
one of the biggest unknowns going into the 2016 election: How much African
Americans' peaking voter turnout in 2008 and 2012 was due to the first black
major-party nominee/president being on the ballot? And will it will fall precipitously in
the absence of one in 2016? Because African Americans have historically
supported Democrats by overwhelming margins (85 percent on average in
presidential elections going back to 1972), this kind of turnout shift matters
hugely. To understand the Democrats' quandary, take a look at the trend line in black
voter turnout among eligible voters according to the United States Election Project.
Turnout jumped from 61 percent to a record high 69 percent between 2004 and
2008, with 2012's 67 percent turnout still higher than any point on record before
Obama. But while Obama's candidacy surely contributed to the surge , turnout
among blacks was actually already rising -- and quickly -- before he ran. In
1996, 48 percent of eligible black voters cast ballots, rising to 53 percent in 2000 and
again to 61 percent in 2004. Democrats hope that high turnout rates among

African Americans will be "sticky," where voters motivated to cast ballots for
Obama will transition into habitual voters in future years. But Democrats'
appeal to black voters could also matter a great deal in how much
black turnout dips. Clinton is popular among African Americans but not as intensely
as Obama. A Washington Post-ABC News poll in late May found 53 percent of blacks
reporting a "strongly favorable" impression of Clinton, compared with 68 percent who
said this about Obama in a poll last fall. Seventy percent said she is honest, but 91
percent said the same of Obama last fall. And while 75 percent said Clinton
"understands the problems of people like you," this was significantly lower than
Obama's 91 percent last fall. Those differences in popularity are not likely to keep
Clinton from winning an overwhelming majority of black voters if she is nominated.
Prior to Obama's 93-95 percent showings, exit polls found Democrats averaged 85
percent support among black voters, with support hitting 90 percent for Al Gore in
2000 and 88 percent for John Kerry in 2004. And indeed, it's not just turnout; a
modest drop-off in share of the vote among African Americans could hurt Democrats'
vote tallies as much as a turnout drop. A basic simulation using an estimate of 2012
eligible voters finds that a drop from 93 to 85 percent support (blacks' historical
average support for Democrats) would cost Democrats a net of 2.8 million votes,

while a drop to 2004 turnout levels would cost Democrats just 1.3 million votes. Add
both together and Democrats would cede about 3.8 million votes, which is 77 percent
of Obama's winning margin in 2012. This, of course, is highly hypothetical, and it
seems unlikely either drop would be so severe -- especially given black turnout was
already on the upswing before Obama came along and that Democrats haven't taken
less than 89 percent of the black vote since 1996. But it demonstrates the potential
for millions of votes to swing under a certain set of circumstances. Democrats cannot
choose between a vote-share or turnout drop, and these factors might both trend

downwards in 2016. The question is how much. What these numbers show is
how important maintaining high support and turnout among
African Americans is to Democrats' success in 2016, and how
Hillary or whoever is the Democratic nominee has their work cut out for them in
repeating 2016 success.

Demographics lock in dem win, but the affirmatives call

for blacks to abandon political institutions causes a GOP
president
Wasserman 15
U.S. House editor for the Cook Political Report, writer for FiveThirtyEight (David, How
Demographics Will Shape The 2016 Election, FiveThirtyEight, 12/3/15,
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-demographics-will-shape-the-2016-election/
In other words, Democrats coalition of non-white, young and well-educated
voters continues to expand every election, while Republicans coalition of white,
older and less-educated voters keeps shrinking. Its no wonder that some pundits

have suggested Democrats have an emerging stranglehold on the Electoral

College because of favorable trends in states like Colorado, Florida, Nevada, and
Virginia, right? Its true that if every demographic group were to carry its 2012 levels
of turnout and party support into 2016, Democrats lead in the national popular vote
would expand from 3.9 percentage points to 5.1 points based on population trends
alone. But, as FiveThirtyEight editor-in-chief Nate Silver and others have

argued, Democrats advantage in the Electoral College is much more tenuous

than its often portrayed. Here are a few initial takeaways from our interactive (let

A small shift in the

national vote is all it would take for Republicans to break
through Democrats supposed Blue Wall. If all five of our
us know what else you find @FiveThirtyEight): 1)

groups were to shift just 3 percentage points toward the GOP in 2016, Republicans
would flip Colorado, Florida, Iowa, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia,
Wisconsin and win 315 electoral votes almost a mirror image of the 2012 outcome.
2) The power of the Latino vote is frequently overstated. Even if Latino and
Asian/other turnout were to plummet to zero, Democrats would still win the Electoral
College 283 to 255 despite losing the popular vote by 2.1 percentage points.
Thats because Latino and Asian voters are heavily concentrated in non-competitive

Sky-high African-American
support and engagement is crucial for Democrats. Suppose
states like California, New York and Texas. 3)

African-American voters were to return to pre-Obama, 2004 levels of turnout

and partisanship (turnout down from 66 percent to 60 percent and support for

Democrats down from 93 percent to 88 percent). In that scenario, Democrats would

lose Florida, and their overall margin of victory would be cut by more than
half in Ohio and Virginia, giving them almost no room for error with other
groups.

Drop in black turnout creates an opening for Trump

Campanile 3-18
Carl, Political Contributor, New York Post, Black Dems arent turning out for Hillary
like they did for Obama, http://nypost.com/2016/03/18/black-dems-arent-turningout-for-hillary-like-they-did-for-obama/

Clinton has to worry about a steep drop-off of the black vote that could imperil
her chances of winning the White House in November , an analysis has found.
The number of African-Americans who voted in Tuesdays primaries plummeted by an
estimated 40 percent in Ohio, 38 percent in Florida and 34 percent in North Carolina
compared with the 2008 Democratic primary when Barack Obama was on the ballot,
reported the advocacy group Black Votes Matter. Record numbers of African-

American voters flocked to the polls to elect and re-elect Americas first black
president. Analysts expected some drop-off, but not the enormous numbers
recorded Tuesday. Hillarys repeated trouncing of Bernie Sanders with the black vote
has masked the alarming fact that there has been

a dramatic drop-off in

black turnout in the Democratic primaries, said Charlie King, founder of the
Black Voters Matter super PAC. The decline provides an opening for likely
GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump to win the presidency, King
warned. It will be very hard for the Hillary campaign alone to have a message
that excites Reagan Democrats and the 4 million new black Barack Obama

voters to come out and vote. That is why Donald Trump poses a real
challenge, he said. And if that is not corrected, a number of states like Ohio,
Florida and Virginia can turn to Republican -leaning states . . . Trump could

become president.

AT: Perm
Our argument is shockingly unique---theres a wide-scale,
dawning political realization that simple reformism has
failed to stem the tide of inequality, and theres growing
momentum for radical change, through the system
Fredrik deBoer 3-20, Limited-Term Lecturer, Introductory Composition at Purdue
Program, 3/20/16, not dead yet, http://fredrikdeboer.com/2016/03/20/predictionsare-hard-mike-konczal-edition/
Look at the United States two years later. Weve got BlackLivesMatter, one of the

most invigorating and necessary protest movements of my lifetime; the Fight

for $15 movement, a vital and organized labor movement that has drawn in
workers of color like never before; an emboldened campus left, calling for
greater racial equality and justice in their own communities; vast throngs of
Americans viewing socialism favorably, particularly among the young, who in
some polls favor socialism over capitalism in large majorities; a reinvigorated
socialist press spreading ideas and speaking to a new generation of radicals ;
and a presidential campaign by a 74 year old self-identified socialist Jew
from Brooklyn who has had remarkable primary success despite opposing the
most organized machine politician in our country and despite facing immense
obstruction from the Democratic party apparatus and the establishment media. That

candidate has absolutely dominated the youth vote, to a degree that is

almost unthinkable. Perfectly stodgy old observers are predicting a
left wing turn in American politics. Thats where the left is: nothing
you can call victory, as precarious as ever in a system designed to
stamp it out, and yet vibrant, emboldened, committed, and alive.
Alive of necessity, inspired by events and by a system that is unjust by
design. It turns out that after The End of History what animates genuinely left politics
is workplace tyranny, poverty, immiseration, racism, injustice, state violence, and all
of capitalisms other monsters. You know: the stuff liberalism has proven it cant fix.
Liberalism, meanwhile, looks like the rudderless ideology, unable to articulate its
basic priorities and unwilling to fight for those it can name. After 8 years of a

inequality the issue that Konczal

identifies as liberalisms bread and butter is as yawning and
implacable as ever. The economy has technically been in recovery for years,
neoliberal technocrat in the White House,

but for many Americans there has been no recovery at all, with the worst off only
getting worse off. However mildly emboldened liberals may have been, Wall Street
bonuses continued their forever climb, with their total last year representing double
the amount of all full-time minimum wage earners combined. Obamacare, the crown
jewel of wonk liberalism, is riddled with problems. The highly-touted co-op system
has collapsed. Many people now forced to spend money on coverage that they then
cant afford to use. It turns out that a health care law written for the health care
industry mostly benefits the health care industry. Meanwhile Obamas successor to
the crown of high chief of American liberalism, Hillary Clinton, openly rejects the kind
of single-payer system that could actually fix things. Higher education costs continue
to spiral out of control, with the Obama administration making no committed effort to

passing broad student loan forgiveness. Clinton, again, has opposed universal free
college, further defining liberals as opponents of meaningful change. Meanwhile, our
refusal to actually withdraw from our imperial misadventures leaves us embroiled in
too many conflicts to count, killing covertly with drones and special forces but always
killing. People like Adolph Reed criticize liberalism because liberalism has failed. Its
failed to restrain our implacable financial sector. Its failed to slow the tide of

income inequality. Its failed to make education affordable. Its failed to

rebuild our crumbling infrastructure. Its failed to address the problems of the
millions of Americans who have been left behind in a winner-take-all
economy, or to even attempt to. Worse, it has now gone further than the usual well
theres Republicans, you know, so therefore we can never do anything fatalism that
is liberalisms stock in trade. It has now gone full-on antileft, using the occasion of the
Sanders campaign to attack treasured commitments of the American left like single
payer. In doing so, it leaves itself no place to go, giving us no concrete vision of what
the long-term goals of the ideology are beyond more vague cultural liberalism and
superficial diversity among the elite. Liberalism has failed. Or, perhaps, its more true
to say that liberalism has succeeded, if indeed we take its actual goal as preserving
the class hierarchy through different means that conservatism. In this vision,
liberalism is not the antagonist to conservatism its typically viewed as, but a species
of conservatism, one which uses intermittent and inadequate pity-charity programs
to placate the exploited masses and keep them in line with capitalisms desires. Its
the politics of an ongoing process in which the dominant capitalist class has defused
potentially explosive threats to its class power by selectively incorporating the
demands of the dominated into its program. Konczal invokes the spirit of FDR;
Roosevelt was indeed an archetypal liberal in the sense meant by this left-wing
critique, in that he was a wealthy racist who passed a legislative agenda that had the
effect, along with some salutary consequences, of kneecapping the American labor
movement that had utterly transformed the workplace in the prior decades. In that
sense, liberalism could be said to be working. But working for whom? What Reed
knows is what more and more Americans are coming to grips with: that our

problems cannot be reformed away. Inequality and injustice are not

an unfortunate error within our system but are instead baked directly
into the foundations of our system, which was built by capital to
preserve capitals privileges. And so liberalism comes to seem more and more
like a larval stage for politics, a period of arrested development before
one decides whether they are bent on preserving the status quo,
and thus becomes a full-out conservative, or bent on changing it, and

thus becomes a proud anti-capitalist. Today, as obviously as at any

point, the question is simple: socialism or barbarism?

Impact

2NCPolitical Engagement good

Prosecutorial elections---Anita Alvarez lost because she
didnt prosecute the Laquan McDonald police murder,
Timothy McGinty lost over Tamir Rice. Proves the success
of electoral mobilization for addressing gratuitous
violence
Jessica Lussenhop 3-16, BBC News Magazine, 3/16/16, Chicago prosecutor
loses her fight with Black Lives Matter, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada35817890
While most of the focus of Tuesday night's primaries was on the battle for the White

something extraordinary occurred in two local elections.

Both Chicago's Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez and Timothy
McGinty, the Cuyahoga Prosecuting Attorney in Ohio, lost their bids for reelection. In Alvarez's case, it was a blow-out - she lost to her opponent almost 2House,

1. As the so-called "top cops" in their respective jurisdictions, Alvarez and McGinty

made key prosecutorial decisions in the controversial killings of

unarmed African Americans by police officers. For Alvarez, it was the
death of Laquan McDonald, shot 16 times by former officer Jason Van Dyke in
2014. In Cleveland, McGinty recommended that a grand jury not charge the
officers who shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice in a public park. These are not
the first prosecutors who recently failed to secure another term on name
recognition and a "tough on crime" platform as the need for criminal justice reform

faced off
directly against the Black Lives Matter movement and
lost. "Black youth kicked Anita Alvarez out of office," the Chicago
gathers steam across the country. But they are the first ones to have

activist group Assata's Daughters wrote in a triumphant statement last night. "Just a

month ago, Anita Alvarez was winning in the polls. Communities who

refuse to be killed and jailed and abused without any

chance at justice refused to allow that to happen. "We did
this for Laquan." According to the widely disseminated original account of the
shooting of Laquan McDonald, the teenager had lunged at officers with a knife when
he was shot. But dash camera footage of the incident - which was obtained by local
journalists - showed he was moving away from police when Van Dyke opened fire,
striking the 17 year old multiple times as he lay on the ground. Though Alvarez
ultimately charged Van Dyke with first-degree murder, she did it more than a year
later, just before the camera footage was to be made public by a judge's order. The
timing gave the distinct impression that a cover-up had barely been averted, and that
Alvarez was more interested in protecting the jobs of officers than she was in justice.
Alvarez ignored calls for her resignation and always maintained that she waited more
than 400 days because she believed that a federal investigation needed to be
completed before charges were brought against Van Dyke. "I don't believe any
mistakes were made," she insisted during the campaign. A coalition of activists members of Black Youth Project 100, Assata's Daughters and Black Lives Matter

Chicago - did not endorse Alvarez's challenger, Kim Foxx. Instead they joined forces
to oppose Alvarez. Their protest and canvassing efforts culminated in the hashtag
campaign #ByeAnita, words which could be seen fluttering on a huge banner trailing
behind an airplane flying over downtown Chicago on election day. Alvarez started the
day with a lead in the polls, but without key endorsements from former allies and the
local media. In the Rice case, McGinty encouraged a grand jury not to charge the two
officers who opened fire on Rice after less than two seconds on the scene. After they
obliged, McGinty said evidence showed it was indisputable that Rice was reaching to
pull out his pellet gun when he was shot, despite differing expert testimony. This was
seen as a knee-jerk response to protect police, and Black Lives Matter Cleveland
showed up with members of Rice's family to picket McGinty's home during the
campaign. As Cleveland Scene editor in chief Vince Grzegorek sees it, nothing but
public outrage can explain McGinty's fall. "It's hard not to see the vote as

anything but a referendum on McGinty's handling of Tamir

Rice and other police use-of-force cases," he wrote in an email to BBC News. The
Black Lives Matter movement has been criticised for its lack of focus, aversion
to a hierarchical structure, and inability to translate rage from street protests
into tangible political goals. They have not coalesced behind a presidential
candidate, and have disrupted both Democrats Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton at
campaign events. Aislinn Pulley, cofounder of Black Lives Matter Chicago, declined a
recent invitation to the White House, deriding it as a "photo opportunity". For those
reasons, the movement has often been dismissed as an aimless and empty social

answered those criticisms

with definitive proof of the movement's real political
clout. The fact that the focus has shifted from police officers to
prosecutors is significant, and these races prove that
activists' message resonates with voters. Prosecutors and
media campaign. But last night's results

politicians are now on alert - ignore their concerns at your own professional peril. "For
an evolving movement - youth-driven - to discover that it has this sort of electoral
power, I can't predict what will flow from that," says Jamie Kalven, founder of the
Invisible Institute, a non-profit journalism outfit on the south side of Chicago. "It's
really something." Where this newly discovered political might goes next
remains to be seen. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who like Alvarez denied that
he was slow to act or that he was part of a cover-up, has already survived a reelection campaign - one that took place before the tape's release and just days
before the city settled a civil lawsuit brought by McDonald's family. He's been called
"political poison" by the Chicago Tribune - Sanders tried to hurt Clinton in the Illinois
primary by pointing out her ties to Emanuel. "I'm

quite sure he would concede

the point that if he were on the ballot yesterday he would have
been voted out emphatically," says Kalven. The morning after the
primaries, another prosecutor - this one in Minneapolis, Minnesota - announced that
he would not use a grand jury in order to decide whether to charge two officers in the
shooting death of Jamar Clark in late 2015. Local Black Lives Matter activists
celebrated the decision as a victory for transparency, proving once again that the

The new generation of

prosecutors will not have a moment to rest easy. Michael
movement now has prosecutors' attention.

O'Malley, McGinty's successor, has demurred when asked how he would have
handled the Rice case differently. Likewise, a vote for Foxx was really a vote against
Alvarez, as Assata's Daughters pointed out in their statement. "We won't stop

until we're free and Kim Foxx should know that as well," they
wrote.

Torture
Trump will torture people
Nick Visser, 6/30/2016, Reporter for The Huffington Post, "Trump Amps Up His
Call For Torture: Were Going To Have To Do Things That Are Unthinkable",
www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-torturewaterboarding_us_5775d740e4b04164640f6597 //AZ

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee and ardent waterboarding

supporter Donald Trump wants America to be much tougher on suspected
terrorists. So tough, in fact, that we must to do the unthinkable when it
comes to prisoner interrogation, he said Thursday. Trump, during an interview with New
Hampshires NH1, was asked about his calls to reinstate waterboarding following Tuesdays attack on
Istanbuls Ataturk Airport that killed at least 44 people .

Trump has enthusiastically endorsed

tactics now widely regarded as torture, and has discounted recent criticism from Sen. John
McCain (R-Ariz.), who said the interrogation technique was not the American
way. Well its not the American way to have heads chopped off and have
people drowning in steel cages, Trump said, presumably referring to videos released by
the Islamic State that show such execution methods. And so we can have our disagreements, but were

Were going to have to be a lot sharper

and were going to have to do things that are unthinkable almost.
Unthinkable, when you look at whats happening to us, when you look at
whats going on in this country and throughout the world and we dont want,
you know theyre allowed to cut off heads and theyre allowed to chop off
heads, and we cant waterboard. So people can have disagreements, but I feel we have to get
going to have to get much tougher as a country.

much, much, stronger, tougher and smarter. Hours after the Istanbul attack, Trump called for the need to
fight fire with fire in the battle against terrorism. On waterboarding, he said, I like it a lot. I dont think
its tough enough. Terrorists probably think were weak, were stupid, we dont know what were doing,
we have no leadership, he told a crowd in Ohio. A day later, McCain a former prisoner of war said
such a position is not the United States of America. Its not what we are all about. Its not what we are.

The International Red Cross classified waterboarding as torture in 2014 and

said the practice violates the Geneva Conventions.

Laundry list
Trump is awfulHell ban Muslims and build a wall in the
first 100 days
Nick Allen, 5/5/2016, Writer for the Telegraph, "Donald Trump's first 100 days Muslims banned, the wall designed, and late night tweets from your commander-inchief", www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/04/donald-trumps-first-100-days--muslims-banned-the-wall-designed/ //AZ
If all goes according to his plan on January 20, 2017 Donald Trump will stand on the same spot where
Abraham Lincoln and John F Kennedy went before. The strains of Elton John's "Tiny Dancer" will drift across
the steps of the US Capitol. Mr Trump, at 70 the oldest person to assume the presidency, will then raise his
right hand and place his left hand on a Bible held by Chief Justice John Roberts, a man he has repeatedly
called a "disaster". He will then take the Oath of Office, swearing to execute the power of the presidency to
the best of his ability. At this solemn moment past presidents have been inspired to flights of soaring
oratory that will be remembered for centuries. Lincoln promised to "bind the nation's wounds in the midst
of the Civil War. Kennedy told Americans: "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do
for your country." And Franklin D Roosevelt told them: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Mr
Trump will tell them they are going to "win". Trump shrug Donald Trump speaks at a rally in Wisconsin
CREDIT: JIM MONE/AP His first 100 days could unfold like this: What will Donald Trump do on his first day in

On Inauguration Day President Trump will escort Barack Obama

to the departure ceremony on the Capitol lawn. A short chat is expected to be
frosty but there will be a handshake for the cameras. Once Mr Obama has
vacated the premises Mr Trump will immediately begin rescinding Mr
Obama's executive orders on immigration, which were intended to give quasilegal status to five million illegal immigrants. After his inaugural parade ends at the White
House, Mr Trump may pick up the phone in the Oval Office and begin calling
the chief executives of major companies like Ford and Nabisco, threatening to
impose tariffs of 35 per cent on their products if they relocate jobs outside
America. Who will stand at his side as vice president? Mr Trump has said he will choose a political
the Oval Office?

person as his running mate, most likely a governor or member of Congress. A campaign official has even
offered a short-list, naming Susana Martinez, the governor of New Mexico, Nikki Haley, the governor of
South Carolina, and Rob Portman, the senator from Ohio. Rubio senate Marco Rubio CREDIT: GARY
CAMERON/REUTERS Mrs Martinez and Mrs Haley have both been critical of Mr Trump, though, and
indicated they are not interested in the vice presidency. Mr Portman is currently running for re-election,
and said on Wednesday that he would not accept the nomination. While they could well reverse course, Mr
Trump may have to seek alternatives. They could include a former rival like Chris Christie, a loyal Trump
surrogate but another brash Northeasterner, or Marco Rubio, who would offer generational, geographic and

Will Muslims be
banned? Yes. It won't happen on day one but Mr Trump has said his
temporary ban on foreign Muslims entering the United States will be in place
by the end of his first 100 days. Mr Trump said he would "make big changes
quickly". He told the New York Times: I know everyone wont like everything I do but Im not running to
be everyones favourite president." What about the wall? It's another priority. Mr
Trump's aim is to have a design for the wall fully completed in the first 100
days and then building will start. Very early on he intends to call in
representatives of the Mexican government and begin bilateral talks. He
believes using the Oval Office as an intimidating venue to negotiate will help
him convince Mexico that they should pay for the wall. He will threaten to
block Mexican immigrants in the US from sending money home to their
families unless Mexico agrees to assume the building costs, which could be
up to $10 billion. Scuffles at anti-Trump demo at GOP conventionPlay! 01:25 While he acknowledges
racial diversity but may still be smarting from Mr Trumps Little Marco attacks.

that such policies are sure to result in further protests, that is a price he is willing to pay. A Nato summit,
and America First Mr Trump said in his recent foreign policy address that he would call a Nato summit after
taking office to pressure allies who had failed to hit spending targets and move the focus of the bloc away
from Russia and onto terrorism and migration. Were rebuilding other countries while weakening our own,
he said, insisting that Americas foreign policy had been a complete and overriding disaster over the

Donald Trump advocates America first approach to foreign

policy He would implement his America First brand of foreign policy by pressuring allies to pay up, and
past two decades.

threatening China with high tariffs to protect US manufacturing. How will he get his message out?
Roosevelt had his fireside chats over the radio, Ronald Reagan made masterful use of television and Mr
Trump has used social media like no American politician before him. Follow Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump Lyin' Ted Cruz consistently said that he will, and must, win Indiana. If he doesn't he
should drop out of the race-stop wasting time & money 7:08 PM - 3 May 2016 7,093 7,093 Retweets
25,672 25,672 likes He has already attacked world leaders like Angela Merkel over Twitter, and may not be
able to resist the occasional swipe at those who stand in his way. Follow Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump I told you @TIME Magazine would never pick me as person of the year despite being
the big favorite They picked person who is ruining Germany 8:53 AM - 9 Dec 2015 5,132 5,132 Retweets
8,575 8,575 likes He has said he may tweet less as commander-in-chief, but expect the occasional taunt or
boast to float out of the Oval Office and into the Twittersphere. Will he modify the White House? No, Mr
Trump is not going to chose to live in the luxury hotel he is building down the road from the White House
rather than the presidential residence itself. Oval Office The Oval Office CREDIT: JONATHAN
ERNSITE/REUTERS Though the colonial style may not match his gaudy tastes, Mr Trump has said he is
thrilled by the idea of moving into such a historic home. Expect him to make a few modifications, though.
The fence out front of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue may be just a bit higher once Mr Trump moves in.

AT: Things cant get worse

The idea that things cant get worse or better is
ahistoricalmaterial conditions can change
Johnson 2/3author of Revolutionaries to Race Leaders: Black Power and the
Making of African American Politics and editor of The Neoliberal Deluge: Hurricane
Katrina, Late Capitalism and the Remaking of New Orleans. He is also a
representative for UIC United Faculty Local 6456 [Cedric Johnson, An Open Letter to
Ta-Nehisi Coates and the Liberals Who Love Him,
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/02/ta-nehisi-coates-case-for-reparations-berniesanders-racism/?
utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=socialnetwork]

In a follow-up to his initial criticism of Sanders, Coates highlighted the limits of social democracy in
achieving racial justice in Europe. There is no need to be theoretical about this, he declared. Across
Europe, the kind of robust welfare states Sanders supports higher minimum wage, single payer health
care, low-cost higher education has been embraced. Have these polices vanquished racism? Or has race
become another rubric for asserting who should benefit from the states largesse and who should not? And
if class-based policy alone is insufficient to banish racism in Europe, why would it prove to be sufficient in a

We actually do need to be theoretical about this.

Coatess sweeping mischaracterization diminishes the actual impact that
social-democratic and socialist governments have historically had in
improving the labor conditions and daily lives of working people, in Europe, the
United States, and for a time, across parts of the Third World. Coates also ignores the legions of
blacks who have fought for generations to advance egalitarian state
interventions in the US and abroad and seems to forget how the neoliberal
assault on progressive left politics domestically and globally has worsened
living and working conditions across different social layers, creating widespread
country founded on white supremacy?

precarity for the middle and working classes, professionals and low-skilled workers, and immigrants and
minorities alike. Coatess disagreement with Sanders isnt new; he riffs on a standing criticism of Sanders,
and updates the Cold War, anti-socialist canard that any attempt to build social democracy on US soil will
inevitably be hobbled by racism. Sanders faced similar criticisms last summer, when a handful of Black
Lives Matter protesters interrupted the Netroots Nation conference and a rally for Social Security,

Ive grown weary of this position repeated with

startling unanimity by students, activists , academic colleagues, social media
commentators, and career pundits, who frequently reject any talk of a universal, broad-based
leftist project which fails to hold up against the weight of
historical fact. Arguments concerning the racist limits of left universalism
often rest on the historical failures of progressive state policies . Whenever the subject
Medicare, and Medicaid in Seattle. But

of the New Deal is broached, many, including Coates, are quick to point to the discriminatory Social
Security Act, which denied benefits to sharecroppers and domestic laborers and excluded thousands of
black workers. The New Deal was certainly flawed . It reflected the balance of class forces
during the 1930s and was a combination of policies that favored particular capitalist blocs and other more
progressive measures that resulted from worker and popular movement demands to constrain the market.

But the tendency to focus on the limitations of the Social Security provisions
overlooks the broader, diverse policies that made up this social-democratic
project programs that directly benefitted the black unemployed like the Works
Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), and during the Second World War, the
executive order to desegregate the defense industry. These efforts were not perfect, and
although blacks were employed across the nation through state-funded and state-directed public works

projects, the CCC camps were racially segregated. The racial and gender integration of the shipyards and
munitions factories was also short-lived, with peacetime demobilization marked by a return to previous
patterns of exclusion and segmentation in various industries, as returning veterans reentered the domestic

Yet each of these measures demonstrated the possibility of an

integrated society, and the power of the public sector in providing direct,
concrete benefits to African Americans against the private discrimination of
the market. Indeed, towering mid-twentieth-century liberal and radical left intellectuals and activists
workforce.

such as A. Philip Randolph, John P. Davis, Esther Cooper Jackson, John Jackson, Bayard Rustin, and scores of
others would have found themselves quite at odds with Coatess liberal antiracist viewpoint that workingclass-centered, anticapitalist political projects are patently inadequate for addressing the concerns of black

The claim that social democracy and socialism are always and
everywhere at odds with racial progress is simply false. It is not supported by
the actual history of progressive struggles and the substantive ways they
transformed black life. Ultimately, Coatess views about class and race and this
voters.

nations complex and tortured historical development

are well-meaning and at times poetic, but wrongheaded. The reparations
argument is rooted in black nationalist politics, which traditionally elides class and neglects the way that

race-first politics are often the means for advancing discrete, bourgeois class
interests.

AT: Theyre all the same

Although Clinton is clearly not a perfect candidate, the
difference between her and Trump is clear and impactful.
Their ignorance empirically hands the presidency to the
right
Black 16 (Louis Black is co-founder of The Austin Chronicle, where he is editor, and SXSW, of which
he is a Director. Page Two: All or Nothing Is No Way Forward 6/17/16
http://www.austinchronicle.com/columns/2016-06-17/page-two-all-or-nothing-is-no-way-forward/)///CW

What Good Came of Voting for Nader? Let's start with that question. For
those who voted their conscience or refused to support the lesser of two evils, what
good came out of that vote? The country moved sharply to the
right. There was no widespread progressive correction but many liberal and left
causes suffered serious setbacks. There is lots of tap dancing around this topic but there is a very clear
bottom line:

Nader's candidacy resulted in Bush's election. The

real world consequences were staggering. The invasion of Afghanistan and

Iraq, though there is no way of knowing how Gore would have responded to 9/11. But the combination of
the Bush presidency, 9/11, those military actions, aggressive Republican gerrymandering (of
which the Democrats are just as guilty, but they weren't as ambitious or successful), the growth of
right-wing media, and an infusion of conservative money to advance a
reactionary agenda together all signaled a certain change of direction in public discourse. The
country not only moved toward the right, but a lot of voters bought what was being sold, even when
against their best interests. In a disparaging of "political correctness" the mood became even more antigovernment and anti-organized labor and attacking of progressive positions. They hate when you say it,

Some of our most radical and uncompromising

citizens helped create this situation. The political reality is that the government does
affect us whether we want it to or not. Who is elected makes a big difference in many
people's lives. Is There No Difference Between the Parties? Sure, both parties can be
frustrating and neither seems to get enough done for most of their
supporters. The differences, however, are very pronounced, unless your goal
is a left-wing utopian state or a completely imagined reactionary America, in
which case you probably lump all who disagree with you, regardless of their
beliefs, together. But in the day-to-day real world, especially for the poor, the
working class, the unemployed, minorities, women, immigrants, academics,
and educators, there is a dramatic difference . There was a moment when a more
but there is no getting around it:

progressive future seemed not just possible, but likely. Despite the polls and the pundits, Bernie Sanders
was gaining momentum. Bringing together Americans from all walks of life, it seemed like the liberal left
was being revitalized as it hadn't been in decades, with Sanders mobilizing a broad swath of citizens
wanting serious social, economic, and political change. If nothing else, his candidacy was certain to move
the Democratic Party to the left as once-shunned positions became openly discussed topics.
Unfortunately, it now seems that many

Sanders supporters felt it was their way or the

highway. Completely invested in the man, they seem to care more about his winning than actually
achieving the vision he expressed. Instead of investing their future in the admittedly daunting effort of
progressive politics, they were firm that, if elected, Sanders was going to be a magic bullet that would cure
this country of what ails it. The more it became apparent that wasn't going to happen, the more they
turned on the liberal establishment. There is a political purity that remains untainted
when it exists in people's imaginations. Achieving actual goals is neither as neat nor as pretty. Along the
way there seemed to be a growing assumption if Sanders was good, then Clinton was evil. If Clinton was
winning she must be cheating. Every hint or accusation against her and the party, no matter how absurd,

was enshrined as fact. There are obvious issues with Clinton , as there are with almost any
career politician. Having accomplished less legislatively than many, Sanders is far less compromised.
Clinton, having been a long-established leader, has always been a target. The unrelenting, decades-long
right wing attack on her has known few limits, accusing her of every crime and misdeed imaginable, with
graft, corruption, and even murder blatantly charged. Again and again the conservative establishment has
attacked her not just with words but active investigations. This is par for most left-leaning politicians, but
few have been attacked so unrelentingly and with such vitriol as Clinton. In almost every case nothing has
come of these charges for what should be obvious reasons. Yet many who share her beliefs have come to
buy what the right has been selling. If Clinton is the sellout claimed, why has the right worked so hard and
so long against her? Why have so many leading conservative and reactionary voices attacked her at every
turn? Is that really all elaborate subterfuge to mislead the American people? Why? Because it has to be
pointed out that many who make that charge also argue that Americans are deluded sheeple, leading one
to wonder as to why then anyone would go to such lengths to fool them. Green Party candidate Jill Stein
said, as has been oft cited online: "The terrible things that we expect from Donald Trump, we've actually
already seen from Hillary Clinton." Think about this for a second. Citing what Clinton has said on certain
issues that is similar to what Trump is saying, Stein claims that Clinton has already done worse than what
might happen under a Trump administration. If you buy that, well, there's no arguing with you. It is
dismissing what has been achieved by generations of left-leaning politicians in favor of a pure radical
revolutionary dream. The claim is not just that Clinton's track record is worse than Trump's rhetoric, but
that her political achievements have already damaged this country more than any potential failings of a

Fantasy-based revolutionary
change is very easy, because it only happens in the imagination, not in real
life. The agenda for the left is about the drive for economic and social justice as well as equality and
Trump administration. Real-world politics is slow and hard.

equal opportunity for all citizens regardless of race, religion, sexual persuasion, or ideology. Pushing a
lessening of spending on defense while an increase of spending for education, social services, and the
infrastructure, it is about a more humane vision, a building up not a tearing down, the push for equal
opportunity for all Americans. Though clearly utopian and idealistic, these are, after all, goals. Those of us
who have been involved with progressive and leftist causes most of our lives have come to understand

movement forward is possible. Many work every day toward that vision of bringing us
together, rather than splitting us apart. There are victories in economic and social
justice, none easily or readily achieved . And there are always far more losses. But
that

maintaining and advancing that agenda is done in a very workaday way by committed folks in the widest
variety of jobs. Sacrificing the welfare of many to make one feel righteous is not particularly progressive.

Labeling the choice between Clinton and Trump as the

lesser of two evils is a way of privileging personal vision
over everyday realities. And if you really believe there would not be much difference
if you espouse left-wing politics that
Clinton is so bad that Trump has to be better, well, there really is nothing to
say. Many of us are at an enormous disadvantage here,
between a Trump or a Clinton administration, or

and having worked much of our lives to advance a

progressive agenda, we are truly scared that, in the name
of political purity, the most hopeful mass leftist
movement in recent years is going to end up handing the
presidency to Donald Trump.

Who wins this election matters---its both a product of

historically white-dominated systems of structural
oppression and a crucial opportunity to symbolically and
materially challenge those systems---the refusal of Trump
politics is the active political affirmation of the breakdown
of exclusive white male authority---thus the subjectgenerating effects of this election are vital ways to break
down structural racism and exclusion.
Rebecca Traister 15, writer for New York Magazine, 12/16/15, The Election and
the Death Throes of White Male Power, http://nymag.com/thecut/2015/12/electionand-the-death-of-white-male-power.html#

It has been a violent, sad year marked by mass shootings and police

violence and acts of terror and a seemingly endless supply of vitriol and anxiety.
But while that series of events may have felt like a random, scary blur as we lived
through it, its coming into stark and horrifying relief at years end thanks to the
blaring optics of our presidential-election cycle. Our first black president sits in
the White House, entering his eighth and final year; in his party, a woman who would
become the first female commander-in-chief is building a substantial lead in national
polls. Meanwhile, the dominant front-runner of the opposing party plays

untroubled host to white-power revivalist meetings, suggests that

deportation forces should round up undocumented immigrants, and proposes
identification badges for Muslims. Donald Trumps competitors for the Republican
nomination who agree with him that abortion should be illegal, and many of whom
even believe that women who have been raped or suffered incest should be forced to
carry resulting pregnancies to term somehow look rational and moderate by
comparison. But Ted Cruz is no moderate: He touts his endorsement by Operation
Rescue president Troy Newman, who has advocated for the execution of "convicted
abortionists" and defended activists who have in fact killed abortion doctors. We
need leaders like Troy Newman in this country, Ted Cruz, who might be the
Republican nominee for president in 2016, has said. Increasingly, the press is bold
and unapologetic in its comparisons of this moment to earlier, presumably nastier
points in history. Trumps rowdy, racist gatherings recall the ugliness of a
George Wallace rally from 1968, and the candidate himself has been compared
to late-19th-century South Carolina governor Benjamin Tillman, who touted violent
terrorism as a tactic for maintaining white supremacy. This weeks news of a
Tennessee woman who was charged with attempted murder after attempting to selfabort a 24-week pregnancy with a coat hanger provoked recollections of a pre-Roe
United States, in which underground abortions caused the death of an estimated
5,000 women a year, the majority of whom were likely women of color. Naturally,
Mondays Nazi rallying cry made awkward comparisons between Trump and der
Fhrer a hell of a lot easier to make, and the calls to set black activists on fire

returned us to the Jim Crow South, in which, Isabel Wilkerson has

written, someone was hanged or burned alive every four days. But

comparisons to earlier eras obscure the grim reality that what we are living
through is not the echo of past risks, but rather our own present danger. This

this election, these years represent the death throes of

exclusive white male power in the United States. That the snarling fury
moment,

and violence are contemporary does not make them less real than the terrors
of previous periods; it makes them more real , at least to those of us living
through them. And the presidential-primary contest, while absurdist and
theatrical, is reflecting very real fury and violence in the non-electoral world :
the burning of crosses and black churches, the execution of black men by
police, the resistance of male soldiers to women in elite combat positions, a white
man with a history of violence against women himself a warrior for the babies after
killing people at a Planned Parenthood clinic, and a younger white man killing nine
black churchgoers with the explanation You rape our women, and youre taking over
our country. The political contest just projects these panicked resentments on

a bigger, more official screen. The public spectacle of this

presidential election, and the two that have preceded it, are
inextricably linked to the racialized and gendered anger
and violence we see around us. Recall that Trumps rise in politics
began with his attacks on Barack Obama as foreign, as Muslim, as other. And that the
tea party whence Ted Cruz springs has concerned itself mostly official
protestations about economic priorities to the contrary with shutting down
reproductive-health options for women. That is, when they are not trying to shut
down the political ambitions of Hillary Clinton at any cost (see Trey Gowdys wildeyed, profligate, and fruitless Benghazi investigation). Whatever their flaws,
their political shortcomings, their progressive dings and dents, Barack Obama and

Hillary Clinton mean a lot. They represent an altered power structure

and changed calculations about who in this country may lead . It is not
coincidence that after seven years of a black president people are calling for
lynchings at Republican rallies. Its not some random quirk that eight years after a
woman almost became the Democratic nominee, Republican candidates are crowing
about their commitment to making pregnancy compulsory and accepting the
endorsements of those who support violence against abortion providers. This is our

country in an excruciating period of change. This is the story of the slow

expansion of possibility for figures who have long existed on the margins, and
it is also the story of the dangerous rage those figures provoke . Listen closely,
and you'll hear the acknowledgment coming directly from the Republican candidates.
Here was Marco Rubio in Tuesday's debate: "What's at stake in this election is not
simply what party's going to be in charge but our very identity as a people and as a
nation." This is not a dog whistle. This is a statement of fact. There are those on the
right and the left who love to downplay identity politics as a distraction: Do we even
believe in race or gender as anything but social constructs? How do identity politics
apply to Carly Fiorina or Ben Carson or to Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz, for that matter?
Isnt worrying about gender and race with regard to presidential politics just

referendum on
the existence and civic participation of Americans who are
not white men as voters, as citizens, as workers, as members of the
narcissism anyway? But its not narcissism. This election is a

military, as presidents. And while the resistance may be symptomatic of death

throes, a rage at the dying of the white male light, it nonetheless

presents a

very real threat there is the possibility that the old and
angry may triumph over the new and different. Those who are
furious are not without power to effect change that lasts
generations: Imagine Ted Cruz or Donald Trump or Marco Rubio in office with
a Republican Congress and Supreme Court seats to fill. Voting:
restricted. Immigration: halted. Abortion: banned. Equal pay: unprotected.
Same-sex marriage: overturned. Imagine, on the other hand, a Clinton presidency
or even a Sanders one, though even a white male Jewish socialist may invite less
ire than a woman. Clinton, like Obama before her, isnt carrying just her own
baggage, but will stand in as the symbolic target for those whose fury at increased
female autonomy has been building. In a nation where women who were not
permitted to cast votes still live and breathe, her campaign, as Ms. Clinton has
herself declared in other contexts, is living history. If she wins, she and we

will be forced to do battle with this rising, chilling, ever more open threat
from those who feel enraged that their country is no longer
their own. I fear that theres a lot more terror ahead of us.

The tangible results of this election should be central to

progressive politics---there will be extreme consequences
for oppressed and vulnerable populations under a racist
Republican presidency---the stakes demand
engagement---refuse any view of the political that denies
the importance of institutional participation in this
instance
Erik Loomis 3-25, assistant professor of history at the University of Rhode
Island, The Privilege of the Sanders Die-Hard,
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2016/03/the-privilege-of-the-sanders-diehard

If Donald Trump gets elected, how many vulnerable people will be

hurt, how many programs cut, how bad will the the economy get under
conservative policies? How much damage will be done if Trump, an open
racist and misogynist, is empowered to command our military, veto
bills, and nominate people to the Supreme Court, impacting life in the US for
decades to come? Trump exhorts his followers to attack protestors at his rallies
(The next time we see him, we might have to kill him, a follower said after
punching a black protestor at a rally.) Trump excuses his followers who attack a
homeless Hispanic man on the street, claims that Mexican immigrants are rapists,

refused to distance himself from the Ku Klux Klan, supports banning Muslims
from entering the US, advocates killing the families of terrorists, and is openly sexist.

Trump is the worst America has to offer. How privileged do

you need to be to imagine that its a good idea to risk the actual
lives of vulnerable Americans because you hate Clinton so much
that you vow to stay home if Sanders doesnt get the nomination? How protected

from the consequences of a Trump presidency do you need to be to think your hatred
of Clinton constitutes, as I saw someone say earlier this week, an inviolable
principle, meaning that its more important than the lives of vulnerable Americans?

That all applies equally to any Clinton supporters saying the same about
Sanders. (We have yet to see the full weight of American anti-Semitism aimed at
Sanders, and if he wins the nomination, we most certainly will.) Vote for whoever you
like in the primary. But lets step away from vicious attacks and hatred. Lets step
away from buying into debunked conservative propaganda about Clintons
trustworthiness. Lets look at the candidates actual proposals and weigh those
proposals actual strengths and weaknesses . Lets respect each others choices
in the primaries. And whoever becomes the Democratic nominee, the stakes

are far, far too high for us to selfishly stay home because we
didnt get our first choice. I will happily, proudly vote for either Clinton or
Sanders, and I hope you will do the right thing and join me . This of course

should be self-evident to anyone who is not an utter

narcissist. But alas, the idea of voting as a consumer choice that
defines you as a moral individual is a cult that will not go away. In
November, you are going to have a choice. One choice will be a Lesser
Evil candidate with a lot of problems but who will also do a lot of
good things. The other will be a fascist. The choice is yours. There is
Not voting because the Democratic Party candidate is not your
primary preference does not mean you are above the fray or not
morally responsible for what happens in this nation over the next four
years (or much longer). It just means you are a preening
individualist who privileges his (and lets face it, it will usually be his) own
self-regard over the community of people around youwomen,
no other choice.

unionists, environmentalists, GLBT, immigrants, African-Americans who still

want the right to vote, etc. I dont particularly care for Hillary Clinton.
But there is no possible way I will not vote for her in November
against Donald Trump or Ted Cruz.

The stakes of this election could not possibly be higher--its the fundamental turning point that conclusively
determines the direction of American politics---it either
ratifies Republican white supremacist extremism, or
stands for a rejection of that brand of politics in favor of a
diverse, progressive, obviously imperfect but still much
better society---there is no middle ground
Sean Wilentz 15, the Sidney and Ruth Lapidus Professor of History at Princeton
University, 12/3/15, Why the 2016 Election Will Be One of the Most Pivotal Moments
of Our Time, http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-the-2016-election-willbe-one-of-the-most-pivotal-moments-of-our-time-20151203

More than 150 years ago, in 1858, as the national crisis over slavery heightened,
Abraham Lincoln famously remarked that "a house divided against itself cannot
stand," and that the "crisis" would be "reached and passed" only when the house
divided would "become all one thing or all the other." Now, the long conflict over
social equality, political democracy and American government that began
during the Progressive era, followed by the New Deal and the Great Society, is

reaching its inescapable conclusion. If the Republicans win the

presidency in 2016, they will also almost inevitably control both the Senate
and the House of Representatives, giving them virtually unfettered
command over the entire federal government to go along with
their domination of the great majority of the state governments . The
Republican president could easily be in a position to appoint new justices to the
Supreme Court for an unstoppable right-wing majority that would last for a
generation to come. Bush v. Gore, Citizens United and Shelby County v. Holder (the
2013 ruling that greatly weakened the 1965 Voting Rights Act) would be merely the
prelude to tilting political and social power. If, however,

the Democrats win

the presidency in 2016, they will almost certainly take back the Senate
and make gains in the House and the Democratic president will likely be able to
appoint new justices to the Supreme Court that will eventually comprise a liberal

Between these two stark alternatives, there is

no middle ground. In 2016, the country will become either one
majority.

thing or the other. How did we arrive at this decisive moment? Two powerful
historic developments have driven American politics over the past half century. The

Republican Party has been transformed by a conservative movement that has

pushed it ever further to the right. The Democratic Party, stunned by the
conservative counterrevolution, has struggled to reinvent itself and its politics, while
facing the increasingly formidable resources of the right. These shifts are responsible
for the polarization and dysfunction that have gripped American government since
the 1990s. But they began in 1968.

Amid that year's turmoil, the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy crushed liberal hopes and paved

the way for the election of Richard M. Nixon. Although at the time Nixon seemed to represent a moderating force inside the Republican Party, his triumph, in retrospect, set in motion what has proved to be the
Republicans' unending radicalization. It is easy to forget how much Nixon changed American politics. Only four years before 1968, Lyndon B. Johnson won a landslide victory over the hard-right Republican Barry
Goldwater and swept a liberal majority into Congress. Goldwater attracted to his cause extremist elements that arose out of pro-business reaction to the New Deal and out of the right-wing anti-communism of the
Cold War. After World War II, those elements began uniting traditional conservatives and libertarians, embodied in fringe groups like the John Birch Society. Goldwater also courted and won the white segregationist
vote in the South, another major element in the emerging conservative coalition, inflamed by the rise of the civil rights movement and the fallout from the Supreme Court's landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of
Education of Topeka. Johnson, in routing Goldwater, wanted to outdo the achievements of his idol, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and create nothing less than a Great Society. He would complete the unfinished business of
the New Deal on everything from health care reform to environmental conservation while also waging what he called "unconditional war on poverty in America." LBJ embraced civil rights and joined the fight for
economic justice with the one for racial equality claiming the mantle of Lincoln just as the Republican Party was rejecting its historical legacy and embracing a Southern strategy that would transform it into the
party it is today. Johnson's continued, forceful pursuit of civil rights policies not only destroyed the Democrats' age-old political base in the South, it also alienated white urban ethnic voters in the North and
contributed to a severe backlash that brought large Republican gains in the 1966 midterm elections. Then, LBJ's escalating military intervention in the Vietnam War badly split his party and ruined his presidency. For
a brief hopeful moment, it seemed as if the Democratic challenger Robert Kennedy might reunite the liberal base that would enable him to succeed Johnson. But Kennedy's assassination ended that possibility.
Nixon, far from a favorite of the Goldwater wing of the GOP, was deeply suspect on the right, and his administration in several ways followed what had become a post-New Deal consensus on domestic affairs,
especially on economic policy. But Nixon also tried to reverse the 1960s, the reforms of John F. Kennedy and Johnson, with his inflammatory coded racial appeals and his efforts to slow the course of desegregation.
He launched a right-wing culture war, in which Republicans attacked Democrats as the party of "acid, amnesty and abortion," and called critics "an effete corps of impudent snobs" a phrase voiced by the White
House's main spokesman for the morally upstanding "silent majority," Vice President Spiro Agnew. "This country is going so far to the right you won't recognize it," Nixon's attorney general and political counselor
John N. Mitchell bragged. Nixon's downfall his humiliating resignation in the wake of the Watergate scandal did not, however, bring about a resurgence of the GOP's once-formidable moderate wing, personified by
figures like New York Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller. The migration of the conservative white South from the Democrats to the Republicans, coupled with Nixon's appeals to the racial and cultural resentments of "Middle
Americans," had moved the political center of gravity inside the GOP sharply to the right. The chief beneficiaries of Watergate inside the GOP turned out to be the party's hard-right wing, which had never trusted the
wily Nixon and now rallied behind its new darling, former California Gov. Ronald Reagan. In 1976, Reagan challenged and very nearly defeated Nixon's White House successor, the traditional center-right
Midwesterner Gerald R. Ford, for the Republican presidential nomination. Four years later, with additional help from newly politicized white Southern evangelical Christians, Reagan humiliated his chief party
opponent, the transplanted Yankee George H.W. Bush of Texas. Then, after he opened his general-election campaign with an appeal to states' rights in the heart of racist Mississippi Neshoba County, where the Ku
Klux Klan had murdered three civil rights workers in 1964 Reagan handily defeated the idealistic but ineffectual Democratic incumbent (and pro-civil rights Southerner) Jimmy Carter. Reagan's triumph was a
decisive victory for the right wing of the GOP that had seemingly been disgraced in 1964, and it marked a direct repudiation of New Deal and Great Society liberalism. Central to Reagan's program was the
reformulation of old-time laissez-faire dogma as something supposedly shiny and new "supply-side economics," which claimed that skewing fiscal policy heavily toward the wealthy, in the form of huge tax cuts,
would supposedly trickle down economic growth to the benefit of all. With the help of a new "counter-establishment" of corporate-funded conservative-policy think tanks like the Cato Institute and the Heritage
Foundation, this radical regression to the doctrines of the Calvin Coolidge era that helped precipitate the Great Depression quickly became a fundamental Republican article of faith. To this, the Reagan Republicans
added a souped-up culture war, reinforced by the militant soldiers of the Christian right led most prominently by the Rev. Jerry Falwell, an old segregationist, and his so-called Moral Majority. Reagan's two terms as
president deepened the radicalization of the Republican Party. Yet moderate-establishment elements still commanded enough political leverage in 1980 for Reagan to name the defeated Bush as his running mate.
As president, Reagan often spoke as an ideologue but occasionally governed as a pragmatist, whether it came to raising taxes (11 times) or to pursuing nuclear-arms agreements with the Soviets (to the outrage of
many of his neoconservative cadres). On some issues, notably immigration reform, Reagan's positions were so liberal that in later years they would come to be regarded as perfidy. Reaganism, for all of its genuine
ideological fervor, contained an element of bad faith. Even as the Reagan White House implemented regressive policies, cutting social spending (especially for the poor), resisting progress in civil rights and rolling
back progressive tax rates, it always promised its political base more than it could or even intended to deliver. Under Reagan, the gross federal debt tripled from $900 billion to $2.7 trillion, and the size of
government grew by 6.5 percent. Signature programs from the New Deal and the Great Society, such as Social Security and Medicare, were expanded. (Reagan had often criticized Social Security, but in 1983, when
he signed legislation to preserve the system, he said it demonstrated "for all time our nation's ironclad commitment to Social Security.") Appealing to his battalions from the Christian right, Reagan paid lip service to
crusades like overturning Roe v. Wade, but in the words of one right-wing activist, his White House "offered us a bunch of political trinkets." Further aggravating conservatives, Vice President Bush ran as Reagan's
successor in 1988. At heart, Bush remained an old-school patrician Republican. His pledge, in his nomination acceptance speech, never to raise taxes won him an ovation "Read my lips: no new taxes" but his
promise, in that same speech, to seek "a kinder, gentler nation" left conservatives cold. Bush showed his true colors as president in 1990 when, addressing the fiscal mess he inherited from Reagan, he approved a
budget deal that broke his "no new taxes" promise. The decision branded Bush, to the hard-liners, as a fraud. Inside Congress, a younger generation of conservatives, led by the firebrand Newt Gingrich from
Georgia, engineered a revolt within the party against Bush, the betrayer. While Gingrich plotted, the job of bloodying Bush's nose in the 1992 Republican primaries fell to Patrick J. Buchanan, an old Nixon hand and
so-called paleo (or Stone Age) conservative. By pressing the wedge issues of the culture war, Buchanan advanced the party's radicalization. Hoping to appease the insatiable base, Bush's forces overcompensated
by giving Buchanan the prime-time speaking slot on the nominating convention's opening night, and Buchanan rose to the occasion by delivering a rip-roaring attack on Democrats as the party of radical feminists
and militant homosexuals, out to destroy what was left of American decency. "There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America," Buchanan declared. "It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind
of nation we will one day be as was the Cold War itself." The face of the Republican Party seemed to be morphing from Reagan's genial optimism to Buchanan's fury; and the culture warriors whom the leaders had
been riling up for decades now seemed primed to turn the GOP into "God's Own Party." After the debacle of 1968, the national Democratic Party fragmented, leaving anti-war liberals, old-style New Dealers and even
surviving elements of the old Jim Crow Southern wing of the party to jockey for internal power. In the aftermath of Robert Kennedy's assassination, Kennedy's Senate friend George McGovern became, briefly, a
rallying point for RFK's traumatized followers. Four years later, McGovern won the Democratic nomination on a forthright anti-Vietnam War platform and ran a disastrous campaign, only to be crushed by the
incumbent Nixon in one of the greatest electoral landslides in U.S. history. The Watergate scandal led to an uptick in Democratic fortunes in the 1974 midterm elections, and in 1976, the Georgia Democrat Jimmy

Carter narrowly won the presidency. As a so-called New Southerner, Carter benefited from Nixon's resignation but succeeded in large measure by winning the votes of Southern blacks newly enfranchised by the civil
rights legislation of the mid-1960s. For the moment, Democrats convinced themselves that the Nixon presidency had been an aberration, and that Carter's election, no matter his slight margin of victory, marked a
resumption of the forward march of liberalism that had become bogged down under Johnson. "The hands that picked cotton," the civil rights leader Andrew Young later remarked, "finally picked the president." And
as president, Carter, building on the lessons he took from the Vietnam disaster, appealed to principles of human rights and sought to redirect the conduct of foreign policy away from reflexive and sometimes
morally compromising Cold War realpolitik. Caught between the president's ideals and the harsh realities of international affairs, and buffeted by recurring oil and energy crises at home, the Carter White House
seemed overwhelmed. Some of the party's liberals supported the surviving Kennedy brother, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, in his challenge to Carter's renomination in 1980, resulting in a primary battle that proved
divisive, destructive and demoralizing. Other Democrats, like Carter's vice president, Walter Mondale (the party's presidential nominee in 1984), stayed true to the old New Deal and Great Society verities, which
were deflected by the conservative charmer Reagan. Progressives outside of electoral politics also faced enormous obstacles. Although the cultural fallout of the civil rights, women's and gay-rights movements was
quietly and steadily transforming the ways many Americans lived, the conservative ascendancy put those movements on the defensive, from chagrin about the failed effort to ratify an Equal Rights Amendment in
the 1970s to outrage at Reagan's indifference to the devastating HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. Finally, Bill Clinton broke through in 1992 when, with a lingering recession crowding out the culture wars in the
general election, he defeated the damaged Bush, who seemed befuddled in dealing with the economy. Having risen through Arkansas politics during the post-civil rights years, Clinton championed the egalitarianism
of the 1960s but also understood the recent history that had hurt the party so badly. It was not simply that the cultural distempers of race and religion had pushed many voters over to the Republicans. On the issues
of economic equality and opportunity, many erstwhile white Democrats believed the party had abandoned them. Clinton would try to reconstruct liberal politics (albeit without using the by-now-demonized word
"liberal") by directing his reformism to the middle class and aspiring middle class. He campaigned on a detailed platform of economic and social policies under the slogan "Putting People First." As with Carter before
him, Clinton's Southern background looked to some party professionals like an antidote to the image of Democrats as decadent, Northern, tax-and-spend do-gooders. But Clinton's thinking ran much deeper than
that. In a major speech in 1991, Clinton assailed what he called the glorification of "the pursuit of greed and self-interest" during the Reagan years, even as poverty rates grew for women "and their little children."
He had it in mind to enact major social legislation, including passing comprehensive health care reform, a goal that had eluded Democratic presidents since Harry Truman. Yet Clinton also endorsed reducing the size
of the federal bureaucracy as well as an overhaul of the welfare system geared toward job training. Clinton's efforts to update liberalism predictably upset some entrenched constituencies inside the Democratic
Party. But if some on the left had reservations about Clinton, Republicans understood just how threatening his revised liberalism was to their political prospects. Some on the right, astonished that any Democrat
could win the White House in the wake of Reagan, denounced Clinton as illegitimate. Others mobilized furiously to defeat Clinton's health care reform plan. "Any Republican urge to negotiate a least bad'
compromise with the Democrats, and thereby gain momentary public credit for helping the president do something' about health care, should be resisted," the conservative operative William Kristol wrote in a
memo to Republican leaders. Destroying Clinton's proposal root-and-branch had become the imperative. The right-wing mobilization included, among other things, an effective insurance-industry lobbying campaign
of misleading television ads, the notorious "Harry and Louise" spots, which demonized "government bureaucrats" and distorted public debate. White House blunders in presenting its health care plan plagued its
efforts and when the proposal was abandoned before even coming to a congressional vote, Republicans made the most of the situation. Advancing his strategy to destroy the existing order, House Minority Whip
Gingrich nationalized the 1994 midterms, recruiting a crop of reliably right-wing candidates for the House and rallying them behind what he called the Contract With America, a set of proposals crafted by the
pollster Frank Luntz. Republicans were also schooled with a Luntz-written memo that encouraged them to "speak like Newt" and trash liberal Democrats with defamatory words like "radical," "sick," "pathetic,"
"decay" and "traitors." In November, the rapidly rightward-trending Republicans picked up 54 House seats, which gave them majority control for the first time in 40 years. Gingrich was now speaker. President
Clinton, stunned, was reduced to reminding the nation of the presidency's continued relevance. Yet the Republican triumph, by accelerating the party's radicalization, also carried the elements of Gingrich's downfall
four years later. The press quickly pronounced Gingrich the guru master of Washington, and the new speaker relished it. "I think I am a transformational figure," he boasted to one reporter on the eve of the 1994
elections. "I'm a much tougher partisan than they've seen...much more willing to take risks to get it done." Yet for all of his verbal bravado and tactical skills, Gingrich would soon be overmatched in his battles with
Clinton. Clinton responded to the trouncing strategically, by practicing "triangulation," which many critics denigrated but was ordinarily known as politics. Following the defeat of many conservative and moderate
Democrats in the 1994 debacle, the congressional Democrats were now, as a group in the minority, more liberal than they had been. Clinton saw room to move in the middle. In June 1995, he laid out a budget
proposal that seized the mantle of fiscal responsibility, which the GOP had claimed for its own. Many liberals reacted with horror and reflexively denounced the president as a defector, a "me-too" Democrat, and
worse. They failed to notice that Clinton's supposedly defeatist budget held the line on education investments and Medicare, which the Republicans wanted to throttle, while aiming tax cuts at the middle class and
not the wealthy. While Clinton bobbed and weaved, the Republicans began to look disturbingly extreme. Swirling around the new majority were freshly emboldened, virulent, even apocalyptic strains of extremist
right-wing politics, reminiscent of the fiercest fringe elements that had backed the Goldwater campaign 30 years earlier. Push came to shove in Washington in late 1995, when Clinton twice refused to approve a
devastating Republican budget that, among other things, would have eviscerated Medicare and granted the wealthy large capital-gains tax cuts, and the Republicans twice shut down the federal government. In
standing his ground, Clinton was making two gambles: that no matter how much the public griped about "big government," people still favored the numerous federal services they received every day; and that
blame for the standstill would fall on the bombastic, anti-government Republicans in Congress. Clinton won both wagers when, as the second shutdown was headed into its fourth week, the humbled Republicans
backed down. Republicans were dismayed following Clinton's trouncing of the establishment candidate Sen. Robert Dole in the 1996 election. Their frustration would grow as it became clear that the nation had
recovered from the sluggish economic times of 1990-92 and entered a sustained and roaring boom period one that, in time, would surpass the prosperity of the Reagan years. But in light of Clinton's success, the
congressional GOP radicals, their numbers swelled by the newcomers elected in 1994, concluded not that they had overreached with their shutdown and other obstructionist tactics but that their leaders had
betrayed them. Speaker Gingrich became the chief target, especially when, chastened by the shutdown and Clinton's re-election, he and Trent Lott, the Senate majority leader, reached an amicable accord with the
White House over the 1997 budget. In July 1997, a plot involving fed-up, high-ranking House Republicans, masterminded by party whip Tom DeLay (a former exterminator who called the Environmental Protection
Agency "the Gestapo") and which included Majority Leader Dick Armey (who called First Lady Hillary Clinton "a Marxist") and conference chairman John Boehner (who passed out checks from the tobacco lobby to
congressmen on the floor of the House), plotted Gingrich's ouster. While Gingrich floundered, anti-Clinton forces on the right seized on a long-standing special-prosecutor investigation that had produced nothing but
insinuations and false but damaging headlines about a failed real estate investment in Arkansas in the 1970s called Whitewater. Then, early in 1998, a tightknit group of right-wing lawyers and operatives got wind
of Clinton's sexual encounters with a White House intern, Monica Lewinsky, and worked hand-in-glove with special prosecutor Kenneth Starr to try to shift the focus of his investigation to bring Clinton down. Riding
the media frenzy, and hoping to shore up support on his right, Gingrich excoriated the president and made the scandal the central issue in the midterm elections. (Left unreported by the press, but well known to
Washington insiders, was the inconvenient fact that Gingrich was himself conducting an illicit affair with a woman who was young enough to be his daughter and who was on the congressional payroll.) In October,
the month after Starr presented an impeachment referral to the House, Gingrich assured the Republican caucus that their party would pick up, at a minimum, six to 30 seats. Evidently, neither Gingrich nor virtually
anyone else in Washington had noticed that the public, although disapproving of Clinton's private behavior, approved of his presidency: Throughout the months of turmoil, Clinton's favorability rating in the opinion
polls had never fallen below 60 percent. When the Democrats actually gained five seats in the House and held their own in the Senate, Gingrich was finished. Days after the election, amid acrid recriminations, he
resigned not simply the speakership but also his seat in Congress. Actual power in the Republican caucus immediately shifted to Gingrich's right-wing rival DeLay, who declared that Clinton was unfit for his office
because he lacked the correct "biblical worldview." With DeLay as the driving force, the House Republicans ignored the judgment of the electorate and went ahead with Clinton's impeachment, only to result in the
Senate, as expected, acquitting the president. The rise and fall of Gingrich extended and strengthened what had become a spiraling, radicalizing pattern inside the Republican Party since 1980. First, a new
conservative Republican leadership would promise to crush big government and the enemies of traditional morality and culture. Then, those leaders would prove, at best, inadequate to the task or, worse, would
wind up being (like President George H.W. Bush) turncoats. Even more dogmatic and confrontational Republicans would take the disgraced leaders' place, further purging the dwindling ranks of GOP moderates and
inflaming the angry Republican base and when they could not deliver on their promises, the new leaders would fall disgraced, opening the way for yet another cycle of radicalization. Clinton had not just outlasted
Gingrich and the Republicans he had triumphed. He would leave office with an exceptional approval rating of 66 percent. Yet during the presidential campaign in 2000, Clinton's anointed successor, Vice President
Al Gore, wary about Clinton's reputation after the Lewinsky scandal, distanced himself from the administration and its achievements. The consumer-rights advocate and gadfly Ralph Nader's third-party effort played
upon all the misgivings on the left by claiming that there was no real difference between the Republicans and the Democrats, and drained a small but vital portion of the Democratic vote. Yet uncertain as the
Democrats' coalition was, they lost the presidential election of 2000 only when the conservative-dominated Supreme Court elevated George W. Bush to the White House by a single vote, five to four an event that,
in its audacity, affirmed the radicalizing pattern on the right. (Gore, who won the popular vote by a half-million, might well have won the vote of the contested state of Florida if the court had permitted it to be fully
counted.) Bush undertook the presidency on intensely partisan terms congenial to the party's base, and by early September 2001, his approval ratings had slipped to a bare majority, 51 percent. Suddenly, though,
the terrorist attacks of September 11th revived Bush's White House. Bush's image as a warrior president, especially after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003, sustained him through his re-election in 2004. A
chorus of Republicans conducted by Karl Rove, Bush's chief political operative, crowed about a permanent GOP electoral majority, in what Rove called a "rolling realignment." In the neoconservative Weekly
Standard, the pundit Fred Barnes expressed as a matter of irrefutable conventional wisdom that "Republican hegemony in America is now expected to last for years, maybe decades." All along, the administration
found willing allies in the Republican Congress and among right-wing advocacy groups, not simply in pursuing a hard-right agenda on fiscal policy but also in subordinating the domestic agenda to political
considerations. Even before the September 11th attacks, the Bush team was closely working with a lobbyist political machine known as the K Street Project, which was run by House Majority Whip DeLay and bent
on a partisan politicization of the federal government. "There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one," one appalled senior appointee told a reporter after leaving his job in August
2001. In 2004, the Democratic nomination went to Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry a hero of the Vietnam War who became a leader of the anti-war movement. Kerry, though, failed to respond quickly to
underhanded attacks on his war record and his character. Then, Rove stage-managed referendums in 11 key states to ban gay marriage, which whipped up the right-wing base. Bush squeaked by to win re-election,
and the GOP increased its majorities in the House and the Senate. In its second term, though, the Bush presidency unraveled quickly. The war in Iraq went poorly, despite the premature announcement of mission
accomplished. And in the wake of its bungled response to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, the administration and the Republican Congress reeled from one disaster to another. These included the exposure of a
web of scandals involving a GOP lobbyist, Jack Abramoff, which soon tainted top Republicans, including DeLay, who was now the House majority leader. The midterm elections in 2006 handed the Democrats a 31vote majority in the House and a one-vote majority in the Senate. In 2006, a growing number of economists began warning that the nation's prosperity had become much too dependent on an irrationally inflated
real estate market. The bubble soon burst, and by August 2007, the markets were facing a crisis point: So-called subprime mortgages were dragging down the credit markets, and hedge funds along with them. In
January 2008, after a week of heavy losses on Wall Street, President Bush announced an economic stimulus package consisting of tax incentives and rebates and stock prices continued to fall. The Federal Reserve
Board made emergency cuts in interest rates, but the crisis deepened over the summer. Suddenly, in mid-September, the Lehman Brothers investment bank, one of the most prestigious firms on Wall Street, filed for
bankruptcy, and Merrill Lynch and the huge AIG insurance firm announced that they, too, were about to go under. On October 3rd, after weeks of contentious debate, Congress, with a strong push from the White
House, approved a $700 billion bill to bail out the nation's financial system and prevent a catastrophic economic collapse. The political fallout from the bailout was immediate. Once again, Republican leaders had
failed their base miserably. The Democrats would elect Barack Obama to the White House, with an ambitious liberal agenda, and they also substantially enlarged their majorities in the House and Senate. President
Bush was departing office deeply unpopular, even on the right. Some pundits wondered whether a new progressive liberal majority had sent the Republican Party into a long-term decline. Those predictions, though,

The election of the first

African-American to the White House heralded a major landmark in the civil
rights revolution and, some imagined, a cessation of the culture wars that
had raged since the 1960s. Obama appeared to affirm the dawn of a new
liberal political era. The enlarged Democratic majority in the House was nearly
proved misguided. A new and powerful Republican shift even further to the right, and with it a resurgence at the polls, was just over the horizon.

identical to the one that greeted Clinton, and the Democratic majority in the Senate
was substantial. As it happened, though, Obama was unprepared for what lay in
store. A relative newcomer to Washington, he had campaigned as something of an
outsider, promising to end partisan gridlock by finding common ground across party
lines. He thought he would be a post-partisan president, convinced that, as he had
declared at the 2004 Democratic convention, there is "not a liberal America and a
conservative America there's the United States of America." Yet on the very night
of his swearing in, as if mocking Obama's naivet, a band of Republican
congressional leaders of the post-Gingrich cohort met for several hours at a
D.C. steakhouse, joined by the original revolutionary Newt Gingrich,

to plot

Obama's downfall. The first step would be to stop cold the new

president's agenda in Congress . "We've gotta challenge them on

every single bill and challenge them on every single

campaign," said Congressman Kevin McCarthy, as reported by the journalist
Robert Draper. Uncompromising as they were, though, even these latest GOP
hotspurs did not foresee just how fiercely doctrinaire the right-wing resistance to
Obama would become. One month after Obama's inauguration, a business reporter's
calculated tirade on the CNBC network against a newly announced financial-aid
program for bankrupt homeowners climaxed with a call for a "tea party" protest and
the rant touched off, via social media and with a boost from Fox News Channel, a
wildfire of right-wing organizing. In fact, various reports indicate that, early on, the
Tea Party phenomenon was, if not wholly contrived, then strongly guided and funded
by some longtime major bankrollers of right-wing activities, including Americans for
Prosperity, backed by the multibillionaires Charles and David H. Koch, and
FreedomWorks, headed by Tom DeLay's erstwhile ally, former House Majority Leader
Dick Armey. Congresswoman Michele Bachmann of Minnesota organized what she
called a Tea Party caucus in the House and established a political action committee
that in time would raise $2.5 million and aid, among others, the Senate candidacies
of Rand Paul in Kentucky and Marco Rubio in Florida. Predominately white, male and
over 40, the Tea Party movement was, and is, wrongly perceived as simply an
outburst of old-fashioned anti-government fervor. Surveys of Tea Party adherents
have shown that a nebulous swirl of resentments pervades the movement , to
some degree generational (with common complaints about entitled young people),
and to some degree

tinged with racial antipathy

(although not usually explicitly racist). There is

a general anxiety inside the movement about precisely the kind of "change" that Obama promised during the 2008 campaign, which the Tea Party faithful take to mean
nothing less than eradicating the American way of life. Politicians of almost every stripe are despised: Democrats in general, but also mainstream Republicans, whom the
Tea Party rebels deem spineless fakes who have proved incapable of defending decent Americans from parasitic big government. And then there was the first AfricanAmerican president, who many on the right thought was not an American at all, had forged his birth certificate and was a Muslim. Over the next four years, a fierce, threesided struggle involving the White House, the Republican congressional leadership and the aroused Tea Party base sharpened the polarizing pattern of the previous three
decades. Less than a month after his inauguration, over nearly unanimous Republican opposition, Obama enacted a large if insufficient economic stimulus package. In
2010, he signed the Dodd-Frank Act, the most sweeping legislation on financial regulation since the reforms of the New Deal era. And in that same year, after a prolonged
battle with Congress, Obama signed the Affordable Care Act, the boldest piece of social legislation since LBJ's Great Society. When the Republicans affixed the label
"Obamacare" to the ACA, support for the Tea Party spiked. In the 2010 congressional primaries, Tea Party-backed insurgencies toppled establishment-GOP candidates, and
in an electoral surge reminiscent of the Gingrich-led Contract With America campaign, Republicans picked up, along with six seats in the Senate, an astounding 63 seats in
the House, regaining the majority they had lost in 2006. "Our top political priority over the next two years," Sen. Mitch McConnell said two days after the election, "should
be to deny President Obama a second term in office." The new Congress brought to the fore the fresh crop of Republican leaders who had begun plotting against Obama on
Inauguration Day 2009, including Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy and the chairman of the House Budget Committee, Paul Ryan. Having dubbed
themselves the Young Guns, they were palpably uncomfortable with the new speaker of the House, John Boehner. A mediocre politician with a gift for longevity, Boehner
was the last man standing from the Gingrich revolution. First Gingrich had been beheaded; then Bob Livingston resigned in a phone-sex-tapes scandal; then Dennis Hastert
was installed as the puppet of DeLay; then DeLay was undone; then the GOP lost the House partly as the result of a sex scandal involving House pages. (Hastert's history
as a sexually predatory high school wrestling coach still remained hidden.) Boehner, the underling, became the face of an embattled and dwindling GOP establishment,
challenged by a younger generation of radical rightists. From the start, the Young Guns made it clear that they would try to force the administration's hand by
manufacturing a controversy over the federal debt limit. Dating back to World War I, the limit is an artificial cap, determined by Congress, on the amount that Congress can
borrow in order to honor obligations already made. For decades, Congress had raised the cap as a matter of course. By misrepresenting the limit (sometimes called a "debt
ceiling") as a virtuous restriction on federal spending, Republicans cast themselves to the party's base as fighting a battle for fiscal righteousness, rather than partisan
cynicism. But the threat made to the White House was undisguised blackmail: Unless the administration agreed to gut Obamacare, Congress would send the nation's
finances careening over the cliff. Early in 2011, the emboldened Republican House threatened to shut down the government as Gingrich had done in 1995, and forced a
last-minute deal in which Obama received $79 billion less in discretionary spending than he had wanted. Over the next few months, Boehner and Obama would enter into
negotiations for what the president called a "grand bargain" on the budget, only to see talks repeatedly fall apart when the speaker would balk at a compromise, having
grown so fearful of a backlash from Tea Party members in the House. Amid the 2011 debt-ceiling crisis, Obama apparently abandoned any illusions about post-partisanship
and instead defended positive government while lambasting theories of trickle-down economics. And Republicans were dumbfounded when he won re-election by 5 million
votes and a landslide in the Electoral College, while Democrats dominated the overall vote total of both the House and Senate elections. As a result of gerrymandering by
GOP-controlled state legislatures, the Republicans retained control of the House. Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee, struggled mightily with his party's inner conflicts.
Another scion of the establishment, the son of George Romney, a pro-civil rights governor of Michigan, Romney had been a moderate governor of Massachusetts, and he
entered the race for the nomination as the well-funded front-runner. By the time he secured the nomination, Romney had been compelled to adopt extreme positions
popular in Tea Party circles but fatal in the general election, including selecting as his running mate Paul Ryan, a proud acolyte of the right-wing cult heroine Ayn Rand.
Neither Boehner nor Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell could break the GOP's absolutists, who repeatedly threatened shutting down the government or forcing a
fiscal default if their demands were not met. During the weeks after Obama's re-election, dogmatic hard-liners brought the nation back to the brink of the fiscal cliff. Ten
months later, after almost continuous skirmishing with the White House and with another fiscal crisis looming House Republicans called for the defunding of Obamacare
and forced a two-week government shutdown. Voters blamed congressional Republicans for the latest shutdown fiasco but the conservative base blamed Boehner,
McConnell and the rest of the party leadership for backing down once more. Persistent right-wing pressure inside the House Republican caucus opened an additional
political front with the ginned-up Benghazi investigations. Right-wing commentators, led by Fox News, imputed that the White House and former Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton had lied about the murders of four Americans in Libya. By the end of April 2014, two Senate committees and four Republican-led House committees had
investigated the Benghazi attacks and found no evidence of wrongdoing by senior officials, including Obama and Clinton. (A fifth House committee would come to the
same conclusion.) Still, Tea Party radicals in the House compelled Speaker Boehner to appoint a select House committee on Benghazi. Boehner named as chair Trey Gowdy
of South Carolina, who had won his seat in 2010 after defeating a Republican who had made the fatal mistake of publicly stating that he believed in the scientific reality of
climate change. In the end, the resulting Benghazi hearing proved to be a repeat of the Whitewater investigations. In a long-scheduled showdown with 11 hours of
testimony before a choleric committee a grilling unprecedented in the history of American presidential politics Clinton seemed to dispel the cloud of suspicion around
her and expose the entire affair as an overtly partisan witch hunt. Meanwhile, Speaker Boehner was losing his grip. Over the summer, congressional conservatives, led by
Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, delivered their latest threat to shut down the government, this time over defunding Planned Parenthood. In late September, Boehner, weary of the
intramural savaging, resigned from the speakership and his House seat, reprising Gingrich's departure more than 15 years earlier. The speakership fell to Rep. Paul Ryan.
With his Randian view of the world and past efforts to slash social spending, Ryan is the most committed ideologue to sit in the speaker's chair in living memory, standing
well to the right of the Gingrichite holdover Boehner. Yet the conservative media figures playing to the new breed of Republican radicals regard Ryan warily as not nearly

The current contest for

the Republican nomination has only accelerated the party's fitful lurch even
conservative enough. And Ryan had to work hard to win endorsement from the far-right Freedom Caucus in the House.

further toward extremism. After decades of ever-intensifying

radicalization, the Republican voting base of which three-quarters now define
themselves as Tea Party supporters, evangelicals or religiously observant was illdisposed to accept an establishment figure of any kind, resulting in a bizarre
primary season where "anti-politician" candidates like Donald Trump and Ben
Carson have dominated in the polls. No matter the identity of the victor, he
will be the leader of a party transformed since Nixon's nomination 48 years before
the 2016 contest a party now irrevocably bound by a series of inflamed
reactionary impulses expressed not only as hatred for the American
government and a desire to paralyze it but also in fear and loathing for
the new, modern and diverse American society. At one level,
history's tide may finally have turned against that reaction. By
the eve of 2016, evidence of a profound social and cultural revolution begun
decades ago became too strong to ignore. The rise of the Internet, changing
patterns in immigration, racial and ethnic diversity, family organization and
gender roles, as well as declining religious piety, have created an America

unimaginable when Clinton and Gingrich squared off 20 years ago.

According to data reported by the respected Democratic pollster Stanley B.
Greenberg, a majority of U.S. households are now headed by unmarried people; nonreligious seculars outnumber Protestants; and two-thirds of women are either the
breadwinners or co-breadwinners of their households. Racial minorities now
constitute nearly 40 percent of the nation's population . According to one Gallup
Poll, 60 percent to 70 percent of Americans consider homosexual relations, out-ofwedlock births and divorce as "morally acceptable." Even more striking, according to

the electorate has changed as well. In 2012, the

combined numbers of minorities, single women, millennials and seculars
formed 51 percent of the nation's voters. In 2016, Greenberg's analysis shows,
these same groups will form 63 percent of the electorate. As each of
these groups supports Hillary Clinton for president by margins of two to one ,
Greenberg,

Greenberg writes, "It is fair to say that

the United States has reached an

electoral tipping point." Despite these apparent social and

cultural trends, though, the Republicans might well win. They
understand the stakes, and their resources are astounding. The Koch brothers'
political network alone has vowed to spend $250 million on the 2016 campaign, out
of a two-year political budget reaching toward $1 billion. Fox News is a powerful force
in shaping public perceptions. Over the past 30 years, Republicans have proven
masterful at manufacturing pseudo-scandals that, with the aid of a cowed, careerist
mainstream press corps, have smeared reputations and distorted public debate. No
matter what happens in the national elections , meanwhile, the radicalized

Republicans will continue their power grabs in the states, having

gained control during Obama's presidency of the majority of governorships and
legislatures. This control has already altered national politics through gerrymandering
that virtually ensures a GOP stranglehold on the House of Representatives through
2023. It will allow the Republicans to

expand their campaigns to

restrict voting rights, gut firearm legislation and deprive poor women of
reproductive health care; and in Washington, Republicans will invent more select

committees to propagandize their political hoaxes. A Republican victory would

bring a comprehensive, regressive offensive unlike any yet seen

in modern American politics over the entire gamut of issues from taxes and
climate change to immigration and women's rights. More broadly, it would signal a
full-scale assault on basic democratic principles, not just on the
programs that have guided the nation since the Great Society, the New Deal,

the Progressive era, or even the Civil War, but on the living egalitarian
idea from which American progress has flowed. Not since the
1850s has an entrenched minority managed to shift one of the major political
parties to such extremes while also holding so much leverage over the
nation's politics. Then, it was the Democratic Party that became the vehicle of
reaction, as Southern slaveholders brooking no interference
with the expansion of slavery effectively rid their party of anyone
who would not truckle to their demands . When Congress passed laws not to their
liking, the Southerners threatened secession, and when they had so alienated the
rest of the country that they lost the White House to Abraham Lincoln in 1860, they
made good on their threats to secede, which drove the nation into civil war. The
crisis facing the United States today is not the same as it was then. But there

are similarities, and the stakes of the coming election, if not

those of 1860, are high enough. Over the past 50 years, the Republican
Party has by fits and starts eliminated all traces of moderation and moved
further and further to the right, well beyond where Goldwater, let alone Nixon,
once stood. By the 2016 campaign for the Republican nomination, that
radicalization has intensified to the point where, week by week, leading
presidential contenders seem to be trying to outdo one another in the shock
value of their right-wing extremism. And the more radical the Republicans
have become, the more apparent it is how profound a gulf separates

the two political parties. "A Choice, Not an Echo" went the title of a proGoldwater tract in the polarizing election of 1964. The 2016 election presents the
starkest choice since then, indeed, in living memory, but now with

literally everything at stake. The country will, as Lincoln said, become

either all one thing or all the other.

AT: Institutions Checks

Trump can get around all the checks and do whatever he
wants
Eric Posner, 6/3/2016, professor at the University of Chicago Law School, "And if
Elected: What President Trump Could or Couldnt Do",
www.nytimes.com/2016/06/04/opinion/campaign-stops/and-if-elected-what-presidenttrump-could-or-couldnt-do.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fcampaignstops //AZ

DONALD TRUMP clearly holds grudges. He has hurled insults at governors, senators, a judge
who recently ruled against him and Miss Universe 2014. He has also attacked the press, arguing that as
president he will open up libel laws so he can sue newspapers that publish purposely negative and
horrible and false articles about him. Mr. Trumps critics wonder whether a man with such a violent

But his defenders, like Senator John McCain

and the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, assure us that the
Constitution will constrain him. I still believe we have the institutions of government that
temper can be trusted with the presidency.

would restrain someone who seeks to exceed their constitutional obligations, Mr. McCain told The New
York Times. We have a Congress. We have the Supreme Court. Were not Romania. Under the principle of
separation of powers, the president shares power with Congress and the judiciary. The party system, the
press and American political traditions may constrain him as well. But what would this mean in practice if
Mr. Trump wins? It depends on what Mr. Trump wants to do. His signature issues are immigration and trade.
He could not build the Mexican wall without congressional support. Bu t

he could order
immigration authorities to deport unauthorized immigrants. And he could bar
Muslims from entering the country under existing law, which authorizes him
to bar classes of aliens whose entry he determines would be detrimental to
the interests of the United States. It wouldnt be the first time: President
Ronald Reagan cited this law, as well as his inherent constitutional powers, to
block a flood of Haitian migrants from pouring into United States territory in
1981. Can he slap tariffs on China, as he has threatened? Yes, he can. Congress has delegated
to the president the power to retaliate against foreign countries that engage
in unfair trade practices like dumping, leaving it to the president and trade
officials to determine what that means. In 2002, President George W. Bush
imposed steel tariffs on China and other countries for what many observers
considered political reasons. The World Trade Organization ruled the steel tariffs illegal in that
case. But Mr. Trump could simply ignore its judgment, and indeed withdraw the
United States from the W.T.O., just as President Bush withdrew the United
States from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty in 2002. While hes at it, Mr. Trump could
tear up the North Atlantic Treaty, which created NATO, an organization that
he has called obsolete. In May, Mr. Trump vowed to rescind President Obamas
environmental policies. He would be able to do that as well. He could disavow
the Paris climate change agreement, just as President Bush unsigned a
treaty creating an international criminal court in 2002. He could choke off
climate regulations that are in development and probably withdraw existing
climate regulations. Even if a court blocked him, he could refuse to enforce
the regulations, just as Mr. Obama refused to enforce immigration laws . In
wielding executive power in these ways, Mr. Trump would be following in the footsteps of
his predecessors. President Bush cited his commander in chief powers in
order to justify interrogation, surveillance and detention polices in the wake

of Sept. 11. While Mr. Obama has shied away from Mr. Bushs constitutional arguments, he has
interpreted statutes aggressively, while also relying on constitutional
authorities, to justify the military intervention in Libya in 2011 and his
nonenforcement of immigration laws. Mr. Trump has expressed impatience with his critics
and hinted that he would use federal powers against them. He wouldnt be able to put someone in jail

he could direct agencies to use their vast regulatory

powers against the companies of executives who have displeased him, like
Jeff Bezos, for example, the founder of Amazon. Mr. Trump has already hinted
that he would go after Amazon for supposed antitrust violations. He could
direct the Department of Justice to investigate his critics by prioritizing
categories of crimes they may have committed. Political opponents could be
accused of campaign finance law violations. Former government officials, like
Hillary Clinton, could be accused of violating secrecy laws. Even if the charges come
to nothing, the legal fees for defendants will be hefty . Mr. Trump could also crack
down on journalists who report on national security issues by enforcing
federal secrecy laws more aggressively than previous presidents. President
merely for criticizing him. But

Obama received a lot of criticism for prosecuting government employees who leaked secrets, but the
Justice Department did not bring charges against the journalists who published the leaked information.
What couldnt Mr. Trump do? He couldnt lower (or raise) taxes on his own. Hes supposed to spend funds
that Congress appropriates and for the things that Congress appropriates them for thats what stands in
the way of the wall (unless he persuades Mexico to pay for it and construct it on the other side of the
border). He could not follow through on his promise to impose the death penalty on killers of police officers
by executive order. And even where he does act, he needs to make sure his legal theories are in order. If
he wanted to withdraw climate regulations because climate change is a hoax perpetuated by China, no
court would allow him to. But if he said that the climate regulations were based on a speculative
assessment of harms that wouldnt occur for 100 years, he could succeed. Much depends on how far Mr.

There is a netherworld of laws that

presidents are supposed to comply with but courts dont enforce. He could
send military forces into a foreign country without authorization from
Congress; courts would most likely stay out of the dispute. What of his
suggestion earlier this year to kill the families of terrorists? Courts typically
defer to the executive on matters concerning military activities abroad. He
might even try to withhold appropriated funds or shift them around in
defiance of Congresss wishes. What, then, stands between us and a nearly unbounded Mr.
Trump, aside from the next election? Senators McCain and McConnell say Congress, but only a vetoproof majority in both houses, passing new laws, could stop Mr. Trump from
exercising the legal authority that Congress has already given the president.
Congress can threaten to withhold funds, but the presidents powers to veto
legislation and appoint government officers give him a large bargaining chip .
Removal of a president by impeachment is extremely difficult; it has never happened. The courts are
another barrier, but they would need to reverse their longstanding practice of
deferring to the president in matters of foreign affairs and domestic
regulation. The Supreme Court could, for example, declare an entry bar on Muslims unconstitutional.
Trump is willing to push existing legal understandings.

But its hard to predict how Mr. Trump would respond. After a federal judge, Gonzalo Curiel, ruled against
him on a motion in the long-running Trump University litigation, Mr. Trump called him a hater and a
Mexican (Judge Curiel is an American). Mr. Trumps biggest obstacle to vast power is not the separation
of powers but the millions of federal employees who are supposed to work for him. Most of these
employees have a strong sense of professionalism and are dedicated to the mission of their agency. They
dont take kindly to arbitrary orders from above. As President Harry Truman said ahead of Dwight D.
Eisenhowers presidency: Hell sit here, and hell say, Do this! Do that! And nothing will happen. To
make things happen, Mr. Trump will need to get loyalists into leadership positions of the agencies, but to
do so, he will need the cooperation of the Senate (or he will need to aggressively exploit his recess

appointment powers). Moreover, the small number of politically appointed leaders enjoy only limited
control of the mass of civil servants. These employees can drag their feet, leak to the press, threaten to
resign and employ other tactics to undermine Mr. Trumps initiatives if they object to them. Theyre also

Trump can fight back. He can appoint

loyalists not only to political positions in the executive branch, but to the
courts, and he may be able to attract them to the ranks of the Civil Service .
hard to fire, thanks to Civil Service protections. But Mr.

And while executive branch officials who disregard the law might be prosecuted by the Justice Department,

Trump would have one more trick up his sleeve. Like President George
H.W. Bush, who rescued Iran-contra defendants from punishment in 1992, he
could hand out get-out-of-jail-free cards in the form of the pardon.
President