Fear of a Counterrevolution
The left-wing critique of the Obama years goes something like this: Swept into office with an immense popular mandate after President George W. Bush crashed the American economy, President Barack Obama pursued half measures that led to a slow, brutal recovery, setting the stage for the rise of Donald Trump.
To follow the logic of this critique, the next Democratic president would have to be someone willing to pursue broad reforms to the economy and health care, someone like Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, or Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. Sanders’s unexpectedly strong showing against Obama’s heir apparent, Hillary Clinton, in the 2016 Democratic primary, and Clinton’s subsequent defeat in the general election, was taken as proof that Americans were fed up with the failures of neoliberalism.
[Ibram X. Kendi: Why I fear a moderate Democratic nominee]
Given the strength of this left-wing policy critique, and among Democratic voters, it may seem puzzling that Obama’s vice president, Joe Biden, now looks poised to secure the nomination. But the caution of the Obama era can that “nothing will fundamentally change” might be a safer bet to make Trump a one-term president.
