He has already written off the results of the 2016 election and is looking ahead to 2018. The weak reed upon which his hopes lean is a multiracial uprising of suburban voters who reject the agenda of the oligarchs represented by Clinton.
The forces coalescing around Hillary Clinton -- mainstream Wall Street, particularly hedge funds, beltway lobbyists, the big media, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and green capitalists -- do not share the priorities of Middle America.Kotkin could be right, Trump is possibly an oligarch masquerading as a faux populist. Perhaps we'll never know if, as polls currently suggest, he loses.
With Sanders conveniently dispatched, the crony-capitalist class is assured its worldview prevails. They can check all the boxes that Rob Atkinson has labeled as “the Davos application” of open immigration, greater globalization, free trade, and higher carbon prices.
In 2018, the real struggle will be to attract increasingly diverse suburban voters who naturally seek to protect what they have from the central bureaucracy. Latino and African-American families now ensconced in a comfortable, safe suburbs with good public schools may not appreciate a political party that wants to turn their neighborhood into the very one they escaped.
I fear Clinton backed by a solidly liberal Supreme Court will take us down the primrose path to societal oblivion. It's a path upon which Europe is already well and truly embarked.
