[lbo-talk] Trump-Sanders as rejection of Bush-Obama austerity

[Carl G. Estabrook]

"...Many Americans seem to have concluded that the political system is so corrupt and dysfunctional that only a total outsider can be trusted to take charge. The point was driven home to me while talking to a potential Trump voter on the fringes of the Plymouth rally. This man, a prosperous-looking lawyer, told me that if he did not vote for Mr Trump he would opt for Mr Sanders.
"The Trump and Sanders pitches to the voters have certain strong similarities. Both lambast all mainstream politicians as in hock to corrupt special interests and lobbyists. Mr Trump, a billionaire, makes a virtue of the fact that his campaign is self-financed — making him immune, he says, to the pressures brought to bear on all the other Republicans by their donors. Mr Sanders has raised most of his campaign money from small donations and has put Hillary Clinton on the back foot by pointing to the hundreds of thousands of dollars she has accepted in speaking fees from the likes of Goldman Sachs.

"Mr Sanders’ argument that “the business model of Wall Street is fraud” is finding an audience. Indeed, if anybody has said a good word about Wall Street in this election, I must have missed it. The most that Mrs Clinton will do is to suggest tentatively that “greed” in high finance, while bad, is not the only pressing problem facing the US...

"...America’s political class is only beginning to grasp the depth of the anti-establishment mood that is gripping the US. Almost eight years after the financial crisis, this mood seems to be growing in strength, not weakening.

"...all the talk is of students reeling under unpayable debts; and of parents having to work at two or three low-paid jobs to make ends meet. The idea that the economy is “rigged” in favour of insiders is now embraced, in some form, by most of the candidates in both the Republican and Democratic parties..."

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/9a42636c-cc22-11e5-a8ef-ea66e967dd44.html <http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/9a42636c-cc22-11e5-a8ef-ea66e967dd44.html>