Oh Dear Lord is it ugly............
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-ugly-truth-obamas-last-gasp-liberalism-14892
Barack Obama’s final State of the Union address sent a clear message, if not one the president had in mind. The text was a jumble of big themes and petty policies. What they added up to, however, was an admission that liberalism has lost its bearings. Even its most exalted spokesman—the man who holds the highest office in the land; the leader who confronted the Great Recession; our first black president—has nothing to say, at a moment when liberalism is decisively losing ground here and abroad.
Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders offer only the first hints as to what may replace the liberalism of the eighty-year-old welfare state. Trump is no fascist, but he is a demagogue who accurately senses that he need not mouth liberal pieties—voters will reward him for attacking immigrants, free trade and Muslims. Sanders, on the other hand, actually is a socialist, albeit one who by European standards may be to the right of some British Tories. Trump and Sanders both show, however, that pushing the boundaries of politics away from the liberal center has become a sound strategy, if not yet a winning one.
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-ugly-truth-obamas-last-gasp-liberalism-14892
Barack Obama’s final State of the Union address sent a clear message, if not one the president had in mind. The text was a jumble of big themes and petty policies. What they added up to, however, was an admission that liberalism has lost its bearings. Even its most exalted spokesman—the man who holds the highest office in the land; the leader who confronted the Great Recession; our first black president—has nothing to say, at a moment when liberalism is decisively losing ground here and abroad.
Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders offer only the first hints as to what may replace the liberalism of the eighty-year-old welfare state. Trump is no fascist, but he is a demagogue who accurately senses that he need not mouth liberal pieties—voters will reward him for attacking immigrants, free trade and Muslims. Sanders, on the other hand, actually is a socialist, albeit one who by European standards may be to the right of some British Tories. Trump and Sanders both show, however, that pushing the boundaries of politics away from the liberal center has become a sound strategy, if not yet a winning one.
