Still recovering from the US Election results, I ended up listening to Springsteen’s “The Ghost of Tom Joad” album this morning which seemed like a good fit with what happened in the Rust Belt last week (tellingly, in the New York Times story in that last link, the man who inspired the Springsteen song I’m posting below has become a Trump supporter.)
As I read more and more post-election commentary, I’m convinced that Barack Obama didn’t recognize the anti-establishment sentiment that helped him beat Clinton Inc. in 2008 had only grown and that Bernie Sanders, with a more positive pro-working class but similar anti-trade vision than Trump would’ve helped keep the Rust Belt blue instead of losing it to a billionaire New York businessman.
That doesn’t mean Bernie would’ve won the General Election – there would be different attacks, different strategies, different voting patterns – but unfortunately, we’ll never know for sure. Unless a Bernie-crat runs in 2020?
“Youngstown” – Bruce Springsteen
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