Relief as Far Right falls short in Dutch election, but there's no future in that feeling: Progressives need reasons for optimism

Elections to the Dutch House of Representatives, seated at the Binnenhof, saw the Far-Right fall short of power. Photograph: Binnenhof from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

The "Wrong Kind of Populism" had been defeated claimed Mark Rutte, leader of the governing liberal conservative VVD (BBC, 2017). Rutte celebrated the defeat of Geert Wilders and his Far-Right PVV, despite his own party's loss of 8 seats, and called the Netherlands the breakwater of the populist tide.

Despite Rutte's good cheer, the results will bring progressives relief but little optimism. Yes, the Far-Right was prevented from claiming a victory, but the debate has already been affected by them. Policy has lurched ever more into their prime, exclusionary, territory (Henley, 2017).

It was also a defeat of the Far-Right that will only be finalised when a broad spectrum of parties are rallied together into an effective coalition - that will have to include perhaps everyone from staunch conservatives to the Left-Greens.

That pattern that has been followed everywhere that a far-right challenge has emerged. The results have not been good. Look, for example, at the Brexit referendum and the US Presidential Election.

The Remain campaign needed support from a broad spectrum if it was to fend off the Leave challenge, but it did little to inspire the radical Left to get on board - in fact there were Left Exit groups. In the US, Hillary Clinton fell short in the face of the same challenge. In both cases, working class men walked away from the Left and the Centre in disillusionment.

As the nationalist tide rises, it pressures the Left to rally behind the uniting of all the mainstream forces. And, further, to accept some bad policies to head off worse. The result has been confusion and despondency about alliances and policies that leave a bad taste in progressive mouths.

It was the kind problem that came between the Remain Camp, and Hillary Clinton, and the Left. How could the Left, radicals, progressives, stand behind parties and institutions that backed the neoliberalism that had helped create the inequality and austerity that had fostered the Far-Right?

Such alliances are not a realistic basis for building a progressive future. The Left, and even the Centre, have conceded too much to Conservatives in the scramble to fend off the extreme Right - accepting too much of the Right-Wing narrative, letting politics be defined by it.

The existential threat that the far-right poses must, however, be faced and opposed by radicals and moderates alike. And if the need for opposition inspires a new period of cooperation and collaboration in Western politics, then all the better. In bitterly partisan times, it would be refreshing to step outside the bounds of narrow party interest.

But these broad coalitions must be formed on the basis of inclusion and not concession. They must form an open dialogue and take representation seriously: too many people have been left feeling excluded and ignored.

It is doesn't feel good to cheer when the Far-Right doesn't win. It feels more like the relieved sigh of the battle-hardened, weary and despondent, at keeping Rome standing just one more day. We need something more. Hope and idealism. We need inclusive alliances that aspire to something better.

The Alternative Year: What kind of year has it been? Four sparks of hope from 2016

For progressives, 2016 has felt like the season finale of an Aaron Sorkin drama. The political world seems to have fallen into a very dark, and rather conspicuously, 1930s shaped hole. Neoliberalism's war of attrition on public services has taken a deep toll and ordinary people face a difficult future. From natural disasters to terrorist attacks and wars, to the humanitarian catastrophe that is the refugee crisis, people have died.

Amidst all of the upset and unrest, the far-right are back and they're getting into positions of influence and power. Russia, America, Hungary and Poland all have authoritarian governments, while France, Austria, and the Netherlands have far-right parties within touching distance of power. Britain, Germany, Italy and others are being deeply affected by far-right populist movements.

What anyone with empathy is looking for now is hope - a sign that humanity's ongoing journey, its progress from the darkness into the light, has not stalled or ended.

Away from politics, there are still plenty of signs: the Ice Bucket Challenge worked, with money it raised being directly credited with a huge breakthrough in the understanding of ALS (Woolf, 2016); Starbucks worked with charities to make perishable foods donations, from end of day leftovers, possible - making tracks into reducing the West's copious food wastage and tackling hunger (Addady, 2016); clinical trials are being carried out for precision cancer treatments, that medical professionals hope will usher in a new era of higher survival rates with lower toxic side effects (Boseley, 2016); and, after bans on CFC aerosol chemicals, the Ozone Later is recovering (Milan, 2016).

We can make a positive difference. We'll be back in January 2017 to continue advocating for the progressive alternative, but in the mean time - to focus on the positive - here are some of the political events of 2016 that show that the progressive view of a humanity still holds true.

Liberalism in Canada

Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau at Pride, August 2016. Photograph: Pride Parade 2016 by GoToVan (License) (Cropped)

Now technically, Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party of Canada was elected in October, and entered office in November, 2015. Yet their first year in government was all 2016. So it counts.

What the election of Trudeau and the Liberals in Canada showed was that social liberalism - open, positive, progressive and tolerant attitudes to others - can win. That matters.

Regardless of what you think of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, or whether his Government will deliver, or of liberalism - which many seem content to conflate with neoliberalism right now, and leave to burn with it in the rising nationalist flames - their election win matters.

Trudeau and the Liberals stood as openly feminist and multicultural, proposing to intervene to help those worst off - including reaching out and openly welcoming refugees. Not only did they win, their polling numbers have risen and remained high.

Amidst intolerance and closing doors, it is important to know that open, decent, tolerant social attitudes can win elections, and emphatically at that. As with Syriza in Greece, it is important to see these progressive ideas reflected in a government.

The Majority in America

Hillary Rodham Clinton's long career, that seemed destined to peak in a return to the White House as President, came to a shattering end with defeat by Donald Trump. Photograph: Hillary Clinton speaks at a rally at UW-Milwaukee by WisPolitics (License) (Cropped)

It might be small consolation at this point, but Hillary Rodham Clinton won the popular vote in the US Presidential Election, and by some three million votes. In fact, along with the socially liberal Libertarian and Green party candidates, that's a socially progressive lead of some six million - a 52% to 46% lead.

And, as journalist John Harris cautioned after the Brexit vote, you cannot conflate all the poor and desperate people voting for the Right with the hatred and intolerance of the people they vote for. Most are afraid of the future, feel excluded and justifiably want change.

Despite all of the hate and vitriol, and Trump's self-aggrandising and media-hungry campaign, only a quarter of US voters turned out for Trump. More turned out for Clinton - and she wasn't even, perhaps, a favoured candidate for the Centre and Left.

As with Brexit, the fully roused expression of anger and hate, poured through a political funnel, has produced a dramatic victory for the Right. But it is based on a much smaller cross-section of society than people fear. It's still an unrepresentative minority, amplified by adversarial political systems.

It is important that progressives see that. Progressive politics in the US needs fixing, that's for sure. Too many people have been alienated, driven into dangerous arms. But it's fewer than people fear, and the majority of those are just people looking for a better life, for a better deal.

The Far-Right's first big defeat

Alexander Van der Bellen, former leader of the Greens, stood for the Presidency as a unifying Independent and defeated the Far-Right. Photograph: Alexander Van der Bellen by Franz Johann Morgenbesser (License) (Cropped)

In Austria, the first far-right Head of State since the second world war was narrowly avoided as Alexander Van der Bellen - a former Green who ran as an independent - won the Presidential Election for the second time in a re-run.

It is the first major defeat for the Far-Right in a contest they were thought to be ahead. However the Far-Right Freedom Party, for whom Norbert Hofer stood as a Presidential candidate, remains a rising force - currently the third largest group and polling high.

The alliance that defeated them was a broad spectrum - perhaps too broad to realistically maintain a united front. But what matters at this point is that a majority in Austria rejected the Far-Right. As important as it is to see progressive ideas in government, it is important to regressive ones defeated.

The Municipal Movement

Ada Colau, the Mayor of Barcelona who has been a leading figure of the municipal movement. Photograph: #‎PrimaveraDemocratica‬ amb Pablo Iglesias i Ada Colau by Barcelona En Comú (License) (Cropped)

And finally, to municipalism. It is an idea whose time appears to have come. Emerging in Spain, in Barcelona and Madrid the city governments are being run by citizen's municipal movements that are trying to radically change the way that cities are run.

On the ground, these municipal movements, like Barcelona En Comu led by Ada Colau, have brought together citizen campaigners, all with a local focus, and pursued a fascinating course. Their focus has been on trying to build spaces around the people who live in them and to bring more power over decisions to them - an essential priority at a time when so many people feel alienated.

And their work doesn't stop there. These municipal movements have been at the heart of effort to build pan-continental networks of cities, helping to tie the European continent together in new ways. For progressives, this work aught to be a lighthouse in the storm.

From housing, to utilities like energy and water, to facing the refugee crisis, the municipal movement has brought these issues into the local sphere. They're engaging people, in the places where they live and work, with tough issues and empowering them.

Lessons for 2017

That is world's away from the walls of silence, disengagement and alienation that proceeded the rise of the Far-Right. If progressives can take anything positive 2016, it can be this: social progressives are the majority, their ideas can win, their ideas can engage and empower, and the Far-Right can be beaten.

The first task for 2017 will be to build bridges. To build networks. To include and empower. To give a voice. The Alternative be back in the New Year to help progressives with that task as best we can.

US Presidential Election 2016: Alexander Hamilton said it had fallen to America to prove citizens capable of unselfish government that served the public good

Alexander Hamilton, Founding Father of the United States and the chief champion of its constitution. Image: Alexander Hamilton from Marion Doss (License) (Cropped)

In The Federalist No.1, arguing for the ratification of America's then brand new constitution, Alexander Hamilton wrote that:

"It seems to have been reserved to the people of this country to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force."

Hamilton drew up an image of a grave responsibility having fallen upon America, as the symbol and example of citizen government, to prove that government by consent, by reason and by dispassionate and sound judgement was something of which ordinary people - once removed from the compulsions of force or fear or hierarchical and servial duties - were capable.

But Hamilton also warned of the prejudicial interests which the new Constitution must overcome to pursue that ideal. Not least the "perverted ambition" of those who seek to "flatter themselves with fairer prospects of elevation" or "aggrandise themselves by the confusions of their country".

Sound like anyone?

Donald Trump has, at every turn, taken the path of division and self-aggrandisement. At every turn he has taken the low road, driving wedges into the heart of the country to exploit fear, disenfranchisement and confusion.

As much as the citizens of the United States likes to see their country as something that stands apart, it has nonetheless remained on trend. The rise of the language of far right politics - sectarian, intolerant - is not unique to America. It is feeding on desperation and hopelessness wherever it can find it.

Around the world, opportunistic individuals are stoking confusion to aggrandise themselves and pursue perverted ambitions at the expense of the public good. Trump is part of that: someone who will use the people while they're useful, only to drop them and persecute them the moment they're not.

At the Presidential Election, and at the many Senate and Congressional and other elections happening this week, America faces a stark choice - almost nowhere else in the Western world has two-party politics so deeply embedded itself.

On the one hand, the Republican Party has been consumed by its own folly. Trump is just the vile symptom of a deeper sickness - the boil than alerts us to the plague hidden within. Intolerance and sectarianism were seized upon as electoral tools in the Sixties and the price is now come due: to be overthrown and subsumed beneath an egotistical populist.

For progressives, the failures of the Democrats are different. They are the product of compromise, of playing within the system, of trying to achieve gradual reform from the inside - that has left them tainted by association with those they have had to work with to build consensus.

Hillary Rodham Clinton symbolises those compromises to many on the Left, and beyond, perhaps more than any other Democrat. A life long career of those compromises have also made her perhaps the most qualified Presidential candidate in history.

That is the upside and down of trying to get things done from the inside: there is a cost to claims of being a reformer when you have been part of the establishment for so long. If a person spends long enough in the political arena, it becomes hard to see for what they actually.

But that is where the people come in: the activists, the radicals, the social reformers, ordinary citizens in thousands of constituencies. As Laurie Penny argues, those who want radical change always see those in power as an enemy and Hillary Clinton is the enemy she has wanted all her life.

Clinton is a centrist, a moderate, a woman, a political insider with a lifetime of experience: a graduate of Yale; a consistent campaigner for healthcare reform, achieving successes for children and reservists; as First Lady, she spoke in China to tell the world that Women's Rights were Human Rights; she built an international consensus to pull Iran in from the cold; and her name is cited as a leading campaigner for numerous reforming policies - like equal pay and care for 9/11 first responders.

For progressives, with narrow but stark options, voting for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 US Presidential Election is a vote for the public good. In his own time, Alexander Hamilton stood opposed to the political fortunes of Aaron Burr, because he believed him to serve no interest but his own. Between the pragmatic public servant and the self-serving egotist, there is no debate as to who the arch-Federalist Hamilton would have supported between Clinton and Trump. As Hamilton argued:

"Happy will it be if our choice should be directed by a judicious estimate of our true interests, unperplexed and unbiased by considerations not connected with the public good."

But it doesn't stop there. One person alone does not make the future. No President, no leader, of no country, not even America, wields that kind of power. That is the work of movements. Progressives must find theirs and with it their voice. Remember: politics doesn't end with an election.

Vote Hillary, but don't do so expecting that you can just leave everything in her lap. Hillary Rodham Clinton is not a perfect candidate. No candidate is. She is human and flawed. So progressives voters must be prepared to hold her to account, to provide scrutiny and be critical, prepared to demand excellence at every turn.

Presidential Illness: An acknowledgement of the grave seriousness of the role

It has been said that there has never been a candidate more qualified for the Presidency that Hillary Clinton. Her recent illness is perhaps another indicator of what sets her apart from her opponent Donald Trump. Photograph: Hillary Clinton speaks at a rally at UW-Milwaukee by WisPolitics (License) (Cropped)

The latest twist in the chaotic US Presidential campaign came ten days ago, when Hillary Clinton had to leave a 9/11 memorial due to feeling unwell. It was later revealed that she was ill with pneumonia.

Of course, her opponents pounced on the opportunity to question her suitability and her capacity to serve as President. But Presidential illness is far from unusual - a number of Presidents have even died in office due to illness. Taking it as a mark of weakness on the part of the candidate is a very narrow and limited interpretation that ignores some important facts.

Probably the most famous President to be carrying an illness was Franklin D Roosevelt, who for over twenty years of his political career strove to cover up paralysis caused by Polio. Yet, despite illness, Roosevelt was President four times - the most of any candidate in US history - and steered the US through the Great Depression and the Second World War.

But perhaps more relevant to Hillary Clinton's situation are the illness and death of both President William H Harrison and President Warren G Harding.

William H Harrison, an old man by the standards of 1841 - in his late 60s, second oldest President on taking office after Ronald Reagan - died from pneumonia. In fact, the former US Army General died just thirty two days into his Presidency, following a punishing initial schedule that left little time for recuperation - and created, in the process, a constitutional crisis over the Presidential succession and the role of the Vice President, leading to the the 25th amendment.

Warren G Harding's death was also linked to pneumonia. Harding was, however, also suffering from a heart condition when he fell ill on a busy cross-country tour, ahead of the post-midterm legislative session. With high levels of stress, a poor diet and an incomplete recovery from the flu, he became tired and fatigued. The Republican died only two years into his first term, to be succeeded by his Vice President Calvin Coolidge and then his Treasury Secretary Herbert Hoover.

While the role of pneumonia, an inflammation of the lungs caused by infection, has been profound, the role of stress  - which hinders the immune system and makes people more susceptible to illness - is perhaps greater.

There are few more obvious indicators of the stress facing prominent figures than the famous greying of world leaders. From George Bush and Tony Blair, to Barack Obama, the role that the stress of office plays in seemingly prematurely ageing people should not be dismissed.

This all raises an important point. Being President of the United States should be a grave honour. If you are not being killed by it, perhaps you are not fully appreciating the gravity of what you're doing. If a candidate doesn't view the role of chief executive of a country as a stressful job, then maybe that candidate doesn't actually understand, comprehend or appreciate the true nature of the job.

Perhaps in this case, illness is not a sign of weakness but one of grave comprehension. Maybe, the real worry should be about the seemingly stress free, unconcerned, gurning and blasé candidate who shows no recognition of the gravity of the undertaking.

Around the World: The Trump Insurgency

Donald Trump chose the Republican Elephant as the mount for his insurgent populist campaign that has ridden the divisive politics of the far-right deep into the American political system.

With the two main parties having settled - which might be an almost too painfully apt expression - on their respective candidates, it is now established who will stand, and for what they will stand, in the 2016 US Presidential Election.

Hillary Clinton will face Donald Trump - but only on the surface will it be a contest between Democrat and Republican. Beneath the party façade the Presidential race reflects a struggle that is a clear pattern emerging across the Western world, seen clearly in most of the recent elections in Europe, between the mistrusted mainstream and a Far Right insurgency.

Whether it was the Brexit referendum or the French regional elections, in this time of crisis progressives have found themselves having to wrestle with a difficult proposition: whether to oppose an imperfect mainstream at the risk of inviting in the Far Right, or to stand with the hated establishment, itself struggling for legitimacy against authoritarianism and sectarianism.

In the US, Bernie Sanders and his supporters tried to capture control of the mainstream Democrats so that the Left might lead from the front. Having failed, they're now left struggling with what to do in the face of Trump's mirrored insurgency succeeding in its capture of the rival Republicans. Despite Sanders' endorsement of Hillary, many of his supporters remain unconvinced.

Trump's insurgency has increased the sense of urgency, if not yet panic, across the Centre and Left. With no hint of irony, despite the hyperbole, even moderate commentators are expressing genuine fears for the future of American democracy (Finchelstein, 2016; Noah, 2016; Collier, 2016) - perhaps a part of which is an attempt to motivate the Left to fall in behind Hillary by stressing the seriousness of the fight ahead.

Political sensibility suggests that moderacy will ultimately win out - that Trump will eventually, whatever his rhetoric, have to bow to political realism. But that sensibility is cold comfort.

The most dangerous thing Trump has done is to force the coalescence of a constituency, previously scattered and with no common identity, that is persuaded by and supportive of authoritarian values (Taub, 2016). Trump himself, whatever his reactionary verbiage, is less of a concern than what this organised political movement, given common identity, might yet be used to accomplish.

The Republicans, the Grand Old Party (GOP), had already been through the long slow process, from Lincoln's time onwards, of coming under conservative control. But since the 1960s, conservatives have decisively consolidated their control over the party - including inviting the influx of Southern Democrats spurned by the embrace of the civil rights movement by the Democrats.

The consolidation definitively moved the GOP away from the Republicanism of Lincoln toward something more resembling the Republicanism of Jefferson - a parochial populist anti-establishment, or rather anti-elite, politics, with a strict and restrictive adherence to the constitution. Recent decades saw that combined with a sectarian Nativism and a politicised Evangelism.

What Trump has now rallied about the Republican Party is support for a popular authoritarianism able to cut across the distinctions, separating members of the coalition headed 'Republican', with a methodology: signified by a language that is brash, abrasive and often violent.

It is not surprising in the face of Trump's rhetoric that people have drawn connections between him and fascism. The theme of violence against others, against opponents, violence and conflict as decisive social positives, was a crucial tenet of fascism and has been inherited by its more 'democratic' successor populism (Finchelstein, 2016).

The Left and Centre getting behind the mainstream to oppose the rise of these violent ideologies is only the first step. Defeating it at one election is not the end of the matter. It does not address the reasons why people would seek out an abrasive, anti-establishment, anti-elite, strongman leader in the first place. The concerns of those voters must be understood, contextualised and addressed with positive solutions.

The angry, authoritarian-supporting, voters who would back a man like Donald Trump are not the enemies of progressives. For the most part they're victims of economic conditions, looking with misguided hope to strength and might for deliverance. The job of progressives is to extend a hand, show a better way to build a society and to expose the Far-Right programme for the fraud it is.

Road to Super Tuesday: The US Presidential Primaries have so far been a tale of outsiders rocking the establishment

Texas, with the most delegates, will be the key battleground come Super Tuesday. Photograph: Texas State Capitol in Austin from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

Tuesday 1st of March marks a key moment in the long and winding US Presidential election. So-called Super Tuesday will see more than ten states, including key state Texas, declare their choices for Democratic and Republican candidates for the Presidency (Weiland, 2016).

Going into Super Tuesday, the primaries for both parties are much closer than previously predicted. The tight races are largely thanks to their being contested by the outsider candidates Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, who are upsetting prior expectations and putting the old two-party system to the sword.

The 2016 US Presidential race was supposed to be a straight race between two clear favourites - one from each party. From amongst the Democrats there was Hillary Clinton, while from the Republicans there was Jeb Bush.

Hillary was a former First Lady, as wife of Bill, and in her own right Secretary of State and a long time Senator. Jeb is the son of one President and the Brother of another, with executive experience as Governor of Florida. The rest appeared to be a formality.

Contrary to first impressions, however, the supporters of neither party where in the mood for a coronation. There were, from the first, insurgent candidacies, but they were paid little heed and given long odds.

Commentary watching the Republican nomination race, in particular, found something between fascination and amusement in how long the list of candidates for the GOP nomination was becoming (Gabbatt, 2015). Where analysis fell on the respective lists in depth, some where given more credibility than others.

Early runner Scott Walker was one such candidate. The Governor of Wisconsin has a controversial record that has proven popular with fiscal conservatives in the GOP (Pilkington & Sullivan, 2015) - including spending cuts and confrontations with unions.

Walker's run for the Republican Party nomination certainly made a lot of sense. As one part of a Wisconsin trio, along with GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan and GOP Party Chairman Reince Priebus, that are trying to set the agenda for the modern Republican Party (Balz, 2011; Healy & Martin; 2015).

The Democrat's version was Martin O'Malley - who was famously the inspiration for the Baltimore-based TV show The Wire. O'Malley entered as the third runner alongside, and 'moderate' alternative to, democratic socialist Sanders and the scandal mired Clinton, clearly hoping to be seen as someone more acceptable to a broader middle ground of voters (Tabor, 2015).

However, all bets were upset by Trump and Sanders.

There is little to be said about Donald Trump from a progressive view, other than to note the apparent popularity of his brand of being offensive to people from almost every demographic group.

Bernie Sanders started the Democratic race with isolated support in only a few Northeastern states and lay nearly 60 points behind Clinton (Daily Kos, 2015). Yet by the Nevada caucus the Vermont Senator was just 5 points adrift (Lewis et al, 2016).

Yet both outside runners still face barriers beyond the Democratic-Republican establishment itself.

Trump's divisive message has kept him stuck in the mid 30s in the percentage polls - although in Nevada on Saturday he did break the 40% barrier (The Guardian, 2016). Meanwhile the more 'mainstream' candidates have together pulled in over 50% over numerous polls.

Coming from almost the opposite direction, Sanders has struggled to get his message out beyond his core of young and working class voters. South Carolina showed this with abundant clarity as Hillary Clinton won 74% of the vote and overwhelmingly with voters who were not white (Walsh, 2016). Clinton, backed overwhelming by the party elite, has campaigned smartly and is so far holding back the rising popular tide.

Regardless of the barriers in their way, the outsiders have none-the-less shaken up the establishment.

This is demonstrated most clearly in the Republican race where mainstream favourite Jeb Bush's campaign ended in complete failure in South Carolina (BBC, 2016), when he dropped out with little to show for millions in fundraising. Marco Rubio, the next to be annointed by the GOP mainstream, inherits a deficit to Trump that it will take huge momentum to overhaul (Stokols & Palmer, 2016).

Super Tuesday will give the first major indications of whether the insurgent candidacies will have the momentum to topple their respective party establishments. Even if the party elite see off the challengers, there doesn't seem to be a positive outcome likely for them.

At best for the Democratic-Republican establishment, it will likely see off a strong opposition run only to be fatally undermined. As seen elsewhere, like in France, the mainstream will limp on hounded by outside forces that sense weakness and opportunity. At worst, the two-party system that has governed the US will not have been broken apart, but rather hacked and hijacked.

Iowa Caucus: How did the establishment Democratic-Republican system lose control of the 2016 US presidential election?

Abraham Lincoln was the first President from the Republican Party. A liberal and a centrist, whose party believed in civic responsibility, individualism and a liberal reading of the constitution. Photograph: Statue of Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

The Iowa Caucus, tonight, will mark the true beginning of the 2016 US Presidential Race as the point at which there will finally be some real data. So far the Presidential campaign has been a strange and controversial affair, with much to be set straight by the nominations process in Iowa.

On the Democratic side, there is now a two-way race where the nomination had looked like being little more than a formal hurdle for Hillary Clinton  (Jacobs, 2015). That was until Bernie Sanders, Senator for Vermont and a self-described democratic socialist, entered the race.

Quietly at first, starting some fifty or sixty percentage points behind Clinton, Sander's campaign has gathered momentum as thousands have turned out to hear him speak (Roberts, 2015; Roberts, 2015{2}). While support for Sanders - beyond a few high-polling constituencies - has been doubted, he has nonetheless been developing into the Democrat's anti-establishment candidate (Silver, 2015; Karp, 2016).

On the Republican side, they too are experiencing an anti-establishment insurgency. With an initial list of more than a dozen candidates, the process of holding debates was complicated enough (Gabbatt, 2015). Yet Donald Trump's candidacy quickly turned the nomination race into something not far short of a farce.

The potential candidates have struggled for air time, even split across two debates in the shape of an undercard and a main contest (Taylor, 2015). As the so-called moderates have struggled, Trump has stood out as the loudest and clearest candidate - even if he has been repulsive and offensive (Lewis, 2015).

Trump represents the toxic stew that the Republican Party has become, with the extreme Religious Right seeming less offensive by comparison with Trump. So deeply have the Republicans become embroiled in acquiescing to their own loudest and most deeply partisan supporters that, as put by one of the early establishment favourites Jeb Bush, it might almost be necessary for a Republican to lose in the primaries in order to win the general election (Mishak, 2015).

For both parties, insurgent figures are upsetting what was supposed to be a slick machine. Yet the fact that the United States' Democratic-Republican establishment is so deeply ingrained into the fabric of the political system, as to be virtually unshakeable, seems to have invited this situation.

Various movements, unable to muscle in alongside those two elder statesmen, seem intent on seizing control of those parties themselves first as an entry point. The big question is, what opened the establishment's back door in the first place?

The Party of Lincoln

Photograph: Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

From its founding, the Republican Party dominated American politics, right up until the New Deal coalitions of the 1930s. For most of that period Lincoln's party, in European terms, where Liberals. They stood for individualism, free markets, a constitutionalist stance consistent with the liberal belief in the rule of law, public education and were brought together as abolitionists, wishing to bring an end to slavery (Wheare, 1948). They also carried an interest in state action in the form of tariffs and public investment, inherited from their Federalists and Whig predecessors.

As a result, their members and supporters were a diverse group. From African-Americans, both free and liberated, to businessmen, small business owners and factory workers, to the white working class (Cornwell, 2016) - of a number of backgrounds including protestants and Germans who had come to the United States following the defeat of the radicals, republicans, suffragists and revolutionaries in Europe's Springtime of the Peoples uprising in 1848 (Rapport, 2008).

But the party of Abraham Lincoln were also centrists. Lincoln in particular believed deeply in civic virtues. His party leadership and Presidency were typical of those values, as he sought balance and compromise between progressive and conservative positions, between the popular will and individual rights, in order to hold together his party's divergent factions - ranging from radical abolitionists to constitutional conservatives.

Yet when Lincoln was murdered, only ten years after the founding of the party, the equilibrium was lost. The radicals sought to punish the South and pressed on with reconstruction, enforced by the military, while the conservatives sought a swift reconciliation. That internal divide came to an end with the diminishment of the radical faction due to corruption, splits, an economic depression and a disputed election that led to a tawdry compromise - ending reconstruction and abandoning the South, along with many freed former slaves.

The party then settled down to supporting business with high tariffs, encouragement for industrialisation and modernisation and investment in infrastructure like railroads. Yet the party was never far from the latest row between progressive and conservative factions - such as on prohibition, which drove less pietist Protestants out of the party, or Theodore Roosevelt leaving to found the Progressive Party, which proposed forward-thinking reforms like women's suffrage and comprehensive social security.

The New Deal Coalition

What must have seemed like a clear run to the Presidency, has become for Hillary Clinton a complicated game of placating popular discontent from her position within the establishment. Photograph: Hillary Clinton speaks at a rally at UW-Milwaukee by WisPolitics (License) (Cropped)

The Great Depression brought the era of Republican dominance to an end. It also signalled the beginning of a dramatic shift for the Democrats. Over the next thirty years the party would go from being dominated by deeply conservative, nationalist and sectarian - to outright segregationist - forces in the South, to the new home for all progressives, from liberals and centrists to social democrats and trade unionists.

In order to provide a positive and interventionist response to the Great Depression, Franklin D Roosevelt assembled a grand coalition that combined the Democrats' core support - white, southern and conservative and including many extreme nationalists, with whom the New Deal did not rest easily (The Economist, 2013) - with many groups. At the heart of it all, though, where the working class (The Economist, 2011).

Roosevelt, by reaching across political boundaries, started a shift that opened up the possibility of the Democrats reaching new voters which broke the party out of their dependence upon their narrow conservative base (Jenkins, 2003). That in turn would make the Civil Rights Act feasible, as the Democrats could afford to alienate and effectively cast out the toxic political support of the white, racist, Southern Democrats.

Embracing the role of a progressive party is, however, not without its drawbacks. It comes with high expectations. And like elsewhere in the world, mainstream progressives, like the social democrats in Europe, have often faced criticism for being too tight with the establishment and too slow to bring about reform.

While part of that is surely the logjam that is the American political establishment, there is plenty of legitimate criticism of the Democrat's failure to argue for a better alternative for America (Jones, 2016). Those disappointments lead to disaffection, which can lead to anti-establishment movements.

As a big tent, with little alternative for those seeking change, all of those hopes and all of that energy is funnelled through the Democratic Party. So when a candidate like Bernie Sanders emerges to give those frustrations a candidate and a voice, the traditional party hierarchy has to start trembling - as happened with the rise of Jeremy Corbyn to the Labour Party leadership, where the establishment backed candidates struggled to inspire with their calls for practical politics in the face of a hopeful and optimistic message from an insurgent candidate to enthused supporters.

Much as Corbyn's opposition were seen as the heirs of the New Labour establishment, Hillary Clinton, as the partner of a former President, a long time Senator and Secretary of State in the Obama Administration, is undoubtedly - despite being a woman - seen as a member of the establishment (The Guardian, 2016). Finding a way over that hurdle will likely come to dominate her Presidential campaign.

The Southern Strategy

The struggling campaign of the so-called moderate Jeb Bush is symptomatic of a Republican Party hijacked by narrow, hard right interests. Photograph: Former Governor Jeb Bush speaking with supporters at a town hall meeting at the FFA Enrichment Center in Ankeny, Iowa by Gage Skidmore (License) (Cropped)

The success of the Democrats in shaking off, with affirmative action, the chain around their necks that was a history of association with slavery, segregation and the suppression of rights, would become the roots of the problems for the Republicans today.

Seeking short term political advantage, the Republicans sought to appeal to those voters and interests who felt they had been abandoned by the Democrats over the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Nichols, 2014). The Republicans isolated, alienated and drove out most of their remaining liberals to open themselves up to be the party of reaction.

That move has, after a century of the conservative faction attempting to assert its control, instead left the Republican Party as little more than a hollowed out shell. When the Republicans sought to pander to extreme, southern Christian Nationalists, welcoming them into the party in leadership positions, they killed off what little was left of the legacy of the Party of Lincoln.

Conservatives, in their short sighted pursuit of electoral gains, allowed the Religious Right, Christian Nationalists, to hijack the party in the long term, using the party's credibility and colours to promote their extreme causes. That extremism has begotten extremism, stoking up anger and division - only for candidates to then have to satisfy it later for the right to stay in office - driving the party ever further to the Right (Frum, 2011).

The result has been moderates, who are not really that moderate, struggling to even get a hearing at debates. Jeb Bush, for example. His immigration policy has shades of his moderate father's call to bring people out of the shadows, to stop making it illegal for decent people to work hard within the law or to have their children educated (Bush & Bolick, 2013; Lee, 2015).

But so-called moderates like Bush, or Marco Rubio, are outflanked and forced into a race to the bottom by candidates like Ted Cruz, a member of the Religious Right who has called for a bombardment of the Middle East (The Economist, 2016), or Carly Fiorina, who with no political experience and a questioned business acumen has compared herself to Margaret Thatcher (Lewis, 2015). All this does is force Republican candidates to put the narrow interests of party before the broader ones of the country.

That approach didn't work for Mitt Romney. As Barack Obama's challenger in the re-election year of 2012, Romney won soundly amongst the conservative and Evangelical Christian base of the modern Republican Party (Rove, 2015). Yet his narrow focus on helping the wealthy over the rest, his focus upon the party base over the country, dropped him short of the line (Scheiber, 2012).

The 2016 Election

Bernie Sanders is the heir of the Democrat's shift to embrace progressive politics through the 1930s and 1960s, and of modern progressive discontent with the establishment. Photograph: Bernie Sanders speaking at Hec Edmundson Pavillion in Seattle by Tiffany Von Arnim (License) (Cropped)

The Republican Party have turned a long way from the civic republicanism of their origins and it has helped fan political extremism - which looks likely to leave the established order in American politics weak and threatened. Not least from Donald Trump who looks likely to leave the Republican Party in the dirt just soon as he's done with them, having levered the party apart in the process.

In the Democrat camp, Clinton is hard pressed by the popular support for Bernie Sanders. Sanders is the only candidate in the race standing for a truly progressive alternative, earnestly wanting to create a more just, more equal America, in a country which is not open to such ideas. That is worthy of tremendous admiration. Yet it will also no doubt frighten the hard right.

For Clinton to top the polls in Iowa would be business as usual, crisis averted for the establishment. Likewise if a moderate candidate is able to step up for the Republicans. For a progressive alternative to break through the establishment, and get past hard right partisanship, would be a tough ask. As elsewhere around the world, the Presidential race looks like ultimately being a struggle between the establishment and an insurgent far right.