Okay TakesThis is not a very original analysis, and not very deep. But I figure I should state it somewhere.
I’m going to use “fascism” and “socialism” in very loose terms. I’m going to be excessively general. If this all seems obvious to you, read something else. If it's surprising to you, read this blog more.
Bad times yield disillusionment with the status quo. At present, the status quo is liberal capitalism. This, the aftermath of the Great Recession, is a bad time.
In the history of liberal capitalism, this disillusionment has yielded two strong movements in reaction, pulling opposite directions: fascism and socialism.
Trump won because he spoke to this disillusionment, with the spirit (if not the letter) of fascism. Hillary lost because she did not speak to this disillusionment at all. Fascism and socialism speak to disillusionment and dispossession. Neoliberalism and centrism are incapable of doing so.
Since the Red Scare, the US political establishment has being fighting to suppress socialism. There are now few countries in the world where communism is less understood and taken less seriously than in the US. So now that we arrive in a moment where people are looking for radical change, and public discourse is weighted toward fascism.
The worse everything gets, the more people will look for radical answers.
The Earth is warming. Mass environment-driven migration is on the horizon. The future is not looking rosy.
So there’s a race to see how the remains of our ravaged planet will be divvied up: so that everyone can survive with some kind of dignity, or so that the übermenschen can achieve all the power they will themselves to. A humanistic ethic against a Nietzschean one. Right now, as socialists, as humanists, we’re both losing and fighting an uphill battle.
If Democrats continue trying to pose as the bastions of normalcy, defenders of the respectable and moderate, they will either continue to lose or trend rightward. The only answer is the reintroduction of socialism as a real political possibility. Its discourse is already finding purchase. We have a choice: we can make the Democratic party the political vehicle of socialism, and in doing so normalize this discourse. Or we can watch it spiral in a miserable death-embrace with Republicans into Bolsonaro-esque neoliberal fascism.