In the afterglow of Donald Trump's historic presidential victory, the Democratic firing squad is already out, looking for someone to blame.
It's time to look in the mirror.
Despite being a historically weak candidate, Hillary Clinton's demise wasn't just about Hillary Clinton.
Clinton was the final lifeline to a neoliberal bubble built by the Clintons and many others—that finally popped on November 8th, 2016.
As Thomas Frank brilliantly chronicled in his book "Listen, Liberal," following Richard Nixon's re-election in 1972, the Democratic Party decided progressivism had expired.
Democratic leaders—including emerging ones like a young, charismatic Arkansas laywer named Bill Clinton—saw a fork in the road, and the path to victory was in abandoning working people.
Sure, in later years, Bill and new wife, Hillary Clinton, would talk the populist talk as they began their climb to power in Arkansas politics on the road to the White House.
But as Ronald Reagan assumed power and began America's shift to a country based on social Darwinism and "I'm gonna get mine," the Democratic Party, now led by the neoliberal, Clinton-backed Democratic Leadership Council, sat to the side—complicit.
Seizing on the loosening of regulations and laws that previously kept corporate money and excessive special interest money out of elections, the Democratic Party began catering to Wall Street, big oil, big pharmaceutical companies, and the "professional class."