This is a great piece, and I think it raises many valid points around certain areas of policy where the general public are moving to the left (especially when it comes to healthcare).

However, I think there is a slight misreading of the situation here as well. When I look at the 2016 election, I don’t actually see a broad general movement to the left per se; I see a sharp rise in the politics of populism, and in particular, a rise in the attraction to populist leaders.

On one level, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump are polar opposites. Certainly, Bernie doesn’t display the racist or sexist traits that Trump exhudes.

But on numerous other levels, Sanders and Trump are remarkably similar. They are both — at least ostensibly — protectionists, or, economic nationalists. They both railed against the bourgeoisie, even though in practice, Donald has overtly supported the interests of the wealthy to the exclusion of nearly all others.

They both advocated for an America that is disengaged from the world, both economically and geopolitically (Trump is finding this somewhat more difficult to achieve in practice, although it’s pretty clear that his engagement with the rest of the world is grudging at best).

Perhaps most importantly in my mind, both Sanders and Trump proposed simple solutions to complex problems, often without clear ways of tangibly achieving change. Large, exciting policy pronouncements carried no detailed plans for implementation— including realistic costings — with such details either hand-waved away, or postponed to another day when everything would be “worked out”.

Although Trump has turned out not to be the champion of the working class, he certainly banged all of the right drums, many of which sounded roughly similar to Sanders (although perhaps with slightly different policy prescriptions). Everyone will have healthcare, everyone will have jobs, the working class will be resurrected and the wealthy will be punished, and we (America) will disengage from the world; let the world take care of itself— in some respects, I saw both candidates as two sides of the same coin.

I say all of this because, if you look at the coverage of the election in 2016, almost no time was ever devoted to public policy. We were bouncing between ridiculous email scandals, rallies of various kinds, and other random controversies that put the focus entirely on personalities rather than policies.

So, on one level, it’s tempting to think that America is learning from history and is adopting slightly more progressive stances in areas where such ideas make sense (like healthcare). However, this is a rosy reading of the situation at best; in reality, I think we’ve seen a tidal wave of support for simplistic populism (on both the left and the right) — if only we choose the right candidate, they will solve all our problems. Our enemies are two-dimensional figures and, if they are taken down a few pegs, we’ll all (it is assumed) be on a more even and “fair” footing.

I’m not saying for a moment that Sanders would be a Trump-like president (far from it, I think). But I do think we have entered a time when numerous populations around the world — including in America — are far more susceptible to autocratic tendencies in their leaders, even if those tendencies only end up being composed of communication style rather than policy substance.