Of course, this is not a fixed position. The success of the Bernie Sanders campaign, and the increasing attractiveness of the socialist idea to millennials, demonstrate that there are real possibilities. But Bernie's capitulation, and his refusal to run on the Green ticket, betrayed what I think was a very real possibility to spread left-oppositional ideas across the political map. It's very possible that Bernie could have beaten Trump. And even if Bernie had lost on a third-party line, he would likely have gotten enough of the vote to change the political conversation going forward in important ways.
That opportunity for the American left was lost to Bernie's TINA conviction: There Is No Alternative--to the Democratic Party. His choice was a trailing shadow of the opportunity that Syriza lost in Greece last year, because, as I pointed out in previous essays , the Syriza leadership could not imagine their way out of the European version of TINA (explicitly: No Alternative to capitalism).
In Europe and America, the capitulation of an incipient populist left paves the way for a populist right. Political actors like Bernie and Syriza are so convinced that if they fight for the left they'll lose to the right, that they revert to fighting for a center that no longer exists--and the right wins anyway. It doesn't make one terribly hopeful. We've already lost a couple of precious opportunities. Let's not lose any others.
Ironically, it is Donald Trump who has demonstrated--albeit in a Bizarro, demented way--the political truth of the old May '68 slogan: Demand the impossible.
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