“As Donald Trump started shambling toward the exit of the U.S. presidency last week, the U.S. left confronted the pivotal question hanging over our newfound interregnum: Who gets to say, I told you so? Since well before Trump’s election, progressives of various stripes have vigorously debated how to characterize the mogul’s brand of demagogy, and the threat that it posed to American life. Was Trump an ‘authoritarian,’ a ‘fascist,’ or a ‘typical conservative’? Was his open contempt for the rule of law a threat to Americans’ most basic freedoms, or an edifying illustration of our nation’s preexisting unlawful disorder, the mogul’s signature shamelessness making it easier for voters to see the rot in their republic, much as a caricature illuminates the flaws in a human face?”
“Most critically, what was a bigger threat to the progressive project in the United States: the mainstream media’s inveterate ‘both-sides-ism’ and attendant complacency about the GOP’s burgeoning contempt for democracy – or the anti-Trump movement’s embrace of a ‘tyrannophobic’ politics that obscured the material roots of right-wing populism, muted the ideological distinctions between Bernie Sanders and Bill Kristol, and privileged the defense of democratic norms over making our democracy responsive to the needs of working people?” – New York Magazine.