On one of his many post-presidential speaking tours, Barack Obama told a 2017 summit on food innovation in Milan: ‘People have a tendency to blame politicians when things don’t work, but as I always tell people, you get the politicians you deserve.’1 He bemoaned the low voter turnout and leftist apathy that facilitated, he believed, the election of Donald Trump. ‘If you don’t vote and you don’t pay attention,’ he told the audience, ‘you’ll get policies that don’t reflect your interest.’ We might counter that his eight-year term was characterized by a set of policies that did not reflect the interests of the majority who voted for him – from the bailout of corrupt financial institutions to the escalation of drone warfare and US imperialism. We could also suggest that his extension of a largely neoliberal agenda throughout his term could only lead to political apathy. Even the extension of healthcare provisions to millions of uninsured US citizens under the euphemism of Obamacare – the major political victory of the Obama era – reinforced the marketization of healthcare and further enabled insurance and pharmaceutical companies to capitalize on the ill-health of millions of Americans.2 The fact that parts of the Affordable Care Act were written in collaboration with these very companies was a warning sign.3
If Obama represented hope, as his initial 2008 election campaign promised, then his decision to reinforce the very economic and social system that engenders hopelessness undoubtedly helped stoke the rightwing anger and leftwing apathy that permeated the 2016 US presidential election. Also, if voter turnout was the real problem with the 2016 election, then the huge turnout for the 2020 election showed that Trumpism is built around a sizeable anger against, and deep desire to move beyond, the neoliberal status quo in the US. While Biden won the presidency, the Democrats will have to reckon with this reality sooner rather than later.
