Blue Wave 2020

Signs clearly point to another Blue Wave in 2020, none of which, to my mind, are bigger than the implosion of the Conservative Party under Boris Johnson. 

Johnson went "Full Trump" once he became prime minister, promising a crash out from the European Union on October 31, and was rewarded by losing control of parliament. BoJo now governs with a majority of minus-21. The bill delaying a crash out will become law on Monday, and Nicola Sturgeon, leader of the Scottish National Party, and Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labour Party, will determine when new elections are held, not Johnson.

Remember, three years ago Johnson fronted the successful Brexit campaign for Tory Leavers, prefiguring Trump's upset victory over Hillary Clinton five months later. For Johnson now to be reduced to a chained, buffoonish zombie in the run-up to a presidential election year augurs ill for Trump.

Another ill omen for the faux-populism of Johnson and Trump is the new M5S-DP government that took office yesterday in Italy. Matteo Salvini, the Italian Trump, made a huge blunder when he collapsed the M5S-League coalition government in order to trigger snap elections. Apparently Salvini could not foresee that the existential enemies of the Five Star Movement and the Democratic Party would nestle down together to keep him out of power.

Whatever hopeful, "Big Tent," anti-establishment, anti-war vibe which filled the Zeitgeist three years ago, uniting Alex Jones conservatives with Jacobin-reading leftists and giving us Brexit, Trump and an Italian government led by Beppe Grillo's M5S, no longer exists. It has been replaced by a rump hard-shell anti-immigrant Know Nothing nationalism overshadowed by an approaching anti-austerity, anti-neoliberal, anti-war Blue Wave. 

Former Clinton pollster Stanley Greenberg is predicting a Blue Wave in 2020. But for the most part he is an outlier in the mainstream. Mainstream media continues to stem the tide. For instance, Disney's FiveThirtyEight is forever trying to explain away the progressive tilt of the Democratic Party.

Keep your eye on the UK general election. Great Britain is the Potemkin village for global neoliberal representative democracy. Tories and Blairites have run the show since the 1970s. For that to change in the next few months would be truly amazing.