It’s hard to imagine a happy ending to the recount of this year’s election results, spearheaded by Green party presidential candidate Jill Stein. Barring miracles in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania in the coming weeks, the challenge for the next four years remains the same: make Trump’s job impossible, and build a visionary alternative to both his autocracy and Clinton’s Third Way neoliberalism. Everything else is a distraction.

Stein has been joined by dozens of lawyers and security experts, $5m in crowdfunding and Hillary Clinton in her recount efforts. But neither Clinton nor Stein are the right women for the job of standing up to Trump. Continuing to revolve a media circus around either could cause us to lose focus from the task ahead.



US election recount: how it began – and what effect it could have Read more

The president-elect has emboldened and empowered a new generation of bigots and neo-Nazis. He has appointed their heroes to senior White House posts. Marine Le Pen is better poised than ever to win France’s presidential election next year, and deliver the European far right their victory of the century.

As the economist Mark Blyth has pointed out, “Global Trumpism” has been under construction for the last 30 years via neoliberalism, a project owned as much by the right as by Clintonian Democrats. Whatever the results of the recount end up being, voters in the US just raised a 60-million-strong middle finger to business as usual.

The result is both the real potential for autocracy and a gaping power vacuum in the Democratic party. Stein’s brand of politics are questionable for a whole host of reasons, including the way she fetishizes her party’s own marginalization, and distance from power. Indeed, her politics might be the opposite of what’s needed in Trump’s America: for the left to step into power at every level.

In a move toward that, Keith Ellison – the first Muslim member of Congress and a reliable progressive champion – is running for chair of the Democratic National Committee, a race that has received relatively little attention compared with the recount fight.

Some 12 million Americans voted for an avowed socialist – Bernie Sanders – and millions more are now polarized against Trump and his administration’s bigotry. And while the right are arguably better internationalists than the left in the 21st century, there has been a left resurgence as well. Consider Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party leadership; Podemos and progressive city takeovers in Spain to Iceland’s still-congealing leftwing government.

The US election recount is a long shot – but the alternative is catastrophe Read more

So, if the left is more powerful than it has been in decades. Why not leave the recount to Stein and Clinton and work on ensuring progressive movements and electoral challengers succeed?

To have any shot of capturing back power from Trump, the future of the Democratic party will need to be more progressive and populist than at any point in its history. It should be headed by women, young people and people of color, emergent from formations like the Movement for Black Lives and Occupy. The party needs to have a thirst for transformative wins – to dismantle white supremacy and shake power and wealth down from the top.

The recount is a fine and potentially even worthwhile sideshow to build that resistance against Trump, but only that. Actually winning will take a lot more than looking backward.

