The theme of this post is too large to really do justice with a quick statement. I am seeking to articulate a larger argument on how the Democratic Party has transitioned, since the 1970s, to decisively support a strong, inclusive, internationalist perspective on governance, both with respect to the role of the U.S. as diplomatic and military hegemon and with regard to the self-confident dominance of free-market capitalism as the hegemonic doctrine of the global economy. In effect, the Democrats now occupy the space once occupied by the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth century Republican Party. On the other hand, the lingering connections of the party to its mid-Twentieth century role as the nominal standard bearer for the Keynesian welfare state and for a domestically-focused articulation of economic policy, crafted most decisively during the Rooseveltean New Deal, captivate a strong minority within the Democratic Party base, particularly among millennial voters - hence the appeal of Bernie Sanders. As such, Sanders, who, until this year, did not even count himself as a member of the Democratic Party(!), is successfully confusing and hindering what might otherwise be a successful transition of the party at a time in history where the world needs the U.S. to project an aggressive and confident leadership role in addressing, among other things, the untrammeled influence of transnational financial actors on the health of the global economy, the evolving political, economic, and military role of the Peoples' Republic of China in Eastern Eurasian and Pacific regions, the festering illiberalism of Putin's Russia, the chaos and impious butchery of militant Salafism spreading across the Muslim world, and the long term consequences of ecological transformations emanating from the global economy of hydrocarbons. In this sense, the world needs a U.S. that is willing, on the one hand, to concede that "America first" is not a viable political position for the future of humanity and that all Americans will have to shoulder certain fiscal and diplomatic/military burdens as the price of standing as a world leader, and, on the other hand, that America's cohort of global economic elites must bear the heaviest material burdens of all as a consequence of their own economically dominant positions. In short, the American electorate is going to have to realize that it holds a responsibility transcending its scale within the global population and even transcending its relative strength in the global economy to reshape the world for an age of peace and global economic/ecological sustainability - a role far beyond what the Obama administration has lulled the American public into accepting and, in important ways, diametrically opposed to the sort of inward looking, exclusionary self-strengthening championed by Trump.
Emphatically, if Bernie Sanders is entirely clueless and backward looking when it comes to articulating the U.S. role at this moment in global history, Hillary Clinton constitutes an unimaginably poorly suited, compromised, and electorally hobbled salesperson for America as a selfless leader to a broader evolution of a unified, liberal-democratic, transnational world vision. She is a philosopher queen bereft of adequate political skills to steer the American polity toward its proper place in the world and toward the depth of internal sacrifices necessary to cement that place. In the course of his presidency, Bill Clinton sought and, to some degree, succeeded in remaking both the Democratic Party and the federal government. On her path to power, Hillary Clinton needs to do something akin to remaking the American voter (Democratic, Republican, and independent) and the American citizen to accept a much broader hegemonic role for the U.S. This task is far beyond her limited abilities - she can't even accept her limited responsibilities for the Benghazi attacks in a way that acknowledges the necessity for a more aggressive American role in Libya and other places in the Muslim world and the likelihood that more sacrifices of this kind will follow from our involvements if we can't fix every constitutionally deficient state by mere recourse to force of arms!
On this note, I remain willing to argue that the present alignment of the major American political parties has decisively changed in the present electoral cycle and that it will continue to evolve in its current direction. The Republican Party under Donald Trump is becoming increasingly inward-looking, isolationist, economically populist, and backward-looking in its articulation of the economic and military power of the U.S. This view is not only antiquated and sterile but also profoundly dangerous to prospects for peace, international political stability, non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and global ecologically sustainable economic development. On the other hand, in the absence of confronting an inspiring and articulate defender of a different future and robust responsibility of the U.S. within the world, Trump's inward-looking vision also probably commands much more fidelity to the views of a majority of American voters - hence his recent rise in the polls on a prospective general election between Trump and Clinton. History desperately demands a stronger candidate than Hillary Clinton for an egalitarian, liberal-democratic, transnationalist future to confront the likes of Trump. Unfortunately, Bernie Sanders is not that candidate and, as far as I can tell, the Democratic Party is simply too confused about where it and the country as a whole stand to produce a dynamic advocate for the future.
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