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There was a very simple way to head Trump off at the pass; say you’re going to do something about illegal immigration, which is wildly unpopular with the body politic, and then fucking do it.
That’s it. That’s the whole game. That would have stopped Trump because he would have never developed his constituency, which wasn’t invented by him but simply ignored by both parties.
There was electoral gold in the streets just waiting to be picked up but a prospiracy driven primarily by rank class hatred blocked it. All it took was one defector.
This comparison may not generalise, but this always makes me think of the first collapse of One Nation over here.
For the unfamiliar, One Nation is/was an anti-immigrant Australian political party. It was founded in the 90s as an expression of protest over immigration, and took some bites out of the ruling centre-right Coalition's right flank. This continued... up until the Coalition adopted a hard-line policy on illegal immigration, communicated that (cf. the Tampa and Children Overboard, both in mid-2001), and by doing so completely smashed One Nation. Without their flagship issue, One Nation's other problems (corruption, incompetence, etc.) became more visible and they declined heavily.
You can defeat the populist/nativist surge - you just have to address the issues that are motivating them.
(One Nation have made a post-2016 comeback, rebranding as a more generic far-right or nationalist party. In the 90s they were basically an anti-immigrant party who worried that Australia was being "swamped by Asians". In the last decade they pivoted to anti-Islam for a bit, and then anti-wokeness, and are generally still flailing boobs. The larger issue remains - One Nation do well when there are issues that large segments of the electorate care about but which the major parties are not responsive to. One Nation are a symptom of political dysfunction. As with most far-right parties, then, it's foolish to try to attack them by attacking the party itself. You have to attack the underlying policy failures that give the party credibility. Once that's done the party's inherent weaknesses tend to come out.)
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