January 20 Reckoning: How Democratic “Blessings” Bred the Trump Curse

By Cliff Potts, CSO, and Editor-in-Chief of WPS News

This Was Not an Accident

January 20 is meant to symbolize continuity: the peaceful transfer of power, the endurance of institutions, the promise that the system still functions. In the United States, that symbolism has collapsed. January 20 has become a reckoning date.

The rise of Donald J. Trump, recast by his movement as the forty-seventh president in spirit if not in constitutional fact, did not occur in isolation. It emerged from a long period of managed decline, marketed as progress and defended as realism. What is commonly labeled the “Trump curse” was not imposed on the country. It was constructed—incrementally, politely, and with bipartisan participation.

The Democratic Blessings That Failed

For decades, Democratic leadership embraced what it considered the blessings of modern governance: technocratic expertise, globalization, market efficiency, and institutional stability. These priorities were presented as pragmatic, unavoidable, and ultimately beneficial.

Under Bill Clinton, Democrats aligned themselves with capital in explicit terms. Trade liberalization, financial deregulation, and welfare reform were framed as modernization. The costs were acknowledged in theory and absorbed in practice by specific regions, industries, and households. Communities hollowed out while promises of retraining and transition rarely materialized.

Under Barack Obama, the pattern solidified. Following the 2008 financial collapse, recovery was defined by institutional rescue. Banks were stabilized quickly and decisively. Households were stabilized rhetorically. Economic success was measured through market indices and growth metrics that did not translate into durable security for millions of people.

These policies were defended as responsible governance. For large segments of the population, they felt like permanent deferral.

Governing for the Impressive

Neoliberal politics did not operate through cruelty so much as distance. Power increasingly oriented itself toward those who were legible to it: donors, credentialed experts, financial institutions, global partners, and media gatekeepers. Success became synonymous with reassurance of elite confidence.

The working majority—industrial laborers, service workers, rural communities, aging employees, and precarious professionals—were treated as background infrastructure. They were expected to adapt indefinitely. They were not actively targeted for harm, but they were no longer central to political decision-making.

Over time, invisibility produces consequences. When people are ignored long enough, they do not disengage because they misunderstand the system. They disengage because the system has ceased to recognize them.

Enter the Curse

Trump did not present a coherent program for structural repair. He presented permission. Permission to say the system was rigged. Permission to reject professional norms. Permission to attack institutions that no longer delivered tangible results.

His message resonated because it contained a partial truth that had been suppressed by polite politics: the system functioned, but not for everyone. Trump weaponized grievances that had accumulated under Democratic administrations unwilling to confront material inequality at its roots. He substituted recognition for redistribution and spectacle for reform.

That substitution was effective because the groundwork had already been laid.

One System, Two Styles

The divide between neoliberal governance and authoritarian populism is often overstated. In practice, they form a continuous system.

Democrats managed decline with decorum and technical language. Republicans blocked corrective policy through ideological obstruction. Trump monetized the resulting anger and instability. The aesthetic differed, but the direction of power did not. Wealth and influence continued to flow upward.

The blessings of neoliberalism did not prevent authoritarian populism. They enabled it by normalizing sacrifice without consent.

January 20, Without Illusions

Trump is not the underlying disease. He is the symptom that refuses to be ignored. The deeper failure lies in a political order that prioritized stability for institutions over security for people.

The most consequential error was not malice but misrecognition. The individuals and communities that sustained the country through economic transition were never impressive enough to protect—until their withdrawal exposed the fragility of the entire system.

January 20 should no longer be treated as a ceremonial reset. It should be treated as an audit. Not of personalities, but of priorities. Until political leadership confronts who was sacrificed in the name of competence, inevitability, and market confidence, the cycle will continue—with or without Trump.

Editor’s Note: This can be fixed, if we have the will to do so.

For more social commentary, please see Occupy 2.5 at https://Occupy25.com

References

Harvey, D. (2005). A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford University Press.

Hacker, J. S., & Pierson, P. (2010). Winner-take-all politics: How Washington made the rich richer—and turned its back on the middle class. Simon & Schuster.

Mettler, S. (2018). The government-citizen disconnect: How the invisible state undermines American democracy. University of Chicago Press.

Piketty, T. (2014). Capital in the twenty-first century. Harvard University Press.

Stiglitz, J. E. (2012). The price of inequality. W. W. Norton & Company.