Breitbart, Steve Bannon and Donald Trump against the world

As we reach the close of the 2016 presidential campaign, Walter Dean Burnham writes that the unstable dynamics of the election have their roots in a crisis of legitimacy for American politics as a whole. With his calls to return to a more idealized past of American greatness, Donald Trump has set himself up as a “savior with a time machine”. Trump’s appeal to less-educated working class voters has also been further enhanced by the anarchic (or even fascistic) rhetoric of Breitbart’s Steve Bannon

In 2017, Trump and the ultra-right wrecking crew will continue to roll back history

In his final post on the aftermath of the 2016 election, Walter Dean Burnham looks at where the Trump administration and its allies might be leading the US. Looking to history to analyze the present, he writes that the American political universe is based on a liberal individualist tradition, which led to a depoliticization of left-wing voters by the 1960s. This in turn allowed the Republican Party to shift the political spectrum to the right in the 1980s and beyond, a shift which eventually led to the rise of Donald Trump

This year’s upside-down election is part of a political realignment which encompasses both parties, and is fueled by public rancor.

In his final of three articles commenting on major political realignments, Walter Dean Burnham looks at the 2016 election picture as of early summer 2016. He writes that on the Republican Party side, establishment candidates such as former Florida Governor Jeb Bush have been flatly rejected by the party’s base, in favor of Donald Trump who is rapidly filling the GOP’s voter vacuum. For the Democrats, while former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has the support of the party establishment, the insurgent candidacy of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders points to the party’s own ‘runaway electorate’

Welcome to Trumpland

Walter Dean Burnham, of the University of Texas, Austin, warns that with Donald Trump’s victory amidst the rise of the alt-right, America should prepare itself for a tumultuous roller-coaster of a presidency over the next four years

By co-opting an ultra-right wrecking crew, Donald Trump is sending the US back to the 1920s

Since Donald Trump’s election, he has been assembling what Walter Dean Burnham has termed his ‘ultra-right wrecking crew’. And while Trump’s proposed Cabinet members are the most right-wing group of leaders in 90 years, at least they will require Senate confirmation. Trump’s appointment of Steve Bannon, on the other hand – who is heavily linked to the alt-right – in a high-profile White House role will require no such approval by elected officials

The 1930s realignment of German politics shows that in times of crisis, political equilibriums can quickly fall out of balance.

In the second of three articles on political realignments, Walter Dean Burnham examines the “perfect” (and perfectly lethal) critical realignment of German politics and the rise of the Nazis from 1928 to 1933. He writes that the Nazis mostly drew their support from those who had voted for secular-liberal parties in the past and other non-voters. While some supporters of the Catholic Zentrum and the Marxist parties were essentially ‘immunized’ against voting for the Nazis, the crisis of the Great Depression meant that much of the remainder of the electorate were happy to support Adolf Hitler’s party

This year’s election is not likely to mean the end of political gridlock in Washington.

The Democratic and GOP conventions were an illustration of the “Two Americas” that John Edwards spoke of in 2004, writes Walter Dean Burnham. While the GOP’s convention had a hateful atmosphere, and displayed a party closing in on itself, the Democrats by contrast, focused on the ‘Politics of Joy’. Even if Hillary Clinton does take the White House, however, he warns that she could still be facing a GOP-held Senate and House next January, which would continue the political gridlock that President Obama has faced for the past two years

Lessons for 2016 from the smashup of the Second Party System and the War of the Whig succession.

The rise of Donald Trump has caused many to predict that the Republican Party as we know it is on the verge of self-destruction. But such party realignments are nothing new. In the first in a series of articles on political realignments, Walter Dean Burnham writes that conflicts between the states over slavery and immigration led to the “War of the Whig succession” of the late 1850s and the rise of the Know Nothing Party. What followed was the destabilization of the 2nd Party System, and the creation of the Republican Party

The current realignment of US politics means that the outcome in November could be anyone’s guess.

May has been a pivotal month in the US presidential election; it has seen the continued success of Donald Trump in the Republican Party’s presidential primary, and his ascension to become the party’s likely presidential nominee. Walter Dean Burnham writes that Trump’s victory, and to an extent, the success of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, have been part of another realignment of US politics, one which has left many in both parties completely at sea