America is in the grip of the fascist process

2 America’s institutions and constitutional democracy are weak: you can call for genocide under the first amendment and buy a gun to perpetrate it under the second. SCOTUS is a vector of anti-democratic actions and Biden flinched from even addressing that problem.

3 The far right got their act together. The coalition of Musk, Thiel, Adelson etc with the “traditional” Republican right could only be built with Trump as the avatar. It will lead to geopolitical catastrophe and more economic insecurity.

4 The Democrats are the most useless party in the whole of the global centre left. They refused to face Biden’s cognitive decline; refused to address the fears of Republican leaning working class voters; “delivered” economic growth with no upside for many workers.

5 The American left is worse than useless. It’s thoroughly penetrated with Putin/PRC proxies. The figure who has stood tall, pulled Biden/Harris to the left and played an outstanding mobilising role is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – but she’s surrounded by a mob of left-wing haters.

6 The tone of the Harris campaign – relentless positivity, hope, empowered women and role-model celebrities – only gets the progressive vote out. It does nothing to address the desire for change and deep insecurity among conservatives – who now include minorities. Labour learned that lesson; it’s a pity the Democrats didn’t listen to them.

7 So this is structural: it’s not an accident; and though Putin has helped engineer it, I doubt we will find Russian interference is decisive. This is a superpower whose population don’t want to be part of the liberal democratic order: for the price of a tax cut and some executions on death row, close to half want to be ruled by an open racist and misogynist.

8 This is a geopolitical disaster. It means Europe cannot even rely on the USA to meet its Nato commitments, or to show moral leadership in the rules based order – let alone stand with Ukraine.

9 All these factors are coming our way in the UK too. That’s why, at the last election, Labour’s job was to stop parts of working class Britain swinging far right. We did it. And we can hold the line if we deliver economically – but Biden/Harris shows that is not enough. The centre left needs convincing answers on crime, migration and personal security.

10 American liberalism is neither producing convincing answers or persuasive leaders. It is a self-centred technocracy that can’t cope with “alliance of the elite and the mob”. Its strategists have no strategy faced with an avatar of the far right. Learn fast.