‘Clinton lost because of working-class revolt against neoliberalism’

Hillary Clinton lost the US presidential election against Donald Trump because of a working-class revolt in the country against neoliberal economics, an American journalist and political analyst says.

Don DeBar, an anti-war activist and radio host in New York, told Press TV on Sunday that the Democratic candidate “identified herself with the elite, and with their programs, and with the status quo, and that was all rejected.”

Clinton and several of her top advisers have blamed FBI Director James Comey for her bruising defeat to Trump in the November 8 election.

On October 30, just days ahead of the vote, the FBI chief announced to reopen the investigation into thousands of new emails sent by Clinton as secretary of state from 2009 to 2013.

However, two days before the election, Comey told congressional leaders in a letter the FBI had determined that a new batch of emails linked to Clinton’s private email server “have not changed our conclusion” that she committed no criminal wrongdoing.

“The reason that Clinton lost the election is because her campaign and the leadership of the Democratic Party were completely tone-deaf to what was actually happening in the country.  They didn’t lose it because of the FBI disclosures although that moved the official polling a little bit, [but] not really a lot. They lost it back in July, or leading up to July, when they stole the primary election from Bernie Sanders,” DeBar said.

“The entire view of the electorate by Clinton and the DNC [Democratic National Committee], and the mainstream media and the bulk of the so-called analysts here in the United States missed the primary driving dynamic in this election, and it’s because they don’t want to add to the public narrative, to reify in the public narrative, the fact that there is a working-class uprising in the United States against neoliberal economics, and also an anti-war sentiment that is very strong even among the Republican base,” the analyst stated.

“I saw that at the Republican National Convention when Trump got the most applause, standing ovation from Republican officials, who constitute delegates to the convention, thousands of them, when he said, ‘No more foreign interventions, no more regime changes, no more nation-building, no war with Russia,’” the journalist said.  

“It can’t be underestimated that the real driver was the economic desperation of millions and millions of people in the United States," he noted. 

"The fact that Sanders, who was supposed to be a token candidate, nearly captured the nomination in terms of actual vote and the fact Trump came from nowhere... and the fact that we’ve had people in the streets more or less for the last five years now, [establish that] the working class in the United States is in a state of rebellion against the institutions, which by the way poll as having almost no legitimacy. That is why Clinton lost,” DeBar said in his concluding remarks. 

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