Sul Guardian, il Premio Nobel Joseph Stiglitz si chiede se Trump sia stata una aberrazione momentanea nel sistema americano, o se sia il segnale di un malessere più profondo. Nella visione di Stiglitz, per almeno un quarto di secolo il GOP ha apertamente fatto gli interessi delle elites economiche attuando misure apertamente antidemocratiche (voter suppression, gerrymandering) e tendendo la mano ai fondamentalisti religiosi e ai suprematisti bianchi.

Nel frattempo, le scelte politiche ed economiche hanno ampliato le disuguaglianze, favorendo l’ingresso in politica di pericolosi demagoghi.

We Americans must reform our political system, both to ensure the basic right to vote and democratic representation. We need a new voting rights act. The old one, adopted in 1965, was aimed at the South, where disenfranchisement of African-Americans had enabled white elites to remain in power since the end of Reconstruction following the civil war. But now anti-democratic practices are found throughout the country.

We also need to decrease the influence of money in our politics: no system of checks and balances can be effective in a society with as much inequality as the US. And any system based on “one dollar, one vote” rather than “one person, one vote” will be vulnerable to populist demagogy. After all, how can such a system serve the interests of the country as a whole?