VERMONT Senator Bernie Sanders won the New Hampshire Democratic primary decisively this week, defeating former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and posting the largest vote and the widest margin of victory ever recorded in the state.
The upsurge of support for Mr Sanders is a delayed political reaction to the 2008 financial crash and the economic slump that followed, which continue to have a devastating impact on the jobs and living standards of the American working class.
These same issues played a key role in the Republican primary as well, albeit in a right-wing populist form, with the victory of billionaire Donald Trump, who won 34 perc ent,
The Trump campaign represents the mobilisation of a criminal element in the American elite, based on national chauvinism, militarism and the glorification of authoritarian rule. His thuggish persona and racist attacks on Muslims, Mexicans and others express openly a grotesque coarsening of politics, even by the degraded standards that prevail in the United States. Mr Trump’s attacks on Muslims, in particular, have evoked a response of a fascistic character.
What frightens the millionaire pundits is not the politics of Mr Sanders himself, long a fixture in the Democratic Party congressional establishment, despite his nominal independence, but rather the radicalisation of the American people, particularly the younger generation, revealed in the growing support for his campaign.
Alan Hinnrichs,
2 Gillespie Terrace, Dundee.
AS Presidential hopeful Donald Trump powers on with his mix of bluster, bombast and baloney it is to be hoped that others will be more discerning than New Hampshire and call a halt with the verdict "chump and dump".
Bull in the White House china shop frightens me.
R Russell Smith,
96 Milton Road, Kilbirnie.
PERHAPS Alex Salmond should now be polite about and to Donald Trump. Just in case.
William Durward,
20 South Erskine Park, Bearsden.
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