Can contemporary American liberalism change? Even to raise this question is to remind ourselves of the political upheaval of the last year. Not so long ago, the more obvious question would have been whether this liberalism had any need to change, whether it would not go from victory to victory unchecked, at least at the national level.
Then Donald Trump came along.
To be sure, Trump’s surprise victory in the 2016 presidential election invites, but does not necessarily compel, the question whether American liberalism needs to change. After all, liberals can console themselves with the possibility that Trump’s election was a fluke. He did not win the popular vote. A switch of a few tens of thousands of votes in a handful of key states would have delivered a different outcome. The liberal candidate, Hillary Clinton, was kneecapped at the very end of the campaign by FBI Director James Comey’s public announcement that he was reopening the investigation into Clinton’s emails as Secretary of State.