Since the Presidential election is effectively over and Hillary Clinton has been declared the next President of the United States, we can turn our attention to the real work of the owners of both political parties. They have quickly analyzed the populist surge propelling the quashed candidacies of Sanders and Trump and are actively pursuing the neutralization of that trend. They are preparing to groom and position a Socialist Obama, a politician who will generate the same enthusiasm as Bernie Sanders, but who will be a safe pair of hands protecting their interests.
Obama provides the perfect template for this transition. Obama destroyed the antiwar movement in the US while maintaining a huge defense establishment. He drained away most of the class resentment accumulated during the growing inequality of the Bush era, and he swiftly crushed Occupy Wall street, the only protest movement that remotely threatened the plutocracy. Upon taking office, Obama appointed Timothy Geithner as Treasury Secretary, who protected the big banks from huge losses attributable to their criminal frauds, and Eric Holder and Lanny Breuer in the Justice Department, who refused to prosecute Wall Street criminals. He protected the profits of the drug and medical care industries while making small improvements to coverage access. When asked by his followers what happened to their promised hope and change, Obama blamed the obstructionist Congress (also hired by the plutocracy).
So what will the Socialist Obama look like? He or she will be much younger than Sanders, because youth conveys hope and enthusiasm better than a cranky old person. The candidate will likely have modest origins and self-made credentials, because elites are out of favor. The candidate will use a code phrase for Socialism to make it more palatable to the general electorate, something like Pragmatic Progressive, or the Real Deal, or Make America Cool Again. The Socialist Obama will be all over social media promoting high-tech solutions for making superficial changes to government. But the true mission of Socialist Obama will be protecting the American interests that profit from weapons, finance, drugs, fossil fuel and all of the other industries that practice rent extraction from an increasingly beleaguered electorate. Living standards for the bottom 90% will continue to stagnate, but the people will have hope and change. The plutocrats have mastered the political art of making things change so that they stay the same.