Peter Beinart writes:

When some presidents leave office, politicians and political thinkers jockey to be their intellectual heirs. Even Ronald Reagan, a Republican, claimed the legacy of John F. Kennedy. Even Barack Obama, a Democrat, claimed the legacy of Reagan.

If Donald Trump loses this fall, few will be in a hurry to claim his legacy. Commentators on the left and in the center—and even some on the right—will compete instead to tar their foes with it. For people across a broad ideological terrain, Trumpism will be less an attractive political philosophy than a term of abuse.

The best precedent is McCarthyism, which has become a synonym for hysterical intolerance. Joseph McCarthy, like Trump, built his political career on demagoguery, intimidation, and a cult of personality—not tangible achievements or coherent ideas. And as the psychology professor Dan P. McAdams has observed, “When narcissists begin to disappoint those whom they once dazzled, their descent can be especially precipitous.” More than a half century after the senator from Wisconsin died, progressives accuse conservatives of McCarthyism, and vice versa. But few embrace the label themselves. Especially if Trump is badly defeated in November—a distinct possibility—Trumpism too will likely be used primarily as an epithet.

What the epithet means, however—and to whom it applies—is already being contested. On one side sit people who define Trumpism as a form of intolerance, a disrespect for the rules that undergird American democracy. On the other sit people who define Trumpism as a form of oppression, a manifestation of the fact that the rules undergirding American democracy are saturated with racial, gender, and class bias. The debate between these two views will shape the relationship between the activist left and the political center for years to come. [Continue reading…]