Yes, the president runs the executive branch, but not the government since the government is divided by design to prevent the president from being a king. Kings are clothed in immense power, not presidents. That’s why the United States largely went on as normal under the anti-president Trump, as opposed to being ruined or destroyed.

Yes, going down is going down. But what would do more damage to the Democratic Party and its brand, (1) surrendering to right-wing economics (to “free market” ideology which eliminates extreme poverty via technological innovations, but widens economic inequality, exacerbates consumerism and thus threatens the ecosystems and all life’s chances of surviving for long on this planet) via so-called neoliberalism or (2) attempting to broaden the discourse to prevent the right-wing framing and demonization of leftist humanism or “socialism”?

Clinton and Obama kept the Democratic Party as a going concern, by being moderate, but they enabled the Republicans to become ever more extreme, by failing to defend an ideological alternative and allowing the Republicans to control the Overton window and demonize what I would call humanistic or liberal values. The Democrats became Republican Lite.

I agree that globalization isn’t entirely a negative phenomenon. It’s helped eliminate extreme poverty in developing countries. But globalization also widens economic inequality (allowing the rich to get much richer, empowering them at everyone else’s expense), and threatens the natural environment by increasing human population sizes and facilitating consumerist mindsets.

I’m aware that “neoliberalism” has a long history. Its early use was about countering the sensible, Keynesian measures after the Great Depression. Today the term is indeed used in various, confusing ways, including rhetorical or demagogic ones. I use the term to refer to the hollowness of liberalism as an economic alternative to right-wing animalism. Neoliberals embrace free-market economic rationales for plutocracy which are consistent with the conservative’s covert animalistic values and which are antithetical to the real liberal’s humanistic ones.