Trump was able to tap into deep social anger. Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and other so-called Rust Belt states have been ravaged by plant closings and mass layoffs and are at the center of the social crisis that has led to declining life expectancy and rising suicide.

That Trump was able to exploit these conditions is above all an indictment of the Democratic Party, which is indifferent and hostile to the social concerns of masses of working people.

In the coming months, social opposition will grow. The task is not to try to revive the corpse of the Democratic Party but to build a mass political and socialist movement of the working class.