2016 will forever be known as the year of the Right Wing: Erdogan ascendant, Brexit, Donald Trumps election.

2017 may come to be known as the year the pendulum swung back and liberalism regained its footing and forward momentum.

Its impossible to say and you wouldnt want to call anything too early but the signs are there across the globe.

The reason why is pretty clear: right wingers and fascists sound good when lying through their teeth on the podium but they cant govern effectively in a democratic or republic system. So, short of if they are able to dismantle those systems completely into dictatorship, which remains a credible and persistent threat we must be ever vigilant against, their incompetence becomes clear to all. AHCA anyone?

This, I think, is the secret to Le Pens shattering defeat in France. Is it possible that the United Front the other parties used against her as well as Frances general distaste for overt racism in government representatives to the world and for the Le Pen family brand, would have been enough to defeat Le Pen anyway? Certainly. However, Macrons garnering of nearly 70% of the vote was also almost certainly due to the British bungling of Brexit and, far more so, to Donald Trump.

The French took one look at that and said, no, not for us.

The French also probably took a look at Austria, where voter ambivalence came nail-bitingly close to putting a fascist in power, and at Turkey, where Erdogan used a sham vote to give himself dictatorial powers, and decided that civil participation was the right way to go. Similarly, the Dutch, in an earlier election, also firmly rejected the right wing.

In rejecting Susan Sarandon-style self-defeating liberal nihilism, they showed that majorities in most western countries are still against right-wing governments, when they are roused from their ambivalence to vote.

And, despite the folly of Brexit, Britain is still governed by the center-right Tory party and the scandal over lies leading up to the Brexit vote have dealt a death blow to the right-wing UK Independence Party. Indeed, almost none of Brexits leaders still hold elective office.

So, what does that mean for the rest of 2017?

Well, all eyes are now on the US and, to a lesser degree, India. The US is the only major western power (no disrespect to Poland and Hungary) governed by the ultra-right wing, and current polls show Trumps administration to be historically unpopular. Indeed, historically speaking, NO president has ever been within 10 points of Trumps current approval rating in their first year, let alone 100 days of their administration.

And, with the latest Quinnipiac poll showing Trump at 36% and falling, if he enters the low-mid 30s, the only presidents in US polling history (since 1952) to ever reach those polling depths were George Bush I and II, Jimmy Carter, and Harry Truman. Of course, we know the results in each of those cases: historic defeat and full transfer of power back in the next major election (1952, 1980, 1992, 2008).

So, people appear to be woke and liberalism may be ascendant. But that cannot and should not be an excuse for any sort of complacency. When backed into a corner, the right wing will be more dangerous than ever.

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The Pendulum is Swinging Back Toward Liberal Forward Momentum - HuffPost