Who are you voting for?

Sixteen years ago, I voted for George W. Bush for president.

At least that’s what I’ve been told. “A vote for Nader was a vote for Bush” is a claim that one hears even after the passage of two two-term presidencies.

Being from Massachusetts, I’m off the hook thanks to our anti-democratic Electoral College. But for fellow travelers from Florida, the implied burden is pretty high: the Iraq war, Guantanamo, no action on climate change, and tax cuts that exacerbated inequality and contributed to a record-breaking federal deficit are just some of the results of the disastrous Bush presidency.

If only they had voted for Al Gore in 2000, the message is, our country would be in a different place now.

Of course, it’s speculation to assume Gore would have responded to 9/11 in a more measured way. The Authorization for Use of Military Force vote by Congress 15 years ago this week has been used by President Obama as well as Bush to justify years of war, drone killings, extrajudicial detentions and surveillance at home and abroad.

It passed unanimously in the Senate with only a single dissenter in the House. While events would surely have played out differently, projecting one’s wishes onto an imaginary Gore presidency is as foolhardy as to have projected them onto Obama in 2008. The truth is, the war on civilians now being prosecuted in Yemen, led by Saudi Arabia with political backing, funding, and logistical support from the U.S., is as immoral and counter to American interests as anything done under the Bush administration.

But what made the argument that there was no significant difference between Democrats and Republicans so compelling in 2000?

Leave aside the corporate domination of both parties and the two-party consensus on the U.S. military role in the world, and look simply at Gore’s erstwhile boss. Bill Clinton’s triangulation strategy was based on making the Democrats even more like the Republicans than they already were. Kick people off welfare. Get “tough on crime.” Promote “free” trade. And, of particular note, deregulate the banks.

If a vote for Nader was a vote for Bush, then so too was a vote for Clinton, twice over.

First, because votes for Clinton in 1992 and 1996 were, as it turned out, votes for Republican policies. Second, because triangulation cut both ways: the Clinton strategy of stealing Republican votes by stealing Republican ideas made calls to vote Democrat in 2000 unconvincing. Some of us voted for Nader. Many more stayed home or chose Bush because, lacking clear political distinctions, they chose the guy they would prefer to have a beer with.

I raise this history now because, as we contemplate the dangers of a Trump presidency, it is important to understand how we got here and, especially, to see that the risk of a demagogue reaching the White House will not pass with this election.

To treat this as a one-time threat, limited to a particular candidate, is to miss the point.

Trump is evidence of the failure of the political class and the natural result of a system that offers those with little power and diminishing prospects (the majority of Americans) few options or alternatives. Although his primary success was facilitated by the internal contradictions of the Republican Party and its history of using dog-whistle politics to rile up a base whose economic interests it undermines, his opportunity to win owes a lot to the failure of the Democratic Party to challenge the country’s growing inequality and corporate power.

Obama’s presidency is bookmarked by two policy decisions that are probably as important as any factor in making a Trump victory possible. First, with the economy crashing as he took office, and a public open to systemic change, Obama chose to bail out the banks while doing much less for homeowners, small business people and other ordinary Americans.

This let the rich quickly return to amassing fortunes while poor and middle Americans stagnated or saw incomes and wealth decline, setting the stage for Trump’s politics of (thoughtless and misdirected) resentment.

Now, as his second term ends, Obama’s push to win approval of the Trans-Pacific Partnership in a lame duck Congress could help Trump win since it makes it harder for Clinton, newly inspired by Bernie Sanders and his supporters, to make the case that Democrats are the ones who will protect workers, communities and the democratic oversight of our laws.

We can and should defeat Trump. But even assuming success, unless a Clinton presidency delivers real change for ordinary people in a way that her recent Democratic predecessors have failed to do, a new and possibly worse threat is sure to come.

If that happens, historians may one day say that a vote for the Democrats was a vote for [insert your worst fears here].

Jim Oldham is a Town Meeting member from Precinct 5.