by
N. Peter Kramer
Bookmakers put long odds on both a vote for Brexit and a win for Donald Trump. Even on the day of the respective votes, polls, media and investors anticipated a win for the status quo.
How was that possible? As with UK Leave voters, Trump supporters were consistently underestimated by polls as was the extent to which they would turn out. Opinion polls, forecasters and the mainstream media in the US have collectively failed to identify the frustration and anger among mainly white and less-well educated people, who feel threatened by globalisation, by growing ethnic minorities and ignored by the ‘elite’. Anti-immigration, anti-globalisation and anti-establishment were the three factors that caused Brexit. The same factors split the US during the race for the White House in Washington DC.
Daniel Henninger wrote on the opinion page of the Wall Street Journal, ‘What we learned on Nov. 18, 2016, was that voters looked past or through all the atmospheric debris of the campaign and focused on what mattered – the direction of their country. Its economy, its politics and the state of the culture’. He gives ‘one stunning example. White evangelical Christians voted by 81% for the nation’s leading proponent of the Playboy philosophy’…
Trump, initially derided as an outsider, actually led an anti-establishment movement. He made a hostile takeover of the Republican platform and then hatched a burglary of the Democratic electorate, especially in the Rust Belt with states like Ohio and Michigan. Democrats are for immigration. Result: low wages. Democrats are for free trade. Result: in the US industry employment dropped by 33% since 2000; nearly 6 million jobs gone. Senator Bernie Sanders understood this better than Hillary Clinton, an eminent representative of the establishment. But she became the party’s choice. Sanders bowed his head.
Brexit, Trump, what is next? France? The French sentiment against immigration is immense. Globalisation is a public enemy. Paris, the center of power, is distrusted by the common French people. Marine Le Pen’s party, the National Front, is strong in the north, the south and the east, with Strasbourg as a stronghold. What will happen if Le Pen makes it to the second round of the Presidential elections. Le Pen vs. Sarkozy? Will the outnumbered left in the first-round vote for 'Sarko' or stay at home this time?
Brexit, Trump, France? I heard somebody say that we live in times of revolution, the revolution of ordinary people.
