On Jeremy Corbyn's Legitimacy

Harry Enten has a little persepctive on this whole Jeremy Corbyn vote of no confidence thing. I wrote about it earlier.

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2016/06/labours-astonishing-failure-to.html

David Cameron with this Brexit mess was like Tom-from the old Tom and Jerry cartoons-leaving out a rake for Spike the dog to step on, forgetting it was still there and knocking himself out.

Boris Johnson is not much better as he never really wanted Brexit to win, just to use this issue to become Prime Minister.

Trouble is, Labour is too concerned about taking out Jeremy Corbyn to capitalize. Now you can argue that Labour is not respecting the democratic choice of Labour voters in this.

They had planned to grin and bear him as their party leader until the failure of Brexit-where Corbyn did nominally oppose it but his heart wasn't felt to really be in it.

But as Enten says, there's more to it.

I should point out that Corbyn won a leadership election with 250k votes or 2.7% of votes cast for Labour in 2015 general election (1/?)

https://twitter.com/ForecasterEnten/status/747827949072695296

In other words, there was a caucus to pick party leader.

For a comparison, Clinton won her primary in 2012 with something like 17 million votes or 26% of Obama's 2012 total votes. (2/?)."

https://twitter.com/ForecasterEnten/status/747828364203986948

If we had chosen by caucus, Bernie would be the Democratic nominee.

"I think the result is valid. Corbyn is certainly a valid leader. But that's different than saying Labour voters r behind him."

https://twitter.com/ForecasterEnten/status/747832174972370944

In other news, President Obama has a reaction to Brexit.

"As governments and markets around the world work to make sense of Britain’s vote last week to leave the European Union, President Barack Obama dismissed the global reaction to the seismic move as “hysteria.”

"In an interview on NPR’s “Morning Edition,” Obama said he did not “anticipate that there is going to be major cataclysmic changes as a consequence of” the U.K.’s so-called Brexit vote. Europe’s core values will remain the same, the president said, as will its international priorities. And he downplayed concern that the U.K.’s exit from the EU was a sign of larger nationalist sentiments across the continent."

“I would not overstate it. There has been a little bit of hysteria, post Brexit vote,” Obama said. “As if somehow NATO is gone and the transatlantic alliance is dissolving and every country is rushing off to its own corner. That's not what's happening.”

"President Obama characterized the U.K. vote as little more than its citizens pressing the “pause button” on European integration, frustrated with the bureaucracy that is unavoidable among a group of 28 member states with diverse economies and cultures. He predicted that the U.K. would end up with a situation similar to Norway, which is not an EU member but aligns itself on “almost every issue with Europe and us.”

“I think this will be a moment in which all of Europe says: 'All right, let's take a breath and let's figure out how do we maintain some of our national identities, how do we preserve the benefits of integration and how do we deal with some of the frustrations that our own voters are feeling,'” Obama said. “But the basic core values of Europe, the tenets of liberal, market-based democracies, those aren’t changing.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/obama-brexit-hysteria-224873#ixzz4Cu9S155u

Obama puts Trump's Brexit response to shame last week in showing how you respond to crises. You damp down on fear and panic and you act and talk in a way that restores confidence.

Interesting that he predicts the UK will become like Norway. We shall see.