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Monday, June 27, 2016

The Brexit Aftermath: Anger, Remorse, and Confusion

That's how CNBC described the British mood this morning.

The Remainers are angry that their fellow Brits have taken a flamethrower to their country and economy for no good reason. Other than lies.

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2016/06/bbc-guilty-of-impartiality-between.html

Will Brexit happen at all? Greg left me a link to this comment at the Guardian.

It pointed out that Cameron had promised to invoke Article 50 immediately and has clearly reneged on it. Boris Johnson himself is saying there's no rush.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cl1BZC-WYAAY9Vv.jpg

Seeing all the market mayhem, maybe it will be too much to expect Cameron's replacement to do Brexit anyway. In any case, the referendum was just advisory and Parliament is not required to observe it.

Meanwhile, I think Greg Sargent is exactly right. Brexit will help Hillary Clinton. As the Orlando mass shooting clearly did.

"Today, Hillary Clinton will campaign for the first time with Elizabeth Warren, and the duo will make the case in Ohio that Clinton has a real economic agenda that will help working Americans, while Donald Trump is offering them nothing but bluster."

"This comes as the conventional wisdom is already hardening that the surprise victory for Brexit just has to be good news for Donald Trump. It shows a rising groundswell for protectionism and a restrictionist approach to immigration, and a declining faith in globalization, which — bluster or not — may supposedly foreshadow more support than expected for Trumpism here, too.

But just as the conventional wisdom turned out to be wrong in predicting that terrorism would be good for Trump, so, too, will it prove wrong about Brexit helping Trump.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/06/27/hillary-clinton-not-donald-trump-will-win-the-argument-over-brexit/

Agreed. The CW is wrong about Brexit as well. This was not a huge surprise based on the polls which had shown a toss up. The Hillary Trump race is showing Hillary with a clear lead.

You can try to spin this as 'close' but Trump is doing much worse at this point in the campaign than previous GOP candidates at this time.

But when Americans see what the foolish Brits have just done-and how it's already hurting the pensions and retirement funds of Americans, they are going to only feel more Trump aversion.

Sargent also makes a great point: Hillary was able to defeat Bernie's obsessive anti trade message as well.

"As it happens, we have already had a test case of sorts for Clinton’s argument: Clinton’s battle with Bernie Sanders. After Sanders’s big Michigan win, Clinton sharpened up her economic case, arguing for a broad slate of government investments to bolster the competitiveness of American companies and workers in a globalizing economy that isn’t turning back. While there are many differences between Clinton’s battle with Sanders and her current one with Trump, the point is that Clinton has already succeeded with a more nuanced argument about globalization than the one Trump is making."

"Some observers are explicitly positing that the simplistic bromides Trump is offering may prove more compelling than Clinton’s offerings because, well, they are simplistic, and simplicity has a good chance at triumphing over nuance. That is possible, but here, too, we’ve already had a test case: the argument over terrorism. Observers confidently predicted that Trump would surely benefit from a terror attack. After all, he’s promising strength and toughness, and there’s no arguing with that, no? Well, no. After the Orlando attack, Trump doubled down on his strongman act and his crudest and most garish proposals, such as the Muslim ban. But the public recoiled, and now polls show that voters reject Trump’s Muslim ban andprefer Clinton’s handling of the Orlando shooting."

"Overall, the pundits who were wrong about Trump in the primary, learned the wrong lesson. It's not that Trump is a Master Persuader but that the Republican party is a xenophobic, racist joke."


2 comments:

  1. Phil Mason ("Thunderf00t") who's video I left you a link to the other day (the one Sumner liked), pointed out the same thing you do:

    "It pointed out that Cameron had promised to invoke Article 50 immediately and has clearly reneged on it. Boris Johnson himself is saying there's no rush."

    He also pointed out the irony that the **EU president** was the one who came forward and urged the British government to respect the will of the voters ASAP! Lolololol! Oh the irony!

    So Mason put up a parlimentary petition on his page to do just that. His Youtube channel is quite popular... I think 10s of thousands have seen his videos on the subject already, so they may well get enough signatures to force a response from the government.

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  2. I saw in a headline today that 2/3s of Americans think that Obama has *improved* race relations. You'd never know that reading right-wing media... they pretty much all agree (anti-Trump or pro-Trump): Obama has done nothing but stirred up racial animosity. The 2/3s number means they're all in a bubble on this in most people's view! Good. (It's actually a bit surprising: given how polarized we are now, you'd think it wouldn't be over 50% on that: maybe Obama shines next to Trump).

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