Britain’s vote to leave the European Union (Brexit) has finally convinced some of the liberal media that they may have to treat support for Donald Trump seriously. In Britain, the liberal assumptions were wrong, the polls were wrong, and the nation’s self-confident establishment found itself ignored by the voters.
At last, some in the media are beginning to realize that American voters might provide the same kind of rebellious surprise. They, too, might decide to take their country back from an unaccountable ruling elite.
It was clear that British voters were fed up with open borders, and all the attempts to equate nationalism with “racism” failed to change that. Donald Trump has tapped into the same concern in the United States with his comments about deporting illegal immigrants, building a wall along the border with Mexico, and restricting immigration by Muslims. While his ever-shifting statements leave voters uncertain exactly where he stands, they know that he intends to change the Obama policy of encouraging and abetting illegal immigration.
Will American voters follow Britain’s example of taking their country back from the establishment elite? The New Yorker’s Amy Davidson warns her readers that “a lesson for Americans is that fortified idealistic structures can be torn down, by means of the same wrecking tools that Trump has been willing to deploy, even if those who are considered the serious people, in a country that reminds us of our own, warn against doing so.”
Dan Balz of The Washington Post remarked that “the forces fueling Thursday’s historic referendum here were similar to those that have shaken U.S. politics to its core in the past year. On both side of the Atlantic, political establishments and the elites have found themselves on the defensive.” “For Hillary Clinton, Britain’s emotionally charged uprising against the European Union is the sort of populist victory over establishment politics that she fears in the coming presidential election,” said New York Times columnist Patrick Healy.
An alarmed Washington Post editorial declared that Trump’s campaign statements “echo the appeal to voters’ suspicions that prevailed in Britain. Brexit’s success should offer one more argument against complacency.” Benjamin Wallace-Wells, writing in the New Yorker, bemoans that the United States seems to be alone in its liberalism, and ever here “liberals seem endangered.”
The liberal media have begun to realize that many American voters are not listening to their propaganda, and that the vote in Britain could be a sign that Trump will beat them in November.
