In 1979, Margaret Thatcher was elected Prime Minister of the UK. This proved to be a leading indicator of politics in the US, as Reagan was elected a year later.
In June 2016, British voters opted to leave the European Union. Here’s what I said the very next day:
Of course this is good news for Trump, as it suggests a groundswell of nationalism. It’s also good news (for Trump) in the sense that the Brexit vote was greater than predicted by either polls or betting markets. I think at some level Brexit voters understood that their decision was destructive (even if justified in the long run) and hence they were more reluctant to reveal this “politically incorrect’ view to pollsters. Maybe the same will be true for Trump voters.
Unfortunately, in October 2016 I was seduced by the polls and predicted that Clinton would win. The Brexit vote turned out to be a precursor of the Trump win.
And now Boris Johnson’s Tories have won a huge victory over the Labour Party. There are two differences that make this a bit less worrisome for the Democrats. There is no “Brexit” issue in the US, and the Democrats are not nearly as bad as Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party. Nonetheless, the surprising scale of the Conservative victory is certainly bad news for the Democratic Party. I notice that the betting markets are gradually raising the probability of a Trump win. That’s where I’d put my money.
READER COMMENTS
P Burgos
Dec 12 2019 at 10:10pm
Would a Trump win discredit whatever branch of the Democratic Party gets the nomination? That is, if the leftists lose to Trump, do they also lose the party? Or likewise if Biden loses, is the Democratic Party AOC’s to lead?
Mark Z
Dec 15 2019 at 1:02am
Perhaps, but it probably shouldn’t. It may for example make sense for a party to run a moderate if it fears it has a good chance of losing. A consequence of this is, imo at least, moderates tend to be run a lot in situations where a loss is likely, which gets misinterpreted as “we would’ve won if we’d run someone more liberal/conservative.” But I don’t think someone to the right of Romney or left of Clinton would’ve had a better chance in 2012 or 2016, respectively.
Michael Sandifer
Dec 12 2019 at 10:55pm
I’ve read some disquieting analyses from publications such as the Cook Political Report, that suggest Trump could lose the popular vote in a more lopsided fashion than he did against Clinton, and still win the electoral college. I wasn’t aware there was such a path before reading that analysis a few months ago. So Democrats have to take Trump very seriously politically.
That said, I am heartened by the rise of Buttigieg and the steadying of Biden. I’m glad Warren is in decline. I think Trump would have great difficulty beating Buttigieg or Biden. I think practically anyone would acknowledge that even Warren and Sanders are better candidates than Corbyn, and this is especially true of Buttigieg, with all of his talent, and Biden, with experience and good will in the bank.
That said, there are significant challenges for Buttigieg and Biden. Buttigieg has to woo minority voters and Biden has to avoid falling into the Trump trap of false equivalency concerning corruption. On the latter point, Biden has not done so well, so far, but is still the cleaner dirty shirt.
Alan Goldhammer
Dec 13 2019 at 9:25am
Johnson won because he faced the Labour Party’s equivalent of Hilary Clinton, a highly unpopular candidate who never had a clear message on Brexit or much of anything else. Johnson’s win is going to complicate things in that Scotland will now hold another election to leave and that is likely to pass. We also have no clue what will happen in Northern Ireland regarding a customs border with Ireland. This very well may turn out to be a Pyrrhic victory. Many multinational companies have been departing England because of economic uncertainty and I don’t see the Johnson victory as solving much of that. London already lost the EU equivalent of the FDA and all employees who are now moving on.
What worries me most is a Trump win in the Electoral College and a loss in the popular vote by 5% to the Democratic nominee. This will lead to further polarization (if that is even possible). In the end it may come down to how the economy is doing next summer. It’s still not clear wither the new ‘NAFTA’ will be approved as Republicans in the Senate are now angry that they were not consulted on the agreement with House negotiators. The impact of any agreement on Chinese tariffs is still unclear.
Shyam Vasudevan
Dec 13 2019 at 10:23am
Johnson also ran to the left by pledging to increase spending on the NHS. The GOP is rapidly losing its credibility on health care (see the 2018 midterms). Obviously Trump will try to obfuscate on this subject but the Dem candidate should be able to present a clear dividing line on this subject.
E. Harding
Dec 13 2019 at 2:52pm
The Johnson victory does not indicate a Trump general election win is more likely. It does indicate a Sanders primary victory is less likely.
Thaomas
Dec 14 2019 at 7:30am
Absolutely, notwithstanding the caveats. There is a strong constituency in both UK and the US that falsely believes that restrictions on trade and investment and immigration is in their interests, Quirks of the electoral system amplify the political effects of this sentiment. Trump has (we’ll see about Johnson, maybe not) seized on this to push an agenda of redistribution of income toward higher income people.
Larry
Dec 14 2019 at 8:54am
Dems are hoping that “impeachment” will be a powerful club to beat on him with. If that’s the best they have, watch out. The economy, especially minority employment, looks like a problem for them. Biden is fading mentally. Looks bad for Dems. The other msg is “orange man bad”. Not working. Look out below.
Lorenzo from Oz
Dec 14 2019 at 6:37pm
They are not economically as bad, but culturally? Imagine a Presidential debate and The Donald asks his Democrat opponent “how do you define a woman?”.
We live in a world where that would be an awkward question. The Liberal Democrat Leader who lost her seat came a bit of a cropper over that question.
What Brexit did is that it generated a cultural issue that alerted working class voters to how much “their” Labour Party really wasn’t anymore. If The Donald was cleverer, he would replicated BoJo’s One Nation Toryism. But I doubt he has the intellectual equipment for it. He certainly lacks the intellectual support base, though it is clearly potentially there.
(And I take it you do not believe that The Donald will be impeached. A friend who is a law professor agreed with me that the articles of impeachment were pretty feeble.)
Scott Sumner
Dec 15 2019 at 3:24pm
You said:
“They are not economically as bad, but culturally? Imagine a Presidential debate and The Donald asks his Democrat opponent “how do you define a woman?”.”
I would never vote for a candidate that asked that question. (And I’d have no interest in how they answered the question.)
Lorenzo from Oz
Dec 17 2019 at 7:45pm
Why wouldn’t you vote for such a candidate? It is, after all, a lively question in the current moment.
If one reads the political science, etc scholarship, it is clear that cultural issues dominate economic issues in relation to migration, and almost always have. That is, people will forego economic benefits, or even pay an economic penalty, if it minimises cultural change/dislocation effects. (Hence, “big lump” migration–US, Europe–is much more politically problematic than “small lumps” migration–Canada, Australia.)
Cultural divides are coming more to the fore as economic issues recede due to the long term tendency to convergence on economic policy. A major factor will be what cultural issues become salient and how. Brexit brought that out, so BoJo tacked to the left economically to gain working class votes.
Essentially, in doing so, he got all the “Somewheres” as David Goodhart calls them to vote for him. Clearly, a winning strategy that is potentially replicable.
Mark Bahner
Dec 16 2019 at 11:53pm
Nobody asked me ;-), but:
I can’t imagine Donald Trump asking such a question.
I think he will be impeached. He won’t be removed from office.
Lorenzo from Oz
Dec 17 2019 at 7:36pm
Successfully impeached then.
Matthew Moore
Dec 14 2019 at 8:15pm
Scott – just thought I’d come back around and remind you that on Mar 3rd in a comment in your post ‘The new fault lines’ , you told me:
‘Matthew, I believe that most liberals oppose Brexit. And those who think it will allow Britain to turn into a sort of Hong Kong are misguided. Corbyn is the future of Britain.’
I’m sure we can probably agree it’s nice you were wrong about Corbyn. I’ve come around to your point on Hong Kong though. Boris’ new coalition of voters will demand a more interventionist state. It would be ironic if we ended up looking more like France just as we leave. I still think the democratic, common law and sovereignty arguments make Brexit worthwhile however.
One caveat – if Scotland becomes independent as a result, rUK would likely become more small state oriented in its politics.
Scott Sumner
Dec 15 2019 at 3:26pm
I think I meant his polices were the future, but I certainly left the impression that I thought he would win. Obviously that didn’t happen. I share your belief that the UK will become more socialist.
Lorenzo from Oz
Dec 17 2019 at 7:51pm
More Scandinavian model perhaps (more public services, but relatively low intervention in markets), but it does not follow that it will become more interventionist in markets.
Though I think an argument can be made that one of Britain’s perennial problems is that it tries to have too big a state for its level of ethnic diversity to cope with. Something migration has made more of a problem rather than less.
Mark Z
Dec 15 2019 at 1:10am
Corbyn was such a uniquely atrocious candidate that I’m not sure even a landslide loss by him is informative. His domestic agenda was so extreme that even with Brexit he made Johnson look like the cautious choice.
Lorenzo from Oz
Dec 17 2019 at 7:49pm
Actually, there is a strong argument that Labour’s 2017 vote was defying political gravity, that Labour was due for the slide/collapse in social democratic votes that have taken place in the rest of Europe. Which has duly happened.
Why these slide/collapses? Because the working class–progressive middle class alliance is falling apart as the latter group come to dominate Party apparatuses and stop talking the language and concerns of working class voters, having reached the critical mass where there own issues and perspectives have come to the fore.
Jeff
Dec 15 2019 at 8:56am
Trump will win the popular vote and an Electoral College landslide. No one who voted for Trump in 2016 has changed their mind about him, but many who did not vote for him then will do so in 2020.
Mark Z
Dec 16 2019 at 10:51pm
I think you’re right that almost no one will change their mind on Trump, but I doubt many will change in the opposite direction either. I don’t think that’s what would determine the outcome. Rather, what matters is turnout: how many people who don’t like him bother to show up at the polls vs. how many who like his opponent less.
Mark Bahner
Dec 17 2019 at 7:07pm
Why will “many who did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016 vote for him in 2020”?
Especially, doesn’t it matter who he is running against (aren’t Biden, Buttigieg, Sanders, and Warren pretty different candidates)?
Lorenzo from Oz
Dec 19 2019 at 6:40pm
I took the view that any plausible Republican nominee would have beaten Hillary in 2016. After all, Trump was an electorally weak candidate, getting 46% 0f the vote when the Republicans in the House got 49% of the vote. A Republican nominee who got the same vote as the Republican House vote would have won the Electoral College and the popular vote.
So I suspect who the Democratic candidate in 2020 is will matter less than many expect but more than normal because The Donald remains an electorally weak candidate. As his approval ratings demonstrate.
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