Saturday Open Thread [6.25.16]

Bernie Sanders said that he will vote for Hillary Clinton for president in November, “the strongest expression of support yet from the Vermont senator for his rival, though he later left the door open that he might change his mind,” CNN reports. I guess a big speech enthusiastically endorsing her just isn’t in the cards. Also too I saw something somewhere in one of the interviews Bernie gave yesterday this notion that Bernie wanted to be actually in the Clinton Administration. Like as a cabinet member or something. What? Why?

Hours after the #BrexitVote, Donald Trump was in the U.K.

Talking about how he, personally, would benefit.https://t.co/YEt5LozDpt

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 24, 2016

Josh Marshall did a good job of connecting the dots between Trump and Brexit.

Put simply, Trumpism and the greater arc of rightist politics in the US in recent years seems to follow this pattern. A declining but still very large fraction of the population which feels that it is losing power, wealth and something between ethnic familiarity and dominance to rising segments of the society. To map this on to the specifics of US society this pits a one group that is both older and whiter against another that is generally younger and less white.

Two points are worth recognizing about this deep social and political cleavage. First, this rebellion on the right is based not on strength but on weakness, the loss of power, control, demographic dominance, privilege. Second, in key respects it is an accurate perception of the change overtaking America…

The future electorate of the UK wanted to remain in Europe. This makes me suspect that for all the differences there is some elemental similarity in play between here and the UK.

From Brown people, Christine. The answer is the same in both countries.

James Hohmann: “Britain’s stunning vote to leave the European Union suggests that we’ve been seriously underestimating Donald Trump’s ability to win the presidential election.”

“When you consider all his controversies and self-inflicted wounds over the past month, combined with how much he’s getting outspent on the airwaves in the battleground states, it is actually quite surprising that Trump and Hillary Clinton are so close in the polls. He’s holding his own, especially in the Rust Belt.”

“The British campaign to exit the European Union… like Trump’s, was fueled by grievance. Those agitating to cut off formal ties to the continent were less organized and less funded than those who wanted to stay connected, but that deficit didn’t matter in the end, because the energy was against the status quo.”

Trump: Brexit is Obama's fault; Also I predicted Brexit; Also Brexit is AWESOME! https://t.co/rZYj23kCcw

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) June 24, 2016

Gary Younge: “In the end those who placed their faith in the ‘experts’ were always going to be disappointed. The pollsters were wrong; the currency traders were wrong; the pundits were confounded. People who did not feel they had been heard have not just spoken. Given a one-off chance to tell the world what they think of how they are governed they have screamed a piercing cry of alienation and desperation.”

“Given the choice between the status quo and change (changing something, anything) Britain voted for change. It got its wish. This will change everything. As the pound plummets, stock markets dive, the SNP leader, Nicola Sturgeon, hints at a new referendum for Scottish independence and Sinn Féin revives the question of Irish unity, we enter a period of volatility without precedent or comparison.”

“Like the dog that chases the car only to amaze itself by catching it, those who campaigned for Brexit own what comes next.”

Matt Bai: “We can derive at least three pretty relevant insights on the state of Trump’s candidacy from his political penury…First, as long as he has to rely on free exposure to compete with Clinton, Republican leaders should probably relinquish all hope of ever seeing a more responsible, electable version of their nominee… Second, Trump has just about wasted the small window he had, after the contested primaries and before the convention, to reassure Republican influencers and consolidate their support.”

“Trump’s so-called campaign is really just a small project in his business empire, populated by a handful of junior executives and based entirely on personal celebrity…my guess is he still wants to be president about as much as I want to be on ‘Dancing With the Stars’… And that right there is the real problem for Republicans… They’ve allowed their party to become an elaborate prop in a tasteless stunt, used by a man who to this point shows very little seriousness of purpose… It’s not that Trump can’t win with a lot less money than his opponent. It’s that he’d probably have a lot more money if he were actually running to win.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) “cut the legs out from a bipartisan effort to keep suspected terrorists from buying guns,” The Hill reports.

“In doing so, McConnell, a master of the Senate’s arcane rules, provided cover for vulnerable Republicans who wanted to be seen as supporting the effort, but did not want to cross the National Rifle Association.”

New York Times: “The solution was a procedural maneuver by which the majority leader, Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, scheduled the bill for a vote on a motion to table it. By voting not to table it, Republicans could keep it alive without advancing or defeating it outright — putting it in a sort of legislative purgatory.”

From the Financial Times:

“A quick note on the first three tragedies. Firstly, it was the working classes who voted for us to leave because they were economically disregarded, and it is they who will suffer the most in the short term. They have merely swapped one distant and unreachable elite for another. Secondly, the younger generation has lost the right to live and work in 27 other countries. We will never know the full extent of the lost opportunities, friendships, marriages and experiences we will be denied. Freedom of movement was taken away by our parents, uncles, and grandparents in a parting blow to a generation that was already drowning in the debts of our predecessors. Thirdly and perhaps most significantly, we now live in a post-factual democracy. When the facts met the myths they were as useless as bullets bouncing off the bodies of aliens in a HG Wells novel.

When Michael Gove said, ‘The British people are sick of experts,’ he was right. But can anybody tell me the last time a prevailing culture of anti-intellectualism has led to anything other than bigotry?”

The Brexit vote, as is Trump support, is a primarily a generational divide. The older Silent and Baby Boom generations are extending a giant middle finger to the X and Millenial Generations, a one last Fuck You. Jack Lennard:

Let’s look at the voter demographics. The “Leave” vote was overwhelmingly carried by those over the age of 65, whereas according to pre-vote polling, 72 percent of those who were aged 18 to 24 favored “Remain.” […]

Despite young people having to live with the decision of the referendum for an average of 69 years, it has been decided for them by people who will only have to live with it for an average of 16 years. Put simply: The long-term effects of Brexit will not be felt by those who overwhelmingly voted for it. Because they will be dead.

This is a final middle-fingered salute to the young from the baby boomer generation. Not content with racking up insurmountable debt, not content with destroying any hopes of sustainable property prices or stable career paths, not content with enjoying the benefits of free education and generous pension schemes before burning down the ladder they climbed up, the baby boomers have given one last turd on the doorstep of the younger generation.

My generation will not enjoy the free movement to 27 different countries and the workers’ rights that rescued Britain from the “sick man of Europe” era of the 1970s. For us, there will be no golden age of economic hope and glory. UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage’s sickening elation at “independence day for the United Kingdom” (surely a joke, given the context of violent colonialism that Britain herself exported to the world over the last centuries, yet sadly deadly serious) heralds nothing but a grim forecast of turmoil.

Where the Greatest Generation of the Depression era and World War II was the best generation, the Silent and Baby Boom Generations have been among the worst ever to walk on this Earth.

“The EU must reinvent itself to survive after Britain’s vote to leave. It may be too late,” the AP reports.

“The damning verdict of British voters was the worst setback to the EU since the germ of a more integrated Europe first took shape in the ruins left by World War II. And it threatens to be wildly contagious — even before the ballots were all tallied, populist leaders in some of the EU’s founding nations were clamoring for a vote on EU membership in their own countries.”

“From Paris to Berlin to Brussels, EU leaders agree they need to change in response to the British referendum. Yet they disagree on how — on whether to tighten their union or rethink it to address those who increasingly distrust all things EU.”

NATIONAL–PRESIDENT–Reuters/Ipsos—Clinton 47, Trump 33
ARIZONA–PRESIDENT–Predictive Insights—Clinton 47, Trump 42

“Salience of immigration as an issue in the US just isn’t comparable to the UK” — Will Jordan