Brexit echoes in U.S. race
Will anger that drove U.K. vote translate into a win for GOP hopeful Trump?
WASHINGTON — The Britons who voted to take their country out of the European Union were predominantly white, working class, older and deeply upset about immigration.
Their leaders drew scorn from the university-educated elite as nativists, borderline racists and occasional buffoons. Backing them was too risky, opponents said. Sound familiar? In the U.S. presidential election, Donald Trump draws
strength from many of the same frustrations, fears and voting blocs that powered the “leave” campaign to victory in Thursday’s British referendum.
A British referendum and a U.S. presidential election are, of course, different: For starters, the U.S. has a significantly larger, younger and more racially and ethnically diverse population than Britain.
Roughly 15 percent of the British electorate is nonwhite, compared with more than 25 percent in a presidential election in the U.S., noted James Morris, a British pollster and adviser to former Labor Party leader Ed Milliband.
But in both countries, voters appear divided between those who feel — as Trump repeatedly says — that “we have no choice” but to embrace radical change and that fearing the kind of change offered by him, and the “Brexit” campaign, amounts to a huge step backward.
“The white working class seems to be rising up against the elites that live in college towns and big cities, and academia — and the political system — and saying, ‘We’re sorry, we don’t like what you’re doing,’ ” said veteran Democratic pollster and strategist Paul Maslin.
Twin questions hang over the U.S. election in the aftermath:
Will Trump prove too flawed a candidate to fully take advantage of the moment?
And will Hillary Clinton’s campaign be able to come up with a positive, more compelling message than “be afraid” — a theme that failed to turn out enough voters to keep Britain in the EU?
Clinton has set out dozens of policy proposals during the course of her campaign, but has struggled to find an overarching theme that would seize voters’ imaginations and encapsulate her message the way Barack Obama’s “Yes, we can” did in 2008 or Trump’s “Build that wall” has done — at least with his side of the electorate — this year.
Her current slogan, “Stronger together,” might just as easily have fit on a “remain” button in London — and seemingly to similar effect.
A senior White House official, speaking anonymously to discuss Clinton’s effort, pointed to her speech this week in North Carolina, in which she set out a distinctively progressive economic agenda, as an indication that the campaign had begun to lay out a more compelling positive message. The official conceded, however, that it was too early to tell whether voters would respond.
In the meantime, Democrats have focused on persuading voters to reject Trump — a case Clinton prosecuted aggressively on economics this week and in a foreign policy speech three weeks ago.
Those attacks highlight another crucial difference between the two elections: A presidential campaign is not a referendum on issues; it’s a choice between candidates.
British voters, narrowly, rejected warnings that a Brexit vote could cause economic chaos. Democrats feel they will have an easier time highlighting the risks of a specific individual who will have his finger on the proverbial nuclear button.
Trump has provided ample ammunition for their attacks. He did so again on Friday.
Visiting the golf course he owns in Scotland, he praised the referendum vote, saying the British had chosen to “take their country back,” but only after touting the sprinkler system, the drains and the luxury suites at his Turnberry resort.
He seemed at one point to welcome the crash of the British currency that threatened to undermine financial markets, noting that he might gain from it.
“When the pound goes down, more people are coming to Turnberry,” he said.
Clinton’s senior policy adviser, Jake Sullivan, seized on those remarks Friday, telling reporters that while the former secretary of state was focused on the potential economic impact that a British departure from the EU could have on Americans, Trump “actually rooted for this outcome,” and “put his golf business ahead of the interests of working families in the United States.”
Trump’s comments, which drew groans from Republican political operatives, underscored another potential risk for him in the Brexit vote.
“Everything that I’ve seen suggests that Americans have been paying very little attention to this” until now, said Republican pollster Randall Gutermuth. For most voters, their first introduction to the British vote could be turmoil in financial markets that threatens to undermine their retirement funds, he said.
By the time the summer ends and the fall campaign begins in earnest, Trump’s support for the “leave” side may associate him in voters’ minds with a dangerous experiment threatening to fail disastrously, Gutermuth said.
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said on Saturday that he wouldn’t characterize his immigration policies as including “mass deportations,” and that rather than a blanket ban on Muslims coming to the U.S. he’d focus on those from countries with links to terrorists.
Trump, in an interview at his golf course in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, also said he would toss out the work done over several years on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a sweeping trade pact, and start from scratch.
The billionaire-turnedpolitician said his immigration policies would have “heart,” suggesting he may be shifting tone to transition into generalelection mode after the bruising primary season.
“President Obama has mass deported vast numbers of people — the most ever, and it’s never reported. I think people are going to find that I have not only the best policies, but I will have the biggest heart of anybody,” Trump said.
Pressed on whether he would issue “mass deportations,” Trump answered: “No, I would not call it mass deportations.”
In Trump’s immigration plan, released in 2015, the U.S. will build a wall along its border with Mexico and make Mexico pay for the structure by, in part, impounding certain remittance payments. Trump has also said he would deport all undocumented immigrants, a number estimated at 11 million.
Trump, 70, continued eating fish and chips at his golf course’s clubhouse before adding: “We are going to get rid of a lot of bad dudes who are here,” Trump said. “That I can tell you.”
Earlier Saturday, Trump told reporters that he’d seek to restrict people from unspecified “terrorist countries” from entering the U.S. It marked a shift from a news release on Dec. 7 saying that, if elected, Trump wanted “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”
There were an estimated 1.6 billion Muslims in the world as of 2010, or about 23 percent of the world’s population, according to the Pew Research Center.
“I want terrorists out. I want people that have bad thoughts out. I would limit specific terrorist countries and we know who those terrorist countries are,” Trump said on Saturday.
Trump didn’t specify which countries may be included. Although the jihadist group Islamic State has occupied swathes of Iraq and Syria, Europe has also been rocked by terror attacks orchestrated by citizens of France and Belgium who were the sons of immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa.
The gunman in the Orlando, Florida, massacre this month was the New York-born son of immigrants from Afghanistan.