Sunday, May 22, 2016

Krauthammer: Donald, Hillary And The Bernie Factor

Among the abundant ironies of this election cycle, there is this: We are now in the eighth year of the most liberal administration since Lyndon Johnson’s. The primary elections reveal a national mood of anxiety, apprehension and anger, in turn reflecting stagnation at home and failure abroad. Two-thirds of Americans think the country is on the wrong track. Yet after nearly two terms of Barack Obama’s corrosively unsuccessful liberalism — both parties have decisively moved left.
Hillary Clinton cannot put away a heretofore marginal, self-declared socialist. He has forced her into leftward genuflections on everything from trade to national health care. At the same time, Bernie Sanders has created a remarkably resilient insurgency calling for — after Obama, mind you — a political revolution of the left.
The Republicans’ ideological about-face is even more pronounced. They’ve chosen as their leader a nationalist populist who hardly bothers to pretend any allegiance to conservatism. Indeed, Donald Trump is, like Sanders, running to the left of Clinton on a host of major issues including trade, Wall Street, NATO and interventionism.
It turns out that the ultimate general election question is not where Cruz or Rubio or Kasich supporters are going — almost all seem to be making their tortuous way to Trump — but where do Bernie Sanders’ supporters go?
Most will, of course, go to Hillary. Some will stay home. But Trump is making a not-so-subtle pitch to those Democrats and independents who gave Sanders his victories in the industrial Midwest.
Read the rest of Krauthammer's op-ed HERE.

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