The Coming Political Realignment

Donald Trump has done something politically smart and substantively revolutionary. He is a Republican presidential candidate running against free trade and, effectively, free markets.

By putting trade at the top of the conversation he elevates the issue on which Hillary Clinton is the most squirrelly, where her position reinforces the message that she will say anything to get power

.. Donald Trump has done something politically smart and substantively revolutionary. He is a Republican presidential candidate running against free trade and, effectively, free markets.

By putting trade at the top of the conversation he elevates the issue on which Hillary Clinton is the most squirrelly, where her position reinforces the message that she will say anything to get power

.. Trump’s only hope is to change the debate from size of government to open/closed.

.. His only hope is to cast his opponents as the right-left establishment that supports open borders, free trade, cosmopolitan culture and global intervention. He would stand as a right-left populist who supports closed borders, trade barriers, local and nationalistic culture and an America First foreign policy

.. But where Trump fails, somebody else will succeed. And that’s where he’s substantively revolutionary. The old size-of-government question was growing increasingly archaic and obsolete. In country after country the main battle lines of debate are evolving toward the open/closed framework.