Decision time

The people v the people Setting Americans against each other paved Donald Trump’s path to power The people v the poeple Setting Americans against each other paved Donald Trump’s path to power From the print edition, November 12th 2016 ON ELECTION day in America it is usually a comfort to spend hours talking to voters emerging from polling places. After months of interviews with partisans at campaign rallies, regular citizens are reassuringly unzealous, and willing to volunteer that neither party has a monopoly on wisdom. Not this year. In 2016 too many Americans sounded sour, unhappy and quick to dismiss as illegitimate or immoral those who disagree with them. Reporting from polling stations was dispiriting and revealing The Economist's Lexington columnist Lexington spent November 8th in southern Wisconsin, talking to voters in small towns known for an unflashy, church-picnic and chambers-of-commerce sort of conservatism. This is Paul Ryan country—the home turf of the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, a beaky ideologue and devout Catholic who several times clashed with Donald Trump during his presidential campaign, publicly rebuking the businessman for his boorish ways (Mr Ryan called Trumpian slurs against a Mexican-American judge a “textbook case of racism”). Reporting from polling stations in Elkhorn and Janesville was dispiriting and revealing. Republicans who had just cast ballots for Mr Trump and Mr Ryan expressed contempt not just for Hillary Clinton—“She should be impeached,” said many—but for the sort of Americans liable to vote for her. As a rule, ventured Shane Price, a shipping manager in Janesville, Democrats put their own interests over those of the country, while a big majority of Republicans are “red, white and blue”, and put America first. Pondering those sections of the electorate immune to Mr Trump’s charms, Mark Schweiner, a financial adviser from Elkhorn, lamented that the country is changing, with a growing proportion of residents who lack a vested interest in America’s future and merely “want handouts”. To greatly broaden its attractiveness the Republican Party might have to appeal to such free-riders, he conceded, yet he would rather it did not, for that would mean compromising on its small government, low-tax principles. Trump voters encountered in Wisconsin were fully aware that their presidential pick is a polarising figure. Several said that he had not been their first choice to be the Republican nominee—and indeed back in April Mr Trump lost the Wisconsin presidential primary to Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a social conservative. They called Mr Trump “blunt” and “very bold”. They cast his rudeness as a form of candour, and proof that he is not a career politician. Several chided Mr Ryan for rebuking Mr Trump, seeing their congressman’s criticisms as evidence that he is just another mealy-mouthed, calculating elitist, who has seemingly forgotten that in the real world “everybody makes mistakes”. Put another way, when the much-loathed press or Democrats attacked Mr Trump, that reassured his voters that they shared common foes. That points to another reason to fear Mr Trump’s populist victory. For populism involves more than policies that are at once simple and stirring enough to shout at a rally (“Build That Wall”) or print on a bumper sticker. Populism is also the politics of Them and Us, involving appeals to tribal identities, and zero-sum contests over hard-pressed resources. Populism is hardly new. What makes Mr Trump’s win different is that he so explicitly sought to cast his opponents as illegitimate, unfit, contemptible, un-American or (a favourite word) “disgusting”—and was confident that he would find an echo among his voters. Mr Trump was the nominee of a party which, after losing the presidential election of 2012, commissioned a post-mortem concluding that until Republicans built a new coalition, including more non-whites and other fast-growing demographic blocs, it would struggle to win national office again. Mr Trump’s gamble was to take an exactly opposite approach. He bet everything on a strategy of nostalgic nationalism, summed up in the slogan “Make America Great Again”, precisely because his hunch was that the country is home to an underestimated mass of voters who do not want to be part of any rainbow coalition, thank you—and certainly not if the price is granting amnesty to immigrants in the country without the right papers, or embracing gay marriage. Nasty, not nice Mr Trump was open about his plans, telling The Economist in interviews that he planned to appeal to a “silent majority” of “hard-working, great people in the United States that have been disenfranchised”. He ticked off areas in which he could beat Mrs Clinton: on border security and fears of crime caused by immigrants, on foreign trade and jobs and on Islamic terrorism (“She’s very, very weak”). Working Americans and their wives are “the biggest group of people in our society”, Mr Trump noted, explaining how he had learned to relate to such folk as a schoolboy spending summers on his father’s building sites, working with sheetrock fitters, carpenters and electricians. He boasted, correctly, that his focus on working-class voters would be rewarded with a “big crossover” from independents, Democrats and those who rarely vote. A pollster told him that his only weak point was when voters were asked about candidates being nice, Mr Trump confided in an interview in August 2015. “And I said, this is not going to be an election on niceness.” Talking to voters in this horrible election year, it has become clear that they dislike one another The Economist Mr Trump may be unique in embracing nastiness as a way to demonstrate sincerity. But it is also the case that Mrs Clinton rallied such voter blocs as Latinos, blacks, women or gay Americans by telling them not just that she was on their side, but that her coalition would not seek to win the votes of those Americans they dislike or distrust. That is what it meant when she declared half of Mr Trump’s supporters “deplorables”: Mrs Clinton was promising that she had no intention of trying to persuade the wrong sort of voters. That politics worked in 2016 because so many Americans have moved beyond distrusting politicians, parties or Washington. Talking to voters in this horrible election year, it has become clear that they dislike one another. Now that divided republic is Mr Trump’s—if he can keep it.

The Trump era His victory threatens old certainties about America. What will take their place? The Trump era His victory threatens old certainties about America and its role in the world. What will take their place? From the print edition, November 12th 2016 THE fall of the Berlin Wall, on November 9th 1989, was when history was said to have ended. The fight between communism and capitalism was over. After a titanic ideological struggle encompassing the decades after the second world war, open markets and Western liberal democracy reigned supreme. In the early morning of November 9th 2016, when Donald Trump crossed the threshold of 270 electoral-college votes to become America’s president-elect, that illusion was shattered. History is back—with a vengeance. If Mr Trump now disengages from the world, who knows what will storm through the breach The Economist The fact of Mr Trump’s victory and the way it came about are hammer blows both to the norms that underpin politics in the United States and also to America’s role as the world’s pre-eminent power. At home, an apparently amateurish and chaotic campaign has humiliated an industry of consultants, pundits and pollsters. If, as he has threatened, President Trump goes on to test the institutions that regulate political life, nobody can be sure how they will bear up. Abroad, he has taken aim at the belief, embraced by every post-war president, that America gains from the often thankless task of being the global hegemon. If Mr Trump now disengages from the world, who knows what will storm through the breach? The sense that old certainties are crumbling has rocked America’s allies. The fear that globalisation has fallen flat has whipsawed markets. Although post-Brexit Britons know what that feels like, the referendum in Britain will be eclipsed by consequences of this election. Mr Trump’s victory has demolished a consensus. The question now is what takes its place. Trump towers Start with the observation that America has voted not for a change of party so much as a change of regime. Mr Trump was carried to office on a tide of popular rage. This is powered partly by the fact that ordinary Americans have not shared in their country’s prosperity. In real terms median male earnings are still lower than they were in the 1970s. In the past 50 years, barring the expansion of the 1990s, middle-ranking households have taken longer to claw back lost income with each recession. Social mobility is too low to hold out the promise of something better. The resulting loss of self-respect is not neutralised by a few quarters of rising wages. "...ordinary Americans blame the elites in Washington for being too spineless and too stupid..." Anger has sown hatred in America. Feeling themselves victims of an unfair economic system, ordinary Americans blame the elites in Washington for being too spineless and too stupid to stand up to foreigners and big business; or, worse, they believe that the elites themselves are part of the conspiracy. They repudiate the media—including this newspaper—for being patronising, partisan and as out of touch and elitist as the politicians. Many working-class white voters feel threatened by economic and demographic decline. Some of them think racial minorities are bought off by the Democratic machine. Rural Americans detest the socially liberal values that urban compatriots foist upon them by supposedly manipulating the machinery in Washington. Republicans have behaved as if working with Democrats is treachery. Mr Trump harnessed this popular anger brilliantly. Those who could not bring themselves to vote for him may wonder how half of their compatriots were willing to overlook his treatment of women, his pandering to xenophobes and his rank disregard for the facts. There is no reason to conclude that all Trump voters approve of his behaviour. For some of them, his flaws are insignificant next to the One Big Truth: that America needs fixing. For others the willingness to break taboos was proof that he is an outsider. As commentators have put it, his voters took Mr Trump seriously but not literally, even as his critics took him literally but not seriously. The hapless Hillary Clinton might have won the popular vote, but she stood for everything angry voters despise. The hope is that this election will prove cathartic. Perhaps, in office, Mr Trump will be pragmatic and magnanimous—as he was in his acceptance speech. Perhaps he will be King Donald, a figurehead and tweeter-in-chief who presides over an executive vice-president and a cabinet of competent, reasonable people. When he decides against building a wall against Mexico after all or concludes that a trade war with China is not a wise idea, his voters may not mind too much—because they only expected him to make them feel proud and to put conservative justices in the Supreme Court. Indeed, you can just about imagine a future in which extra infrastructure spending, combined with deregulation, tax cuts, a stronger dollar and the repatriation of corporate profits, boosts the American economy for long enough to pacify the anger. This more emollient Trump might even model himself on Ronald Reagan, a conservative hero who was mocked and underestimated, too. Whereas Reagan was an optimist, Mr Trump rails against the loss of an imagined past The Economist Nothing would make us happier than to see Mr Trump succeed in this way. But whereas Reagan was an optimist, Mr Trump rails against the loss of an imagined past. We are deeply sceptical that he will make a good president—because of his policies, his temperament and the demands of political office. Gravity wins in the end Take his policies first. After the sugar rush, populist policies eventually collapse under their own contradictions. Mr Trump has pledged to scrap the hated Obamacare. But that threatens to deprive over 20m hard-up Americans of health insurance. His tax cuts would chiefly benefit the rich and they would be financed by deficits that would increase debt-to-GDP by 25 percentage points by 2026. Even if he does not actually deport illegal immigrants, he will foment the divisive politics of race. Mr Trump has demanded trade concessions from China, Mexico and Canada on threat of tariffs and the scrapping of the North American Free Trade Agreement. His protectionism would further impoverish poor Americans, who gain more as consumers from cheap imports than they would as producers from suppressed competition. If he caused a trade war, the fragile global economy could tip into a recession. With interest rates near zero, policymakers would struggle to respond. Abroad Mr Trump says he hates the deal freezing Iran’s nuclear programme. If it fails, he would have to choose between attacking Iran’s nuclear sites and seeing nuclear proliferation in the Middle East. He wants to reverse the Paris agreement on climate change; apart from harming the planet, that would undermine America as a negotiating partner. Above all, he would erode America’s alliances—its greatest strength. Mr Trump has demanded that other countries pay more towards their security or he will walk away. His bargaining would weaken NATO, leaving front-line eastern European states vulnerable to Russia. It would encourage Chinese expansion in the South China Sea. Japan and South Korea may be tempted to arm themselves with nuclear weapons. The second reason to be wary is temperament. During the campaign Mr Trump was narcissistic, thin-skinned and ill-disciplined. Yet the job of the most powerful man in the world constantly entails daily humiliations at home and abroad. When congressmen mock him, insult him and twist his words, his effectiveness will depend on his willingness to turn the other cheek and work for a deal. When a judge hears a case for fraud against Trump University in the coming weeks, or rules against his administration’s policies when he is in office, he must stand back (self-restraint that proved beyond him when he was a candidate). When journalists ridiculed him in the campaign he threatened to open up libel laws. In office he must ignore them or try to talk them round. When sovereign governments snub him he must calculate his response according to America’s interests, not his own wounded pride. If Mr Trump fails to master his resentments, his presidency will soon become bogged down in a morass of petty conflicts. The third reason to be wary is the demands of office. No problem comes to the president unless it is fiendishly complicated. Yet Mr Trump has shown no evidence that he has the mastery of detail or sustained concentration that the Oval Office demands. He could delegate (as Reagan famously did), but his campaign team depended to an unusual degree on his family and on political misfits. He has thrived on the idea that his experience in business will make him a master negotiator in politics. Yet if a deal falls apart there is always another skyscraper to buy or another golf course to build; by contrast, a failure to agree with Vladimir Putin about Russia’s actions leaves nobody to turn to. Nowhere will judgment and experience be more exposed than over the control of America’s nuclear arsenal—which, in a crisis, falls to him and him alone. The pendulum swings out The genius of America’s constitution is to limit the harm one president can do. We hope Mr Trump proves our doubts groundless or that, if he fails, a better president will be along in four years. The danger with popular anger, though, is that disillusion with Mr Trump will only add to the discontent that put him there in the first place. If so, his failure would pave the way for someone even more bent on breaking the system. The election of Mr Trump is a rebuff to all liberals, including this newspaper. The open markets and classically liberal democracy that we defend, and which had seemed to be affirmed in 1989, have been rejected by the electorate first in Britain and now in America. France, Italy and other European countries may well follow. It is clear that popular support for the Western order depended more on rapid growth and the galvanising effect of the Soviet threat than on intellectual conviction. Recently Western democracies have done too little to spread the benefits of prosperity. Politicians and pundits took the acquiescence of the disillusioned for granted. As Mr Trump prepares to enter the White House, the long, hard job of winning the argument for liberal internationalism begins anew.

How did the polls get it wrong? The Economist explains How did the polls get it so wrong The Economist explains IT WAS a big polling miss in the worst possible race. On the eve of America’s presidential election, national surveys gave Hillary Clinton a lead of around four percentage points, which betting markets and statistical models translated into a probability of victory ranging from 70% to 99%. That wound up misfiring modestly: according to the forecast from New York Times’s Upshot, Mrs Clinton is still likely to win the popular vote, by more than a full percentage point. But at the state level, the errors were extreme. The polling average in Wisconsin gave her a lead of more than five points; she is expected to lose it by two and a half. It gave Mr Trump a relatively narrow two-point edge in Ohio; he ran away with the state by more than eight. He trailed in Michigan and Pennsylvania by four, and looks likely to take both by about a point. How did it all go wrong? At state level, the errors were extreme The Economist Every survey result is made up of a combination of two variables: the demographic composition of the electorate, and how each group is expected to vote. Because some groups—say, young Hispanic men—are far less likely to respond than others (old white women, for example), pollsters typically weight the answers they receive to match their projections of what the electorate will look like. Polling errors can stem either from getting an unrepresentative sample of respondents within each group, or from incorrectly predicting how many of each type of voter will show up. The electoral map leaves no doubt as to how Mr Trump won. In states where white voters tend to be well-educated, such as Colorado and Virginia, the polls pegged the final results perfectly. Conversely, in northern states that have lots of whites without a college degree, Mr Trump blew his polls away—including ones he is still expected to lose, but by a far smaller margin than expected, such as Minnesota. The simplest explanation for this would be that these voters preferred him by an even larger margin than pollsters foresaw—the so-called “shy Trump” phenomenon, in which people might be wary of admitting they supported him. But in fact, the 29-point margin he ran up with this group was an almost perfect match for the 30-point gap that showed up in previous polling. That suggests an alternate interpretation: this group, which historically has had a low propensity to vote, turned out in far greater numbers than pollsters could predict. It serves as a devaststing reminder of the uncertainty in polling and a warning about being overconfident even when the weight of surveying evidence seems overwhelming The Economist Of all the consequences of Mr Trump’s stunning victory, its impact on the public-opinion-research industry is surely among the least important. Nonetheless, it should inspire pollsters to redouble their efforts to better forecast turnout, beyond merely relying on the census and applying simple likely-voter screens. For the layman, it serves as a devastating reminder of the uncertainty in polling, and a warning about being overconfident even when the weight of surveying evidence seems overwhelming. As the physicist Niels Bohr famously quipped, “prediction is difficult—especially about the future.”

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Border woes What the president-elect’s Mexico-bashing may look like in practice Border woes What President Trump’s Mexico-bashing may look like in practice From economist.com, November 9th 2016 ENRIQUE PEÑA NIETO, the president of Mexico, was roundly castigated at home for meeting Donald Trump in August. Mr Trump, then the Republican presidential nominee, is reviled south of the border for calling Mexican migrants rapists, and for promising that he would force Mexico to pay for a wall between the two countries. In his defence Mr Peña said it was important to begin a dialogue early, with a view to reducing the potential harm a Trump presidency could cause Mexico. In Mexico the immediate effect of Mr Trump's victory has been to send the already weak peso tumbling The Economist That strategy is about to be put to the test. In Mexico the immediate effect of Mr Trump’s victory has been to send the already weak peso tumbling to new lows. Throughout the campaign the currency reacted badly to any perceived improvements in the Republican’s chances of victory. On early Wednesday morning it fell to more than 20 to the dollar—its biggest drop since 1994—on fears about the future of trade with the United States. The governor of the central bank, Agustín Carstens, suggested in September that Mr Trump’s arrival in the White House would hit Mexico like a “Category 5 hurricane”. The bank is widely expected to respond to the peso’s malaise by raising interest rates at least once more this year. Currently 4.75%, they could head as high as 6.75%. This tightening, which may be accompanied by cuts in public spending, could seriously hobble a Mexican economy that is already struggling in the face of reduced industrial demand in America. That uncertainty is a minimal risk compared with the prospect of Mr Trump taking the United States out of the North American Free Trade Agreement. America has not withdrawn from a trade agreement in well over a century, but doing so is within Mr Trump’s presidential powers, and he has called it “the worst trade deal in history”. Whether he will actually want to endanger bilateral trade of $580bn a year is unclear. Mexico would have more to lose from the imposition of tariffs, given that it sends around 80% of its exports to America. But the gains accrued to America are massive, as one hopes that Mr Trump, for all his bluster, ought to know. Cooperation on matters of security is also of vital importance, and relations in this area are currently better than at any point in the past ten years, suggests Duncan Wood, head of the Mexico Institute of the Wilson Centre in Washington, DC. Given that Mr Trump has complained about Mexican drug-traffickers coming into America, the chances of his undermining the very interactions that aim to keep them out are minimal. "The sky won't fall...but it will be lower" Mr Peña has a tricky balance to find. Criticised for being too soft in his approach to Mr Trump earlier in the year, he may feel obliged to strike a harsher tone now. Yet that attitude would bring with it the danger of escalation from Mr Trump, who can be touchy. It would be better to identify Mexico’s policy objectives and promote ways in which the countries can work together. The disruption the next four years could cause to the bilateral relationship, though worrying, need not be apocalyptic. “The sky won’t fall,” says David Shirk of the University of San Diego, “but it will be lower.”

The world economy A Trump presidency will be bad for the world economy and worse for places outside America Our election, your problem A Trump presidency will be bad for the world economy and worse for places outside America From the print edition, November 12th 2016 IT IS not clear precisely how Donald Trump will govern, the extent to which he will carry out some of his scarier promises on trade and immigration, and who will be his economics top brass at the Treasury and in the White House. But a decent first guess is that President Trump will be bad for the world economy in aggregate; and a second is that his actions are likely to do more harm, in the short term at least, to economies outside America. This election result belongs to America but is potentially a bigger economic problem for everyone else The Economist When America has in the past stepped aside from its role at the centre of the global economic system, the damage has spread well beyond its borders. In 1971, when Richard Nixon ended the post-war system of fixed exchange-rates that had America at its centre, his Treasury secretary, John Connally, told European leaders, “The dollar is our currency, but your problem.” This election result, to paraphrase Connally, belongs to America but is potentially a bigger economic problem for everyone else. The scale and nature of that problem depend on the interplay of the two main elements of Mr Trump’s economic populism. The first is action to boost aggregate demand. Mr Trump favours tax cuts and extra public spending on infrastructure. The second element is trade protectionism. He has pledged to slap tariffs on Chinese imports and to renegotiate the North American Free-Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Mexico and Canada. To the extent that he leans more on the first element and less on the second, the immediate damage to America’s economy will be limited. But even in that event, the net effect of a Trump presidency on economies outside America is still likely to be harmful. To understand why, go back to the subject of Connally’s gibe: the dollar. As it became clear that Mr Trump would win the election, the greenback fell against rich-country currencies, such as the euro, yen, Swiss franc and pound, as investors sought a haven from policy uncertainty in America. An index of its value against major currencies dropped by 2% in early trading on November 9th. Within hours it had regained almost all the lost ground, as investors pieced together a positive story for the dollar, based on the prospects of a boost to demand in America’s economy and an inflow of capital from abroad. Bringing it all back home A deal between Mr Trump and Congress to cut corporate taxes, goes the logic, would spur flush American companies to repatriate retained profits held offshore. It would also allow them to increase capital spending in America, because they would have more ready cash; and consequent profits would be taxed more lightly. The larger budget deficits entailed by tax reform, along with more public spending on infrastructure, would underpin yields on long-term Treasury bonds. Indeed, after falling in the initial aftermath of Mr Trump’s victory, yields on 10- and 30-year Treasuries are on the rise again. Add the potential for higher inflation from the stimulus and the likelier use of some protectionist tariffs, plus a Federal Reserve with a more hawkish tilt, as Mr Trump’s appointees alter the complexion of its interest-rate-setting committee, and you have the makings of a renewed dollar rally. A fiscal stimulus coupled with an investment splurge in the world’s largest economy should, all else equal, also be good for global aggregate demand. And if this kind of “reflation populism” improves the near-term prospects for America’s economy, it may dissuade Mr Trump from resorting to full-strength “anti-trade populism”. Well, perhaps. But given his leanings, it is easy to imagine him resorting to soft protectionism that keeps much of the additional demand within America’s borders. He might for instance lean on companies to favour domestic suppliers, or attach local-content conditions to publicly funded infrastructure projects. What is more, the repatriation of profits by American firms would draw resources away from their subsidiaries abroad. In 1971 the world feared dollar weakness. These days, dollar strength tends to have a tightening effect on global financial conditions. The waxing and waning of the dollar is strongly linked to the ups and downs of the credit cycle. When the dollar is weak and American interest rates are low, companies outside America are keen to borrow dollars. Often big firms, flush with such cheap loans, will further extend credit in local currencies to smaller ones. But when the dollar goes up, the cycle goes into reverse, as corporate borrowers outside America scramble to pay down their dollar debts. That causes a more general tightening of credit. Mexico has the most to lose from Mr Trump’s presidency, should he keep his campaign promises. So the peso plummeted in the wake of the result. But Mexico, along with Chile, Turkey, the Philippines and Russia, also has a large burden of dollar debts, which are becoming more expensive in local currency. Mr Trump’s protectionist bent may make it hard for emerging markets to trade their way out of trouble. Only a few are likely to be unharmed by his victory. Where does a Trump victory leave China, the world’s second-largest economy? China accounts for roughly a half of America’s net trade-deficit, so in Mr Trump’s zero-sum reckoning, it has a lot to lose should America launch an all-out trade war. In fact, the resulting disruption to global supply-chains would badly hurt American firms, and higher prices on imported goods would squeeze American consumers, especially poorer households, which spend proportionately more on them. Yet there are risks to China’s economy too, from even a milder form of Trumpian populism. The dollar’s weakness over the spring and summer helped stem the outflow of capital from China that had threatened to unmoor the yuan and so unsettled global financial markets at the turn of the year. A sustained dollar rally would thus mean a severe headache for China’s policymakers, as it would revive the pressure on its capital account. They might then face an unpalatable choice: let the yuan sink against the dollar or keep domestic monetary policy tighter to support it. China is safe from the biggest indirect effect of Mr Trump’s victory: the boost it gives other populist politicians. Europe is far more vulnerable. Britain’s vote in June to leave the European Union was one early ballot-box reflection of anti-establishment sentiment. Since then, insurgent political parties in France, Germany, Italy and elsewhere have called for referendums on membership. Such parties typically favour trade barriers and limits on immigration, and are gaining in popularity. The euro area’s economy has been faring better in recent years, but the single currency remains fragile. The kind of cross-border risk-sharing needed to put the euro on a sound footing is at odds with the rising tides of nationalism and populism. An immediate hurdle is Italy’s referendum on constitutional reform on December 4th. A defeat would weaken Matteo Renzi, the reformist prime minister, and embolden the populist Five Star Movement, which favours ditching the euro. Around 14% of the euro area’s goods exports go to America, quite a bit less than China’s 18%. But America accounts for about 40% of the currency zone’s recent export growth, according to economists at HSBC, a bank. So American protectionism is arguably a bigger threat to Europe than to China. The whole world has much to fear from Mr Trump’s threats to tear up trade agreements and impose punitive tariffs on imports. And even if he refrains from starting a trade war, the loose-tongued, fact-lite style he cultivated during the campaign could wreak serious damage when he is president. His hyperbolic threats now carry the weight of the American presidency. His victory was enough to chill some financial markets; what he might do with it could spark full-scale panic. Even short of that, like the Brexit vote, it marks an alarming step away from a liberal, open economic order towards more isolationism and less prosperity.

Nominator in chief How the Supreme Court will change under President Trump Nominator in chief How the Supreme Court will change under President Trump From economist.com, November 9th 2016 THERE are two ways to think about the future of the Supreme Court in the wake of last night’s stunning upset in the presidential race: taking Donald Trump at his word when he says he will load the bench with conservatives, or, in view of his penchant for changing his mind, taking these promises with a shaker full of salt. Neither offers much solace to liberals. Mr Trump has pledged to appoint highly conservative justices to the Supreme Court The Economist Mr Trump has pledged to appoint highly conservative justices who will uphold gun rights, walk back the 18-month-old decision allowing gays and lesbians to wed and “automatically” overturn Roe v Wade, the 1971 ruling recognising a right to abortion choice. On the campaign trail, Mr Trump provided more information about his intentions with regard to the nation’s highest court than any presidential candidate has ever divulged: not one list of potential nominees but two, totalling 21 souls he says merit a shot in one of the Supreme Court’s nine seats. That is 21 more names than previous applicants for the White House—including Hillary Clinton—have made public. Mr Trump released his first list of 11 names in May to shore up support for his budding nomination and to reassure conservatives that he could take just as hard a line on replacing Antonin Scalia, the arch-conservative justice who died in February, as his nearest rival, Ted Cruz. Publicising the roster, which was curated with the help of the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation, two solidly conservative think tanks, was a highly unorthodox move, and it’s likely Mr Trump knew very little about any of the potential nominees. But the stunt had its intended effect: the conservative base coalesced around Mr Trump and the real-estate magnate took the mantle of the Republican party. The original Trump Eleven were all white judges, six sitting on federal circuit courts and five on state supreme courts. In line with what would become a promise to “drain the swamp” in the final weeks of his campaign, none hailed from inside the Washington beltway. That is a remarkable slight to the DC Court of Appeals, an institution where many presidents have fished for nominees. Of the eight justices currently on the Supreme Court, three once served on the DC court: the liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg and conservatives Clarence Thomas and John Roberts, the chief. Barack Obama’s pick to replace Mr Scalia, Merrick Garland, is the DC circuit court’s chief judge. "Nobody knows who Mr Trump will actually tap for Mr Scalia's empty seat" Late in September, Mr Trump added ten more potential picks to his Supreme Court wish list. This list was more diverse. It included more women and three people of colour, including Amul Thapar, a Detroit-born judge of South Asian descent; Federico Moreno, a Florida judge who hails from Venezuela; and Robert Young, the black chief of Michigan’s supreme court. It also featured Mike Lee, a senator from Utah who refused to endorse Mr Trump and who called on him to quit the race following revelations about his treatment of women in October. Mr Lee has said he is happy serving in the Senate and is not interested in taking a seat on the Supreme Court. Nobody knows who Mr Trump will actually tap for Mr Scalia’s empty seat. Mr Trump himself might have little clue. In the course of his business career, the president-elect has shown a remarkable ability to dodge and parry and reverse himself on everything from the war in Iraq to immigration policy to Mr Obama’s birthplace. Notably, Mr Trump never said he would choose one of the 21 people on his lists: he said the names should be viewed as “a guide” he would consult when sitting down to make his selection. They are "representative of the kind of constitutional principles I value”, he said. Time will tell whether those principles make their way into an actual Trump nominee. Last night's vote may have changed retirement plans for Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Stephen Breyer The Economist But with Republicans in control of both houses of Congress and the White House, there is only one barrier to Mr Trump seating a justice of his choice: the Senate filibuster, a maneouver that permits the minority party to prolong debate and block votes as long as the majority is weaker than 60 votes. Senate leaders told The Economist over the summer that this last line of defence will be erased no matter which party takes the chamber in the November election. With their successful nine-month stonewall of Mr Garland now looking like a brilliant move to preserve a half-century-long conservative tilt on the Supreme Court, Republicans will have no reason to bow to a Senate rule that hamstrings their new president. Expect the filibuster to dissolve and Mr Trump to have his way with the empty chair—one way or another. Meanwhile, last night’s vote may have changed retirement plans for Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 83 and Stephen Breyer, 78, the elder liberals on a court that is destined to swing to the right. If they hang up their robes over the next four years, the Supreme Court may be unrecognisable a generation down the road.

Trumpette Does Donald Trump’s victory presage a win for Marine Le Pen? Does Donald Trump’s victory presage a win for Marine Le Pen? It remains improbable. But it would be unwise to rule it out From economist.com, November 9th 2016 What might be the knock-on effect in Europe of Donald Trump’s victory? The next big democracy to vote after America is France, which holds its presidential election next spring. Could Marine Le Pen, leader of the populist National Front (FN), be elected president? A jubilant Ms Le Pen, who had argued that a Trump victory would be good for France, congratulated the American president-elect The Economist Before the American result, the question seemed absurd. Polls have suggested for months that she would do well enough to secure one of the two second-round places at voting next April. This in itself would be a victory of sorts, repeating the achievement of her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, in 2002. But no polls have indicated that she could beat the centre-right candidate likely to face her. Now, the unthinkable has become conceivable. There was no disguising the delight in Paris at the FN headquarters. A jubilant Ms Le Pen, who had argued that a Trump victory would be good for France, congratulated the American president-elect and praised the “free” American people. Her lieutenant and party strategist, Florian Philippot, summed up the mood at the FN: “Their world is collapsing; ours is being built.” Even Mr Le Pen, who has fallen out with his daughter, tweeted: “Today the United States, tomorrow France!” Certainly, the parallels between Ms Le Pen and Mr Trump are striking. Both trade on simplified truths and build politics on rejection and nostalgia. They have both reinvented themselves as anti-establishment outsiders, who stand up for people forgotten by the system and scorned by the elite. They speak to the same white working-class rage, use similar vocabulary, and thrive each time the establishment sneers at them. Drawing her own personal strength from the old industrial and mining towns of northern France, which once voted Communist, Ms Le Pen is now the favourite politician among French working-class voters. "Mr Trump and Ms Le Pen are both protectionists and nationalists, supportive of Brexit and sympathetic to Russia" Their policy instincts are similar too. Mr Trump and Ms Le Pen are both protectionists and nationalists, supportive of Brexit and sympathetic to Russia. The FN has borrowed money from a Russian bank with links to the Kremlin, and Ms Le Pen has long admired Vladimir Putin. Pro-Europeans in Paris are particularly concerned at the prospect of an alliance between Mr Trump, Mr Putin and Ms Le Pen, bent on dividing the European Union and undermining the old order. After the Brexit vote, the FN leader promised a “Frexit” referendum in France too. One difference is rhetorical excess. Ms Le Pen is in some ways a Trump lite. She may share many of his reflexes, but wraps them up in more cautious language. She has never, for instance, called for all Muslims to be banned from France, but rather for an end to an “uncontrolled wave” of immigration. She does not promise to build walls, but to control borders. The problem, she says, is not Islam but what she calls the “Islamification” of France. In France, where Ms Le Pen is trying to transform a one-time pariah movement with former neo-Nazi links into a credible political force ready to govern, such nuances remain an asset. Ms Le Pen’s populism has fewer rough edges than Mr Trump’s, and is all the more electorally powerful for it. Even in France’s two-round system, which makes it difficult for insurgent parties, her party has shown that it can win a majority of votes locally. The FN now governs a dozen town halls across France, mostly in the north and the Mediterranean fringe. To win the two-round presidential election, however, Ms Le Pen would have to break a glass ceiling. Empirically, this has capped her support, both in opinion polls and at the ballot box, at just over 40%. A majority of French voters on the left and centre-right, less wedded to their political family than they are allergic to the FN, tend to gang up to vote against it in a run-off, in what is known as a front républicain. They did just this at regional elections in December 2015, when Ms Le Pen won 44%, but failed to secure the presidency of northern France, after Socialists, improbably, campaigned for the centre-right candidate, Xavier Bertrand. A Le Pen victory may still be improbable. But it would be a grave mistake to rule it out The Economist All polls suggest today that Ms Le Pen would similarly face—and lose—a presidential run-off next year against the Republican candidate, who will be picked at that party’s primary later this month. She would do better in a contest with Nicolas Sarkozy, a frenetic former president, against whom polls suggest she would win 42% of the vote, than she would if she faced Alain Juppé, a professorial former prime minister, against whom she would win 32%. Indeed, Mr Juppé has specifically campaigned for left-wing voters disappointed with François Hollande’s Socialist presidency to turn out at the Republican primary and vote for him, a more palatable option for them than Ms Le Pen. All of which assumes, however, that the polls are a reasonable guide to voting intentions. Recent American and British experience now caution against this. The sense of possibility that a victorious Mr Trump offers Ms Le Pen will give her campaign fresh momentum, and perhaps embolden her silent supporters. The more the media and political classes lament the American result, the more she will play on the arrogance and entitlement of the out-of-touch Paris elite. And, whether Mr Juppé or Mr Sarkozy runs for president, her anti-establishment denunciation of the unchanging cast of political old-timers will ring all too true. A Le Pen victory may still be improbable. But it would be a grave mistake to rule it out.