Mainstream media, pay attention. Well over two years since Donald Trump won the presidential election and the Left’s handwringing about how and why still hasn’t abated.
And no, the answer isn’t Russia, though you wouldn’t know that from watching most press coverage.
Former Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper, whose book Right Here, Right Now explores populism in great detail, answers the question in a video produced by Prager University.
“I did not expect Donald Trump to be elected president of the United States, but unlike most observers, I did think it was at least possible,” he said. “Why? Because I sensed, as Mr. Trump surely did, that the political landscape had shifted.”
Harper takes aim at the characterization of ordinary people as “deplorables” in distilling the western population to two main groups–the Anywheres and the Somewheres.
The Anywheres can live and work pretty much wherever in the world they choose, unimpacted by things like outsourcing and technological disruption. The Somewheres are your quintessential midwestern voters, tied to their communities and their jobs. They don’t have the luxury of picking up and moving to greener pastures when their communities and jobs cease to exist.
Even if one disagrees with the Somewheres’ views on immigration and economics, Harper said it’s imperative that leaders try to understand and offer solutions.
Those solutions, he says, lie in “tried and true conservative values.”
