Cornell Chronicle

Carlson says:

“Most of the post-election analysis is likely to focus on issues with a return to divided government in Washington. This misses a much more fundamental point: the deepening division within the country between red and blue states.  The coasts and metro centers remain quite liberal, while the rural center has become even more conservative. This election was largely about identity politics and cultural values much more than it was about any specific policies.

“Despite the fact that they are arguably suffering the most as a result of the President's trade war with China, rural voters widely cast their votes for candidates on the ballot who were most closely aligned with Trump. Within such a climate I suspect China barely registered in the minds of most voters.  As a result, moving forward both parties will only deal with China through the prism of what has become a zero-sum battle between them over who will govern the United States now and in 2020.

“For Democrats there is little to be gained by taking a gentler approach to China.  For Republicans, China serves as convenient target upon which to project the fears of their core supporters. Above and beyond this, the President's whims, informed by the anti-free trade views of his closest advisors, will then continue to drive China policy.  Given his unpredictability, this capriciousness – more than anything else coming out of Washington, D.C. – is what in all likelihood worries China's leaders the most.”

Berezin says:

“Viewed as an anti-immigrant nationalist party with roots in Sweden’s Nazi party, the Sweden Democrats are likely to come in second or third on Sunday with between 15 and 20 percent of the vote. Since its founding in 1988, the Sweden Democrats regularly garnered from one to three percent of the vote – this began to change in 2010 when the its share of the vote jumped to six percent and in 2014, when the political establishment began to take the Sweden Democrats seriously after they won 13 percent of the vote.

“Swedes have seemed the most welcoming to refugees in contrast to other European countries. However, a 2016 Pew poll suggested that about 88 percent of Swedes are unhappy with the European Union’s handling of the refugee crisis – only citizens of Greece are unhappier. The perception of trans-European inefficiency has helped the Sweden Democrats, as well as latent xenophobia.

“On the morning of September 10, the international media will no doubt focus on how the Sweden Democrats could do so well, but they will be missing a key point. Nationalism runs deep in Swedish culture—as it does in all of the Nordic countries—and the infrastructure of Sweden’s Social Democratic past was built on a mono-ethnic society. Sweden has never been an exception, and this is what accounts for the rise of the Sweden Democrats.”