President Obama has a lengthy commentary in the Economist, which that magazine-that-calls-itself-a-newspaper says is an “open letter to his successor. The Economist also describes the essay as “centrist,” as it criticizes Bernie Sanders’ leftism as much as, if not more than it criticized Trump.
But the article isn’t really centrist. Instead, Obama is defending the liberal (in a classical sense of the term) consensus in favor of free trade, relatively open borders, and mostly free markets. That is what liberals believed in during the nineteenth century, and it is what both the liberal and conservative elites believe today, which is why neither Bill Clinton nor George Bush questioned these ideas.
This election year, in fact, is the first time in many decades–perhaps more than a century–that a candidate who challenged these ideas won a major party nomination for president. While Trump openly challenged the open borders ideas, Sanders gained a lot of votes by challenging the free-market ideas. Brexit and similar votes in Europe show this isn’t unique to the United States: many people are feeling disenchanted with the liberal consensus.
