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This essay in the Economist magazine points out the special nature of the 2017 presidential election in France with the rejection of establishment candidates- Manuel Valls, Sarkozy, Juppe, and now Fillon. Fillon and Valls were prime ministers under Sarkozy and Hollande, from the Republican and Socialist parties respectively. With unemployment high in the areas outside the major cities their is a surge in support in these areas for the National Front. Emmanuel Macron, former Economy minister in the Hollande government, is the only candidate leading Marie Le Pen at this time. In a second round of voting he has to bring in centre right supporters and centre left voters and moderate voters, and appeal enough to working class voters, young unemployed people, offering hope for a better future to win this election against Le Pen. Economist magazine research shows support highest for Le Pen outside major cities in outlying areas, and for Macron in the major cities. There is also an education divide as seen in the U.S. election and Brexit referendum with less educated voters preferring the nationalist sentiment, church support sentiment fostered by the National Front.  ...

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David Brooks on the candidacy for U.S. President of Senator Rick Santorum. He says Santorum genuinely represents the working class- a grandson of a coal miner and the son of Italian immigrants who has represented workers of the steel manufacturing region of western Pennsylvania. Santorum has pushed hard in this campaign largely ignored by the media. He has visited 370 towns riding in a pickup truck trying to cover as much ground as possible and talking with great conviction about his positions distant from the corporate and financial wings of the Republican party, about family, and communities. Bring someone like Sherrod Brown of Ohio together with someone like Rick Santorum and you have good representation of the working class across the political spectrum to win this election for the working class of America, says Brooks, who sees this as a lot better alternative today than Harvard Law.

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David Brooks on the change in Romney as he breaks away from tea party orthdoxy to be the man Brooks believes he truly is.

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Thomas Friedman of the NYT sees a climate change as an area in which Trump has ignored the information of eminent scientists. He sees a weakness of the Trump administration in Trump's putting no importance to briefings by experts from climate change to national security briefings. Friedman sees Russia and hacking as a major issue facing the new Trump administration, including the new hearings in Congress from leading Republicans on the cyberattacks.

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Rosa Ines Rivera, a cook at the cafeteria for the Y.H. Chan School of Public Health, Harvard University, with 2 small children, describes the protests over the increase by Harvard administration of the premiums charged on health insurance that now take up over 10% of the income. She says she lives in public housing with her parents as she lost her apartment because she is behind on the rent, and now cannot afford to pay the increase in premiums. About 750 workers at Harvard are on strike on this issue. She says dining hall workers want the current pay of $31,193  a year increased to $35,000 to provide a living wage that helps them afford medical care, because of the high cost of living in Boston.  To get some idea of the plight of workers who provide the kind of nutritious meals that a lot of students depend on for healthy living- Rivera says she takes in about $450 a week after taxes, or about $1800, rent is $1150, which leaves $650 for herself and two children for all food, and expenses in Boston. The $4000 in premiums for health insurance would be about 330 per month, leaving her about $320 for food and living expenses with 2 children. Why the need to bring up children in poverty in America, for generation after generation, after putting in a full day of work? ...

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Democrats face an uphill battle to recover lost territory during the Obama presidency. The efforts to promote Trans Pacific Trade Agreement by Obama against the interests of the unions, working class Americans, is one example of the way president Obama had alienated working class Americans. By being too close to Silicon Valley and failing to understand the changes in states with blue collar workers Democrats lost some of the working class base that had always voted Democratic. On social issues the party drifted too far in one direction in appealing to small groups and in the process drifting away from blue collar workers who were Democratic in the past but did not share the same passion for these issues. About 90% of better educated Americans were liberal yet among blue collar workers who had voted Democratic in the 1990's only 60% were liberal in the same way. The changes in America's landscape with the shift of manufacturing centres away from cities such as Pittsburgh to blue collar suburbs stretching from Michigan and Wisconsin to the Carolinas and the Deep South, created a new blue collar worker base that was more aligned with Republicans on social issues such as abortion, LGBT, and gun control. As a result the conservative base of the Republican Party now finds itself aligned with the blue collar worker, while the Democratic Party in places like New York and California is more aligned with the workers in the financial industry and in Silicon Valley. The improving economy gives more room for Republicans even with policies that might not help its new working class base as it strives to meet policy demands from wealthier Americans in the Republican Party.   ...

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The AKP party loses its parliamentary majority in the 2015 general election. It wins 41% of the vote compared to 50% in the 2011 general election. This gives it 258 seats in the Turkish parliament, compared to 327 seats in the last election. Kurds, liberals and secular Turks were part of the antigovernment protests in 2013. This part of the electorate voted for the Kurdish People's Democratic Party, which won 13% of the vote. The traditional secular party in Turkey won 25% of the vote, giving the opposition to the AKP a combined 38% of the vote. Turnout was 86% for the election. The Kurdish People's Democratic Party is led by a 42 year old human rights lawyer, who told reporters: "As of this hour, the debate about the presidency, the debate about dictatorship, is over. Turkey narrowly averted a disaster."

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This WSJ editorial says the free Indonesian elections and win by Widodo are worth celebrating. In the win by the Jakarta governor over Subianto, a military figure from the Suharto period, by 8.5 million votes in a country of 190 million, there is one big piece of good news in the midst of the failures elsewhere including neighboring Thailand. The Constitutional Court dismissed a challenge from Subianto, and the Yudhoyono government has shown a balanced approach to carefully respect the election results. This sets the stage for Indonesia to join the other democracies in the region, especially neighboring India, Australia and Japan, and also Pakistan, Bangladesh. The Indian region and Indonesia together represent the largest population in the world. The effort to tackle the common huge problems of inadequate infrastructure, using a elected democratic government process, will require all the energy, wise policy and ingenuity of the people themselves.

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This editorial in the New York Times is strongly critical of former president Barack Obama for accepting $400,000 in speaking fees from Wall Street for a single speech. It says the news is causing people to question the ideas and words presented by Obama in his books about the dangers of losing sight of the interests of ordinary people. It gives the impression says the NYT, that Obama is cashing in like everybody else, and that his talk was empty. The editorial says the millions raised by Hillary Clinton led to her defeat in the election. Obama is reported to plan a foundation with the work of training a new generation of political leaders. This NYT editorial says it would be better to stay true to vision and purpose, to walk the talk for president Obama, especially now that a recent poll shows two thirds of voters, including about half of Democrats say that the Democratic Party is out of touch with the interests of the American People. By associating this closely with wealthy donors leading Democrats contributed to this. During a period when some of the remarkable achievements of the last fifty years such as the European Union are being called into question, when ordinary working people, young people and older people are struggling, this is all the more a tone deaf approach by politicians. The idea of helping train a new generation of political leaders through a foundation sounds bizarre in this context, and seems to suggest politicians believe there is always a solution through marketing their audacity and money.   ...

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The U.S. Census Bureau shows incomes of American households, the median household income, surged in 2015 by 5.2%. This increased by $2800 to $56,500. This is the largest increase since 1967. It shows that steadily improving employment and hiring is leading to improvement in incomes for the middle and working class. Ris in minimum wage has also helped . The largest increase was for the lowest 20% of the income tiers. Full time working women did better than men, with increase annually of 2.7% for women, and 1.5% for men. Nocitizen incomes increased 10.5% to $45,100, native born households went up 4.4% to $57,200. The number of people without health insurance also declined from 33 million or 10.4% of the population to  29 million people or 9.1%. Another way the changes are helping lower income households is the decline of the official poverty rate to 13.5% in 2015 by 1.2 percentage points from 14.8% in 2014. Through a series of small incremental steps the path is being set for a recovery of household incomes for the middle class and working class. A bright spot is that the improvement has affected all age groups, household types, regions and ethnic groups, though among full time workers women did better than men. In this recession older white men have had more difficulties getting back into the workforce. This is reflected in the political scene in 2015-2016 for the election season. ...

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This article in Spanish calls on president Santos and former president Uribe to bridge their differences and take the peace process forward in Colombia. This follows the "no" vote in the referendum on the agreement reached in peace talks with FARC. Only 38% of the voters voted in the referendum and the vote was 50.2% against and 49.8% in favor of the peace agreement.

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Chozick and Parker of the NYT show how Donald Trump's frequent sexist comments on women and references to Hillary Clinton in similiar terms are likely to influence the outcome of the general election of 2016. The women's vote has played a significant part in the recent elections of 2008 and 2012 helping Democratic candidate Obama. Trump has a astonishingly high disapproval rating with women, unprecedented in U.S. election history, cited by the WSJ as 75%. Cruz's choice of Carly Fiorina as a running mate shows an awareness of the importance of the women's vote. Some of the comments cited here include the Trump comment that "if Hillary Clinton were a man, I don't think she would get 5% of the vote." It is not clear if this will help the Republican party, as such comments could alienate the mass base of women voters, including the base of young women voters who supported Sanders, women who are independents and moderate Republican women. Hillary Clinton is carefully planning a fall campaign in which such Trump attacks are expected, and the response will be handled not directly by Hillary but by Super PAC's, as Hillary sticks to calling them sexist and energizing her base from the attacks. CBS polls show Trump has the support of 39 percent of white women, compared to 50% for Hillary Clinton. Trump's attacks on women are strangely enough targeted at getting the support of white women- and men - in another wild twist of the 2016 campaign....

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The sixth Republican presidential debate in Jan. 2016 showed the main exchanges between Trump and Cruz, with some points made by Christie. The rest of the candidates Rubio, Kasich, Bush, Carson, made little headway. As Dan Balz points out in the Washington Post the Republican primaries look like a contest between Cruz and Trump, both anti-establishment candidates, both tapping into grass roots anger at the Obama administration and at establishment Republicans.

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The U.S. and China presented conflicting views on trade and security in Asia-Pacific region at the APEC summit in 2018. Vice President Pence said "we don't drown our partners in a sea of debt," in a criticism of the China Belt and Road Initiative. The U.S. has 1500 new projects and $61 billion in new investments in the region. Mr. Xi Jinping stated " confrontation in a Cold War, hot war, trade war will produce no winner." 

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Krugman points out the gains on three fronts evident from the Census Bureau report of 5.2% gain in median income of households in the U.S. He says the first is the growth in incomes of ordinary working class and middle class families, second the large decline in the poverty rate, and third the further rise in insurance coverage in 2015 for people without health insurance. He points to the steady efforts of the Obama administration to improve lives of ordinary families as working based on the Census report though results have taken time, and could have been better. The Stimulus, says Krugman could have been larger following the blow of the 2009 financial crisis and increased unemployment at the time. Janet Yellen at the inequality conference of the Boston Fed in 2014 pointed out the problems of 62 million households having net worth of about $10,000, and why this was running against the American idea of a better life for all Americans. In that sense the Census report is a movement in the right direction but a lot remains to be done.   ...