What do Rob Ford, the Brexit and Donald Trump have in common? by Rex Murphy.  Toronto mayor Rob Ford … was seen as offensive to all right-thinking people, under a “massive and continuous avalanche of scorn, mockery and outright contempt” from the media and the political class. Yet legions of Torontonians liked Ford.

We have just witnessed a larger, more consequential example of the same break between elite suppositions and the real hopes, dreams and fears of the ordinary voter — the Brexit. …

Ford was a signal of the disconnection, the great space between correct opinion in the higher altitudes and lived experience in the valley. Brexit was the first major demonstration of the consequences of that disconnect.

The rulers and the ruled are increasingly out of touch with each other. The words of elite opinion have no resonance with the experience of those who they increasingly talk down to. Worse, the rain of snark and insult directed at the less enlightened only widened the gap, and added anger to their discontent. It’s never smart to be always talking down to people you refuse to listen to in the first place.

Cometh the moment, cometh Trump — who has “dispatched every professional politician in the Republican party who opposed him and now threatens the succession of the Clinton dynasty itself.”

Trump has the perfect opponent for the moment he’s in: presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is the ultimate, consummate insider, and she is married to the greatest political alchemist of our day, Bill Clinton. She is Washington and Wall Street (Bernie Sanders got that right); he’s Davos and Hollywood — the greatest marketer of a post-presidency that the world has ever known. There are no two people who are so drenched, soaked and saturated with politics as a business and business as politics than Hillary and Bill.