As voters count down the weeks to election day, it looks like Donald Trump’s chances for a come-from-behind victory are vanishingly slim. Several new polls this week showed Hillary Clinton surging despite her ongoing (and worsening) email scandal. A Monmouth University poll has Clinton ahead by 12 points, while polls from CBS and George Washington University put her 9 and 8 points ahead of Trump, respectively.
Assuming Trump loses in November, let’s think for minute about what might come after him. Who might best replace him as an outlet for populist angst? Because this is 2016, we can now take seriously ideas that last year seemed absurd. In that spirit, let me suggest that the most likely successor to Trump isn’t Chris Christie or Mike Pence or any other hapless politician. It’s Ivanka Trump.
By way of analogy, think of Ivanka as America’s Marine Le Pen, the current leader of France’s right-wing National Front party, which polls now show has a plurality of support with just six months to go before France’s presidential election. Le Pen is the daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, who founded the National Front in 1972 and made it to the final round of the 2002 presidential election. Under the elder Le Pen, who is now 88, the party was far more xenophobic and frankly anti-Semitic (Le Pen routinely minimized the Holocaust), and last year Marine Le Pen succeeded in officially ousting her father from the party. – READ MORE
