http://nypost.com/2015/12/11/the-establishment-begins-to-wake-up-to-voters-terror-worries/The establishment begins to wake up to voters’ terror worries
By Post Editorial Board
December 11, 2015 | 7:41pm
American voters are taking the Paris and San Bernardino attacks very seriously — and the political establishment doesn’t know what to do about it.
One sign: As The New York Times reports, Hillary Clinton’s not laughing about Donald Trump anymore. Obama adviser David Axelrod told the paper that Trump is “speaking to something” that members of “the elite political community . . . are just getting their arms around.”
Trump’s appeal is populist, aimed at voters who feel shut out by the elites of both parties. His call this week for a freeze on Muslim immigration met broad condemnation — but looks to have helped him in the polls.
It seems a good chunk of the electorate would now rather see someone overreacting to the terror threat than underreacting — or offering only symbolic gun-control ideas, which was the response from Clinton, President Obama and other Democratic leaders.
One (temporary) exception: Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.) told Larry King she’s worried about the minority of Muslims, “between 5 percent and 20 percent,” who support the concept of an Islamic state.
Some of them, she said, “are willing to use, and they do use, terrorism . . . in the name of a very wrong way of looking at Islam.”
Sanchez is no minor figure. She’s aiming to win a US Senate seat next year, and serves on the House Homeland Security and Armed Services committees.
Yes, she started walking back her “caliphate” comments the next day. But it’s still remarkable that a liberal Democrat would say such things on air even as Trump was being pummeled for “Islamophobia.”
On the other hand, House members are far closer to their constituents than other Washington pols — and San Bernardino is just an hour’s drive from Sanchez’s district.
The public’s worries may be hard for some leaders to “get their arms around,” but that’s a politician’s job.
