Where’s James Comey When You Need Him?

Assumptions of an unstoppable international white nationalist surge in the wake of Brexit and Trump have been greatly exaggerated:

As exit polls suggested, the Dutch election gave foes of Geert Wilders — and right-wing populism in general — reason to cheer. While polls had the anti-Islamic lawmaker in the lead for much of the last year, his Party for Freedom, or PVV, had an underwhelming finish. With 95 percent of the vote counted, PVV is expected to finish second, taking 20 of the 150 seats in parliament. The People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, or VVD, came in first with 33 seats, which means Prime Minister Mark Rutte is likely to secure a third term.

“This night is a night for the Netherlands — after Brexit, after the American elections — where we said, ‘Stop it, stop it,’ to the wrong kind of populism,” Rutte told cheering supporters at his election-night party.

And, of course, if the United States had a democratic system for choosing the president, or the director of the FBI had not decided to imply that the non-white-nationalist major party candidate was a crook based on nothing less than two weeks before the election, the n allegedly showing that power of white nationalism to render polls meaningless would be even smaller.