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Keller @ Large: It's Doesn't Pay To Insult Voters

BOSTON (CBS) - Whether you think last week's British vote to leave the European Union was a brilliant move or a fiasco, I would hope there's one lesson we can all draw from it – it doesn't pay to insult the intelligence of the electorate.

I happened to be in Europe two years ago when third parties – including the key British backers of the EU exit plan – did surprisingly well in elections to the European Parliament. This was an early-warning sign of the magnitude of the discontent with EU bureaucracy and dogma, but the elites in Britain didn't listen.

Instead, they spent two years peddling increasingly ridiculous warnings of the catastrophe that an exit would bring, with little attempt to conceal their contempt for exit-leaning voters.

Hard to believe that behavior wasn't rewarded at the polls, I know, but the bottom line is, voters don't like to be told their concerns are misguided and their opinions are idiotic.

We saw that here at home two years ago when the Democratic nominee for governor ignored the blunders of the Democratic incumbent and was beaten by a Republican who acknowledged and promised to fix them.

And we're seeing it in the presidential race in both the support for Donald Trump by voters sick of double-talk and political correctness from their leaders, and in his post-primary inability to attract voters who know darn well that gratuitous insults and grandstanding aren't presidential.

We see it in the sky-high negative ratings for Hillary Clinton, unwilling to earn back voter trust by acknowledging her own failures.

Moral of the story: pols who don't listen to what the people are saying and at least show respect for their opinion are just begging for trouble, and proving it's not the voters who are the stupid ones.

Listen to Jon's commentary:

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