LISTEN. Can you hear the British lion roar? People on Europe’s side of the Atlantic may strain to do so through the din of June 23’s shock result. But in parts of America it came through loud and clear. Among conservatives in particular the UK has become an instant king of the jungle. To Donald Trump’s supporters and critics alike, Brexit is that rare event that evoked the same instinct. What happens to Brussels need not stay in Brussels. It can happen to Washington too.

So much for Britain’s demonstration effect. What of America’s reality? The parallels between America’s coming election and the UK referendum are real, particularly if you are on the side that is expected to lose. Much like Britain’s Leave campaign, Republicans are beset by divisions, nervous of hijack by racist fringe groups, heavily discounted by the betting industry, and facing a well-oiled establishment opponent.

Mr Trump’s fate — and those of many hapless down ballot Republicans — appears to be sealed. Only fools would gamble the presidency on such a person. Why risk so much for a brief emotional release?

The projection of American conservative dreams on to the UK referendum result went deep.... Mr Trump congratulated the British for taking ‘their country back’. That, after all, is what he is promising America

The answer is not quite so confident after Brexit. It was natural Mr Trump would interrupt his golf marketing stopover in Scotland on June 24 to congratulate the British for taking ‘their country back’. That, after all, is what he is promising America.

It was slightly odder that he observed Scotland ‘going wild over the vote’ after almost two-thirds of Scots opposed Brexit. But Mr Trump has a knack of seeing things others cannot. Witness his imaginary fan base of Hispanic and African-American voters.

Yet he was not alone. The projection of American conservative dreams on to the UK referendum result went deep.

John Bolton, a senior official in George W Bush’s administration, said that Britain’s ‘peasants had voted to leave the feudal manor’. Newt Gingrich, the former Republican Speaker and vice-presidential hopeful, tweeted that ‘Churchill and Thatcher would be proud’. Ted Cruz, Mr Trump’s former rival for the Republican nomination, heralded the vote as a ‘wake-up call to internationalist bureaucrats from Brussels to Washington’.

It would be easy to poke holes in such misreadings. It was Churchill who conceived of the ‘US of Europe’ — albeit without British participation. It was Margaret Thatcher who proposed, and negotiated, the radical (and successful) idea of a European single market from which Britain now looks likely to be shut out. Likewise, some voters for Brexit may have been misled into doing so by promises it would free up money for the National Health Service — the stuff of US conservative nightmares.

Nor, contrary to Mr Cruz, was Brexit a dramatic blow for freedom. Britain already possessed full sovereignty. All that was needed to quit the EU was more than half of voters to say so. In many countries, any momentous change would require a two-thirds majority. In the US, no state, including Mr Cruz’s native Texas, could secede without provoking war.

The alternative would be to persuade three-quarters of US states, and two-thirds of each chamber of Congress, to amend the constitution. It could never happen, in other words. In legal terms Britain was little closer to being a sovereign EU’s 28th state than it is to being America’s 51st.

But such niceties are beside the point. The spirit of Mr Trump’s reading was more accurate than the letter. So too are his tactical conclusions. What he grasped — along with Boris Johnson, the big beast of the Vote Leave campaign — was the brute psychology of a society itching to upset the status quo. Once you suss out that logic, no genius is required.

You may campaign without much regard for facts or consistency at all. The same conclusion applies in reverse to Britain’s Remain campaign and Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid. Mrs Clinton has the advantage of being able to see what David Cameron did wrong. If she wants to avoid the prime minister’s fate, she must grasp his big error.

Mrs Clinton shows few signs of doing so. The key takeaway from Brexit is that Project Fear is not enough. You must give supporters something more positive to endorse than the status quo. Just like the Remain camp, Mrs Clinton represents business as usual. Even her campaign slogan ‘Stronger Together’ echoes Mr Cameron’s. Most people may vaguely agree with it.

But it is too nebulous to excite. The demography is also similar. Like the Brexit base, Mr Trump’s base is older, whiter, more rural and less educated than the median. It is also more spirited. Like Remain, Mrs Clinton assumes voters carry out a cost-benefit analysis of their choices. Some version of that is usually true in elections. Until it isn’t.

Can we know which 2016 will be for America? Obviously not. It may be comforting to fall back on conventional logic and anticipate an easy Clinton victory in November. By the rules of the head Mr Trump’s defeat is overdetermined. The alternative — revamping her campaign to appeal to people’s hearts — is so much harder to do. It may even be beyond reach.

Americans are too cynical about the Clintons to believe anything could be authentic. Yet in my view Mrs Clinton is overthinking her campaign. Few would question Mrs Clinton’s IQ. It is her core that people doubt. The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.

edward.luce@ft.com

Published in Dawn, Business & Finance weekly, July 4th, 2016