Recently there have been several columns on the chances of Bernie Sanders and/or Donald Trump capturing the nominations of their respective parties for president and the whys and wherefores of their campaigns. I have opinions on the matter that I want to share.
Most Americans are seriously worried about their own economic security and the nation’s social stability above everything else. Liberals and conservatives publically place the blame for their angst on different entities because that is what their parties have conditioned them to do like Pavlov’s dog. However, the fundamental dissatisfaction is nonpartisan to the degree where the rank and file of both sides even see some validity in the other’s arguments. That, alone, is a sea-change from the ordinary.
Sanders tells his followers that the culprits are the wealthy who do not pay their fair share of taxes while Trump tells his followers that the culprits are third-world immigrants who come in poverty and take jobs for low wages. Both are a form of scapegoating – you can’t get elected President of the United States by telling the truth, which is in too many cases we have been our own worst enemy.
By showing support for Sanders and Trump the public is sending a message about their worries rather than buying into the solutions those candidates offer.
Near the top of the public’s worry-list is the stagnation or erosion of their standard of living, an entrenched lack of opportunity and the continuing dissolution of traditional family units. The dissolution problem was formerly centered on poverty, now it has moved solidly into the middle-class. Add the thought that the future holds more of the same and you have a combustible situation.
For previous generations the family unit, not welfare checks, was the real safety net, but no longer. Modern physical mobility and lifestyle choices mean that families are often geographically and generationally isolated. This makes setbacks more serious, especially for those with limited resources. That potential terrifies many lower middle-class and middle-class voters. Having something and losing it is more psychologically damaging than never having it.
The electorate knows, intuitively, how destructive those forces are in combination; both Communism and Fascism, dictatorial twins, came into their own only 16 years apart when those same forces ravaged Europe in the early 1900s.
The traditional power structure of the major political parties have not found a way to address these problems in a believable manner; they continue to offer non-solution solutions that are more about blame and the next silver bullet than setting essential and attainable goals and holding people and organizations accountable for results.
Our politicians have spent so many years telling the population that they are helpless victims that they now believe it “It’s certainly not your fault,” not E Pluribus Unum, is now the de facto motto of the United States.
Will any presidential candidate be able to convince the electorate that they truly understand the situation and that they have a workable plan to make things better that goes beyond transferring blame? I’m not sure and neither is most of America.