They’re the pundits’ front-runners, but they’re at odds with a restless electorate.
BY JOSH KRAUSHAAR
August 27, 2015 By focusing so much on the candidates, consultants, and donors in political coverage, it’s easy to overlook the most important element in the political process—the voters. And at a time when Washington has prospered but much of the country has struggled, it’s easy to forget just how disaffected the American electorate is. For nearly all of the past decade, Americans have consistently believed that the country was headed in the wrong direction and have grown alienated from their elected leaders.
Consider: Since 2006, there have only been seven public polls (out of thousands) showing that more people believe the country is generally headed in the right direction than the wrong direction. In recent years, the “right-track” optimists have rarely hit even the 30 percent mark. In the year before the two most recent open presidential elections (2008/2016), nearly three-quarters of voters surveyed in theNBC/Wall Street Journal poll said they wanted the next president to take a different approach than his or her predecessor.
It has been a dismal decade for most Americans. Whether it’s government incompetence (Hurricane Katrina, the Veterans Affairs’ deadly lapses in medical care), economic recession followed by a slow recovery, deadly struggles in managing post-war Iraq, or the increasing threat of terrorism from a brutally repressive enemy, there’s been good reason for voters to distrust their government and its political representatives. Indeed, since 2006, we’ve seen wave elections occur in four out of the past five cycles. Democrats capitalized on the public’s anger to take back control of Congress in 2006 only to hit historic lows in representation across the country eight years later. If the United States had a parliamentary system, the government would be facing routine votes of no confidence.
So it’s no surprise that this year’s presidential campaign has been as unpredictable as ever. That happens when voters feel that government isn’t working for them, and they’ve been feeling that way for nearly 10 straight years. In past elections during times of voter alienation, the unexpected happens. In 1976, the first campaign after Watergate and amid rising crime and inflation, a little-known Georgia governor (Jimmy Carter) came out of nowhere to win the Democratic nomination and the presidency. That same year, a Republican president (Gerald Ford) was nearly unseated by a conservative insurgent (Ronald Reagan) that few pundits took seriously at first. In 1992, in the middle of a recession, Democrats chose a fresh-faced Arkansas governor (Bill Clinton) while Republicans saw a populist (Pat Buchanan) threaten their president (George H.W. Bush) in early primaries—with a billionaire winning 19 percent of the vote running as a third-party candidate (Ross Perot).
Yes I do