Are voters this year more pissed-off than ever? Kevin Drum doesn't seem to think so…and to the extent, they might be, what accounts for that? Here's something he wrote to eliminate possible reasons…
I was chatting with a friend yesterday about the (alleged) anger of low-income whites this election season, and she asked what kinds of concrete, long-term trends might be responsible for this. Concrete in the sense of important, measurable stuff that truly makes people's lives worse. The truth is that I don't know of many. Crime is down. Teen pregnancy is down. Student test scores are up. Graduation rates are up. Illicit drug dependence is down (yes, really) and it's way down among teenagers. The growth rate of health care is on a multi-decade downward trend. The Great Recession did immense damage, but we've been recovering nicely for several years: growth is steady; unemployment is below 5 percent; inflation is below 2 percent; job openings are rising; and household debt, which has been trending downward for nearly a decade, is at its lowest point since 1980.
If you read his article, you'll see that Kevin came up with two (well, two and a half) reasons why voters might actually be more enraged than usual. I'd like to toss another one out for consideration. We're ending eight years of relative impotence for both sides.
Obama hasn't been able to do many of the things he wanted because of the Republicans and Republicans haven't been able to do many of the things they wanted because of Obama. Activists on both sides have been stewing, waiting for 2016 and fantasizing it was the year they'd nuke the other side and no longer have to settle for, at best, tiny victories. There's always some of that but because of the partisan gridlock, it's been worse than ever.
So you have a lot of leftie voters lining up for Bernie because Bernie was the guy who wasn't going to just give them tiny victories but big, sweeping revolutionary ones. Having been denied so long, they're hornier than ever to get things on their wishlists.
And you have a lot of rightie voters who were angry for eight years of the gay Muslim from Kenya pretending to be president. The thing they want most is to win and I think most of them looked over the field of candidates they were offered and saw Trump as the guy most likely to win — the guy who'd kick and scream and throw things and insult the people they hate…and win. It sure wasn't Jeb "Low Energy" Bush.
My theory is if along the way, there had been a lot of compromises and creative "working together" between Obama and Congress — if each side could have felt they were getting a good chunk of what they wanted — you wouldn't have as much rage. Some, just not as much. But we've reached the point where that's not possible so you have a lot of people who see it as all-out, kill-the-enemy war. They figure that's what it's going to take to accomplish anything.