Confronting America's anger.

AuthorBresler, Robert J.
PositionSTATE OF THE NATION

WHEN THE PRIMARY season began this winter, no one would have predicted a year ago the rise of Donald Trump, a vulgar, boorish billionaire, and Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Jewish socialist from Brooklyn, N.Y., via Vermont. No political pundit imagined they would be making political noise and threatening to throw the political establishments of both parties into a panic. Even as they rose in the polls, it is difficult to imagine either one on the Inaugural Stand come January. Whether the unimaginable occurs or not, the question still vexes most political observers: how did they arise in the first place?

The most obvious answer is that Trump and Sanders have given voice to a deep-seated and often-unarticulated American anger. Their followers are not interested in the details of their candidates' position papers--so much as they have any. Trump's Republican followers are not put off by his previous liberal positions on abortion and gun control, or his deviation from longtime conservatives causes, such as entitlement reform and crony capitalism. His lack of past involvement in any religious activities of any kind and the bungling of a scripture reading at Liberty University have not hurt him significantly with evangelical voters.

Sanders' legions seem indifferent to his being a Democratic Socialist rather a member of the Democratic Party. Few seem to care that he spent his honeymoon in the Soviet Union, backed the Nicaraguan Marxist Sandinistas, and has a decades-long record of supporting far-left causes.

What matters for their voters is not substance, but tone: Sanders' fury over the billionaires who are running the country; Trump's indignation over foreign goods and immigrants invading our country. No matter that Sanders did not name one of these sinister billionaires. He certainly could not have meant Warren Buffet, George Soros, or Tom Steyer, each of whom has poured millions into liberal causes, nor could he have meant most of the Hollywood elite or the liberal entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley. For years, Trump has been hobnobbing with the political establishment, inviting them to his weddings, and giving to their campaigns and causes.

If this is about anger and the candidates who can give some authentic voice to that anger, regardless of issues and positions, the question is: why is all of this anger erupting now? The Obama years have been far from bountiful for many, but we have seen worse times. In the 1970s, the country was plagued by high...

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