Don Blankenship is done. His nihilist populism is not.
A fifth of the Republicans in West Virginia felt so hopeless, they voted for a candidate in the Senate primary who embodied the nothing-matters cynicism generally reserved for the darker corners of Twitter. If nothing changes, if the quality of life doesn’t improve for the average citizen inside the Mountain State in the next decade, that desperation metastasizes.
That nearly 20,000 voters pulled the lever for Blankenship should terrify Republicans and Democrats alike. They didn’t mind that he accused the Senate majority leader of trafficking cocaine. They weren’t bothered by his casual racism. They didn’t even blink an eye at the year he spent in prison after his criminal negligence sent 29 men to their early graves in a preventable mine disaster. Plain and simple, that big fraction of the electorate just didn’t care.
Some will dismiss those voters as backwards. Others will call the third-place candidate a racist byproduct of the current presidency. Both will be wrong.
Blankenship isn’t just a populist and Blankenship voters aren’t just an anomaly. They are a complete and total rejection of the status quo and they will be around long after Trump leaves the White House. While the president tapped an anti-establishment nerve, Blankenship tapped an anti-institution artery.
Compare and contrast President Trump and the Blankenship populism. Trump promised to go to Washington and drain the cliche swamp to restore the system. It requires a sort of hope and something to conserve. Blankenship pledged, on the other hand, to go to Washington and undermine the status quo. He didn’t offer any hope, only his own victimhood.
From the moment Blankenship declared his candidacy, he ran his campaign on his martyrdom. The economy was rigged. He pointed at all the regulations imposed by democracy. The political powers were conspiring against him. He griped about Republicans not willing to support an ex-con. The judicial system was corrupt. He insisted his prison sentence was a miscarriage of justice at the hands of the Obama administration.
All of this is absolutely crazy. None of this could persuade a chunk of West Virginia to vote for a more reasonable candidate. Everyone should be concerned because populism, in whatever shade it takes, won’t end with Trump.
If things improve and the government responds to the needs of the governed, that populist electorate will elect politicians serious about preserving our institutions. But if things get ugly and things start to look like West Virginia in the rest of the country, an increasing number of voters will say screw it. They will identify with the victimhood of the next Blankenship and willingly burn it all down.
