As he conceded defeat in his home state of Florida and dropped out of the presidential race, Sen. Marco Rubio made an important observation about the 2016 election.
“This is the campaign we’ve run, a campaign that is realistic about the challenges we face but optimistic about the opportunities before us,” he said. Then he added, “This may not have been the year for a hopeful and optimistic message about our future…”
Rubio is right. His message is not the one voters currently want to hear.
They didn’t want to hear about “a new American century,” or how it’s “morning in America.” They’re not in the mood for “hope and change” either. The supporters of both parties are in a sour mood. They are angry. They are more disillusioned perhaps than ever about how the nation’s institutions work. They don’t like the direction of the country. They doubt it is the shining city on a hill. They fear their children will not be better off than they were.
President Obama arrived in office vowing that he was going to heal America. Not just America, but the planet. But the fantasy he was selling and voters bought has turned to ashes. Voters are in no mood to support candidates who say things will be OK. They want candidates who reflect their anger.
Look first at the Democratic side, where Bernie Sanders has turned what should have been doomed, cameo candidacy into something far more serious and formidable than anyone expected. His campaign is one of resentment against the wealthy, the supposed elites, bankers and big corporations, the “millionaires and billionaires.” In other words, he has drawn a following by stoking resentment against those who are most successful, and suggesting that the economy and electoral system is rigged against the little guy.
Sanders remains a heavy underdog, but he has made Hillary Clinton work a bit harder for the coronation that her party’s apparatchiks have tried to arrange for her. He even came close to defeating Clinton in her home state on Tuesday, by running against her chummy connections with Democratic establishment figures such as Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who is accused of holding back a tape that appears to show a murder by a policeman. Sanders has even scored points by identifying Clinton with the last generation’s foreign policy establishment, as represented by Henry Kissinger.
Sanders’ ideological similarity to President Obama is less important than his radical difference in tone. Sanders’ trademark is the cultivation of antipathy toward that small, faceless and ill-defined group who control the system. The one percent, the wealthy, Wall Street, or whatever name you want to give it.
Anger is even more evident on the Republican side, where the two leading candidates are both ministering to the disappointment of post-Obama America.
Donald Trump is leading the way, and collecting the delegates. The title of his campaign book, Crippled America, nearly explains everything. He is persuading Republican voters that all of their problems are caused by devious foreigners who have out-negotiated America in trade, and immigrants who are supposedly taking their jobs. He says he will make America great again, but it’s not a sunny, upbeat slogan but, rather, one that suggests something fundamental has gone wrong with the country.
His only real rival now, the more level-headed Ted Cruz, is also a candidate backed by supporters who are angry. They are angry at Washington. They are conservatives who believe that the federal government has arrogated power to itself in a way wholly at odds with the vision and law laid down by the nation’s founders. Cruz promises to tear up existing deals and laws. It is a message that says the past several years of government need to be shredded.
He casts Washington as fundamentally corrupt, and in his speech Tuesday evening, he invoked the image of Hillary Clinton, lying awake in her jail cell. He spoke of how Trump buys influence, and how Clinton sells it.
People aren’t angry right now without reason. Much damage has indeed been done to the nation by bad policy and cynical politics. And now anger has become the overriding force of campaign 2016. Both Obama and Reagan used uplifting messages to win elections in trying times. This time around, voters aren’t interested in hearing that.
