Moore: Trump and Sanders Appeal to the Disenfranchised
Monday, March 14, 2016
The legacy media cannot comprehend it.
An obscure, socialist US Senator from Vermont and a crass, billionaire reality television star are dominating the coverage and many of the results of this year's presidential primaries. At the race's onset, pundits expected Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton to run away to their respective coronations. Nate Silver, the statistician so many revere as a soothsayer, gave Trump a 2 percent chance to clinch the nomination when he announced last summer.
Yet as winter turns into spring, Trump is the overwhelming favorite to clinch the nomination. He's won the majority of states. And he's won them in all of America's geographic regions.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTSanders, for his part, is threatening to drag the Democratic nomination all the way to the nomination. He had a devastating victory in New Hampshire, and upset victory in Michigan last week. He's sprinkled wins in other states in between.
Anti-Establishment Authenticity
The anti-establishment candidates are defying their naysayers. How did we get here? Why are unorthodox candidates so successful this year?
The answer is simple. Both of those candidates aren't supported by special interest groups. That's freed them up to speak directly to the American people. And this year, people are listening.
The corrupt campaign finance system in America never actually took away someone's right to vote. At least is hasn't done that in the literal sense. But it makes voting irrelevant. If both candidates are bought and paid for by special interests, and you don't belong to any of the groups, what does it matter?
Corrupt Campaign Finance System
Candidate X, or Candidate Y, when elected, isn't going to Washington to serve the interests of his constituents, but his financial backers. The financial backers are the folks who made his candidacy possible.
All the candidates like to talk about honesty. Under the current system, where dark money rules the day, there is no honesty. Everyone is lying. That's because the underlying assumption, that politicians serve the general interest, is false. Politicians will always stick with the person (interest group) who brought them to the dance.
The other presidential contenders are supported by either Wall Street Titans or other well-heeled backers. Let's face it: big oil, technology, finance, pharmaceuticals, insurance, defense contractors, and labor unions call the shots in our government. That's because they fund the candidates. Some, like Wall Street, fund candidates on both sides of the political aisle.
But both Trump and Sanders, have been able to take on those special interests with their rhetoric because they're not financed by those groups.
Special Interests
Sanders, for his part, has made campaign finance reform a central theme of his campaign. He refers to it as "corrupt". Small donors fund the Sanders campaign. Like Trump, he doesn't have a Super Pac.
Trump has also received donations from small donors. But the rest of his campaign has been self-funded. That's allowed him to speak with impunity. Trump can take positions that you'd think would be anathema to the GOP base.
Last September, Trump made headlines when he said that the hedge fund managers, who I refer to as the Hedge Fund Cowboys (since they're overwhelmingly male), are getting away with "murder" under the current tax code.
Unorthodox
Trump has said that he would work to broker a peace deal between Israel and Palestine. He has said that nobody should go untreated due to lack of health care. And he hasn't denounced Planned Parenthood.
Those types of positions that run counter to normal Republican Party dogma would normally sink a Republican candidate. But Trump's rejection of all the normal hallmarks of a campaign give him a sense of credibility with the electorate. Both Trump and Sanders have spoken against free trade deals that they feel have hurt the average American worker.
That's hardly astonishing for a liberal like Sanders. But popular wisdom would suggest that it would hurt Trump with the GOP electorate. But like so many other issues, it hasn't.
Authenticity
It's that issue that gives the two the most credibility with their bases. That's why Trump and Sanders may be more alike than the political establishment realizes.
In today's election cycle, that's what concerns most voters. It doesn't matter to most of the electorate whether they agree with every single position. But they want a candidate who will do what they believe to be best for the country. They don't want someone concerned with paying back their donors with the public treasury.
It's sad that in today's political climate, that's asking quite a lot. Give credit to Trump and Sanders for providing what the people want: authenticity.
Russell Moore has worked on both sides of the desk of media, both on political campaigns and for newspapers. Send him email at [email protected] Follow him on twitter @russmoore713.
