The 2016 Presidential race has begun and if it wasn't evident earlier that a lot of people were frustrated with the way things were going in Washington D.C. and how the leaders of both major political parties were conducting themselves, it should be evident now.
Both the Republican and Democratic parties have leadership that seem to be less interested in thinking outside the box and more interested in being upset that things didn't go their way in 2008. Top GOP folks continue to believe there was nothing wrong with how things were run under George W. Bush with a GOP majority in Congress, while certain Democratic leaders give the impression that they still can't believe Hillary Clinton didn't win the nomination in 2008. Neither side wishes to acknowledge what the real problems are and the roots of voter frustration.
Regarding Sanders, it's true that a lot of the solutions he has proposed aren't workable, but that doesn't mean we need to look the other way and pretend everything is OK. This seems to be what the Democratic leadership wants to do, though, where a common line preached is that Clinton is "more electable" and that if the Democrats are divided, the GOP takes the Presidency. These are lines, though, that the frustrated portion of the Democratic party, or those who left the party, are tired of hearing. They want somebody who will at least offer alternative suggestions, even if they aren't all realistic and some won't stand a chance of passing.
Furthermore, there's a large perception that the segment of the Democratic leadership who wasn't happy that Clinton didn't win the nomination in 2008 had their minds set on ensuring that it happened in 2016. All you have to do is look at how few Democrats announced they would seek the nomination, how few debates were scheduled and how those who entered the race were quick to pull out. Democratic party leadership cannot shatter this perception by simply declaring that if the members don't unite behind Hillary, the GOP wins the election.
As for the Republicans, the rank-and-file would love nothing more than to get Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio into the White House because neither will attempt to rock the boat. Ted Cruz is not like that, although his appeal is somewhat limited. Cruz draws interest from the deeply religious in the GOP, but that group is a small minority with a loud voice. And like with other GOP candidates that group backed, Cruz will get a few wins but not enough to win the nomination.
The real threat to GOP leadership is the man with a legitimate chance at winning the nomination, Donald Trump. As with Sanders, many of his proposed solutions aren't workable, and unlike Sanders, Trump seems less interested in eloquence and more interested in playing up to the crowds. But at the heart of the support for Trump's candidacy is GOP voter frustration. More members of the GOP are realizing how many mistakes were made in the George W. Bush years and are tired of seeing the same old rhetoric from leadership.
And yet the more I read, the more I find that leadership in both parties are clueless to what voters are really frustrated about. To put this into perspective, there's something I saw a few years back about how one concern of the Tea Party and one concern of Occupy Wall Street are actually linked together. It goes like this:
* The Tea Party believes that the government is too powerful.
* Occupy Wall Street believes that corporations are too powerful.
* The heart of the matter: Corporations influence government leaders to form legislation that's favorable to corporations in exchange for financing the campaigns of said government leaders.
The third point is a major reason for the real problems facing the United States and leaders in both parties may not be oblivious to that, but they sure act that way.
If the leaders of both parties are going to take an honest approach to addressing voter frustration, it needs to be realizing that Corporate America cannot continue to run the show. That doesn't mean you take the exact opposite approach of milking Corporate America for all it's worth, but it does mean you need to take a deeper look at issues of taxation, wages, immigration, social welfare, health care and foreign policy and figure out a different approach to them, rather than party leadership continuing to roll out its version of "we have always done it this way."
Most of all, the favorites of both party leadership need to pay closer attention to that frustration and start thinking outside the box for themselves. They especially need to realize that the issues are not like flipping a coin and calling heads or tails, but they are like a 500-piece jigsaw puzzle that will create one big picture, but has many pieces that form that picture.
But as long as the leadership of both major political parties continues to portray legitimate voter frustration as just a phase people are going through, and that candidates like Sanders and Trump are only destined to tear the parties apart, nothing is going to get solved, voter frustration will worsen and it's far more likely that the parties will get torn apart for good.
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