What Explains the Anti-Establishment Sentiment?

[Joanne98]

by Glenn Greenwald

After last night's election results, there's no doubt that the electorate has contempt for Washington incumbents and the political establishment. Virtually every media account dutifully recites the same storyline -- that these results reflect an "anti-incumbent" mood -- but virtually none of these stories examines the reasons for that "mood." Why do Americans, seemingly regardless of party affiliation or geographic location, despise the political establishment?

One reason why media mavens seem reluctant, even unable, to grapple with this question is because it so plainly falls outside their familiar, comfortable narratives. Contrary to efforts earlier this year to depict the problem as one aimed at Democratic incumbents due to the unpopular health care plan and the growing "tea party" movement, Republican voters -- as demonstrated in Florida, Utah, and last night in Kentucky -- clearly hate their own party's leadership at least as much as the animosity directed toward Democratic incumbents. The trend is plainly trans-partisan and trans-ideological, and the establishment political media has a very difficult time understanding or explaining dynamics about which that is true.

So extreme is the anger toward the political establishment that not even popular politicians have any impact on it. Despite the fact that he remains quite popular with his state's GOP voters, Mitch McConnell's handpicked candidate was slaughtered in Kentucky by a highly unconventional and establishment-scorned Rand Paul. And just as Massachusetts voters did in December when President Obama traveled there to plead with them to elect Martha Coakley, only for them to reject those pleas and send Scott Brown to the Senate, Democratic voters completely ignored Obama's vigorous support for incumbent Senators Arlen Specter and Blanche Lincoln, sending the former to ignominious defeat after 30 years, and forcing the latter into an extremely difficult run-off with Bill Halter (who was recruited by Accountability Now, an organization I helped found and continue to run).

It makes perfect sense that the country loathes the political establishment. Just look at its rancid fruits over the past decade: a devastating war justified by weapons that did not exist; a financial crisis that our Nation's Genuises failed to detect and which its elites caused with lawless and piggish greed; elections that seem increasingly irrelevant in terms of how the Government functions; grotesquely lavish rewards for the worst culprits juxtaposed with miserable unemployment and serious risks of having basic entitlements (Social Security) cut for ordinary Americans; and a Congress that continues to be owned, right out in the open, by the very interests that have caused so much damage. The political establishment is rotten to its core, and the only thing that's surprising is that the citizenry's contempt isn't even more intense than it is. But precisely because that dynamic so clearly transcends Left/Right or Democratic/GOP dichotomies, little effort is expended to understand or explain it.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/05/19-5

[dmallind]

1. Short attention spans, media-driven spin, unrealistic expectations

Most voters can't think beyond "Are things OK for me?" and "who's in charge?" then vote for or against the latter depending on the answer to the former.

[FiveGoodMen]

2. K&R

[no_hypocrisy]

3. Exasperation and frustration.

Concession that our individual lives are controlled by powers that be: corporations, banks, and the media and their enablers, "the government". Pipe dream to think replacing "the government" with new members will change the system, at least right away.

[SocialistLez]

7. Yeah, we need more people who are not corporate who*es.

It will take a while to get there and who knows if we will EVER get there.

[marylanddem]

4. Thanks for posting - Greenwald is excellent commentator.

[elleng]

5. Yes:

'The political establishment is rotten to its core, and the only thing that's surprising is that the citizenry's contempt isn't even more intense than it is. But precisely because that dynamic so clearly transcends Left/Right or Democratic/GOP dichotomies, little effort is expended to understand or explain it.'

[OHdem10]

6. Most of the Establishment have been here for years. They sent

jobs overseas, deregulated everything, Enron, Lucent, Delphi
all those crooked companies of 2000. Unending wars and
a war weary America, money going to wars and support of
other countries while Americans are in pain at home.
Common sense tells Joe and Jane Sixpack, the Establishment
are not innocent bystanders. Waiting for crisis to
do anything about these.

Our party is not the best at repkorting to the public via
TV telling them what is going on and what is being done.

If we were not activists and on the Net all the time we
would be sorely lacking in intelligent information.

[FBI_Un_Sub]

8. It's in the American DNA -- n/t

[blue97keet]

9. Simple, our government looks the other way on regulation/enforcing

and minding the store on whatever (you name it) at home while off empire building overseas.

[Jade Fox]

10. What you said! nt

[laststeamtrain]

11. Now I don't know for sure, but it might be...

...the presence of so many intellectually inferior, morally degenerate weasels within the establishment.

Just a guess.

Oh... you meant why do tea bagger/moe-rons think that.

It's because the establishment isn't intellectually inferior & morally degenerate enough.

It's like prunes.

Is one enough?

Is six too many?