I've already spoken about how important it is to seek to understand a frustrated part of the electorate that is now approaching 50% of the country. Simply casting them as the bad guy in some two-bit melodrama isn't going to work, and in all truth hasn't worked for the past 30 years. The rich have gotten richer, the poor have gotten poorer, and the middle class has all but disappeared. After 30 years of Reaganism, where we blame the victims of corporatism and upper-class-welfare by saying that they just aren't good enough people to get ahead in a system that is rigged against them... people stop believing the old line.
They start to realize how badly the system is broken.
They start wanting to fight the system.
But how?
You're seeing it crop up all around the country: the Dakota Pipeline protests, the Black Lives Matter movement, the Bernie Sanders movement, the Jill Stein notoriety and, yes, the Tea Party and Donald Trump. More and more people are getting more and more frustrated and desperate with a system they feel has left them behind, and promises from establishment politicians have not rung this hollow in their empty pockets since the Gilded Age. Triangulation can't work when that much-beloved 51% of the vote is no longer attainable because 51% of the country may just want to burn down the house, even if they're inside, just to make sure that rich blankety-blank in the penthouse goes up in smoke, too.
People are so, so angry. They feel they have been lied to. This isn't a question of asking if you were better off 4 years ago... it's asking if you were better off 40 years ago. And for many people right here in Fillmore County, the answer is no.
And so, Donald Trump is a protest vote. He is a protest candidate. He is a protest being staged by a part of the electorate who has seen their power diminish in the past 40 years, and they realize this might be their last chance at relevancy. And they are so desperate, so angry for feeling cheated for almost four decades that they don't care if they have to destroy the country. To them, the country is already destroyed.
Yes, there are racial elements. Yes, there are elements of ignorance. But much like Brexit, the fundamental misunderstanding comes from simply thinking they're all a bunch of dumb hillbillies who don't know how to vote "right." They are perfectly aware of how they are voting, and they don't care if it's destructive. They want change, and they have been waiting long enough.
There is still time to win this, but bold steps need to be taken. The Democratic nominee needs to make bold and unequivocal promises to the electorate, and most importantly those promises must be backed up with a very simple bargain: if I betray any of these promises and stop working for you, the vanishing middle class who are thirsty for change, don't vote for me in 2020. It's not enough to say you will resign, because these same folks don't like the VP nominee either (although, as history shows, you can replace a VP nominee). You need to be willing to sacrifice your ambition and make a bold choice to show the people you actually give a damn about them. If you don't, simply put, they won't vote for you.
At Your Service,
Doremus Jessup
