If the polls are accurate, New Hampshire voters on Tuesday will rally behind Democratic and Republican candidates who are wildly different yet weirdly similar tribunes of populist rage.
Bernie Sanders, the Democratic socialist showing up Hillary Clinton, and Donald Trump, the wealthy marketing genius who is pummeling the Republican field, unite in railing that the rich and powerful have rigged the U.S. economy against everyone else.
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False prophets both, Sanders and Trump are masters at amplifying long-building national frustrations and anger over, first and foremost, declining standards of living. They are now speaking the exact same language.
Here is Sanders in last week’s Democratic debate:
“Millions of Americans are giving up on the political process. And they’re giving up on the political process because they understand the economy is rigged.
“They are working longer hours for low wages. They’re worried about the future of their kids, and yet almost all new income and wealth is going to the top 1 percent . . .
“And then sustaining that rigged economy is a corrupt campaign finance system undermining American democracy, where billionaire, Wall Street, corporate America can contribute unlimited sums of money into super PACs and into candidates.”
Now, here’s Trump in New Hampshire on Sunday:
“Whether it’s the insurance companies, or the drug companies, or the oil companies, it’s all the same thing, We’re never going to get our country back if we keep doing this. . . . I’m the only one that’s self-funding, Democrat or Republican. Everyone else is taking from — I call them the bloodsuckers.”
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This exploitative odd-coupling — one far left, the other, well, far out — is also aligned in vacuously promising to usher in a radically new day, with Sanders envisioning an electoral victory that produces revolution, and Trump claiming to be so astonishingly capable that, “We will win, we will win and we will win.”
Clinton and the Republican field are struggling in their apparent wake. Plaintively, for example, former President Bill Clinton tried to overcome the primal scream emotion of Sanders followers with reason.
“When you’re making a revolution you can’t be too careful with the facts,” he told a crowd.
While Sanders has held to principle in moving from fringe to momentary front-runner, Trump is a salesman with a talent for pressing the buttons of potential buyers. Either way, as outsiders, both are positioned to take advantage of the failure of the major parties to successfully improve the lot of working- and middle-class Americans
Inconvenient truth for Clinton: The country’s rising number of jobs and falling unemployment rate mask the fact that America’s recovery from the Great Recession has been lackluster through President Obama’s two terms.
Economic growth has been slow, the median household income has been falling and income inequality, which Obama called “the defining challenge of our time,” has increased.
After Obama’s trillion-dollar stimulus at the start of his tenure, the administration accomplished little in terms of economic stimulus. Blame intransigent Republicans if you like, but also recognize that indicting them is irrelevant in the contest of Sanders versus Clinton.
To Clinton’s additional disadvantage, Democrats up to Obama made sport of demonizing Wall Street only to have her accept $675,000 in speaking fees from Goldman Sachs after serving as secretary of state — and refuse to release transcripts of her remarks.
Inconvenient truth for anti-Trump Republicans: The stagnation of middle-class incomes began during the “pro-growth” presidency of George W. Bush — whose tax cuts were a windfall to the wealthy.
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The “pro-growth” policies touted by Mitt Romney in 2012 and by Republicans in Congress since would have done nothing to lift the fortunes of most struggling families.
Meantime, the party has systematically tuned out legitimate grievances of working people and treated labor unions as enemies, while answering almost every call from corporate suites.
The Republicans have refused to raise the minimum wage or enlarge the Earned Income Tax Credit for those struggling at the bottom of the income ladder.
Sanders and Trump are demagogically waving magic wands that conceal their utter unsuitability for the presidency.
Sanders has never managed anything larger than a breadbox and is clueless on foreign affairs. Madman-of-the-people Trump is a vulgar ethnic and religious fearmonger with often-lunatic policy proposals. To name one, his tax plan would deliver a windfall to top earners and leave the country $10 trillion deeper in deficits.
Polls are often wrong. If not, voters will have their vengeance.