How to Cool Voter Anger? Pay Attention to Them
"Why," a reader recent asked after president-elect Donald Trump's stunning upset victory, "don't you liberal mainstream media columnists get over it and write something positive to unify the country?"
Why, I wondered, must it be left up to liberals to repair the divisions ripped open by conservatives like Trump?
Maybe Trump supporters have a right to gloat after putting their guy over the top after almost every major poll indicated that he probably was going to lose.
But two questions still keep tongues wagging: Why are they so angry, and what can be done about it?
A newly released study of 2,411 voters by the University of Maryland's Program for Public Consultation, confirms one thing that others have found: Trump benefited heavily from a widespread belief that the federal government ignores ordinary people.
Although this perception crosses party lines, pollsters heard it from Republicans more than Democrats -- and from Trump's voters most of all.
Democrats who supported Sen. Bernie Sanders' insurgent campaign expressed more anger than early supporters of Hillary Clinton did, but both groups were outdone in anger by the Grand Old Party's voters.
For example, nine out of ten voters overall in the survey agreed that "elected officials think more about the interests of their campaign donors than the common good of the people." Among those who agreed "strongly" were 63 percent of all voters and 72 percent of Trump voters.
And who can blame them? The hotbeds of Trump and Sanders support have been mostly small town and rural communities that feel economically depleted and woefully untouched by anything out of Washington except empty promises.
It's not policy or ideology that drives the voter discontent, they survey found. It was the sense that they are being ignored, shoved aside by politicians who are eager to focus on campaign donors, party organizations and shadowy "special interests."
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(c) 2016 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
