Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
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FEBRUARY 17-23, 2016 UCW 5 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM I have f inally f igured out something Barack Obama and George W. Bush have in common besides liv ing in the W hite House for eight years each. I suspect both of them are horrif ied — as in hair st anding straight up on their heads horrif ied — by the directions voters of all stripes are t ak ing as Presidential politics 2016 unfold. It is almost as if Democrat s, Republicans and Independent s held a secret convention and agreed to do their own thing this year and to do it loudly. As I heard a TV talking head express this stunning phenomenon, it is as if American voters are in full political revolt. W hen Democrat-t ur ned-Republican Donald Tr ump, w it h all his insult ing ways, and 74 -year-old self-descr ibed Democrat ic Socialist Ber nie Sanders began resonat ing w it h voters, t he Est ablishment of bot h par t ies pooh poohed t hem. Surely, par t y elders said, voters w ill come to t heir senses any minute now. Surely, t hey w ill ack nowledge t he w isdom f rom above and fall back into line, suppor t ing t he candidates we have put for ward and bank rolled for t hem. Wrong-o! The troops have quit t ak ing orders. American voters have apparently t aken a lesson from the 1976 f ilm Net work in which a main character holds up his f ist and declares, "I am mad as h*#l, and I'm not going to t ake this any more!" "This" varies from voter to voter, of course, but it generally involves the sense that the political Est ablishment is, at the ver y least, not listening to real Americans and at the ver y worst is ly ing and thoroughly corrupt . Nevermind that Est ablishment candidates like Hillar y Clinton and Jeb Bush have long records of public ser v ice and zillions of dollars behind them. This season's voters are sending messages that both par ties' elders are loathe to receive. We are far from done, of course. Early voting has been in small st ates with, from Nor th Carolina's perspective, amazingly homogenous voters and over whelmingly white populations. So, what to expect as the rest of the nation continues to express it s frustration and anger at the polls? My guess and my hope are that much of this emotional political t sunami stems from the realit y that politics-as-usual has brought us inequities of all sor t s — economic, env ironment al, voters' right s, educational, access to health care, our personal and national safet y and more. These are not easy or comfor t able topics for many on this year's political st age, but they loom large in the minds of voters. The Donald's suppor t base of largely white, lower income men without college degrees illustrates the frustration. They are people for whom today 's technolog y and economy are not work ing well. They may have lost jobs to other nations or to technological advancement s and they are angr y. W ho would not be? On the other end of the spectrum, Bernie Sanders appeals to women and younger voters, a real concern for Hillar y Clinton. W hat is that appeal? Sanders t alk s about both free and debt-free higher education, notions much on the minds of younger people and others hoping to move up the educational ladder. In the midst of all this swirling frustration, candidates and voters seem far ther away from each other than ever. Voters simply do not believe much of what they hear from candidates, of ten with good reason. An entire industr y of debate fact checkers has popped up during the 2016 c ycle, another of countless examples of our federal government hav ing become so polarized by par tisanship that it is v ir t ually paralyzed. The immediate par tisan reaction to last weekend's sudden death of U. S. Supreme Cour t Justice Antonin Scalia is but the latest manifest ation of our polarization. A ll of this feels a bit like a high prof ile spor t s competition with both sides cheering and booing. Call me Pollyanna, but I have faith in the common sense of American voters. With only a few exceptions, we have elected reasonable people to our presidenc y, and I have my f ingers crossed that we will do that this year as well. I also sense that voters will do our best to force candidates and our event ual par t y nominees into t alk ing honestly not about what div ides us but what shapes our daily lives — our jobs, our schools, the env ironment around us, our health, our safet y. If those honest conversations can and do occur, America is likely to elect a reasonable and realistic president, be he or she a Democrat or a Republican. If they do not, the frustration and anger so many of us feel now can only grow and carr y over into f ut ure election c ycles and push us ever far ther apar t . Politics Upended by MARGARET DICKSON OPINION MARGARET DICKSON. Columnist. COMMENTS? Editor@upandcomin- gweekly.com. 910.484.6200. In the midst of all this swirling frustration, candidates and voters seem farther away from each other than ever.