Why are Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders doing so well, while conventional heavyweights in their parties seem to be taking a beating? I got a sense of that in this Politico analysis of Hillary Clinton’s campaign after New Hampshire which had the strap:
After a devastating defeat, her campaign hopes to rebound with a sharp focus on African Americans.
In similar vein, Shikha Sood Dalmia wrote an excellent analysis of why Ted Cruz won Iowa despite being against ‘the Hawkeye State’s beloved ethanol fuel mandate’. To sum it up:
Cruz assembled a broad but piecemeal coalition of conservative voters by giving each faction something it really, really cared about.
Elsewhere, there is analysis of the four men (Rubio, Kasich, Bush, Christie) fighting for the ‘establishment lane’ of the Republican party.
Do you see what is happening here? Politicians typically think of voters as a market (as indeed they are in the political marketplace) and divvy it up into segments and strategize accordingly. But Trump and Sanders are unconventional politicians whose fundamental message seems to be: ‘This is who I am. This is what I stand for. I won’t tailor my message for anyone. I won’t pander to any group of voters or to special interests. I am different from your typical slave-to-special-interests politician. Are you sick of them too? Vote for me!’
Now, forget the sincerity of this message: what matters is how they come across. And voters are sick of business as usual. This election was supposed to be Bush vs Clinton, but Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton would be very similar presidents, firmly in the pockets of special interests, albeit different ones. Trump and Sanders clearly would not. (At least, that’s the message.) So that’s the appeal.
You could say it’s the same appeal Arvind Kejriwal had in India.
Now, I strongly oppose Trump and Sanders (and for that matter Kejriwal), because as much as what you stand against, one must also see what you stand for. Trump is whacko in every way. Sanders is whacko on economics. (Kejriwal is Indira Gandhi all over again.) But that is not the point. The point is that conventional politicians cannot hope to capture those constituencies (in their language!) unless they accept that the system is broken to begin with, and communicate that in a credible way. The establishment guys seem to be in denial that the public is turning against the establishment. So this is going to be fun.
The elections in the US are already the greatest reality show ever. It is fitting, therefore, that Trump should be the star.