About That Voter Anxiety

WaPo ran an "exposé" on how the voters got 'disenchanted' during the Obama years:

Eight days before Trump took the oath of office, Kurt Glazier, now 50, was in the dining room of his home in Sterling, Ill. Wearing a John Deere hoodie, he offered a measured view of the road ahead. ***Glazier is a state worker, a union member and serves as chairman of the Republican Party in Whiteside County. He also sits on the county board. He is a thoughtful person who speaks deliberately and chooses his words carefully.

(*** in a state where the GOP governor has steadfastly refused to pass a budget, which is widely understood to be Gov Rauner's way of using the "budget problem" to kill Public Employees' Unions, cut Medicaid, and generally drive down wages in order to make Illinois more "Business-Friendly")

1. Fuck something up
2. Wait a bit
3. Point at it and say, "Oh look - it's fucked up"
4. Run on a platform of, "It's All Fucked Up So You Better Vote For Me Cuz Only I Can Fix It"

Sorry not sorry, kids. You fell for it. You got snookered.

- and -

Although he had not seen Trump’s victory coming, he said that it hadn’t been difficult to interest people in Trump’s candidacy. “I think Trump brought out the fact that — I mean, as crude and callous as he was at times — so many people had been almost discriminated against because they were Republicans and not Democrats that we felt inferior.”

- and -

Bruening, 41, understood Trump’s success in Clayton County despite the earlier string of Democratic victories. “I think one [reason] is that it is exhausting to have to edit yourself all the time, and Trump was completely the opposite of that,” he said. “I think Trump allowed . . . people to not have to feel bad about holding, say, anti-immigrant views or something. That’s one of the things I really noticed. People are way less afraid to say what they really think about a host of different things.”

Trump, he said, also was like a mirror that reflected on people what they wanted to see and hear. “What people are talking about is what he gives back to them, and I think because of that, that’s a good way to really reach people on a visceral level,” he said. “. . . So there’s this feedback loop, which I think he’s, like, a genius at, legitimately. And so people got the impression that he was hearing them on a personal level.”

Call it the Archie Bunker Effect. Archie starts out as the penultimate bad example - the guy who embarrasses everybody almost every time he speaks, but ends up being some hero of the Culture Wars because "really, Archie just says what we're all thinking".

And speaking your mind is generally cool, of course, but when what you're thinking is a buncha racist shit that's been manufactured for you to the point where it feels like a custom fit, then we've got a problem. 

Because y'know what, Sparky? It's not unreasonable for me to expect you to sit politely at the dinner table and resist any and all temptation to call your grandmother a worthless stupid cunt just to see her get mad enough to cry.

And, as usual, the Press Poodles continue to ignore the GOP's hand in creating these problems. McConnell & Co spent 8 years fucking it all up, but that little tidbit never factors in to any of the questions when the Poodles go out there and mingle with the simple folk.