Can you feel it?
It’s not just the 100-degree temperatures that never seemed to never end over this extended summer. There’s some real heat bubbling up among the electorate in the United States.
Oh, we are all well aware of the partisan and political divides in our country and how they have been exacerbated over the last two to five years. The immediate pressure isn’t really as much about the social and grievance issues anymore. Those will always be there, and folks will align where their true souls are.
The immediate political pressure boiling up is economic. And that is a pressure that hits everyone.
Pew Research found this summer that economic issues are by far what registered voters most wanted congressional candidates to discuss with affordability and cost of living the largest component. Gallup found health-care access and affordability is leading the list of domestic worries.
And something politically significant is happening now. A Reuters/Ipsos poll released recently found Democrats leading Republicans 44% to 37% on the generic congressional ballot. And although no one should consider this a forecast on who will control Congress, it’s a national snapshot of how America feels right now.
Remember Ronald Reagan’s famous question to voters in 1980?
In his closing statement at the October 28, 1980 Reagan-Carter debate, Reagan asked Americans:
“Are you better off than you were four years ago?”
He followed it with questions about the cost of buying things, unemployment, America’s standing in the world, and national security.
Sound familiar?
For a growing number of Americans, Reagan’s question may be the right one again: Do I feel better off than I did four years ago?
And, then there was the Bill Clinton team in 1992 that kept focusing on “It’s the economy, Stupid!”
Instead of questioning whether a particular idea is a Republican idea or Democratic idea, maybe they’re asking “Does this make my family’s life better?”
Americans have spent years being told that the people on the other side are the problem. But strip away the party labels and ask what kind of country most of us want: one where work provides a decent living, children are safe, veterans aren’t sleeping on streets, illness doesn’t bankrupt families, corporations and politicians play by the rules and opportunity isn’t reserved for the wealthy.
Suddenly, we may not sound quite so far apart.
The battles begin over how we get there. That’s where legitimate conservative and liberal differences belong.
But perhaps the simmer we’re feeling isn’t America moving left or right. Perhaps it’s something more fundamental.
People are tired of feeling left behind and unheard. They’re watching some of the stability they have counted on — the ability to afford a home, pay for health care, plan for retirement, find a good job and believe their children will have opportunities — feel less certain than it once did.
And they’re growing tired of a political system that keeps demanding allegiance to a team while too many of those everyday concerns remain unresolved.
Maybe the political question of this moment isn’t whether Americans are becoming more liberal or more conservative.
Maybe it’s whether they still believe the people they elect are listening to them at all.
The next two elections may tell us how powerful that frustration has become.
Cindy Allen 