The Economic Collapse of 2008 Still Ripples US politics--Discontent Has No Ideological Boundaries

Distrust of the Political Class...is Embedded in the Politics of "Now"

WASHINGTON -By Dan Balz
The Washington Post

Dissatisfaction and protest are roiling the current politics. They are evident in the response to the angry rhetoric from Donald Trump, in the crowds that come to hear Bernie Sanders bash Wall Street and in the rallies demanding racial justice. For presidential candidates, there is no safe harbor. Ignore the mood at your peril; engage it at your peril.

The discontent is real, whether economic, racial or cultural. It knows no particular ideological boundaries. It currently disrupts both the Republican and Democratic parties. It reflects grievances that long have been bubbling. It reflects, too, the impatience with many political leaders — what they say and how they say it.

The economic collapse of 2008 continues to ripple through the lives of many families, despite the drop in unemployment. Steady but slow growth has not been balm enough to give these families, many of whom see a system rife with inequity, much optimism about the future. Instead, they see the American Dream as part of the nation’s past.

The uproar over illegal immigration underscores the anger over what many still see as broken borders, an issue heightened by the recent killing in San Francisco of a young woman by an illegal immigrant with a criminal record who had been deported but returned to the country. But immigration also is tied to the broader cultural reaction to demographic changes that continue to remake the face of the country and generate tensions that are at the heart of political differences.

Racial issues remain front and center, whether the killings in a black church in Charleston by a young man who wanted to start a race war or repeated episodes that have raised hard questions of how police and law enforcement officials treat African Americans. All this is a reminder that, almost seven years after the election of the nation’s first black president and all of the progress that made that possible, work remains to be done.

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Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont who is running for the Democratic nomination, seems to be an extension of the Occupy Wall Street movement that began four years ago. That movement struggled to find political traction the way the tea party movement had two years earlier. But it nonetheless had an indelible impact on the political dialogue by framing the economic debate as the 99 percent vs. the 1 percent.

Obama carefully subsumed the unrest represented by the Occupy Wall Street movement into his middle-class message in 2012. In Mitt Romney, he found the perfect foil, an opponent he portrayed as an out-of-touch plutocrat. That was enough to win reelection.

Yet four years later, the Democrats find themselves debating not just Republicans about the economy but one another, as well. They debate how far left they should move to deal with the issues of income and wealth inequality and the power of what Sanders calls ‘the billionaire class.‘

MORE of an interesting read about the coming election at....

http://www.buenosairesherald.com/article/194962/economic-collapse-of-2008-still-ripples-us-politics