Quote of Week – John Meacham

Many, including yours truly, were surprised by Donald Trump’s election.  It was because we were not listening to the growing frustration of many of our fellow Americans who were being left behind by rapidly advancing technology and globalization.  Many of these Americans also felt threatened by an increasingly diverse America.  And, perhaps more importantly, they were sick of political correctness and, at least, the appearance of corruption at virtually every level of government.  They were in the words of the fictional anchor Howard Beale in Network, “mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.”

The same frustrations propelled the success of Bernie Sanders, albeit with a different demographic group.  Thus, it seemed destined until last Tuesday that the country was headed for an ideological free-for-all between Trump and Sanders, each proposing different visions for how to blow up institutional America.

But on Super Tuesday, the middle of America seemed, as Professor Meacham suggested in today’s quote, to pump the brakes on “blowing the place up.”  There is a lot of time left between now and November, but it seems the American people are growing increasingly weary of the histrionics from both extremes.