Despite never having held public office, Carly Fiorina, Ben Carson, and Donald Trump are dominating the polls in the race to capture the Republican nomination.
The 2016 presidential election was always going to be a thrilling one. The Republican primary has been flooded with no less than seventeen candidates, while the Democrats on the opposite side of the isle watch a select few try to battle their way past the inevitability of Hillary Clinton. No matter which party you look at, however, one trend in this campaign cycle is becoming more and more clear; the American people are sick and tired of establishment politics.
In January, it seemed almost certain that Hillary Clinton would face off against establishment, super-funded Jeb Bush or Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker in the general election. Bush had quietly let slip that his Super PAC would be able to raise over $100 million before he even decided to officially run, and Walker had been setting first-in-the-nation Iowa ablaze with his speeches and connections to the Midwestern state.
Fast-forward to September. The latest CNN poll shows the braggadocios Donald Trump leading the Republican field with 24% while ex-HP CEO Carly Fiorina and evangelical neurosurgeon Ben Carson come in 2nd and 3rd with 15% and 14% respectively. Amazingly, none of the three leaders in the GOP have ever held any political office. Jeb Bush has fallen to just 9%, and Scott Walker, registering less than 1%, has astoundingly dropped out of the race altogether after running out of hard cash to fund his campaign.
At first, many people had viewed Walker as an “outsider” to the sluggish, despised machine that Washington is often painted as today. With the emergence of the unimaginably aggressive Trump, the stirring performance of Fiorina, and the calm, friendly demeanor of Carson, however, being an outsider took on a whole new definition for a Republican base that has seen its party finally win a majority on Capitol Hill and do next to nothing substantive with it. Walker has paid the price, and the man who was once expected to be a heavy favorite to win the nomination has dropped out five months before the first ballot will be cast.
The Democratic side is hardly different. Hillary Clinton represents every vestige of establishment politics; hailing from a politically powerful family, loved by donors and extensively funded, and falling in line with almost every standard Democratic position. Though her lead remains intact nationally, an insurgency from the left in the shape of a self-described socialist, Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) has taken the early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire by storm and could spill into the rest of the country.
Bernie Sanders has held the largest rallies in the presidential race and continues to win over support in droves as voters grow more and more wary of the establishment-blessed Clinton.
Though Sanders has been in politics for almost forty years as the Mayor of Burlington and as a Representative and now Senator of Vermont, the progressive firebrand is about as far as it gets from the usual career politician. An outspoken critic of big money in politics and rampant income inequality, Sanders’ unorthodox message has caught fire and lent serious thought to the idea that the era of establishment candidates like Clinton is over.
This rise of the anti-establishment has come upon the American political system without warning or precedent. The Donald captured headlines out of nowhere with his announcement speech that decried Mexican immigrants as rapists and drug addicts, and the real estate mogul has dominated headlines ever since for his bravado, name-calling and demagoguery. Along with him came Ben Carson, a soft-spoken neurosurgeon that offered the same lack of political experience that the voters so dearly craved without the over-assertiveness of Trump.
Carly Fiorina especially has been one of the most surprising stories. Having presided over one of the worst periods in Hewlett-Packard’s history that included an over 50% drop in profits and over 30,000 layoffs, Fiorina had been stuck in the low single-digits in polls for months after entering the race. An impressive undercard debate performance and some intense lobbying of CNN led to the ex-CEO being placed on the main debate on the 17th where yet again Fiorina impressed. Those two performances later, Fiorina had jumped 11% in the polls and has become a serious contender for the nomination.
In the GOP especially, the abrupt come-up of these three individuals illustrates the type of frustration that the Republican base is feeling. Two regulars of the political stage in Walker and ex-Texas governor Rick Perry have already dropped out due to lack of support and funds, but one-time prohibitive favorite Jeb Bush has been particularly underwhelming, suffering multiple gaffes on Iraq and women’s health as well as a forgettable first debate. Only in the CNN debate has the ex-Florida governor held his ground at all, and the funds-rich candidate remains inexplicably polls-poor at just 9% nationally.
The Republican primary is especially interesting due to the lack of policy specifics driving each insurgent campaign. Trump’s main points have mainly been anti-immigrant and pro-wall on the Mexican border. Carson has admitted to being a little out of his depth on policy, especially on the global stage, while Carly Fiorina has only the powerful rhetoric of the debates that has propelled her forth, not any political details. Conservatives aren’t even overly concerned with the issues anymore, they simply want to turn to a candidate they think isn’t lying through their teeth and will actually shake up D.C.
On the left, Bernie Sanders has led a very different type of anti-establishment revolution. The Vermonter has laid out numerous detailed plans to fight income inequality, create more jobs, reverse climate change, fix campaign finance, and more. The senator has packed tens of thousands into venues to see him speak and has managed to hold his own in the fundraising war despite not starting a Super PAC. As the party’s pick in Clinton continues to struggle with handling her email controversy, Sanders has ridden the wave of liberalism in the Democratic Party into the lead in Iowa and New Hampshire despite not actually identifying as a true Democrat.
While it may be too early to definitively say that establishment politics are done for, it’s certainly not out of the question to suggest it. Never before has a presidential cycle been so dominated by candidates that have won the love of the people without winning anything close to the support of their party mechanisms, and the ensuing developments of having such candidates run has utterly shaken up the race for the White House. It seems America is fed up with the same-old in Washington and that the anti-establishment is well and truly on the rise.
The West Wing Politics 