Voters are still looking for hope

There’s no incumbent in the 2016 race for the White House, so it’s a jump ball in both political parties. The surprises on both sides have been the clamor for outsiders. In the GOP, half the primary voters prefer Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, or, first among them, Donald Trump, none of whom has ever held elective office. On the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders, who’s an Independent in the U.S. Senate, poses a daunting challenge to the virtually anointed Hillary Clinton.

Though Trump and Sanders, a real estate magnate and a Vermont socialist, seem polar opposites, they both respond to a growing concern that political and economic life in America has become stiflingly unfair: We’re losing the American dream, the rich and privileged control the system to their own advantage leaving ordinary people helpless, and politicians ask for voter support then serve big donors who in turn own them.

Trump says he understands this complaint because he was one of those owners. He argues that because he himself is rich—quite very rich, actually—he can’t be bought and will therefore serve ordinary people as political leaders should. Internationally, Trump claims we’re being suckered with bad trade deals by foreign governments because our leaders either cannot or do not look out for us. They’re serving themselves and their friends with “free trade.”

Sanders appeals to a parallel sentiment on the political left. These people also have the sense that America is not a fair game anymore: The system is rigged in favor of the 1 percent, the few wealthiest. Sanders’ website laments “the growing gap between the very rich and everyone else,” and, “the enormous economic and political power of the billionaire class,” and the “economic and political oligarchy” that we kid ourselves is our democracy.

But whereas the disaffected on the right believe that big government in collusion with corporate elites has killed the dream, the left looks to government to revive it. So Sanders would use Washington to force the pieces back into place: guaranteed paid sick leave, universal healthcare, free higher education, and big spending federal job creation. A government-driven Nerf economy would guarantee that no one suffers and no one falls behind.

But would anyone care about income inequality if they had the sense that they and others could rise with honest hard work? People want a return of the America where the circumstances of your birth don’t determine your destiny, a country where people can rise from rags to riches, or at least to modest middle-class comfort with a car, a backyard, and a college education for your kids who will live better than you did.

Supporters of both of these political populists are looking for hope, what Barack Obama promised and did not deliver. Instead, we got record profits for Wall Street and a sluggish recovery for the rest of us who still cling by our fingertips to the bottom edge of the middle class. In America, we find hope in opportunity, and we expect opportunity in a free system. It is an open question whether either of these candidates, or any of the others, has the key to making real the promises of our great experiment in self-government and human dignity.