Brian Leeland, a 79-year-old Democratic voter in Detroit, had enough. Frustrated by the way the US media covers this febrile political era, from Donald Trump’s Washington to political campaigns across the country, he contacted the Guardian.
“Your decision to frame the race here as a simple progressive versus establishment choice is overly simplistic verging on lazy,” he wrote to this reporter, after our coverage of progressive Abdul El-Sayed’s campaign in the Democratic US Senate primary in Michigan. “As an electorate, we are not binary for the convenience of the media.”
His was a complaint I heard often as I traveled across the midwest to cover a host of contested Democratic primaries. So I called him up.
Leeland’s list of frustrations is long: grifters, liars, the two-party system, money influencing elections, the US’s standing in the world, the growing national debt and a fixation on cultural issues, not just the larger problems that plague the country.
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I like this Leeland person.
Yes, most Americans are very upset with the establishment. They just can’t agree on who the establishment is.
Obviously Trump is currently the establishment since he’s the one in power right now, but the irony is a lot of the people who voted for him did so because they were angry with the establishment that preceded him. So, many Americans are angry at an establishment that was meant to take on a past establishment that many other Americans had been angry with.
Obviously Trump is currently the establishment since he’s the one in power right now, …
Trump and maga are not the establishment. They are extreme radicals with a completely different agenda than the establishment. Their agenda is to do away with the Constitution and replace it with an authoritarian regime centered on christian nationalism and fascism–of that’s not radical, what is? The fact that they managed to take over the government doesn’t make them “the establishment” unless you accept that they will maintain power and thus become a new “establishment”.
When will they will figure out bOtH pArTiEs are “The Establishment”? Don’t hold your breath!
I vote, and you should, too. They are not the same. One party is “pro-LGBT” and the other is “pro-church” and they are bOtH pro-corporate, pro-billionaire, pro-war, anti-union and so on.
The differences are the bait. The commonalities are the establishment.
Yeah, realising your entire lineage’s lifelong earnings for generations amounts to sofa change to megalomaniacs who are also making sure your grandchildren will suffer even more than you are now is bound to make one testy.
