Maybe I am just telling myself what I want the believe but I am kind of optimistic by nature so I’m prone to that kind of error. The thing is, when I see that people were much more positive about the future of the country before the presidential campaign began in earnest, I reach a different conclusion from Nancy LeTourneau and Steven Holmes.
Rather than thinking that people are getting more downhearted because they’re absorbing negative messages from Bernie Sanders and the eleventy billion Republican candidates, I think they are becoming pessimistic because they’re realizing that we’re going to have to replace the current president with another Bush or another Clinton or a racist clown or some unpopular governor who seems half out of his mind.
Frankly, one reason I think Sanders is moving up in the polls is that a lot of people could live with him as president, but I think deep down most people know that a Brooklyn-born 74 year-old Jewish socialist from Vermont is not going to prevail over all this madness and become the next occupant of the White House. Still, Sanders offers a slender reed of hope in what is an otherwise thoroughly demoralizing set of prospects.
What am I saying?
Well, gas prices are down, employment is up, housing prices are up, but the public mood is going south. Maybe you buy that everything is going to hell and people suddenly noticed (just coincidentally) right when the campaign kicked off. Obviously, we have our problems, but the timing suggests that people don’t like their choices.
I think if Obama were permitted to run for a third term, people would be feeling a lot better about the future.
Maybe the candidates are fomenting some of this discontent, but it’s less by people agreeing with them than it is by them listening to the stupid shit that they have to say.
