After last
night’s election results, there’s no doubt that the electorate has
contempt for Washington incumbents and the political establishment. 
Virtually every media account dutifully recites the same storyline —
that these results reflect an “anti-incumbent” mood — but virtually
none of these stories examines the reasons for that “mood.”  Why do
Americans, seemingly regardless of party affiliation or geographic
location, despise the political establishment?

One reason why media mavens seem reluctant, even unable, to grapple
with this question is because it so plainly falls outside their
familiar, comfortable narratives.  Contrary to efforts earlier this year
to depict the problem as one aimed at Democratic incumbents due to the
unpopular health care plan and the growing “tea party” movement,
Republican voters — as demonstrated in Florida, Utah, and last night in
Kentucky — clearly hate their own party’s leadership at least as much
as the animosity directed toward Democratic incumbents.  The trend is
plainly trans-partisan and trans-ideological, and the establishment
political media has a very difficult time understanding or explaining
dynamics about which that is true.

So extreme is the anger toward the political establishment that not
even popular politicians have any impact on it.  Despite the fact that
he remains quite popular with his state’s GOP voters, Mitch McConnell’s
handpicked candidate was slaughtered in Kentucky by a highly
unconventional and establishment-scorned Rand Paul.  And just as
Massachusetts voters did in December when President Obama traveled there
to plead with them to elect Martha Coakley, only for them to reject
those pleas and send Scott Brown to the Senate, Democratic voters
completely ignored Obama’s vigorous support for incumbent Senators Arlen
Specter and Blanche Lincoln, sending the former to ignominious defeat
after 30 years, and forcing the latter into an extremely
difficult run-off with Bill Halter (who was recruited
by Accountability Now, an organization I helped found and continue
to run).