As America goes to the polls shortly to complete the most contentious election season in anyone’s lifetime, it is good to reflect on perhaps why people are voting for the candidates that they are. While much has been made of Trump’s failings, with the baffled media wondering how anyone could possibly vote for such a person, the simple fact is that elections are a binary choice and Trump isn’t exactly running against a JFK or Ronald Reagan. Although the press won’t admit it, Trump was probably right when he said that Hillary belongs in prison for corruption. Think about it. Has there EVER been a candidate for President running while also under FBI investigation? So why are people lining up behind ‘their’ candidate? Largely for the same reasons that they always line up behind either the R or the D. So to ask why people will vote Trump or Clinton, you need to ask what makes them vote ‘R’ or vote ‘D’.

With all of the ways that pollsters divide people into certain groups, we have a pretty good idea of who tends to vote which way. For example, single women tend to prefer the ‘D’, while married women tend to prefer the ‘R’. Why? African Americans overwhelmingly prefer the ‘D’ (90%), even when there is no black candidate at the top of ticket. Why? Latinos generally prefer the ‘D’ to the ‘R’ by roughly a 3 to 1 margin. Why? White men generally vote the ‘R’. Why? White folks with a high school education tend to vote ‘R’. While those with higher education tend slightly to vote ‘D’. Why?

The answer to these questions often involves looking beyond simplistically satisfying narratives. For example, some would explain that the overwhelming 90% African American support for Democrats is due to vicious Republican racism. While a certain political party might not be the choice for 9 out of 10 African Americans, it is hard to argue that they are shunning a Party that forced desegregation in the South in at least one case in 1950’s, implemented affirmative action in the civil service, appointed an African American to the Supreme Court, appointed two African American Secretaries of State, was headed less than 4 years ago by an African American, and recently elected the first black Senator in the history of South Carolina, because of racism.

More than likely, the something that causes people to vote the ‘R’ or the ‘D’ is which Party’s platform offers them something or makes sense in the context of how they live their lives. For example, the perennial Republican offering of “tax cuts” makes sense to people who A.) are actually paying federal income tax (Mitt Romney’s infamous 47% comment notwithstanding, nobody said that he was factually incorrect) and/or B.) feel that they aren’t getting their money’s worth in government services. Many of these folks undoubtedly feel that they are in control of their lives, and that things are going reasonably well for themselves AND people who they associate with. I am not saying that these folks are getting rich, but they likely have stable lives and stable jobs.

On the opposite side, you have the Democrats with their perennial offering of “more government programs”. For people who don’t feel in control of their lives, this can offer a comfort. The fact that married women tend to vote ‘R’ while unmarried women tend to vote ‘D’ should come as no surprise. For a married woman, she has a partner there helping (more or less) and so the Democrat offering of more government programs is not going to have as much of an appeal to her (all things being equal) as it likely will to the struggling single mother.  In another case. more government spending is going to appeal to the government worker class (that overwhelmingly votes ‘D’) because they get more money and more job security.

Still another factor that can influence a person’s vote can be cultural conditions. For example, the African American experience with the police has often been an unhappy one, and this has led to a general suspicion of police in many parts of that community. In addition, the lock em’ up and throw away the key law and order policies of the ‘R’ (and the ‘D’ too to some extent, but the ‘R’ is more associated with law and order) probably can feel like an attack on the community itself. On the other side, the fact that many ‘R’’s don’t have run-ins with the law in the same way can likely cause them to be dismissive of complaints against police practices. In other words, the policies championed by the ‘R’s and the ‘D’s make sense in the context of how the ‘R’s and the ‘D’s live their lives.

To continue with cultural factors, the view of guns and gays is going to be influenced by how much interaction ones has with them. If you are living in rural America with limited police presence and a feeling that you have to protect your own home and family because the police are nowhere nearby, you will resist attempts to ban guns because A.) you will see a ban as threatening your personal safety and that of your family, and B.) your likely familiarity with guns is going to mean that you won’t fear them. But if you live in a highly urban, safe neighborhood, with heavy police presence, you might not see the need for a gun and might not understand why anyone would need it (because you won’t know anyone in your social circle who needs one). Consequently, you might be more receptive to a gun ban.

Or take the case of gays. If you have extensive contact with such folks, you are likely to see that they are normal, everyday guys and gals going about their lives the best that they can, just like all of us. But if you don’t have contact with such folks and the picture you get of the “gay lifestyle” is what goes on in gay clubs in San Francisco, you are likely see just a bunch of wierdos who have nothing in common with you and who you certainly wouldn’t want anywhere near your children. Consequently, you are not likely to be sympathetic to gay marriage or any other such issues.

In conclusion, people vote for the ‘R’ or the ‘D’ because the programs offered by these two parties make a lot of sense. They just make a lot of sense in different contexts. How people live their lives, the conditions they operate under, and the situations that they find themselves in are going to determine which program makes sense. It does no good to berate people as stupid or dismiss large minorities of the country as moochers as one candidate for President did a few years back, or as irredeemable and deplorable as another more recent candidate for President did.  Whatever factors drive their vote, the Party that offers a policy program that makes sense in the context of their lives is going to get their support, and the Party that offers a policy program that doesn’t make sense in the context of their lives (or that might make their lives more difficult) is going to earn their opposition. For most people, the corruption of one candidate or the volatility of another candidate simply doesn’t make any difference. They just don’t care.

So if you want to understand why people could possibly vote for Trump or Hillary, understand that they represent the ‘R’ and the ‘D’ (whatever else they may be, including the fact that Trump used to be a Democrat). Which Party’s platform makes sense in the context of an individual’s life will, in the majority of cases, explain why someone will go ahead and vote for Trump or Hillary. And honestly, whether you will admit it to yourself, you are probably choosing your candidate in the same manner as the person voting for the other awful candidate is doing. And if you aren’t, then you almost certainly know someone voting for your candidate who is.

Eight years after the financial crisis, many are still asking, “when will things return to normal”. In this case, the normal that they are referring to is largely the period from 1982 to 2007 when solid economic growth, punctuated by 2 short recessions, was the norm.

Often in periods of fundamental historical change, people are tempted to see the shift as a short, transitory, departure from the status quo and the historical order of things. At that time, it is simply seen as a matter of just muddling through this, or winning the next election and reversing the programs of the other side, and then we will be back where we want to be. People at the time thought that once WWI was over, things would go back to the way that they had been. Undoubtedly Republicans in the 1930’s thought that the New Deal could be reversed. The South thought that in time, it would rise again and reverse the verdict of the Civil War. All of these brief short periods, fundamentally and irreversibly altered the dynamics of society and the world.

Today, we too are living through a historically altering time period. While some may speak of a “New Normal” with permanently lower economic growth, most of these folks seem to imagine that Western societies will continue on the current trajectory that they have been on since the end of WWII, except that they will have lower economic growth. In the U.S., these folks seem to think that once this Donald Trump foolishness is dispensed with and Hillary Clinton is safely in the White House, then the world will continue on the way that it is supposed to; the way it is has largely gone on for 3 generations.

Unfortunately for this view, the expression “New Normal” is a declaration that economic growth will never return to the 1982-2007 trajectory. It is also a declaration that people should get used to this. However, this view as it is currently expressed appears to ignore the shifting of the political landscape that has taken place in countries across the West. From the Tea Party movement in the U.S., to the National Front in France, The Freedom Party in the Netherlands, the UK Independence Party in Great Britain, and others, nationalist & populist parties are, where they are not actually setting the agenda, at least asserting themselves as political players to be taken seriously. Fifteen years ago, many of these parties didn’t even exist, and those that did were largely considered jokes. The fact that these parties have the influence that they do, never mind the fact that someone like Donald Trump could get as far as he has, means that the current political-economic structure that has existed over the last 70 years or so is no longer meeting the needs of a significant fraction of the population. While “New Normal” adherents may delude themselves and think that they can return to the “good old days” with a regulatory tweak here, a tax cut there, or an increase in a government program over here, the rise of these parties says that they are not likely correct in this belief.

In the last 20 years, communications technology has changed the game. Today, people can connect with like-minded people in ways that they couldn’t before. The internet has allowed us to compose playlists to each of our specific tastes quickly, custom order automobiles with the specific features that we want (and without having to pay for those we don’t), check out multiple restaurants on a device in our hand, etc. In short, the power to have what we want, when we want, and how much we want, is greater than ever before in human history. The idea that a regulatory/governing structure, the foundations of which were constructed 80 years ago before anyone had televisions and that specializes in dispensing slow, one-size-fits-all solutions with a take-it-or-leave-it attitude, is going to be acceptable to the Western population over the next few decades is, frankly, probably wishful thinking. The idea that we have to just “shut up and take it” is something that fewer and fewer people are going to be willing to accept.

So when will things return to normal? Probably Never.

Whatever way the U.S. Presidential election is ultimately decided a month from now, it is becoming increasingly clear that this is likely to be an historic election. This is not because we are likely to be looking at the first female U.S. President, but because historians 100 years from now may actually look at this election as the moment when certain realizations dawned on various segments of the population making the ultimate break-up of the U.S. inevitable. Some of the things that have become apparent are:

1.)    The media and major political figures literally hate an entire segment of the U.S. population, and view them as unredeemably awful.

Although Hillary Clinton’s comment about half of Donald Trump’s supporters being deplorable was walked back a bit by her, the fact that many media figures jumped to assure us that she was in fact correct shows us that they don’t really believe that a large fraction of the population deserves anything but being kicked. While Democrats and the media likely have felt this way for a long time (and it is possible that the ‘deplorables’ sensed this), the fact is that this sentiment is now out in the open. The ‘deplorables’ know that the political left doesn’t really see them as human and being deserving full political rights. This makes political accommodation between the groups difficult as there can no longer be a presumption of good faith.

2.)    The political left doesn’t believe that certain laws should be enforced. As an aside, the left also doesn’t believe in national sovereignty.

Part of the case against Donald Trump was that he was going to get serious about border enforcement (that was also coincidently part of the limited case for him). But for all of the howling on this subject that implied that he was some sort of nativist/Nazi, what was forgotten is that most of what he was proposing was in effect to simply enforce existing law. He really wasn’t talking about laws that he wanted to pass. He was largely saying he was going to do what any President is supposed to do: enforce laws whether he personally likes them or not (this being Trump, however, he was unable to articulate that). The fact that the very definition of sovereignty is being able to control a border and have the say over who gets to live within that border along with the fact that the left denies this right to the U.S., and it is now very clear that a large segment of the population doesn’t believe that laws should be enforced if they don’t like them, and that the U.S. has no right to exercise national sovereignty.

3.)    The political left believes that it is naturally superior to certain other groups, with a natural right to rule over those other folks.

To go to the previous point, when one side thinks that it should be exempt from laws it doesn’t like (like immigration laws), while their opponents should be subject to laws that THEY don’t like (like gay marriage requirements), this a presumption of superiority. It has become abundantly and undeniably clear that many on the political left believes this to be the correct order of things.

4.)    The Department Of Justice and the FBI have become political tools and can no longer be trusted to conduct investigations or dispense justice impartially.

With all the revelations regarding Hillary Clinton’s emails, it is abundantly clear that she should at least be facing charges. It is now undeniable that FBI and Department of Justice did what they could to help cover up the scandal and avoid doing their duty simply because of who Hillary Clinton is. There is no way that this doesn’t seriously degrade the legitimacy of these federal agencies in the eyes of a substantial portion of the American electorate.

5.)    The political class doesn’t have answers, nor does it have an interest in finding answers, to the troubles afflicting the American middle class.

Looking at the mainstream (aka not Donald Trump) wing of the Republican Party, and the mainstream (not Bernie Sanders) Democrat Party, the stated policies of both parties (tax cuts/less regulation/strong national defense on the right and more regulation/more government social spending on the left) haven’t really changed much for roughly 20 years. The problem is that the middle class is hurting and all the political class seems able to do is to pretend that the problem doesn’t exist (through misleading unemployment numbers) or to heap abuse on the voters.

Overall, this election has revealed fissures in American society that are now blindingly clear even to people who don’t really follow politics. That something is horribly wrong and has shifted is not something anyone but the most deluded can miss. The corruption in the federal agencies (FBI, DOJ, IRS, and VA) and the inability of the system to hold anyone accountable (note that nobody appears to have even faced criminal charges) is not something that can go on forever. People have not yet lost complete faith that one man can go in and clean up the mess, hence the support for Donald Trump. When they lose faith that this is even possible……………….then the process of breaking up is likely to start.