JEFFREY CARTER: The Retirement of Liz.
Liz Cheney went down in flames last night. Pundits are chalking it up to another win for Trump. He’s doing pretty good in his endorsements. It’s hard to say who he has actually put over the top vs who would have won anyway. Certainly, there are some like Blake Masters in Arizona who benefitted. But, Masters also had Peter Thiel money.
But, maybe Trump just has a good eye for people. All those years running a business might have made that skill sharp. No, the pundits missed it in 2016. They never understood why Trump came out of nowhere to win. They are missing it today.
Trump certainly is very good at articulating what people are thinking. He’s good at connecting with them.
But, I think it’s deeper than candidate Trump. These are votes against the Beltway Establishment. It’s a vote against the way things have always been done. Mr. Smith can’t go to Washington because they are living their lives outside the Beltway and want to be away from politicians. Most Americans agree the best government is the one that governs the least.
That’s where the “middle” is.
The mainstream media is of the Beltway Establishment. They don’t understand the real middle. Neither do the Twitter people or social media people. Remember when Mark Zuckerberg went to spend time with a Midwestern family and milked cows to try and get in touch with “regular people”?
What we all hate to see are career politicians that get rich simply because they are in Washington. They take no risk and make gigantic sums of money. They campaign on one thing and then do another.
Would the Cheney family have dynasty money if it weren’t for politics? What about the Dingells? What about the Chicago Daley Family? The Clintons? The Gores? Former and disgraced Speaker of the House Denny Hastert was a teacher, then a career politician. He was also a prescient and amazingly successful land speculator.
There are people like Senator John Thune too. When he first went to Washington, he didn’t seem like an establishment guy. But, once he got there and understood the system he became the establishment and enforced the establishment.
They usually do.