The Establishment

By Jonathan Bernstein

Jamelle Bouie has a great post up over at Yglesias's place asking why the left is so disgruntled with Democrats. I can't really help him with that excellent question, other than to say that I tend to use a rule of thumb that involves tuning out when someone uses the word "hegemony." But following the links back from Bouie's piece takes me to a much simpler question. Glenn Greenwald asked last week, "Why do Americans, seemingly regardless of party affiliation or geographic location, despise the political establishment?"

That's easy! The key to public opinion, especially when it's about abstractions divorced from practical day-to-day life, is that it follows opinion leaders. And all opinion leaders in America are against the establishment. In fact, no opinion leaders in America will admit to being part of the establishment! Virtually every president in my memory, from Nixon on with the possible exception of George H. W. Bush, not only ran against Washington to get elected but continued to campaign against Washington from the White House. Look at Obama -- he's not the establishment! He's not even the establishment of the Democratic Party; that's the message of keeping his grass-roots insurgent organization, OFA, running. Over on the Republican side, surely no one -- not Rush Limbaugh, not Glenn Beck or anyone at Fox News, and certainly not the Republican Party's most recent nominee for vice president -- would admit to being part of the dreaded establishment.

So there's two sides to this question. First, I'm not really sure it makes sense to call (for example) the side that includes Mitch McConnell "the establishment," while the side that includes Ron Paul, Jim DeMint and the Sage of Wasilla is not the establishment. But beyond that, it's pretty obvious that since the side that includes McConnell (or, Obama, or Nancy Pelosi, or whoever) also uses anti-establishment rhetoric, virtually all voters will wind up believing that the establishment must be some terrible thing.

Of course, polling numbers for such things as Congress or the president or the political parties do fluctuate all the time, and right now many of these indicators are on the low side. That's pretty easy to explain, too; that's what happens when you get almost 10 percent unemployment. When good times return, the polling numbers will go back up, just as they always do. But people still won't like the establishment.

Oh, and liberals will still believe that all liberal pols are weak sell-outs, while most conservatives believe the same about all conservative pols. That's a harder one to figure out, other than to say that it's a natural consequence of a Madisonian system that frustrates quick action by electoral majorities.

-- Jonathan Bernstein blogs about American politics, political institutions and democracy at A Plain Blog About Politics, and you can follow him on Twitter here.