As the dust settles over the shifted tectonics of Wyoming politics after the primary, one factor at play in the election stands out to me: voters in Wyoming are pissed.
Voter anger manifested itself in a couple of ways. First, a slew of incumbents were shown the door by their Freedom Caucus opponents, as voters expressed their anger at the status quo in the voting booth. Second, because of anger, ennui or disillusionment with the whole shebang, voters stayed home in droves.
It doesn’t take a political rocket scientist to conclude that folks in the Big Empty are irate with what has been going on in the halls of power. It's palpable. You can almost smell their anger in the air, like smoke from an upwind prairie fire.
And it's not confined to Wyoming. There is a rising populist fervor throughout the country predicated on “the people” pushing back against “the elites”.
As Clemenza explained the Mafia war to Michael Corleone in The Godfather, “This has to happen every ten years or so.”
When anger is vented, it's cathartic. And catharsis often breaks some crockery.
Incumbents in the Wyoming legislature who lost their primary probably don’t consider themselves “the elites”, but that doesn’t matter. Apparently the voters do. And the voters have the only voice that counts.
So it's worth taking a look at voter anger just as closely as we look at gnarly mailers, negative campaigning and personal attacks as a factor in what happened in the primary.
Anger is a bit more difficult to analyze in this context, because anger is not an ethos or a political philosophy. Anger is an emotion and behaves differently.
Citizens today are not just pissed off at politicians. Folks are angry with high prices, unwanted immigration (both across our national borders and those of Wyoming), books in libraries, popular entertainment, cultural change, and schools. And that ain’t all.
Incumbent officeholders take the brunt of this voter animus because voting is about the only action citizens can take to effect change.
Anger among voters is real, and a politician denies it at his own peril. Remember President Jimmy Carter castigating the nation for their negativity during a fireside chat, calling it a “crisis of confidence”? He lost the next election to Reagan who promised “Morning in America."
A politician telling voters to chill out works about as well as a husband telling his angry wife to calm down. Try this at home, if you don’t believe me.
Equally risky to a political career is ignoring citizens’ anger. Marie Antoinette is a cautionary example. Those in power should never tell hungry voters to eat cake if they don’t have bread. Heads will roll.
Using voter anger as a vector for political change is usually pretty effective, but it can also place the newly-elected in a dicey position.
If they can’t provide policies that satisfy the voters, and pour oil on the troubled waters, they are left with a population that is still pissed off. But this time pissed off at them.
As Thomas Jefferson advised, “If you have a wolf by the ears, you can neither hold on nor let go." Politicians who have successfully weaponized voter anger to gain office should keep that advice in mind.
Popular anger with the status quo was a motivating factor in our American Revolution. Both the Declaration of Independence and our own Wyoming Constitution provide the citizens the right to alter or abolish their government any time they see fit.
It should shock no one when angry citizens exercise that right regardless of who is in office.
Rod Miller can be reached at: RodsMillerWyo@yahoo.com
