What New Hampshire Means

The vote is a vote for dramatic reform of the current political system.

1.   Republicans:  One thing it means is that earnest compassionate conservatism does in fact have a market in the Republican Party:  Kasich got 16% of the vote and Jeb Bush got 11%:  Total of 27%.  It is a solid minority position.   For a while, back when Bush and Kasich were polling at 2% it looked like the tone and policy that consolidated the GOP back in 2000--the compassionate conservatism of George W. Bush--had disappeared.  It re-emerged from near-zero to a voting block--of 27%.

Kasich and Bush don't shout.   They don't condemn bi-partisanship.  They aren't trying to break the system.  They want government to work.  They are very conservative but Bush talked about immigrants being motivated by "love" and has been roundly condemned for being soft.   Katich's election night speech spoke of the need to build people up and to console the grieving.  They are conservative, establishment, compassionate.

(I don't include Carson's 2% in this voting group.  Carson's ideas are angry, but expressed in a very mild, almost sleepy, way.) 

Republican Truck

2.   Republicans:  The majority of voters wanted anger and disruption of the system.  Trump (35%) promises total disruption of the GOP coalition with an authoritarian, nativist message denouncing the current establishment as corrupt and weak.  Cruz (12%) promises total disruption of the GOP coalition with a hard conservative message, denouncing  the establishment as corrupted by special interests and willingness to compromise.  Rubio (11%) promises a hard conservative message condemning the direction of the country as being willfully destroying American civilization. Christie (7%) promises a hard conservative message condemning the fecklessness, weakness, and corruption of Democrats.   One can also add in the marginal votes for Carly and Carson, another 4% total.

Note the common message:  it is an anti-corruption and reformist message.  It wins something around 70% of the vote.   It is a message that excites people.   It is expressed with real drama and engagement.  

3.   Democrats:   Bernie Sanders (60%) is angry.  He is angry about Americans being screwed.  He points up at the source of the corruption:  money in politics has arranged our politics so the rich get richer.   The multi-millionaires and billionaires are capturing all the growth of income in the recovery, he says.   His solution is higher taxes on the rich, to break up the big financial institutions, and to break up the health insurance and pharmaceutical company complex.   He wants radical reform of the system.  He won.

Hillary says she is "fighting for us" and the direction of her politics is unequivocally progressive left (certainly compared to Republicans) but she isn't expressing reform of the political system.   She isn't fighting the system.  She is fighting within the system.  Apparently it is not enough.   She is promising that the current system will bend left, toward more regulation of banks, toward repairing Obamacare.   It gets 39% of the vote.  Incremental change within the system is a solid minority position.

Incremental change:  Hillary hearing about drug abuse polic

Summary:   I am trying to get at the big message in this election.  The message is that there is a body of people in each party who are OK with maintaining the current social order and bending it in one direction or another.   This is the Kasich, Bush, Hillary vote.   And relative to the other candidates, they sound earnest, not angry.   They are a minority of about 25-40%.  Hillary's results are complicated by the fact that she is the messenger.  People already have strong opinions about Hillary, often negative.  So some of her results are personal, not policy.

The big message is the majority position, consisting of impatience and lack of confidence in the current system and a demand for reform.  They do not want incremental anything.  They want to break the system.  Sanders and Trump both target Wall Street, and it is a popular target.  Wall Street firms destroyed the economy then got out of the disaster with government loans, then merely paid fines.  No one went to prison.   

Republican candidates also target down, to immigrants, to Muslims, to government benefits given to people poorer than themselves, to affirmative action, to women wanting abortions, to health care, education, and cell phones given to the undeserving poor.

The commonality is a demand for reform.   There is little commonality between Sanders and the Republicans on what needs to be reformed.   In fact, with the exception of Sanders and Trump both targeting hedge funds and Super PACS, reform points in opposite directions.  

The public in New Hampshire has spoken: they want a reform candidate.  I predict that Kasich, Bush, and Hillary are going to attempt to re-define themselves as the campaign moves to South Carolina.  We will be hearing about reform.  Big reform.  Reform now.