Elites Still Don’t Get Trump

Washington journalists and pundits missed the appeal of outsider Republican candidates like Donald Trump and Ben Carson, and they continue to dismiss their significance, veteran reporter Mark Halperin said Wednesday.

Appearing on the “The Laura Ingraham Show,” Halperin noted that none of the establishment favorites — Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, John Kasich and Chris Christie — are doing particularly well in the polls. Halperin, the co-managing editor of Bloomberg Politics, said political journalists still do not recognize why.

“These are out-of-touch elites who don’t spend enough time talking to real people or things from any perspective but the most wealthy and elite people they hang out with,” he said. “There’s a reason why they’re doing so well.”

The Washington elite view Trump as boorish and lacking policy specifics. Halperin said his supporters do not dispute that.

“I meet Trump supporters all the time in Iowa and New Hampshire who say the same thing and certainly wouldn’t deny that list,” he said. “But, from their point of view, the country is broken, Washington is broken and they say, ‘You know what, if the guy is boorish or the guy’s loud or if the guy’s politically incorrect, either I like that or I can deal with that. I can accept those warts because I know that electing a career politician is not going to change a thing.’”

“These are out-of-touch elites who don’t spend enough time talking to real people,” Halperin said.

Halperin said the one candidate in elective office who seems to be moving up in the polls, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, is benefiting from the same zeitgeist because he is “another person who is not interested in business as usual, is not interested in the status quo.”

In a separate appearance on the show Wednesday, Democratic pollster Pat Caddell offered a similar analysis of the presidential race on that side of the aisle. Caddell said that Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders missed some opportunities in Tuesday night’s debate to press front-runner Hillary Clinton, but still helped himself.

“I actually think he probably did very well for his primary audience,” he said. “Bernie Sanders probably gained some because, you know, his rhetoric for the far left, for the left of the party and also for many Americans who feel they’re being screwed, as he is many ways the Donald Trump of the Democrats, may get him support.”

Caddell said that with few exceptions, though, Tuesday night’s debate was a pander-fest that lacked any serious discussion of the angst gripping the country. For the most part, the candidates pandered to various interest groups, he said.

“This is a Democratic Party eating itself,” he said. “That’s what you saw last night, devouring itself on its own interests … This was literally Kool-Aid party time.”