The simplistic and less troublesome view of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s what-comes-around-goes-around defeat at the hands of a college economics professor is that immigration reform was the culprit. Cantor, number two Republican in the House and a happily irritating thorn in the side of President Obama, was the casualty of an ongoing political war over immigrants and his party’s future outreach to Latino voters.
One other theory only a brave few have come just short of saying is that Eric Cantor was a straight up asshole. There, done. You can sense this during the post-mortem press conferences and interviews where no one – on either side of the aisle – uses that exact word, but you know they want to say it. It’s safe to say that no one else, other than a weeping House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), is saying how much Eric will be missed. It’s not like there’s any kind of warm, open eulogy for Cantor as he processes what happened in his Virginia 7th Congressional district and attempts to change his abrasive image by humbly moving aside as Majority Leader with quickness.
Relying mostly on immigration as the lead reason is a bit short on creativity, lacking in wisdom and slightly bunkum. Sure, there’s still a heavy contingent of red state white voters in VA-7 who don’t like the changes happening in their former Confederate cradle state. But, That’s not the main reason Republican primary voters gave him the boot. It was just one sliver among many slices of things that vexed Virginians – and a lot of other people – about Eric Cantor.
Among them was the fact that Cantor, plainly put, had become an easy poster face of broken Washington. Republican primary voters in VA-7, motivated by telegenic Cantor stunt double and tea party neophyte David Brat, had been giving the Majority Leader bitter signals for some time. He was too busy being Leader of the Punk Obama clown crew to take notice, in addition to meeting the crazy busy demands of being Majority Leader. But, maybe if he had spent less time trying to trip up the president and more time paying attention to the details in his district (“down to the last blade of grass” as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) put it during a recent press briefing), he might have had a shot at hanging on.
That said, it was hard for Cantor to shake that face – and he wasn’t really making any effort at a makeover. He seemed content with it. There was some poking around in urban waters with talk of beefing up school choice proposals, but there’s a higher chance you’d see Cylons blasting your backyard than Eric Cantor giving interviews with Black outlets.
The mainstream conversation over Cantor’s fall is missing the point. Conveniently, no one wants to ID it as a sign of populist discontent and potential revolt. Talk of internal Republican rebellions driven by tea party fanatics is an easy sell because it’s a safe thought. Easier and much more comforting to isolate the problem as something confined to one party rather than acknowledge there’s a larger, national problem in which a whole lot more people are just a bit pissed off and fed up. So, to make it seem like Cantor or any other Republican ousted in a primary is just isolated tea party bluster is less jarring than violent riot scenes in burning urban centers or Main Streets.
National Journal’s Ron Fournier gives a spot on explainer: “[W]hat may be in the air is a peaceful populist revolt—a bottom-up, tech-fueled assault on 20th-century political institutions.”
Fournier is being nice about it, though, right after citing the recent Swastika-fueled Las Vegas shootout that blew up like a Natural Born Killers director’s cut. But, true, there’s nothing to say it will be violent because there’s no data point spelling it out at the moment (pollsters are too scared to ask it, of course). What we do see is not only a growing gap between rich and poor, but an endless chasm between suit-wearing politicians versus average people in jeans. Elected officials seem ever more satisfied with keeping it detached when the electorate wants them to keep it real.
Problem is the electorate doesn’t know what it wants. It’s a bit schizophrenic. Like Cantor’s district: people don’t want immigration reform, but neither did Cantor and they voted him out anyway. His opponent, Brat, is an economist who thinks economics is bullshit. People say they want to keep their social security, Medicare and other entitlements, but a bunch vote for candidates against that because they believe some black guy in Washington wants to give it all away to people who don’t look like them. Many want no national debt, but they sure get nervous when House Republicans go trigger happy on the debt ceiling. You say you don’t want government shutdowns, but you egg on the people who create them. You don’t want to stay in Afghanistan, but you don’t like the way we’re pulling out of it. It goes on.
The other problem, and most untold story, is that Brat’s election wasn’t so much about voters liking Brat as it was about dissing cats who stand for inauthentic politics and status quo. It was all about poking fingers in the eye of the Man. And, it’s really just as simple as that. Political polarization is at an all-time high, as Pew points out in the wake of Cantor’s slip. Trust in government has dropped from 60% in 2002 to 19% now. Sure, we can believe all the nicely crafted tea party monster in the closet bed time stories all we want. Something is in the air … that we know. Sidestepping it like a pile of shit on the sidewalk won’t make it go away.
CHARLES D. ELLISON is a veteran political strategist and Chief Political Correspondent for UPTOWN Magazine and host of #Uptownhall. He’s also Washington Correspondent for the Philadelphia Tribune and a frequent contributor to The Root. He can be reached @charlesdellison.