Los Angeles, CA - Every two years, when election time rolls around, many people, some of my friends included, go to the polls and vote for protest candidates. People who have little or no chance of winning, but because the electorate feels like nothing is being fixed, they choose not to vote for either major party.
Sometimes they vote for Mickey Mouse, or Bugs Bunny, this year they are voting for Donald Trump. Trump is the voice of the angry Americans, people so fed up they are willing to try anything at all to fix the system.
Some of Trump’s supporters say they want revenge on the establishment for years of lies, others tell me they want entertainment, and some just like to hear Trump continue to bash the political correctness that many on both sides of the aisle are getting tired of. (Perhaps this is why nothing short of shooting Bambi will cause Trump to fall in the polls.)
However, not all Americans are angry at the establishment or want revenge. They are hurt, tired, and disillusioned and they don’t want payback, they want healing. But they don’t naturally turn to the bombast of Trump, but rather to gentler, kinder, some might even say gifted, hands; those of Ben Carson.
Ever since he announced his candidacy, the mild mannered Republican and former neurosurgeon has been a longshot candidate, however, he has managed, save for a few scrapes at the beginning of his run, to avoid incendiary and controversial rhetoric, and, for the most part, and instead talk about his vision for America.
And that approach seems to be helping Carson along quite well, in a poll a few days ago in Iowa; Ben Carson became the first person, since July, to at least tie Donald Trump in any poll anywhere for the nomination. Trump and Carson are, in that poll, tied at 23%.
While Carson is still a long shot, (he has less than half of Trump’s support nationally, and way less money than many other candidates,) at a time when pollsters tell us America is more divided along political lines than at any time since the Civil War, he, a black Republican in a party accused of not liking minorities, a non-career politician at a time when American’s are fed up with career politicians, and a man who came from rags to riches at a time when Americans feel the ruling class does not care about the plight of the less-advantaged, Carson could possibly feel a lot of slots and begin a surge of patriotism across the country. While he seems to be weak on economics and foreign policy, it is not hard to see, at least at first glance, what Carson’s supporters are looking at when they say his name in surveys.
It is almost as if he is another form of Donald Trump, because Carson is certainly a crazy politician, to say the least. His ideas are far out from the norm, and his stances are far right of the center. But he isn’t brash or loud about it, and for all of the Americans that really think the country could use a doctor right now rather than a Trump card, they feel that Dr. Ben Carson is their man.
Andrew C. Abbott
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