Voters cite broad dissatisfaction with establishment
The Guardian’s reporting, published Sept. 20, captures a political landscape in which voter frustration extends beyond partisan grievances. Brian Leeland, a 79-year-old Democratic voter in Detroit, said his list of frustrations includes “grifters, liars, the two-party system, money influencing elections, the US’s standing in the world, the growing national debt and a fixation on cultural issues, not just the larger problems that plague the country.”
Leeland contacted The Guardian after its coverage of Abdul El-Sayed’s Democratic Senate primary campaign in Michigan, writing that the outlet’s framing of the race as “a simple progressive versus establishment choice is overly simplistic verging on lazy.”
In Minnesota, anger at the Trump administration over Operation Metro Surge — an immigration enforcement effort — continues to dominate political conversations, the Guardian reported, months after the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
Phil Verges, a 65-year-old farmer from Spring Valley, Wisconsin, said reaching Medicare age was “bittersweet.” He recalled being in his 20s and believing the US would have universal coverage by the time he qualified. “People are getting sick and tired of being sick and tired,” he said. “The US is the only nation with GoFundMe campaigns for hospital bills — or before that, a spaghetti dinner to raise funds in small towns like his,” the Guardian quoted Verges as saying.
William Lawrence, the Democratic nominee in Michigan’s seventh congressional district, said he hears frustration from voters across the political spectrum. “People are pissed off and incredulous that our leaders could have allowed it to get this bad,” he said. “It’s Republicans and Democrats, independents and those who don’t even know what to call themselves any more, because they’re just so fed up with it.”
Lawrence, 36, said the first step to dealing with voter anger is acknowledging and affirming it. But, he added, his goal is to make sure those voters “don’t drop out of the political process altogether.” He warned that “things are going to get worse before they get better, because the imbalance of power right now is so severe,” and that “after the damage that’s been done, it’s going to be a long road back.”
Candidates tap anti-elite energy
Trump rode a wave of voter anger at the political establishment in 2016 and 2024, the Guardian reported, seeking to stir up anger at “his enemies, immigrants, trans people, the so-called ‘deep state.’” But in his second term — with material conditions deteriorating for many Americans as wealth accumulates at the top, disruption caused by the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence, an unsanctioned war in Iran, failed accountability on the Epstein files, and trade wars with friendly nations — Trump has become “a target of the very anti-establishment anger he stoked.”
Rob Sand, the Democratic contender for Iowa governor, has framed his campaign as representing “the fed-up” rather than a partisan base. Angie Nixon, a democratic socialist and Democratic nominee for Senate in Florida, said voters care less about intraparty labels than about a candidate who is “actually going to look out for just regular, everyday people and put them first.”
In Montana, independent Senate candidate Seth Bodnar released an ad in which he shot a Flock surveillance camera, railing against mass surveillance and data centers. “They are all getting rich and we’re getting screwed, and nobody is holding them accountable,” Bodnar said.
Maurice Mitchell of the Working Families party characterized the current candidate field as running on “solidarity populism” — “giving voice to the anger and calling out the villains who deserve to see it directed at them, instead of blaming people who don’t have power.” He said the scapegoating playbook that Donald Trump employed — blaming immigrants, trans people, and DEI for economic pain — is losing effectiveness after a decade. “If you’re claiming that the source of my pain [is] trans people and DEI and immigrants, and now you have the ball and you’ve used that power to make those people’s lives hell, but my life isn’t better, then the jig is up,” Mitchell said.
Political consultant Anat Shenker-Osorio said the Trump administration’s “common argument that the reason people can’t get well-paying jobs is because of immigrants” is “a central example” of a broader pattern. “It’s a common story that authoritarians tell — that ‘those people’ are standing in the way,” she said.
A field of voters beyond the partisan map
The Guardian’s reporting describes a voter base dissatisfied beyond Democratic-Republican lines. Sarah Agnew, a 56-year-old Democrat in Minnesota, said her party has not done enough to stand up to Trump, but expressed faith in candidates including Minnesota US Senate hopeful Peggy Flanagan and Texas US Senate candidate James Talarico. For Agnew, accountability is the priority: “I want to see accountability for Alex Pretti and Renee Good, and I want to see accountability for Kristi Noem and everybody who is responsible for what happened here in our state and our city,” she said.
Milan van Dam, the 17-year-old national chair of the High School Democrats of America, will be just shy of voting age in November. He was in second grade when Trump was first elected. Van Dam said young voters are not craving a return to the pre-Trump status quo they never knew. “The vast majority of people voting for these candidates, who in some cases happen to be democratic socialists, aren’t democratic socialists,” he said. “They just don’t accept an incremental approach to politics.”
Stephanie Matejka, a 46-year-old insurance agent in Lincoln, Nebraska, first got involved in politics during Bernie Sanders’ presidential run, volunteering after seeing a candidate speak to the issues that matter to her as a single mother. She now volunteers with the local Democrats, the Guardian reported, and thinks deep-red Nebraska could elect Democrats to Congress and the governor’s office, and an independent to the US Senate, this year. Driving through rural Nebraska, Matejka said she can tell which communities have seen their schools closed and consolidated as small towns wither — residents who must drive 100 miles to reach the nearest nursing home and now contend with gas prices that make the driving harder. “The current administration, both statewide in Nebraska and countrywide, they do not care about people’s quality of life as long as it fits their pocketbook,” she said. “And people hate that. They’re resentful of it.”
Economy, immigration crackdown, and foreign policy as driver
The Guardian reported that voters cannot afford healthcare or childcare; that grocery and gas prices continue rising while wealth concentrates at the top; that farmers and small business owners are contending with tariffs and a trade war; that small-town residents are beating back data centers and tearing down Flock cameras; that many do not want the US to be involved in wars overseas; and that women’s access to abortion care has backslid.
Peggy Flanagan, the Minnesota US Senate candidate, said Trump effectively campaigned on the idea that “the economy was rigged,” but “what’s become clearer, as Trump built a gilded ballroom and billionaires lined their pockets, was that the president and his friends were the ones doing the rigging.” She said the rage has crystallized as the impact has moved closer to home. Flanagan attended the Minnesota state fair on opening day and found that imagery of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown dominated artwork made of locally grown seeds and plants — “a sign,” she said, “that the state’s voters have not moved on from the trauma and disruption caused by Operation Metro Surge.” “Folks have had it, and they want people who are going to push back,” Flanagan said.
At a Wisconsin county fair last month, Rebecca Cooke, a Democratic congressional hopeful, said she spoke with a man who had voted for her Republican opponent, Derrick Van Orden, twice but would not do so again because of “this goddamn war.” Cooke wants to direct such anger at the ultra-wealthy and “the tech billionaires, the people making record profits off American workers,” the Guardian reported.
Nan Whaley, the 2022 Democratic contender for governor in Ohio, told the Guardian she recently had beers with a former Republican who became an independent. The voter was worked up about healthcare costs, rising government debt, and billionaires like Elon Musk not paying their fair share of taxes. A cab driver recently told Whaley he had voted for Trump but did not realize the president was “going to steal everything that wasn’t nailed down.” “People are very, very angry that there have been people in office that are viewed as the establishment and nobody seems to care about the problems they’re having in their daily lives,” Whaley said.
Abdul El-Sayed, the Michigan Democratic Senate candidate, said voters want politicians who follow through. “They want to see you fighting for the things you said you would fight for, and doing the things you said you would do,” El-Sayed said. “And too often, the very people who tell them they’re fighting for them turn around and do the same exact thing that they swore they’d never do.”
Building sentiment and challenges ahead
AJ Simmons, research director of the Center for State Policy and Leadership at the University of Illinois Springfield, said the anti-system sentiment has been building since the 2008 recession, when voters felt the government bailed out banks and businesses while leaving ordinary people behind. He said Americans are craving both authenticity and competence: “People are getting [to] a point of ‘I don’t know how much I care about the culture war – I can’t eat blueberries, I can’t eat lettuce, I can’t get healthcare. Will you do one of those things?’”
Outlook for November
Shenker-Osorio said the “mad-as-hell faction” that often decides midterms represents a “plague on both your houses” vote rather than an embrace of Democrats. The scale of that sentiment in November, she said, will depend on turnout. “There could be a not merely blue wave, but a blue tsunami.”
Democratic candidates have told the Guardian they can work in a divided government — potentially controlling Congress, if not the White House — to build consensus positions through an “inside-outside” strategy that engages voters pushing for those positions outside government while advocating for them inside. But the party will have to reckon first with its own mistakes, the Guardian reported, including “their subservience to big-money donors and an often poorly articulated vision of what the party stands for, especially during the age of Trump.”
Simmons cautioned that governing after the election will be more difficult than winning it. “It’s real hard to govern right now because you also look at Congress and how conflictual that is, how non-governing Congress is,” he said. “And nobody seems to be really solving anything.”
Michigan voter Leeland said he was never as angry under President Ronald Reagan as he is now. “I didn’t like it much, but I wasn’t angry about it,” he said. He added that he hopes the current trajectory can change.