In recent days two major political figures, Jeb Bush and President Obama, revealed why American voters are fed up with the establishment political elites.  President Obama had the petulance to comment that he was not aware that Americans were so upset by the San Bernardino killings because he does not watch TV. 

Several things about this statement don’t pass the smell test.  President Obama had no trouble keeping up with current events when Trayvon Martin was killed.  He immediately said that Trayvon could be his son.  Apparently none of the San Bernardino victims could have been his son, daughter, or neighbor.  Obama also responded immediately to the Michael Brown death in Ferguson, Missouri and sent out a Justice Dept. task force to investigate the Ferguson Police Dept. for civil rights violations.

What is most troubling about his remark that he doesn’t watch enough television is that it demonstrated how he wants to ignore any Muslim-based terrorist acts.  Secondly, it reveals how gullible he thinks the American public are.

This is where Bush comes in.  He also needs to watch more television, and perhaps read the Constitution, so he can learn how American voters feel about the GOP campaign.  At the recent CNN Republican debates Jeb Bush told Donald Trump he can’t insult his way to the presidency.  Perhaps Jeb Bush is tone deaf to the fact that Americans don’t want another Clinton or Bush in the White House and that it is the voters, not Jeb Bush, who decide who the candidates will be.  Jeb Bush apparently feels, as Hillary Clinton does, that his family name is all he needs to get elected to the White House.  Never mind the voters’ choices.  And never mind that he is so far down in the polls that his chance of becoming President is hopeless.

President Obama and Jeb Bush are stuck in an outdated paradigm of voter expectations.  So are most of the news media.  This is why voters, not self-appointed media experts and establishment public officials, determine who wins elections.  The paradigm has changed and the establishment pols are suffering from cognitive dissonance: there is a conflict between what they think voters look for in candidates and what today’s voters are really looking for.  They may be in control of what is said on TV and pass in Congress but they are not in control of what voters think.

Jeb Bush needs to watch television, look at the polls, and realize that voters choose the Republican candidate, not someone’s family name.  And he needs to recognize that Trump is far more appealing to voters than he is; that his biggest flaws, his arrogance and sense of entitlement, were revealed to all the viewers of the CNN debate with his comments and interruptions of Trump.  Jeb Bush should apologize to Trump, apologize to voters, and leave the campaign. But he won’t.  He is convinced that his name and establishment connections are all he needs.  And in this campaign, that’s all the proof voters need to see that Jeb Bush cannot be president.