While the mainstream media and the political left relentlessly condemned Donald Trump for tapping into Americans’ frustration and hopelessness over crippling inflation, stagnant wages, and an illegal immigration crisis, the reality is most Americans are fed up with the direction of the country over the past four years.

For every article speculating on why Vice President Kamala Harris wasn’t further ahead in polling even though she is running a “positive style” campaign, and every mainstream news article criticizing Trump for “taking his doomsday approach to a new extreme,” there was evidence that Trump tapped into the reality of the way people feel, while Harris dismissed it.  

From the first speech Harris gave after becoming the nominee, where instead of focusing on her own record she seized the opportunity to accuse Trump of “taking our country backward”, to her speech Monday at Madison Square garden, Harris perpetually criticized Trump’s tone and rhetoric while sidestepping criticisms of her administration.  

While a great many Americans still have hope for the future of our country, that hope rests largely on correcting the political missteps that have wreaked havoc on our economy, dollar, border and standing in the world, and that is why voters resonate with Trump when he points out the failures of the political class.   

A majority of Americans see the last four years as having heavily eroded their own sense of peace and prosperity, and most of the country says they are worse off now than before the Biden-Harris Administration was installed.

The latest YouGov survey shows, for example, that Americans say 64 percent to 25 percent that the country is generally headed in the wrong direction and the public says 64 percent to 20 percent they feel the country has gotten out of control.

Americans say by 14 points (48 percent to 34 percent), that they themselves are worse off than they were four years ago, and they say by 22 points (51 percent to 29 percent) that the country is worse off than it was before Joe Biden and Kamala Harris assumed office.

Independents say they are personally worse off than they were four years ago by a 2:1 margin, 50 percent to 25 percent, and independents assert by a broad 37-point margin (55 percent to 18 percent) that the country is worse now than when the Biden-Harris duo assumed power.   

Thirty-eight percent of the country says the economy is in poor condition, while 29 percent say it is in fair condition and 22 percent say it is in good condition. A mere six percent of Americans say the economy is in excellent condition after four years of the Biden-Harris economic agenda.

Looking back at the past year, a full 40 percent of Americans say they are worse off financially in the final year of the Biden-Harris administration than they were one year ago, while only 18 percent say they are doing better than a year ago.

What Kamala Harris and the entrenched political establishment she represents are missing is that it is largely due to their own incompetence and negligence that Americans are pessimistic, and Trump is merely tapping into that sentiment. Voters are reacting to the reality in which they find themselves four years into one of the most destructive administrations in history, and it is Trump, not Harris, who is giving them a voice.

Although they are eight years apart, Tuesday’s election arguably shares more similarities to the 2016 election than it does to 2020. In 2016, Americans were fed up and frustrated with the political establishment, and domestic issues like the hollowing out of the middle class and the influx of illegal immigrants from third-world countries dominated.

Then four years later in 2020, the Black Swan event of the pandemic largely overshadowed domestic issues, and a perfect storm of events led to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris being installed in the executive branch. This election was once more, focused on the decline of the middle-class due to globalism, and Trump was the only candidate speaking not only to what is happening but to solutions for it.

—  Manzanita Miller is the senior political analyst at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.