I never heard a word all night about IRS and NSA abuses, soaring prices, militarized police, government surveillance and violations of the Constitution. Not a word. Didn’t during the campaign either. So the answer is. not much.
We have seen a wildly swinging political pendulum for the last 20 years. The reasons, as I see them, are:
1. America IS in decline,
2. The American people know it and and are angry about it, but
3. The American people either do not know what they want, or are very divided about what they want
4. Too many Americans want the free pixie dust powered skittle-crapping unicorns flying over rainbows. Oh, did I mention that they expect this for free?
5. Most of the rest of the American electorate realizes that you can’t have free unicorns, but they do not have the political will to make the hard choices and sacrifices necessary.
6. American politicians at the highest levels of government are selected on the basis of politics (getting into office) rather than on policy (what you do when you are there), so
7. Politicians will not make the hard choices if they fear it will cost them their office
8. So a lot of people who need to be told “no”, who aren’t accustomed to hearing it, still won’t hear it.
9. And so the decline continues, the people get angry and dissatisfied, switching between the two political parties, but
10. Neither one offers a real solution to the problem of decline, and it goes on, and the American people lose faith in their country.
Short of a real national catstrophe I don’t see anything to break this institutional dissonance.