One story that you could tell about the second half of the Obama Presidency is that the politics of the country have been pushed along by movements—Occupy, Black Lives Matter, the Tea Party—that are not basically about the contest between Democrats and Republicans but, rather, emanate from outside them. The scope of what counts in politics, of whose voices matter, has been broadened beyond those who normally vote. No one knows whether these populist tendencies will abate or change each of the parties, but this year it is clear that the traditional biases of electoral politics have given way to the more various terrain beneath them. The influence advantage that voters have over non-voters is more tenuous; the distance between the concerns of the campaigns and the experience of the country has narrowed. This election season has been strange and often alarming, but that is in part because it has been aimed at a broader audience—because it has been, in some crude ways, more democratic than what came before.
Source: Sanders, Trump, and the Rise of the Non-Voters – The New Yorker
