Were they alive today, most of America’s founders would not be surprised by the electoral successes of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Trump and Sanders, whose experience and policy proposals make them implausible and potentially disastrous presidents, both are the product of political factions, which James Madison cautioned against in Federalist #10.
“By a faction,” wrote Madison, “I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”
While interest might explain why some voters favored Sanders—with his laundry list of promises, from free health care to free college education—the strong support for both Trump and Sanders arose mostly from their appeal to “common impulse[s] of passion.” Sanders’ supporters resent what he portrays as a rigged economic system benefitting only the wealthy, while Trump’s fear that immigrants are stealing their jobs and that foreign leaders are outsmarting incompetent American officials—and both groups are passionate in their beliefs.
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