1st. I think one of the lessons from Kansas is precisely the power of PRE-EXISTING facts on the ground - such as public education. This is, I think, so clearly one of the bedrock "goods" that Government is supposed to deliver that the tax-cutters - when they were found to be wrecking it and to have no fix - lost their legitimacy. I think we can see some of this in the UK as well, with school lunches, tuition, etc. Education - like it or loathe it - is simply considered to be vital, and the Government to have a powerful role in it.  [It was also just the #1 issue in Nova Scotia's recent election down here.]

Some of what the Right is running into the fact that they sold magic pixie dust to people, and then were in office long enough that their failures can't be blamed elsewhere. Which is to say, they've long been lying, and are beginning to be found out. Their grand claim has always been that most of Government was waste. Which they would cut. And then, that the private sector could do and do better the main remaining functions. And that - freed up from  the State - the private sector would give us all more consumer goods, fabulous getaway holidays in the sun, and... freedom. In other words, they promised more + MORE... for less. But then, given time, they're flailing. As in Kansas.

And their only responses were to double-down on precisely the agenda the Republicans and Conservatives have been promoting since the 80's. Cut taxes to the rich. Sell off government assets. Starve welfare state functions like pensions, education, etc. Expand the military. Hate on foreigners. Stuff women back into the pantry. And shout about God, the Flag and the Confederacy. 

Now, as a wild-eyed green-activist-progressive-etc., the fact that people eventually get tired of loud-mouthed liars - or at least 5% of swing voters do - isn't really all that great a result, frankly. It doesn't really set out much of an agenda beyond the core welfare state we've all come to know and be frustrated by these past, oh, 4 decades or so. 

Which is where your second thesis comes in. Why the rising dissatisfaction? Why aren't we happy? Well, let me test-drive - top of head only - a few thoughts:

1. I think there's a real case that while we have more jobs again, the pay sucks. And that means relative decline versus the idealized middle class [or the rich], whichever we focus on. In short, there are still some rather gaping holes in the traditional cloth we've been promised.

2. Meaning. I've kindof been on this track all my life, maybe right, maybe wrong, but "happiness" has never been a great measure of what makes people tick in my books. [i.e. Viktor Frankl had something going on.] Insofaras it meshes with meaning, "happiness" may be useful. But social sciencey academics have shied away from meaning, and clung to happiness - and wrongly so, I think. Just because it's downright impossible to measure meaning, whereas with "happiness" you could lash it to consumer spending and a few other "goods" and be away to the races. 

And indeed, being from old redneck, religious, white, rural, economic declining stock, I think this is part of what people are trying to analyse out there in Rural America. It's not just "economic decline." And not just "racism." Or "ignorance." It's that there's not much goddamn reason, not much passion, not much life purpose out there in much of Rural world anymore. You're not nobly working the farm, the woods or the mines. You're not marching to war, or seeing people get saved for the first time, or beating down the evils of drink, or outrunning the smokies, or whatever the fuck you did that kept you excited about rural life back in the day. Shit, when I go home, it's largely to a world of crack and oxy and decaying houses and teeth. And lives. [And I don't mean this as something that is only affecting others, I can walk through my family members with this.]

And I think we see a similar story in the cities, only it's sliced up differently. There, you hear it as suburban kids who can't nearly reach where their parents were - the Millennials. What's their reason for happiness? Rebellion? Getting a degree and a good job? Getting a car and a house? etc. 

We're in a West now where religion is just not working like it did. Where Nationalism has paled. Where the belief in onward and upward in an ever-rising economic arc of Progress isn't there.

It's not just a loss of faith in our "institutions," which can magically be rebuilt by Civics classes [seriously], it's the wider and deeper culture and purpose and vision that those things grew out of.

3. Finally, I think we now have an ever-growing portion of the population who have taken on the new post-60's, post-modern values. As each cohort ages out, and each new one grows up, the numbers of people holding to values around the Earth, around Women, around the Equality of Races, around the nonsense of Violence, well... though it may feel like they were pretty insignificant when Brexit won and Trump won, I think they're sitting right in the gut of an awful lot of people. Think of the Women's March - perhaps the single best, and most surprising, and most hopeful thing I've seen in years.

Now, add to that the "threshold" idea - which I think is both a good, and an obvious one. So we see:

•   Some people directly lose as the Right cuts public goods [pension or health or education]...
•   Some whose private incomes just collapse or erode, and don't recover... 
•   Some whose worlds of meaning have collapsed...
•   Some whose new values are simply opposed/slashed/ignored.

Add those constituencies together, anomalous grab-bag though it might appear to create, and I would say you have what Bernie and Corbyn were trying to form into something coherent. [And Trump.]

And for these people, if these hits have knocked them over a threshold, then incremental change doesn't feel like it offers much.

/end blather