Let’s say, one day, you decide you want to go to Los Angeles from Las Vegas, so you get on a bus. A few hours later, you find yourself in Elko, and the driver announces that the next stop is Salt Lake City.

Are you happy with where the bus is?

Are you happy with where the bus is going?

A conservative, technically defined, would be someone who is happy with where things are and where things are going. This, however, doesn’t line up neatly with our political idea of a “Conservative,” as Jonah Goldberg pointed out over a decade ago:

“To say a conservative is someone who wishes to conserve is technically correct but practically useless. ‘Liberals’ these days are in many respects more conservative than ‘conservatives.’ American conservatives want to change all sorts of things, while liberals are keen on keeping the status quo (at least until they get into power).”

That’s a problem because adopting a more technically accurate definition of “conservative” would help us make sense of the Tea Party, the election of President Trump, the rise of the DSA and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's victory in New York, and the difference between Gary Johnson’s results in 2012 versus 2016. The truth is, technical conservatives lost control over the Republican Party as soon as the clapping stopped; “Conservatives” these days are clearly unhappy with where the nation is, and are extremely unhappy with where the nation is going. Goldberg was also right that “Liberals” were quite conservative, technically speaking - how else does Hillary Clinton’s nomination make sense? If there was a tribune for the status quo, ante or futurae, who else could it have been than her?

There’s just one problem - most Americans are not technically conservative, and they haven’t been for well over a decade.

According to Gallup, since 2001, a majority of Americans have been consistently dissatisfied with the direction the U.S. has been going. This has been every bit as true after President Trump was elected as it was prior to his election; according to Gallup, satisfaction with the way things are going dropped from 28% to 27% from 2016 to 2017. This is why a lot of people claim “Bernie would have won” and why actual card-carrying socialists (as opposed to the “disagreed with yesterday’s Fox News talking point” kind) are starting to win Democratic Party primaries - there’s a lot more support for hope and change (any change, really) than there is for maintaining the status quo. This even includes increased support for halfway competent third party candidates, as Jill Stein and Gary Johnson can both attest, and also for halfway competent third parties, as the Libertarian Party can attest. Unsurprisingly, our national politics are reflecting this continuous, generational dissatisfaction - and we’re even seeing this in Nevada.

A lot of ink, virtual and chemical, has been spilled over brothel owner Dennis Hof’s and Storey County Sheriff Gerald Antinoro’s victories in their respective primaries. A lot of ink, virtual and chemical, has also been spilled over their various character flaws and legal issues (which are, like Morbo’s children, belligerent and numerous). What hasn’t been asked near as frequently, however, is this: Despite everything, why did their voters decide these guys in particular were better than the alternatives?

The answer is simple: Hof successfully painted Oscarson, despite his very Republican voting record in the Legislature, as someone that will vote for tax hikes when asked politely by a Republican governor and will otherwise maintain the status quo. Antinoro’s supporters, meanwhile, painted a similar picture of the embattled sheriff - a vote for Antinoro was a vote against Lance Gilman and the status quo in Storey County.

Given that, is Steve Sisolak or Adam Laxalt the status quo candidate? Which candidate was recently endorsed by the existing power brokers in Storey County, and which candidate waited until the last possible second to revoke his support for Storey County’s embattled sheriff?

At the national level, meanwhile, the present status quo is President Trump, a Republican Congress, and now an increasingly “conservative” Supreme Court. The Republican base long since abandoned technical conservatism, and that has led to a fairly consistent string of electoral victories both in and out of Nevada through most of this decade. But it’s one thing to be unhappy that you’re in a bus in Elko - it’s another thing to have your fellow passengers vote to send the bus to Chicago when you’re trying to get to Los Angeles. How many people in Nevada want to go where President Trump wants to go? Is visitor-friendly Nevada ready to support trade wars with our most lucrative customer base? Are we ready to deport nearly 20 percent of Nevada’s population? We certainly weren’t in 2016.

On the other hand, the Democratic Party still isn’t quite ready to shake off its technically conservative underpinnings. They want to abolish ICE, except when they don’t. They want to embrace fresh new candidates with new ideas, except when they don’t. Of course, there is one party that’s open to new candidates with new ideas - they even want to abolish ICE and are currently the only political party with a sex worker plank. Then again, if you look at my footer byline, you’d know I’d say that.

When you’re trying to get to Los Angeles from Elko, there’s something to be said for getting off the bus before it heads any further east than you already are. On the other hand, if you don’t know where you want to go, just that you have to get out of here, does it really matter which way you’re headed? That’s the question facing Nevadans this year. Personally, I hope we’re at least a little picky.