Maybe it’s not all middle-class discontent, a desire for outside-the-beltway candidates or angry Americans. Maybe the core reason Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump enjoy a surprising number of followers is something far simpler:

Maybe it’s television shows.

In 1939, Jimmy Stewart played a U.S. Senator in a movie, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” and Americans received a dramatic glimpse inside politics. People were fascinated; they were angry. They knew politics had a seamy side, but it’s different to see it front and center, notably when an honest guy, Stewart, is exactly the sort of person they want representing them.

Today’s television goes even further, and it’s hard to watch 52 hours of legislative lynching without getting depressed. Forgetting now-gone shows, no less than HBO’s “Veep,” Netflix’s “House of Cards” and Amazon’s “Alpha House” show everyday politicians doing everyday political things – and it’s ugly.

When we read that a House bill, if passed (no chance), would ban representatives from calling donors four hours every day, it registers in gray cells as “business as usual.” We saw it on TV; it’s here in real life. (It’s the STOP Act).

Forgetting the nuances of television shows – whose killing who, who’s out-negotiating who, who’s screwing who – viewers walk away with a feeling that politics is a job just like any other job. Getting re-elected is the career goal and the thing every task feeds; legislating is a means to achieve that goal.

“House of Cards” fans might doubt that a sitting president can be so heartless or, if he is, kill people without getting caught. But the chess game of politics? The competitive way each senator, cabinet member, press secretary and reporter plies his or her Washington career? They buy that part. A viewer who plodded through the entire series looked inside the political machinery’s guts for 52 hours. It’s not a two-hour movie glimpse; it’s part of his reality.

The result: Voters with a penchant for political TV shows come to believe

1. lawmakers lie constantly
2. “constituents” is code for “a hoard of people I want to manipulate”
3. nothing in Washington will change no matter who wins an election. We’re playing a different game of chess on different boards.

Sanders and Trump promise to mess that up – to put the system in a blender and hit puree.

Will they do it? Or the bigger question: Can they do it? Or perhaps the biggest question: Do they really want to do that, or are they simply a new type of snake oil salesmen doing a better job than their opponents?

Voters want Mr. Smith, and they want him to go to Washington. They want someone with high ideals – okay, ideals they agree with – to kick some collective self-serving political asses. They want change they can believe in.

For better or worse, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders openly pooh-pooh politics as usual. Can you blame crowds for eating that up? They talk about a dysfunctional Congress as if they believe it to their core. Neither one seems to kowtow to a political party or play the I’m-running-for-election game, and that’s the way voters want it.

But, perhaps, Sanders and Trump are just really, really good politicians. If so, they’re selling, we’re buying, and Americans’ shelves will soon be filled with snake oil.