I Hate to Repeat Myself, But Trump Did Not Win: Clinton Lost
This article by Damon Linker totally mirrors my take on this election -- a competent Democratic candidate without Clinton's many flaws should have wiped the floor with Trump. Biden would have won, I am absolutely convinced. Anyway, I liked this bit from Linker:
Most of all, I don't want to hear about how unfairly Clinton was treated by the media. In comparison to whom? All the other candidates who've run for president while under criminal investigation by the FBI? (Maybe that substantial handicap should have overridden the party's presumption that she was owed the nomination because it was "her turn.") Or do you mean, instead, that she was treated badly in comparison to her opponent? Really? You mean the one whose 24/7 media coverage was overwhelmingly, relentlessly negative in tone and content? Either way, a halfway competent campaign should have been able to take advantage of the great good fortune of running against Donald J. Trump and left him bleeding in the ditch.
I am exhausted with folks talking about some fundamental political shift to a white male resurgence, or whatever. There was no shift. Trump got about the same number of votes as Romney and McCain. He won no more white male votes than those guys and if anything performed better than them in traditional Democratic categories like single women and blacks. The reason Trump won is because Clinton had 10 million fewer votes than Obama had in his first win. Traditional Democratic supporters were unenthusiastic about Clinton and stayed home.
I am of the opinion that her polling wasnt as good as you suggest and Hillary's team missed the swing until the very end. I am pretty sure she was believing the polling g the day before showing her having a significant lead.
I agree with you, her message wasn't good, mostly bash Trump and try to get people not to think about her personal failings, while Trump bashed he also managed to get out a populist message or two, which we might not be able to talk about in polite company but many agree with - build a wall - stop inviting people to the US from places that hate us (until we can screen them), keep jobs in the US. Hillary not only didn't have a real message but doubled down on ideas like, let the enemies of our nation move in, without explaining the benefits, just if you don't like it, you are racist. Calling voters racist and deplorable, etc won't win votes.
I was strongly against Trump as presidential candidate, and I am not happy that he will not be president. However, I am ecstatic that Hillary will not be president.
Moreover, as part of my evolving views on the election this year, I have become more accepting – even a bit enthusiastic -- about Trump. Initially, I thought he add an appeal because he was viewed as authentic, just as Sanders was considered authentic. Then I saw his support based in angry Republicans, and even if he got the nomination, there would not be enough angry voters to put him in the White House. Finally, I recognized that Trump had an appeal to more than angry Republicans. Many people recognize that MSM and bureaucrats severely mislead the public,and the more that the MSM treated Trump unfairly (yes, despite my distaste for Trump, I could see remarkable bias in reporting and focus), the more that these people were accepting of Trump.
But the main thing I wanted to respond to was your prediction that “Trump will be an unmitigated disaster.” Actually, I am not anticipating that outcome. I think he will be a better respecter of constitutional separation of powers, and if he
can get our country off the ridiculousness of the CAGW hysteria, that alone will give him an aura of success.
I could not agree more with your first paragraph. Otherwise, I hope Trump proves me wrong.
Very good argument, morganovich.
I agree that Romney was a strong candidate. But he couldn't use the issue most lethal to the Democrats in 2012: Obamacare. Also, to the blue collar worker, Romney would always be a rich elite who cut jobs. His 47% gaffe only made him seem even farther removed from the common man.
Although Trump is wealthier than Romney, his language and demeanor throughout the campaign made him much more comfortable to the working class. Over and over again my blue collar friends reminded me that Trump tells it like it is. They trusted Trump. I'm pretty sure they never trusted the too-slick Mitt Romney.
I despise Trump, but I can't actually find a single point to what you said that I disagree with.
While you have a point that Trump won because of how bad Clinton was,
No I do not think Biden or Sanders would have won.
As large as Clinton's problems were - and they were enormous, She is likely the only democrat who could have won.
Nor is that about Trump specifically.
Trump might have been the easiest Republican to defeat in the general election.
Essentially what I am saying is that the ONLY route to victory for democrats in this election was Trump Vs. Clinton, and they could not manage to win that.
This election was not merely a rejection of Clinton - though there was lots of that.
It was a rejection of progressivism.
Yes, other democrats would not have had Clinton's baggage,
But they would still have been weak contenders. Biden is just not a strong candidate.
He may well be a nice guy.
He may not be a crook or a perve - though there are lots of clips of Biden groping women - even young women.
I would argue that Biden is a more competent campaigner than Clinton. Biden says stupid things occasionally, but he's likable and has relatively little political baggage - like, you know, being married to a rapist, among many other little issues. Clinton not only has the baggage of a political circus, she has the charisma of a badger.
It should be worth noting that virtually all of Hillary's political success has been given to her. She has never won a difficult election in her life.
Lol @ Trump campaigning in California. Believe me.
All of your points are true. Biden is a way better candidate than Hillary. Kind of makes one shudder to think that....
"It was a rejection of progressivism."
I wish it were true, but I disagree. If progressivism was rejected, then a plurality of voters would have voted against Clinton. But even if we can accept this premise, this leads us to a novel question: if we have rejected progressivism, what have we accepted in it's place? Libertarianism? Conservatism? With Trump, the answer seems to be a rather profound: NO!
Oh, how I would love to have a conservative/libertarian in the White House. Or at least someone who understands the values of the free markets.
"Biden is just not a strong candidate."
This is a statement you fail to justify. In fact, you undermine this argument by pointing out all of his strengths over Clinton. I suspect Biden would've been a much better candidate.
Clinton was nominated for one reason, and we all know what it is: she's a girl. It's the tactic of identity politics, and although this cheap shot has been the key for success among Dems, they overplayed their hand in 2016. Trump is a fool that can't take two steps without stepping on his own testicles. She should have beat him by (as she herself admitted) 50 points, but she didn't because she was terrible.
It was a rejection of identity politics.
She alienated the second largest demographic in the country, white men. Not a smart thing. Folks do tire of being called a racist or a sexist just because they were born a white male. And then in the next breath scolding folks who don't accept Bruce er I mean Caitlin Jenner as a woman.
She also had no policy other than being a woman and accusing Trump of all kinds of "ists" and "phobias". Trumps policies were admittedly vague but he had them.
For example, when he talked to black leaders he promoted education reform and economic growth policies as the key to success. Smart.
Hillary promoted the idea that the only reason blacks don't succeed is racism.
Dumb.
Just the tip of the iceberg, It was actually closer than it should have been
She sucked is so many ways its hard where to start. She had the charisma of a dog turd and absolutely no coherent policies.
Trump could have won in a true historic landslide if he just omitted a few unnecessary incendiary moments.
For example, tough on immigration but we don't need the rapist comment. No reason to say anything about McCain's service no matter how idiotic McCain is and he is a moron.
"She had the charisma of a dog turd and absolutely no coherent policies."
The first half of your statement is true. The second half of your statement is at least partly true, though it is worth pointing out that Trump was far worse in articulating anything coherent.
But there may have been many people who didn't bother to vote, or who voted third party, precisely because they lived in New York, Illinois or California. They figured that there was no point in their voting, since the State was going to Hillary. Those same people might have voted for Trump if they were moved to different States.
Before the election, I heard many people say that they didn't like Hillary but were going to vote, say, libertarian rather than for Trump, since "it doesn't matter because I live in ....."
Last time I looked the rules, spelled out nicely in the Constitution, said that having more overall votes doesn't matter.
or to put it another way. "Whiny prog says what??"
Both candidates were pretty lousy, but I think this is an over-simplistic view of the election results. Take out California (now perpetually living in some sort of insane alternate reality), and Trump wins the popular vote by a fairly good sized margin. Enough of the rest America was tired of the last 8 years, the culture of political correctness and the lack of focus on the economy. They wanted something different, even distastefully so and here we are.
Regardless of the Dem nominee, I think Trump still wields a successful campaign targeting Obama cross-over voters in swing states who had been forgotten and taken for granted...
I agree that while it was a rejection of identity politics, it was also an affirmation that much of America is populist, and this is what still gives me pause. The Left, by definition is the party of giving things away with someone else's money. Despite some of Trump's cabinet picks so far, he ran on a protectionist platform that in some very alarming ways had more in common with the left than those who favor free markets.
Now, don't get me wrong -- Trump is far preferable to Hillary (if only for the Supreme Court) and I even pulled the lever for him... but I have no disillusions that the guy is the second coming of Reagan and Milton Friedman.
I think this is right. Trump's campaign, blighted widely by the media across the country, had a way of connecting with the forgotten voters in any state where they were able to break through this firewall with focused face to face time. IMO, this would have made a difference even in California if he'd chosen to campaign there.
This.
Trump won where he spent focused, face to face campaign time.
It's no wonder his margins flagged elsewhere when media coverage was 10:1 against him.
Regardless, take California out of the mix and Trump *does* win the popular vote by a healthy margin.
Coyote, ordinarily I agree with you a lot, but on this one you're slightly off target. Yes, Trump had about as many votes as previous Republican candidates, but he did it on very different terms. It makes no more sense to me to elide the number of votes for Trump into comparability with those for previous, mainstream Republican candidates on the basis of number than it does to look at two investments which do equally well but differ greatly in the amount of risk taken. "On what terms?" is a key question. In this case, he did just about as well in terms of pure numbers with a foolish, bloviating, antagonizing, populist message as Mitt Romney did with a mostly disciplined, relatively anodyne Republican message in 2012.
According to the 2016 Survey of American Political Culture, almost 3/4 of voters believe that “political correctness is a serious problem in our country, making it hard for people to say what they really think.” That includes over half of Hillary voters (and of course most-- 93%-- of Trump's voters).
http://www.iasc-culture.org/survey_archives/VanishingCenter.pdf
But Trump wouldn't have to win the state any more - because it would be popular vote. Even if he lost by a million instead of two million, it would have increased his odds of winning the race.
There is a depressed GOP turnout in CA, because there is really no hope of voting in a GOP candidate. An example, I had a choice of two democrats for Senator. And no-one campaigns in CA for the GOP side so no one gets excited enough to do anything. Just a little attention from outside would have increased Trump's vote in the state considerably.
""thought she had it in the bag" seems pretty hard to swallow."
Reports are she stopped paying for most polling services 4 weeks before the election because she was so sure.
Yeah she was a bad candidate, but I blame hubris as well.
It's as easy to argue that Trump campaigning in CA would result in an even greater Democratic turnout. People here just assume (correctly) that any Democrat will easily cruise to victory. If Trump campaigned here, it could easily bring out a much larger Democratic vote.
I believe there are 2 statements that hurt Clinton's chances the most. The first was by Obama when he told American workers to essentially "get used to" the fact that their jobs were going overseas and never coming back. The other was Clinton saying she would put coal miners out of work. What presidential candidate promises to put Americans out of work?!? This statement didn't just play poorly with coal country (Trump killed in West Virginia and Kentucky), but put American labor workers on their heels in the states Clinton needed to win (Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania).
What Trump did brilliantly was to steal a large part of the Democratic base: the working classes. What the Democrats forgot was that the working classes weren't just white, but today are much more diverse than ever. While Trump promised to do something about American jobs going overseas, Clinton promised to put people out of work, and Obama shrugged his shoulders and claimed defeat.
Bernie Sanders was right. He was the only other candidate who took the side of working people against the corporations and their desire to move American jobs to other countries. While free trade is a good thing, it was never meant to be used as a way for corporations to move their operations all over the world. Only Sanders and Trump understood this and were able to communicate it to the American people.
While I'm not sure Sanders could have beat Trump, I truly believe that the Democrats lost because the abandoned the working classes who found a champion elsewhere. They forgot class politics in favor of identity politics, and it didn't work. The truth is that as more groups better integrate into the country their political views will diversify, and is why Trump made inroads with Latinos over what Romney was able to do. A charismatic center-leaning Democrat who voiced the concerns of the working class would have wiped the floor with Trump, but do they have anyone like that, or will they continue to insist on propping he up the Pelosis and continue down the same failed path?
There are myriads of facets to this election, trying to identify one as pivotal is difficult.
The fact that Clinton was female was important, but I do not think it was determinative.
More important was that it was "her turn", She had punched her ticket properly, jumped through the right hoops, built the right political machine.
Numerous other democrats chose not to challenge her - had they done so they likely would have been bloodied badly and quickly. Clinton was formidable.
Her flaws may be all too visible, but they do not eliminate her strengths.
The test of Biden's viability is a real election.
Anything else is specultion - but I stand beside my speculation.
Absent an FBI recomendation to prosecute in june of 2015 Clinton was the inevitable democratic candidate.
Further, other democrats would likely not have done as well against Trump.
For all Clinton's weaknesses, she also had many many strengths.
Biden, Warren, Sanders - none are as strong, though they might also not be that weak.
Warren and Sanders were too far too the left - or could be painted as such.
Warren might be a serious candidate in the future - but she is going to have to tack towards the center to win an election.
I can say lots of bad things about Trump, but frankly, is NOT as bad as Clinton.
You can spin things however you wish, but he has succeeded in a world where no one is forced to work for or with him.
That matters - alot. It means for all his flaws he is Clearly NOT a fool.
I have a great deal of respect for the success of others.
Government is different - and Trump may learn that.
The skills we want in business are NOT the ones we want in government.
At the same time Clinton has been a FAILURE in business.
Frankly she should not have beat the postman.
While I have praised her alot - and politically she is incredibly formidable and powerful.
She is also a reflection of one of the major things wrong with government:
Failure is not an impediment.
She was a weak senator from a powerful state, a pretty bad sec. state, but at every step along the way she built a bigger organization, collected more favors.
Part of this is the question of "what defines success".
If we define success as being a good senator or sec. state Clinton was an abject failure.
If we define it as climbing the political ladder and building personal power - she was a tremendous success.
The latter is important to winning elections - but it is not alone determinative.
Trump has exposed the fallacy of numerous progressive memes.
Trump overcame - possibly even used a hostile press.
He was radically outspent - money is important, but at some relatively low point money becomes less and less effective.
You make a series of great points. The difference between you and me is a matter of nuance. I simply believe Uncle Jo would've beat Trump because he is extremely likable and the FBI wasn't spending time sifting through his emails. But then again that's a matter of hypothetical history: fun but frivolous.
By the logic you espouse then in 1992 Slick Willie the Molester did not win. He only received some 42% of the popular vote...
meaning he did not win, did not have the much hyped 'mandate' that politicians like to claim and in essence should not have
been allowed to take office.
"Traditional Democratic supporters were unenthusiastic about Clinton..."
They are unenthusiastic about the entire party. The Democrats have veered so wildly to the left that left their traditional base way behind. They have nothing left but coastal enclaves.
Putin won.
It's important to note that his support went up after the rapist comment. Have you stopped to consider that maybe that's because the majority of the Republican party, and virtually the entire Tea Party movement agrees with that? When people talk about not being able to speak their minds because of "political correctness" what did you *think* they were wanting to talk about?
Biden is likeable. Despite the way that the left painted him Trump is likeable too.
Biden too has a "groping" problem. Part of the reason why you need a real election to test things.
Also like Trump he has a tendency to shoot off his mouth before engaging his brain.
There are myriads of other factors. Clinton's strategy was the recent tried and true democratic identity politics game. It worked in that alot of people have bought Trump as a sexist, racist, homophobe.
At the same time democrats have a cry wolf problem - you can only call every opponent a hateful hating hater so many times before people quit listening. Further their identity politics started nailing too many blue collar voters.
And when the voters thing that you are talking about them when you rant about hateful hating haters - you have lost their vote.
Further Trump actually campaigned brilliantly. Long before handlers got involved it was clear to atleast some of us that he was betting everything on the rust belt. Several Trump backers were predicting a Trump landslide BEFORE he won the GOP nomination - and but for his own gaffes and negatives he would have won in a landslide.
Clinton's campaign screwed the pouch tactically. They never took the threat in the rust belt seriously.
Honestly even though I knew he was targetting the rust belt I though he was going to fall short there.
I would have bet if he was winning it was going to be FL, NH, NV that was going to do it.
Regardless 538 and the pundits got it completely wrong - and even though I thought Trump lost I knew he was more competitive than he looked.
You can run a bazillion scenarious. What matters is which ones are likely.
Clinton was not getting the south (except FL). Trump lost votes big time in the south - which is why he lost the popular vote. The south came in as more pink than red. But Clinton was not turning it.
At the other end SHE had to fight for FL, NH. VA, MI, PA, WI, NV, CO and had to win most of them.
Another thing this has exposed is the fallacy of the lefts demographics is destiny game.
There are alot of purple states that are very white and blue collar that Trump has just demonstrated are in play for the GOP. If Republicans can strengthen their position in those states, it will be a very very long time before increasing minorities flips major GOP strong holds.
And that poses a different problem for the left. With every generation minorities move a tiny bit further right.
Especially as they climb the economic ladder.
The The GOP loses minorities 60/40 rather than 70/30 - so much for the democrats demographics is destiny nonsense.
After this election both the left and right have a problem.
Democrats have lost the center. But it may be politically impossible for them to regain it.
The left of the democratic party is just too powerful to make the ideological changes needed to win.
At the same time Trump has shifted the GOP in an unusual way.
Anti-immigrant and anti-trade are NOT traditional GOP planks.
Frankly many of Trumps successful stances are really blue collar democrat.
So the question is where the GOP goes ?
The 21st century has been a civil war inside the GOP. The social conservatives slowly lost power and created a vaccuum. Various groups - establishment republicans (McCain/Romeny) tried to grab it, The Tea Party has to a large part replaced social conservatives, but still is only a strong minority not in control.
Libertarian republicans have gained strength - but are still a minority. Supply siders have gained but do not control, neocons have not only waned but are moving to the democratic party.
And Trump has built this new core
Further it has yet to be seen what it actually is.
Trump claims to be Pro law enforcement "fair trade", limited immigration, .....
But what will matter most to those with those views who voted for him is whether he delivers economically.
If trump bumps labor force participation brings growth above 3%.
He will get re-elected.
There are people who actually care about our trade deals and immigration,
But mostly those "voters" are really proxies for - "make america great" again - a robust economy and more jobs.
Trump can build a couple of hundred miles of wall, talk tough about Trade,
And if he does not start a trade war and tank the economy
No one will care that he did not actually deliver.
Further if he is smart - and the evidence is that he is much smarter than he sounds,
there is a fantastic trade opportunity that is right up his alley.
The AAFTA - Anglo-American Free Trade deal.
The now EU free UK that would love a US trade deal, Canada seems willing to modify NAFTA,
Add NZ, AU. and even Mexico
And you have a trade deal that even blue collar workers are not going to piss on.
US Blue collar workers are afraid of cheap labor in poor countries with people of different color
No one complains of the UK dumping steel.
I would say that US blue collar labor thinks it can win in a fair fight with the Brits - but that is not really what it beleives. Blue collar labor suddenly understands that free trade is a win win - when it is trade with people that speak our language are about as affluent and share our values.
We know that is a trade competition with the UK - we both win.
And that kind of deal lets trump ignore China. He can threaten and rattle sabers, and scowl,
but if our trade with the UK etc grows, no one will care if china essentially stays the same.
And again this effects future politics.
The next GOP candidate will likely have to speak much like Trump to win.
But what republicans will have to actually do, depends on whether Trump succeeds.
And that depends on doing what works while appearing to somewhat do what he promised.
Clinton failed partly because Obama failed to deliver.
Or put better, he focused on trying to deliver the ideology he promised - rather than success.
We may talk about ideology, but elections are really about who we beleive will bring about prosperity, not ideology. No one beleived Clinton was going to bring about prosperity.