The populace likes “change,” that is, for one party to build things and clean up the mess from the other, followed by the other party that smashes things to dust. We knew that. Except for a few things: PBO’s approval ratings are higher than the Gipper’s at the end of his term. Bush 1 won in a landslide. Also, HRC won the popular vote, so did Gore. So in those cases the majority of the populace wasn’t crazy about hiring the other party to smash things. And the most important takeaway is, facts have officially died. A large minority of Americans are absolutely impervious to them. Shitgibbon really could shoot someone and his followers would blame it on someone else.
The fact that as a billionaire he was able to finance his own campaign and therefore claim to be free of donor influence proved to be a boon to his chances, as it had been to Ross Perot in 1992. Even though Trump refused to release his tax returns, and had a history of shady business dealings, voters judged him to be less corruptible than Clinton.
sorry, can’t quite figure out if this is some sort of joke or parody piece and I just don’t get it?
Trump is less corruptible than Clinton because he’s already corrupt. She, on the other hand, could potentially have been corrupted.
So we’re better off, see?
My immediate election night reaction was also that Clinton lost rather than Trump won. Clinton’s problem is that even after all these years she doesn’t have a clue about what running a campaign - a campaign of any kind - is primarily about. Trump understood from long experience in the hotel business. Tried to get this point across to Josh Marshall a couple of months ago with a link to an article about Clinton’s anemic campaign, but his electoral cretinism prevents him from seeing this sort of thing. And he thinks he can write a book about Trump’s followers - without showing the least understanding of Trump’s kind and what he represented to some sections of the capitalist class, let alone a large (politically backward) section of the American working class that’s taken a major part of the brunt of 50 years of America’s economic decline and deindustrialization.
The good news is that in their backward, deformed way American white workers have en masse started to wake up. Now they’re about to get their next lesson, which isn’t going to be pretty in the short run.
If people really wanted change, they wouldn’t continuously re-elect their senator and house reps.
Democrats stayed home, “purists” cast protest votes and prejudice of all types (sexism, racism, etc.) is more prevalent than we can to admit.
She ran an almost entirely negative campaign focused on her opponents’ bigotry, sexism, and bilious temperament.
Please tell me how this is a negative campaign.
indeed, if you run against a man who has no coherent policies what else do you push back against? The guy said on national television, during a debate, that abortions are happening in a delivery room, just before birth… and he still didn’t get laughed out of the metaphorical election room.
he won the popular vote when it mattered.
Saying this now: don’t ever assume that Trump couldn’t win re-election, if the only device was a popular vote.
Folks might not like the answer to that theory.
Republican overreach seems all but baked in already – the election was just about 48%/48% but only because of the votes uneven distribution Rs claim a mandate to overturn Roe v Wade and privatise Medicare to fund tax cuts for the wealthy, etc. Maybe half of Trumps 48% actually voted for those things so there is every chance of a huge backlash against Rs in 2018 and 2020 and therefore little incentive for Dems to cooperate. They should focus on 2018 state and federal level more than the usual circular firing squad of election autopsy while limiting what damage they can in the meantime based on their own 48% “mandate”. None of the Dems supporters voted for the Republican agenda.
Sure, but let’s project four years into the future. He would only win reelection if people feel they’re better off. Considering that they’re sure to be worse off after four years of President Pence, that is unlikely. Which leads to a second point: Shitgibbon will not work a single day - chairman of the board he will see the job - and would be bigly bored with the job after about two months.
assumption and frankly I rather pass…all of the data isn’t in yet =)
assumption…
Much of the analysis of flaws in the Clinton campaign is persuasive, but this piece seems to take grievances about trade and immigration as supported by facts in all cases. Are there particular industries in which employees may have faced growing competition and even job loss? Yes–but the idea that is true across the board, for example, in a state like North Carolina makes no sense. Losing such a large share of the white electorate while failing to generate sufficient enthusiasm among Democratic leaning groups was, as Judis indicates, a recipe for disaster, but this piece like many others seems to take angry white voters who live away from the coasts as the only measure of authenticity.
Also, and we have no easy way to measure the impact of all variables, no candidate has ever faced a simultaneous onslaught from a political opponent, hackers allied with a foreign state, and (whatever his intentions) the head of the FBI. Yes, as Judis explains, the Clinton campaign lacked a persuasive positive message, and that was a problem, though whenever she did try to go positive she simply got ignored. At the same time, Wikileaks and the FBI perfectly supported the pronounced Breitbart strategy of suppressing the Democratic vote, though, again I am not saying that Comey was in on the deal.
Judis’ analysis is almost entirely based on exit polling. The pre-election polling was shown, very clearly, to be wrong. So why then are we to believe the exit polling is more accurate than pre-election polling? That’s a serious question. Are there methodological differences that makes exit polling more accurate? Because if there are not, I think we are very much in danger of over-intrepreting the exit polling when doing these types of post-mortem analysis.
“So why then are we to believe the exit polling is more accurate than pre-election polling?”
That’s a good question. The level of Hispanic turn-out and Trump support in particular is hard to believe.
I totally agree with this point about exit polling. This comment if the first I have seen to make the case that I am tired of this exit polling being constantly offered up as the gospel when the pooling has already been proven to be incorrect
Clinton got 337,636 more votes than he did. That means she won and if had been a senatorial or gubernatorial election, she would have been declared the winner and he the loser. The anachronism of the Electoral College made all the difference. I can only wonder with the splendid easily done Monday morning quarter backing Judis is offering if he offered her his special wisdom while she was campaigning.
@matthew1961 His supporters often didn’t reveal to pollsters and others that they were supporting him, and infotainment that passes for journalism didn’t dig deep enough into who was supporting and just how many…
Yes, agree with all this–regarding over-reach–there is even talk of repealing the clean air act–please try a) it will never pass and b) it will be a yoke around the neck of every republican in congress that voted for it (and also stain some that don’t).
Also agree on focusing on 2018–unpopular president, unpopular congress should mean big gains. I would add that the house is still likely out of reach and the map doesn’t look good in the senate. I would focus on the state houses and gubernatorial races, where impact can be huge and with a census coming up pretty soon, we need to redistrict to have any chance to take back the house between 2020 and 2030.
This is a USA Today-worthy analysis. Apparently racism and misogyny played no role in this campaign. Apparently the fact that Trump won the largest percentage of the white vote ever was not worth mentioning. Comey and media harping on the emails? Not a factor. No, it turns out this campaign was all about the issues.
Oh and no mention of the fact that actually Hillary overcame the third term curse to win the popular vote.