How progressives elected Donald Trump.
In 2016 about 67,000 votes handed Donald Trump the electoral college, there’s plenty of interesting stories about how those votes came to be and a myriad of alternate realities where they weren’t. But today I’d like to focus on a very peculiar one: how progressives elected Donald Trump.
Let’s set the scene. It’s a cool, February day in Des Moines, Iowa in 2016. Hillary Clinton has just won the Iowa democratic primary, it was a close race, with Clinton winning by only 0.3%, she carries mostly older, more moderate voters, with higher incomes whereas Sanders carried the progressive wing of the party. Hillary Clinton’s reputation is far from clean but has been tarnished by a general sexism that has dominated the media especially when she entered the public eye in the 90s, being portrayed as Bill Clinton’s “Nagging Wife”. However she had served as a senator for New York and was re-elected before joining Barack Obama’s cabinet as Secretary of State. Nevertheless Sanders voters were not pleased, it was a close race and a quite decisive one.
Next in the primary road we have New Hampshire, it’s still freezing and now in Concord, New Hampshire but this time something goes differently. Bernie Sanders wins, by a large margin, over 20% and 50,000 votes. It’s just the spark the Sanders campaign needed to keep going and they ride it.
Until Nevada, 11 days later, Clinton wins. “But that’s okay, only 5% right?” thinks Sanders voters. One week later: South Carolina. Clinton wins again. “It’s a fluke” thinks Sanders voters, denying the almost 200,000 vote lead she carried in South Carolina, receiving more Black votes than Obama in 2008.
Now, it’s 2 days later. The dreaded day for any primary campaign that can either make or break you: Super Tuesday. Sanders wins about 4 states to Clintion’s 8. However some were by big margins and this was just enough to keep donors happy and keep the fire of hope alive inside of progressives. Then came the March contests, Florida — Clinton, Illinois — Clinton, “oh but Kansas went to Bernie” hopeful progressives thought.
The first days of May roll around and the count sits at 25–16 after some surprisingly strong support for Sanders, west of the Mississippi, but Clinton is still ahead and it has become clear that she will likely win this primary. Disgruntled Bernie voters retired from the trail while the Hillary supporters finished the primaries and the final count sat at 34 (Clinton) — (Sanders) 23.
One more time, I’d like you to set the scene. It is July 22nd 2016 in Southern Washington DC, where the temperature is sitting at a hot 85 degrees on 430 Capitol Street. Inside the DNC National Headquarters all hell has broken loose, Hillary Clinton is the presumptive nominee and in 3 days would be chosen at the Democratic National Conference 3 hours north in Philadelphia. But hell has broken loose because WikiLeaks have just released tens of thousands of DNC emails which implied that they pushed the party to choose Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders due to mostly worries about his atheism and subsequent electability. Sanders voters were furious and the DNC’s reputation as well as Hillary Clinton’s was greatly tarnished. However the convention went as planned, however tense, and Clinton chose Tim Kaine to join her on the ticket and she became the first female nominee of a major political party in the United States.
But now, several months later it’s voting day and the Clinton name has been dragged through the mud and back again, Sanders voters are still mad and feel like they’ve been cheated and in protest they do not vote for Clinton. Despite being progressive democrats, many put in a protest vote for Trump, expecting nothing to come of it as Clinton led by 8 points in national polls. But little did they know that this happened enough times that it gave Trump far more than the 67,000 votes needed to put him over the edge.
A CCES study from 2016 of 50,000 voters found that it was likely that disgruntled Sanders voters who voted for Trump accounted for roughly double Trump’s margin of victory in many swing states. One alternate potential cause is just general internalised sexism, while its rare among progressives Hillary Clinton was frequently dubbed Bill’s “Bitchy Wife” in the 90s and in politics names stick. Another cause as to why they may have voted this way was the horseshoe theory, a political theory which described the far-right (Trump) and far-left (Sanders) as closer to each other than the political centre. I believe this idea is best demonstrated by this scenario: two people say they are strongly against funding Israel. One, on the far right, says this because they believe the US should be off the world stage or in extreme cases anti-semetism or xenophobia. The second person, on the far left, says this is because of the genocide in palestine and the IDF’s war in Gaza. Two completely different ideas that lead to the same outcome, this isn’t perfect and doesn’t work with all policies but it is another potential factor in Sanders-Trump voters. But really the true cause was the democratic party’s failure to unify, the same thing is about to happen with republicans today, but Bernie failed to push the progressive wing to Hillary and she failed to bring them over. It was this failure to unify that gave Trump those 67,000 votes and more in 2016, but it seems the party has learnt, having paid the ultimate price in 2016 the DNC now seems to be more unified, in congress especially. This does seem to be weakening behind Biden but other than that they have learnt from their mistakes and won’t make it again.
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