Trump Was Always The Republican Candidate Best Positioned To Defeat Hillary

Take a gander at the places where Hillary overperformed Obama 2012. She far overperformed him in Utah but we can basically chalk that up as an outlier due to 1) The peculiarities of the Mormon vote and 2) A Mormon cleric having ran on the Republican ticket four years ago. Other places where she substantially overperformed Obama 2012 include the Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC — Arlington, Alexandria, Fairfax (i.e. ground zero of the Military Industry Complex) — as well as Manhattan, Morris County NJ, and Orange County CA. What do all these places have in common? They are highly affluent. On the other hand, non-affluent Democrats (especially in rural areas) trended toward Trump.

Which leads us to the question: would any of the other 2016 GOP candidates have beaten Hillary? My inclination is to conclude that another GOP candidate could have ran up the votes in traditional GOP strongholds (such as Texas) where Trump won but atrophied support compared to the Republican norm. It’s not clear, however, that any other GOP candidate could have performed as well as Trump did in the electorally-crucial states. One or two of the other GOP candidates could have possibly still beaten Hillary — Rubio, Kasich — but they would’ve had to figure out another path to do so. I don’t think either of them could have replicated Trump’s path.

When I say that Bernie would have beaten Trump, I take the aforementioned factors into account. Yes, Bernie might have lost Virginia against Trump because rich Arlington Democrats would’ve voted for him in lesser numbers than they did Hillary. (Although if the alternative was Trump, who would the rich snobs have opted for instead? Unclear). If it had been Sanders versus Rubio, I am 100% certain that a large portion of snobby rich Democrats would have gone for Rubio, because they wouldn’t want their taxes hiked. Hence, I think Manhattan, Arlington, and Orange County are places where the “Never Trump” mantra did have an effect — people who weren’t all that enthused about Hillary voted for her anyway in great numbers mainly because they were stridently opposed to Trump. In these select places, Rubio would have significantly outperformed Trump. But it wouldn’t necessarily have been enough to win overall.

I’m doubtful that Rubio would have defeated Hillary. It’s possible, but his odds would've been lesser than Trump’s. First, he wouldn’t have had nearly as an enthusiastic “core” of voters as Trump did. Rubio’s core constituency would’ve been prosperous “woke” Republicans who thought it was oh-so-wonderful for the party to be led by a 40-something Cuban American. He would’ve probably modestly improved on Trump’s Hispanic turnout, but not by as much as people think. (Hispanic voters are not anything close to a monolith, contrary to media reductionism.) Again, this is a counterfactual and can never be corroborated, but here’s what I think the map would’ve looked like had it been Rubio versus Hillary, in the best case scenario for Rubio.

So maybe Rubio still could’ve won, but it would’ve been much tougher.

Remember Rubio was the establishment darling — every Super Savvy Pundit thought he was a shoo-in to win the nomination. They thought that he was hyper-electable because everyone would rejoice at his heritage and look past his fervent neocon disposition. But the “electability” thing was never accurate: Republican elites wanted him because Rubio would’ve allowed their cherished “conservative movement” to press on without undergoing any changes. Rubio would’ve allowed for the implementation of warmed-over Bushism, and his victory would’ve been taken to absolve failed GOP elites of their sins, because he’d be christened as a new “generational” standard-bearer. It was a fairy tale.

And Jeb? Give me a break. HRC would’ve blown him out.

Trump only won because he animated certain segments of the electorate that were either nonvoters, infrequent voters, or Obama voters. These new “Trump voters” were concentrated in key parts of the country — southeastern Ohio, northern Maine, northeastern PA, northern Wisconsin, etc .— such that their heightened participation was sufficient to secure Trump an electoral college victory. Romney received a greater percentage of the popular vote than Trump, but so what? He got more votes than Trump in Texas and Utah — that means squat for the purposes of the electoral college.

Also: do we really think Kasich, Jeb, Rubio, or any of those other characters would’ve attracted tens of thousands of people to rallies on a near-daily basis? Those rallies were widely derided by the Smug Pundit Crowd but it turns out they were highly effective data collection endeavors. They garnered Trump an extraordinarily enthusiastic core of voters who marshaled their own grassroots “ground game” effort. Trump probably would not have won without the rallies.

I cannot picture Kasich holding massive rallies in Grand Rapids, Michigan or Wilmington, North Carolina. Jeb? Please. Everyone would have fell asleep. (“Please clap.”) Ted Cruz would’ve mobilized a groundswell of Christian Conservative voters but there probably aren’t enough of those in Michigan or Pennsylvania to have secured him victory. Trump’s popularity among irreligious, cultural conservatives was critical.

After years of insisting precisely the opposite, even former Jeb operative Tim Miller now admits that Trump was better positioned to win than the other GOP candidates:

(Of course, despite admitting that every assumption he operated on for the past two years was dead wrong, Tim will probably still be treated like a savvy Politics Expert and find further campaign work without a hitch.)

Trump has now outperformed Romney in terms of popular vote total. As of today, November 16, 2016, Trump received 318,377 more votes than Romney nationwide, and that total is guaranteed to continue trickling upward.

This should be cause for reevaluation among pundits who insisted that Trump’s personal foibles and crude disposition would be so repellent to good-natured GOP voters that they’d refuse to turn out for him. This was probably true in select areas — the Northern VA/Manhattan/Orange County type areas — but not true for GOP voters writ large. (Notice that Northern VA and Manhattan are also places where national media is clustered — that’s not a coincidence. It accounts for the over-representation of “Never Trump” conservatives in the media.)

If the nominee had been Rubio or Kasich or Jeb, they all would have ran on the same old hoary Reagan dogma. Maybe this would’ve still gotten them over the edge with such a hellishly bad candidate in Hillary, but they would’ve had to assemble different coalitions than the one Trump did. (I think Jeb would have had no chance in hell irrespective of whatever coalition he tried to assemble.)

I don’t think any of the GOP candidates would have had a prayer of defeating Sanders — that’s because he’d have been seen as a departure from the “status quo” despite running for a third consecutive Democratic term. (“He’s not a real Democrat!” cried indignant Clinton loyalists all throughout the primary process. Well, yes, that’s true — and it’s partly why he would’ve won.)

The unique aspects of Trump’s support base propelled him to victory. I see no reason why this would’ve been easily transferable to any other GOP candidate. Kasich and Rubio would’ve probably been favored, but they would’ve had to find other pathways; I do not think they could have won PA, WI, or MI. (Can you picture Rubio doing extraordinarily well in rural Maine? I can’t.) Both Rubio and Kasich probably could have won VA, NC, FL but would that have been enough? No. Things could’ve still broken their way versus Hillary, but Trump’s path to victory was the most unorthodox and ultimately, the most efficacious. He had the right message on trade for the “Rust Belt” — but he also had the right message on foreign policy to peel off a few percentage points’ worth of Bernie supporters. Kasich and Rubio couldn’t have done either of those things. Again, they might have won anyway, but they would’ve had to do it much differently.