Why so surprised?
Barack Obama ceded his legacy back to Clintonism with no heir apparent of his own, and left an imbalance of voter passion in that vacuum.
This exit polling data should put things in perspective for those who fear this election represents a white-male-backlash-uprising against women and minority groups. In fact, even though Trump won, the data shows quite the contrary. If Trump supporters think they’ve earned such a mandate, they’re wrong, too. This election result wasn’t about white males returning to power and “taking their country back.”
It would have been one thing if a wave of white-uneducated-male Trump voters had “out-surged” other “surges” of women and minorities coming out in support of the first female presidential candidate — and against the bigoted Trump. If this were that sort of epic clash and the “white nation” was victorious — in the face of its diminishing demographic share of the U.S. population — that would have made a statement. We’re Making American Great (White) Again!
But that’s not what happened.
“Weak!”
Yes, there was a measurable wave of Trump support in rural counties, but nothing out of the ordinary. Rural counties are typically red or purple anyway. Some red counties that Obama surprisingly won in previous elections simply slipped back to red. That’s right: Some key counties have voted Obama-Obama-Trump in the last three elections. And yes, there was an uptick in evangelical support for Trump compared to Romney. (We saw a premise tested here: Evangelicals will indeed vote for Satan before they vote for a Democrat.) Again, not surprising. Trump basically got the usual Republican, red-state vote, only less of it. While he out-performed Romney with several demographic groups percentage-wise, he ended up with fewer votes in terms of raw numbers.
Trump claimed to have brought “millions” of new voters into the process during the Republican primaries, and that may be so … but it didn’t seem to carry forward onto November 8, where new voter turnout was basically limited to 18–21 year olds voting for the first time. The “I-was-too-disaffected-my whole-adult-life-to-vote-until-I-met-Trump” voter was a subplot, not the main story.
So, unfortunately Trump gets to spout off about “winning,” but the victory could better be characterized by one of his other favorite words during the campaign: “Weak!”
…but weaker still
So how did he actually win, then? The real shock of Election Night wasn’t any overwhelming Trump support, but that his counter-resistance underwhelming and weaker still.
On Tuesday night we watched Jon King and Steve Kornacki rack up the rural counties for Trump and note that there should be plenty of votes left in Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Detroit, and Miami … but instead, they were tapped out. Clinton’s margin with women was about the same as Obama’s vs. Romney. Despite running against the most despicable, racially-divisive candidate since George Wallace, she underperformed with Hispanics compared to Obama while Trump actually overperformed with these groups compared to Romney.
I don’t think the Clinton campaign ever underestimated Trump … at least that’s what they constantly claimed, and I believe them. I do think the Democratic Party overestimated Hillary, however, and her ability to inspire Obama’s powerful coalition. Nobody seemed to understand for sure until Election Night, just how bad it was.
The media and the polling data that showed Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin in the bag for Clinton ultimately betrayed her. Theory: Her fair-weather, luke-warm supporters (and there appear to have been many, many of them) saw polling margins of over 5 points in these states and decided they’d safely avoid Trump and would not need to bother voting for Hillary, either and stayed home. On the other hand, Trump voters at least had some incentive to do what they could in those states. Five points was close enough.
The Clinton campaign out-spent Trump at least 5 to 1 in advertising. Trump had virtually no ground game in any state, let alone the battlegrounds. Hillary had the full weight of the Democratic Party behind her, while Trump’s party was beside itself trying to figure out what to do with him next. His mouth spewed diarrhea on a daily basis. And yet Hillary’s lead in the polls just kept falling back to 3–5 points or less, nationally. Despite Trump sometimes seemingly deliberately burning his campaign to the ground with gasoline by the gallon, Hillary couldn’t shake him. Something else was going on.
And now the “Sixth Sense” re-watch
Hopefully there will be lessons learned here, starting with the 20/20 hindsight that the Democratic Party should have nurtured a deeper bench and another candidate. With Joe Biden being older and mourning his son’s loss, the Democratic candidates should have been developed sooner and offered more options. (As a sad side note regarding Biden, Beau would have been a wonderful candidate for ’20 or ‘24.) Bernie Sanders wasn’t even supposed to be there … he glommed onto the Dems so he’d have a party to run with. They didn’t exactly invite Martin O’Malley to the party either. It was Hillary or Bust from 2008 forward, and that approach led to disaster.
I don’t want to be the one to pile onto Hillary’s personal and professional shortcomings. Many post-mortems from the left are summing these up pretty well, especially Frank Bruni’s November 11 piece title succinctly, “The Democrats Screwed Up.” Reading this piece is like re-watching The Sixth Sense, aghast that you missed all the clues that Bruce Willis — or Hillary’s campaign — was dead the whole time.
I will reiterate what I stated above and what Bruni also details in his essay: Barack Obama, disappointingly, ceded control of the Democratic Party’s vision back to the Clintons almost from the get-go. It’s as if Clinton lost by a default or technicality to Obama in the ’08 primary, so in the spirit of fairness and party unity, all liberal or progressive rising stars would be kept at bay and and in check while Clinton added a cabinet position to her resumé. No vetting, no grooming … all lanes were open for Clinton.
Obama’s two-term victory — not Hillary’s entitlement to get another shot at it — should have shaped the party landscape from there forward. In this preferred alternate universe, progress would advance forward: Obama would be followed by a woman or Hispanic as the party’s new standard-bearer … but on Obama’s terms and with anyone but a Clinton. The Clintons trigger abnormally high levels of vitriolic passion on the right, especially with the “deplorable half” (Jesus, what an unforced error that was); and abnormally low levels of any sort of passion whatsoever on the left. And that’s exactly how Election Night played out.
I realize this with great sadness, because I truly wanted to see Obama transition his administration to a woman and not … to this. After the euphoria of progress we saw on Inauguration Day in ’08, we’ll now watch Mr. Birther take the stage. This is tragically and almost hopelessly sad, and if we’re hoping Trump voters feel bad about at least one thing, it’s that.
So, hurl all the insults you want at those who voted for Trump. But they’re not totally culpable in getting The Grabber elected. Many simply couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Hillary, but would have brought themselves to vote for just about anyone else (see the “Obama-Obama-Trump” voter phenomenon). They shouldn’t be lumped in with Trump’s race-baited-birther crew, which has been around since before ’08 and were just waiting for him to come along as their messiah. They were probably uninspired by McCain and Romney but came out for Trump in bigger numbers, but they didn’t make the difference.
You can also cast some aspersions on those missing Obama coalition voters, those who simply needed to show up in the same numbers as ’08 and ’12 and Clinton would have had things locked up by 9:30 ET.
Or, Democrats can look inside and begin to move forward as quickly as possible. 2018 and 2020 are right around the corner, the clock (orange-skinned time bomb?) is ticking and the bench is still thin. To quote Yogi Berra, “it’s getting late early” for the Democrats.
What’s next?
Biden and Sanders are old. Kaine is a possibility to take on Trump in ’20, but is now tied too closely to Clinton. Sherrod Brown is a progressive player from Ohio; there are some excellent Democratic female and minority leaders in the Senate, too. What is certain, however, is that the Clintons need to step aside and shift focus back the their foundation.
And Barack and Michelle Obama should most definitely remain involved, even take a leadership role in defining the party’s vision and future leadership. It will be about time.
