So that happened

Dissections of the outcome of the 2016 Presidential election will be taking place until long after the 2020 election.  Despite the perception that Trump’s win was a bolt from the blue, FiveThirtyEight gave Trump a reasonable chance even as they said that there was a 66% chance of a Clinton victory.  If the weatherman says there is a 70% chance of fair weather, is it fair to get mad if it rains on your picnic?  He didn’t say rain was impossible, just unlikely.

Speculating about the future is probably foolish, as no elected President has been as enigmatic as Trump is.  Is he actually going to start construction on a $5 trillion wall between the US and Mexico and send Mexico a bill, or will saner heads prevail?  As John Oliver said on Last Week Tonight, there are two terrifying possibilities: either he will try to implement the policies he advocated for in the election (cancelling international trade agreements, tax policies that will greatly increase the deficit, and so on), or everything he said during the election was just campaign rhetoric.  Those who voted for him are hoping for the former, while all the sane people in America are praying for the latter.

Let’s get down to brass tacks—who is responsible for the election result?  I place the blame at the feet of Hilary Clinton.  In the past, when parties anointed their candidate for the next Presidential election four or eight years in advance, it hasn’t worked out well.  The GOP nominations of Bob Dole in 1996 and John McCain in 2008 produced weak candidates who underperformed.  The path was cleared for Hilary to get the nomination in 2016 after her loss to Obama in 2008, although I would fall short of repeating Bernie Sanders’ line that the contest was fixed (as opposed to “rigged”).  You don’t need to pre-determine the outcome if you can tilt the playing field and make Sanders run uphill.

Hilary knew she had the nomination assured based on her support by “superdelegates” that represented the Democratic Party elite.  Therefore, she felt no urgency to defeat Bernie Sanders, as no matter how many caucuses he won he was never going to wrest the nomination away from her.  Therefore, her risk-averse instincts kicked in and she didn’t make an effort to attack Bernie and alienate the left wing of the party.  This allowed Bernie to run an extended campaign against her, eroding her support on the left.  She should have been able to easily defeat an elderly independent crackpot socialist, but her inability tom make Sanders go away signaled her weakness as a candidate.

Similarly, I think she assumed she had the election in the bag once Trump secured the GOP nomination.  Her TV ads that I saw were overwhelmingly about painting a negative view of Trump and not about following up on the excellent message of the Democratic convention that presented the positive aspects of the Democratic policies.  Her pointing out that Trump was a nut was ineffective because the majority of Trump supporters were going to vote for him because he was a nut.  This was information readily available to all voters; she was not telling voters anything they didn’t already know.

Two of Hilary’s defining characteristics are her penchant for secrecy and her risk-aversion.  Both betrayed her.  Instead of coming clean about the e-mail mess, she stonewalled and did not respond to legitimate questions in an open manner.  She defended herself using words that even someone without a Yale law degree could tell were prevarications and obfuscations.  Instead of developing policies she believed in that might offend some of her constituency (particularly the left), it was easier and “safer” to portray Trump as a dangerous demagogue. 

My favorite line from the George C. Scott version of A Christmas Carol is when Scrooge’s fiancée asks if he would still ask her to marry him now that he had acquired some wealth, and he strategically replies, “You think I would not?”  His fiancée chillingly says, “Oh, what a safe and terrible answer!”  Clinton played it safe, and her answers were terrible.

After Hilary, I also place some blame with President Obama.  Throughout his administration, he was attacked as a Muslim, as a non-American, and Trump said he was the founder of a terrorist group attacking the United States (Trump also insisted that Hilary Clinton was a co-founder, although how a Caucasian woman in her 60’s who was a life-long Christian managed to become the leader of a Islamic terrorist organization was never explained).  Obama responded to these attacks by attempting to work with the Republicans and treating them as rational human beings.  This merely legitimized the more insane accusations of the GOP, providing them with credibility.  His support for Republican calls for budget cuts at a time of high unemployment was a betrayal of the legacy of FDR and Keynesian economics.

Where do we go from here?  A year ago many speculated on the death of the Republican party, with the split between the Establishment branch and the Tea Party branch; now many are predicting the end of the Democrats, who have a weak bench for 2020 given GOP control of Congress and a majority of state houses (when speakers at the Republican convention were describing the terrible state of America, they didn’t mention that the GOP controls most of America and is therefore responsible for most of the problems).  The fact remains that no non-incumbent Republican nominee for President has won the popular vote since 1980, yet the GOP will control all three branches of government once Trump fills Scalia’s seat on the Supreme Court.

Can Trump govern effectively?  No one on Earth can say.  Can the Democrats find a candidate who can make the case for Democratic policies, and how attractive will that message be after four years of Trump?  Let’s just hope that there is still an America existing in 2020 after The Donald gets the nuclear launch codes.  It would be a bad day indeed if he calls a press conference and announces, “They’re fired!”