Head Tale

Holy fucking shit!

After saying yesterday that the polls were predicting a Hillary Clinton victory with 75-99% certainty, her campaign flamed out like perhaps no other campaign in history.

Yesterday, I went from joking about whether she could flip traditionally Republican states like Alaska and Utah to having two hours of sleep and actually *puking* this morning from the uneasiness this result left me feeling. :-0

(For comparison’s sake, when Ryan Meili lost the NDP Leadership to Cam Broten – which coincidentally happened after our internal numbers also projected a 75-80% chance of victory – I had a few sleepless nights but wasn’t shaken like last night’s result left me shaken.  This, even though I’d been directly involved in Ryan’s campaign at a fairly high level, poured my heart, soul (and wallet!) into that campaign, and foresaw that it was unlikely the NDP would make any gains with a leader that some people called “Brad Wall Lite”.

So what’s the difference?  I guess for the Meili loss, we still lost to someone on the same team and who was experienced, competent and, even with my personal misgivings, had just as much chance of being successful as not (he beat us, didn’t he?). 😉

With the Trump win, it’s completely unexpected PLUS the US has such outsized impact on the entire world PLUS I feel such empathy for all the people in the firing line – minorities and immigrants and GLBTQ PLUS Trump has normalized *incredibly* offensive behaviour PLUS it feels like the US has likely taken a giant step backwards in about a zillion different ways – climate, women’s rights, healthcare, etc.  As someone posted on Facebook, “Hey United States, you were supposed to set your clocks back one hour, not sixty years!”)

Anyhow, here are a few thoughts about last night’s debacle (from notes groggily composed at 4am this morning)…

PUNK’D 
After starting his campaign by calling Mexicans criminals and rapists, every new development seemed like nothing crazier could be said or done.  But things just kept escalating – from Trump talking about the size of his penis during a primary debate to encouraging Russians to hack into US servers to the infamous “Grab ’em by the pussy” tape.  I even said in my post yesterday that Hillary flipping Alaska or Utah would be one last crazy moment.  Little did I know that wasn’t even close to the craziest final outrageous thing that could happen – TRUMP WOULD ACTUALLY WIN THE ELECTION!  (That’s an “I see dead people” level of plot twist right there!)

THE BIGGEST LOSER
In 2008, Hillary seemed like a shoe-in for the Democratic Presidential nomination but Barack Obama came out of nowhere and built a team that managed to out-play her to take the win then go on to win the Presidency in a historic moment.  This year, Clinton appeared to leave nothing to chance – putting supporters in key positions in the DNC, lining up super-delegates before the contest ever began – in what many saw as a coronation rather than a contest. Bernie Sanders, a wild-haired, septuagenarian *socialist* still nearly managed to upset her, as Obama had eight years earlier, but she prevailed – only to have her long-standing desire for her own historic moment – to be the first female President – dashed in such a cruel fashion.  One person made an analogy to someone who spends their life perfecting their skills at playing a certain video game then a beginner comes along, mashes all the buttons, and still ends up winning.

AMERICAN IDOL
There will be endless analysis of how Donald Trump managed to beat Hillary Clinton but one factor didn’t get examined very much in my view – the impact that having name recognition as a TV celebrity has – especially on so-called “low information voters” who may have voted for him as much because he was someone they knew from his reality TV programs and appearances on WWE pro wrestling as any policy position he held or what the Politico web site was saying. In addition to being a skilled salesman, he was experienced in the tropes of reality TV as well and that all helped him get his message across.  How well?  The last time Wisconsin went for a Republican was in 1980 for another celebrity – former actor, Ronald Reagan.

FEAR FACTOR
There was a point late in this race where I thought about writing a blog post about what it would mean if Trump wasn’t a crazy proto-fascist many on the left saw him as and instead was simply misunderstood (coincidentally, this is what many of his supporters were claiming all along.  One interesting Exit Poll note – the majority of Democrat voters say they *fear* what a Republican presidency would mean and the majority of Republican voters say they *fear* what  Democratic Presidency would mean.)

Now Trump is a special case and him *not* being as bad as he appears seems as unbelievable as anything else that happened in this campaign.  But now that he’s won, I want to re-visit the idea on a more hopeful note – maybe, just maybe, he’s not as racist and sexist and scary as he came across during the campaign and this was a persona he developed (he’s a noted fan of pro wrestling) to appeal to audience that could help him win?  (In the past, he’s been pro-choice, a Democrat and hell, he had Hillary Clinton attend his wedding.  Or as one person, also grasping at straws, observed – “He’s still a New York Republican, not an Alabama one.”)

So what if some of the things he said/did during his campaign were more about his lack of political skills and experience and his relentless focus on “telling it like it is” that got so many people on the left afraid of him (and so many on the right to love him)?  One commentator made the observation that he could turn out to be another Ronald Reagan – celebrity turned politician who isn’t great but doesn’t blow the country up either.  We can hope…

DUCK DYNASTY
My personal theory is that how big of a shock this result was to you has a direct correlation to how small your “bubble” is.   If you mostly listen to voices who see the world like you do and read media who reflect how you think and they were all predicting a Hillary victory while you dismissed any arguments to the contrary, this result is so shocking you might even wake up and puke. (ahem).

Okay, I try to make sure my own bubble isn’t completely impenetrable – I have right wing friends on Facebook, conservative members of my family, I grew up in a small town and think I at least am a bit more open to that mindset than someone born in a city whose only ever known urban life.

If you either seek out or have access to alternate viewpoints that you’re willing to at least consider, you might’ve had a better sense that something unprecedented might happen a long time ago.  And on that note, *why* have left wing parties across the globe seemingly given up on white working class voters?  That should be a natural constituency but perhaps that tent gets crowded when you’re also including people of colour and other groups that are often at odds with those same white working class voters?  There’s also a related aspect about how many elite liberals don’t realise how smug they come across to working people when they lecture them about how they’re sexist and racist and privileged instead of finding a way to reach them and include them, warts & all.

THE BACHELOR
Even if signs indicate that he may have, no one will ever know for sure if Bernie Sanders would have done better against Trump than Clinton did since that would be a different campaign with different strategies (criticizing the establishment sounds a lot more authentic coming from a disheveled, lifelong independent than a multi-millionaire former First Lady), attacks (socialist!) and voting patterns (Bernie appealed to Millennials *way* more than Hillary did).  But like Trump, Sanders talked a lot about the unfairness of globalization and international trade deals and was an outsider who connected well with independents.  Sanders also had a massive upset over Clinton in Michigan during the primaries (and did very well in Rust Belt states) and for the most part, Sanders was scandal-free and basically a blank slate for much of the country, especially compared to Clinton so that all would’ve at least put a serious roadblock in the Rust Belt path that took Trump to the Presidency.

THIS IS YOUR LIFE
I can’t remember the last time I supported a winning candidate or cause – federally, provincially, municipally, in party leadership contests, in foreign elections, Scottish independence, Brexit.  Seriously, the closest I came was in the municipal election a few years back when I didn’t see much difference between the two main candidates in my Ward so offered my vote to whoever re-tweeted me first.  The candidate who did ended up winning – which is probably a good sign that he’s on the ball if nothing else!  (Oh, I guess I was technically a Charlie Clark supporter as he won the Mayorship of Saskatoon recently.  That was at a distance but many friends worked on that campaign and I was with them in spirit.  Still not a great track record for me though.)

BIG BROTHER
I called this the first Cyber Security election in an earlier post and I think that turned out to be true – hacking of e-mails, Wikileaks, cyber-terrorism, secret servers, even absolute false information running wild on Facebook.  Many people said Clinton’s e-mails were a non-issue and she was exonerated by the FBI.  But they missed the larger symbolism of *what* the e-mail issue represented – that Clinton was someone who thought the rules didn’t apply to her and that she was above the law.

DANCING WITH THE STARS
In 2000, many people blamed Ralph Nader and the Green Party for Al Gore’s loss in Florida and again, many people are blaming third parties for the Clinton loss which, as in 2000, is scapegoating but isn’t actually true (in 2000, if Gore had carried his home state, he would’ve won, even without Florida.)  I don’t buy this argument for a second – people vote for a whole number of reasons and if you feel that the Green Party is the best match for your personal views, you have every right to vote for that party, whether you’re in a battleground state or not.  And if you would prefer to vote Green but think that Hillary Clinton needs your help, you might choose to hold your nose and vote for Clinton.  One way to look at it is to flip the argument around – did Hillary Clinton do enough to reach people who were looking at voting Green or Libertarian?  Its hindsight but what could she have done differently?  (It wasn’t about third party voters but in a similar fashion, one leaked e-mail apparently had Clinton’s campaign chair saying that for every working class voter they lost with their strategy, they’d pick up two moderate Republicans.  I’d imagine they did a similar calculus about any voters lost to the Green Party or Libertarians.)

VOTED OFF THE ISLAND (aka “A Never-Ending List of Reasons Hillary Lost”)

1. She was the ultimate establishment candidate in a change election.
2. Many people found her untrustworthy with regards to things like her private e-mail server, the Clinton Foundation with its ties to foreign governments, her risk-averse, focus-grouped seeming positions and lack of “authenticity”, etc.
3. It’s fairly clear that some degree of misogyny played into this result – even some women obviously aren’t comfortable with the idea of a woman as President.
4. Perhaps the most shocking thing of all in this whole deal is that Trump’s overt sexism, racism, misogyny plus his general appearance of lack of intelligence and qualifications didn’t disqualify him and a huge (YUGE!) number of Americans still voted for him.
5. Since she announced, Clinton has seemed entitled and that it was “her” turn.  As one example, she apparently never set foot in the traditionally blue state of Wisconsin after the primary which became one of the Rust Belt states she lost.
6. Tim Kaine was about as bland and vanilla of a VP pick as you could have and the most he brought to the ticket was the ability to speak Spanish and (barely) delivering his home state.  What if she’d picked a minority or someone who was viewed as progressive or hell, Bernie Sanders himself?
7. By her own admission, Clinton isn’t a natural politician like her husband or Barack Obama.  She didn’t energize and inspire people which is what you need for Democrats to win and that hurt her in the end.
8. Much of the media, widely seen as being on her side, covered Trump relentlessly since he drew good ratings and was entertaining and controversial.  In a world of reality TV and where “there’s no bad press”, that amount of coverage helped legitimize Trump for many voters.
9. Trump apparently only won the vote of whites by 1% more than Romney but Clinton vastly underperformed among people of colour compared to Obama (which may be expected to a certain degree and winning 88% of the black vote versus 93% isn’t shabby but doesn’t get it done in the end either.)
10. Trump got something like 2 million votes less than Romney but Hillary got *6 million* less than Obama.
11. That tells me that racism may not have been as big of a motivating factor as some are saying and that Hillary lost as much because she didn’t connect with voters like Trump did (or like Obama did in 2008 & 2012).
12. I read an article during the Republican primaries saying that Trump’s opponents were like boxers – jabbing back and forth, playing by the rules, trying to win using traditional techniques and strategies while Trump was like a wrestler – more about showmanship and spectacle and putting on a great show for the fans.  I’d argue that Hillary fell into the same trap – she kicked ass in the debates and it didn’t matter.  She had great GOTV and it didn’t matter.  She outspent him 5-1 and it didn’t matter.  Frankly, I think her supporters got cocky and thought “How could we lose to Trump?”  (For the record, I thought Hillary *should* beat Trump but posted in a Reddit thread to say that anything could happen, especially in this election.)
13. There’s a rule of thumb in politics that when people go for change, they’ll go for something as far from what they currently have as possible – bumbling good ol’ boy George Bush got us an African American constitutional law professor with a middle eastern-sounding middle name.  But after eight years of that, we’ve again gone a complete 180 in the other direction with a wealthy, non-politician who spent years claiming the current President wasn’t even an American.
14. This results was in part, America displaying their resentment over the election of the first Black President and/or not wanting to set another milestone with the first female President too.
15. Racism and sexism are getting a lot of attention but you can’t forget the class issues as well.
16. For example, people truly voted against their best interests when lower-class whites choose a President who’s a billionaire and has a tax plan that will favour the wealthy.
17. People vote out of fear of “the other” or fear for their own “prospects” in tough economic times.
18. I’ve heard a lot about the racism of white voters but I’ve also read that Obama actually did *better* than Hillary with white voters in some of the Rust Belt States when he won so it’s probably not that simple – it’s a combination of Trump representing change, Hillary’s own baggage, changing economic factors and probably a zillion other things.
19. The electoral college is a relic of the 18th century and basically “gerrymandering” on a national scale.  This system means that for the second time since 2000, a Democratic candidate who won the popular vote did not win the Presidency.
20. Although I defended third party voting above, I can also admit that it may have contributed to her loss given the margin in many states was less than the number of votes cast for third parties.
21. On a related note, many Democrats may have stayed home believing Hillary had this in the bag or some voters may even have voted Trump as a small gesture of protest, without wanting him to actually win (I call that the “Brexit” move.)
22. Rust belt voters forgot it was the Democrats who bailed out the auto industry after the last Republican government led the US into a worldwide recession.
23. People are polarized like never before.
24. There seemed to be an unwillingness among Clinton’s team and her supporters to listen to legitimate criticism or suggestions for how to improve their campaign.  If you said anything about her not being a great candidate, you were a sexist “BernieBro”.  Even Bill Clinton, a guy who knows a thing or two about winning Presidential elections, was ignored when he told the campaign to focus on Rust Belt States since Hillary’s team thought he was just trying to re-live old glories.
25. Another rule of thumb – especially in the age of 24-hour news, the more charismatic candidate always wins.  This goes back to at least 1980.
26. People lied to pollsters that “of course I’d rather vote for the first female President” instead of the truth: “I don’t like anyone not like me”.
27. Pollsters never captures the number of people who rarely/never vote in their polls who did vote in this election.
28. Parties rarely win a third mandate (GW Bush coming in for a term after two terms of Reagan being a rare exception.)
29. It was in the media’s interest to portray this as a horse race to the very end.
30. If I’m being honest, even though it was pretty collegial, the Democratic primary did reinforce some of the concerns people had about Hillary Clinton – especially her connections to Wall Street and her status as part of the establishment.
31. Many Bernie supporters protested Clinton by voting third party.  That’s fine in my view.  But many also stayed home completely which I find a bit harder to justify.  If you’re not happy with your choices, go write in Bernie’s name if nothing else which at least shows you cared enough to show up (turn out was less than 50% which means only 25% of Americans voted to elect Trump.)
32. One of the most successful prediction models – based on mostly economic criteria – which has picked the President correctly since 1992 – picked Trump to win – even though the model’s creator didn’t even believe it this year!
33. Social media has replaced traditional media (Clinton had something like 300+ newspaper endorsements and Trump had like 5 – including the official newspaper of the KKK for fuck’s sake – and that didn’t matter either!) but social media also doesn’t fulfill the traditional media role of screening for truth and accuracy (some would argue traditional media no longer do that either.)  There were people in poor Eastern European countries making good livings/helping their own countries such as Russia from a propaganda perspective by producing absolutely false click-bait articles about Trump/Clinton that were widely shared on Facebook by people who don’t know how to critically analyse information of this type.  Trump, who only has a passing relationship with the truth, even retweeted false information regularly.
34. The timing of FBI Director Comey’s announcement that they had discovered new e-mails relating to the Hillary Clinton investigation, very late in the election and not in keeping with precedent for the FBI to not influence elections either way, made her rising poll numbers drop.  (This is the main thing the Clinton campaign has cited in their post-election commentary but to me, it’s like a football team blaming a late penalty for losing a game.  What were you doing that made it so you didn’t win the other 59 minutes of the game?)
35. Strangely, the Democrats may have vilified Trump *too well* and people refused to believe he was as bad as the Democrats made him out to be.
36. I keep adding to this list as I read commentary in the days following the election so I can’t remember – did I mention the general degrading of the US education system – at the primary and secondary levels but also how many universities have become credential mills rather than focusing on giving a proper classic education where students learn critical thought and various other important life skills as well?
37. 81% of Evangelicals voted for Trump.  Obviously not much different than 88% of African Americans voting for Clinton.  But if you want a reason that I don’t like religion, you can start there.  I can’t think of anything more hypocritical than people (who are already highly susceptible to bullshit) voting for a thrice-married adulterer who literally makes an idol of himself and can’t even properly say the name of well-known books of the Bible.  Jesus, how many commandments has Trump broken?  (And before you shout “Well, I’m religious and I’m not like that/all religions aren’t like that, I think it’s a *very* slippery slope and that all extremists – in any religion start as moderates.)

Dog help us all.