My basic reading of the 2016 election

[BlueSwan]

OK, I think I'm ready to do a reading of the 2016 election without being super pessimistic, which is my default way of thinking.

The main dynamic goes like this:

For Hillary Clinton, the main problems are:

1) Getting people excited about voting for her.

2) Getting the Bernie holdouts to support her, millennials in particular.

Clinton has a quite large amount of "soft" support. People who could potentially vote for her, but very well might not give a damn. She also has a supposedly very strong GOTV-operation, which could give her the decisive advantage in the end.

Clinton is a very good example of a politician who needs to be on TV to remind people of how competent she is. When she is on high-profile national TV as a serious politican - like at debates or the convention - she improves her poll numbers. When she is off the screen, others define her, which is very very bad for her. Also, she needs to avoid entertainment TV - she is horrible in those settings.

For Donald Trump, the main problem very obviously is that a lot of moderates who would usually vote GOP, knows deep down that voting for Trump is incredibly irresponsible. However, the upside is that a lot of these same voters really don't like Hillary Clinton and will happily give any excuse to vote for Trump. However, they do need that excuse. This is why Mike Pence having a good debate performance might actually matter because Pence could be that excuse, however ridiculous it would be to vote for a VP candidate. Trump is generally the opposite of Clinton. He needs to NOT be on TV. When he is on TV people are reminded of why he should never ever be president. When he is more subdued on generally away from the headlines, like in mid-june or in the first half of september, he improves.

In other words, a slow week where nothing much happens is GREAT news for Trump and TERRIBLE news for Clinton. During those weeks Trump is likely to gain on Clinton. The good news for Clinton is that this is 2016 and a slow week is highly unlikely to happen with only a month to go until the election. The good news for Trump is that the strategy he needs to pull off is really very easy. He just needs to give the GOP holdout voters the excuse that they need. He needs to not say anything offensive and stay somewhat normal for a month. Just a month. He doesn't need to "win" the debates as such. If he can avoid a total beatdown on the issues and avoid lying too blatantly, he will probably be declared the winner anyway. Of course, avoiding those thing is a tall order when your name is Donald Trump.

I believe it boils down to this: If Trump can stay normal for a month the election will be razor-tight and Trump would be somewhat favoured to win. A normal appearing Trump will bring the GOP-holdouts the excuse that they need to vote against Clinton and will at the same time fail to energize the soft Clinton support that she needs. If Trump fails to do this, Clinton wins and she might even win big. Given the fact that Trump is Trump, that would make Clinton a very strong favourite right now.

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

BlueSwan, this is the reading of the election from those for whom America has generally worked.  I'm one of those people, so it's tempting to look at things this way.

Now, let me give you a different reading.

This election is a referendum on the direction of this country under the control of an elite governing class that doesn't understand the needs of an electorate that it is failing.  Over the last several decades, manufacturing jobs have disappeared.  Ordinary people have been priced out of homes, and paradoxically, those people who bought homes lost them through mortgage speculation.  Young people can't even afford the education necessary to find jobs in the post-manufacturing economy.

These problems absolutely devastated the white, male base of the GOP, and they revolted.  Donald Trump did two brilliant things: first, he lay the blame for these problems squarely on trade and immigration, playing on the longstanding fears of white men that they would be overrun and become obsolete.  Second, he sold himself as a strong leader with business acumen who would stand up to the corrupt elites who have sold them out to globalism and internationalism.  The GOP establishment had no response to this.  Not even the TEA Party could withstand this onslaught.

The Democrats already had a populist, labor wing, so they were better positioned to take on the revolt, but the it still came.  Young people, primarily white, found themselves increasingly unable to adapt to the changing, post-manufacturing economy without taking on mountains of student debt.  (I say primarily white, because people of color had already been accustomed to dealing with systemic inequality.)  They couldn't become home owners like their parents and grandparents could.  They saw a rigged economy sustained by a rigged political system.  Bernie Sanders didn't so much create this movement as he was drafted into leading it.  It had already begun in 2011 with Occupy Wall Street.

The anti-establishment sentiment this election cycle is palpable.  Hillary Clinton stays afloat only because Donald Trump is a monumentally terrible candidate, and because the old-guard coalition of social elites, activists, academic establishment, and minorities behind her are very powerful.  I am a member of this coalition.

Donald Trump's supporters are hurting.  They feel left behind by the new economy, and deeply resent movements like Black Lives Matter, which they feel trivialize their struggles.  In their minds, all Hillary, Obama, and the establishment elites care about is stacking the deck against them and letting boys who feel like girls use the girls' showers.  I am deeply opposed to this sentiment, but I know it exists, because I encounter it daily.

It is all well and good to attack Donald Trump's plausibility as President.  It looks like it has been a (barely) winning strategy.  What the Clinton campaign should have also done is drop the elitist attitude and address the fact that white men around the country have been left behind by a transforming economy.  Not just call them deplorables.  The biggest reason Trump dropped in the polls, the most devastating thing for him, is not calling a beauty queen Miss Piggy.  It's the revelation that he's just another a-hole elite businessman who avoids paying his fair share and fires workers he doesn't like.

[BlueSwan]

BlueSwan, this is the reading of the election from those for whom America has generally worked.  I'm one of those people, so it's tempting to look at things this way.

Now, let me give you a different reading.

This election is a referendum on the direction of this country under the control of an elite governing class that doesn't understand the needs of an electorate that it is failing.  Over the last several decades, manufacturing jobs have disappeared.  Ordinary people have been priced out of homes, and paradoxically, those people who bought homes lost them through mortgage speculation.  Young people can't even afford the education necessary to find jobs in the post-manufacturing economy.

These problems absolutely devastated the white, male base of the GOP, and they revolted.  Donald Trump did two brilliant things: first, he lay the blame for these problems squarely on trade and immigration, playing on the longstanding fears of white men that they would be overrun and become obsolete.  Second, he sold himself as a strong leader with business acumen who would stand up to the corrupt elites who have sold them out to globalism and internationalism.  The GOP establishment had no response to this.  Not even the TEA Party could withstand this onslaught.

The Democrats already had a populist, labor wing, so they were better positioned to take on the revolt, but the it still came.  Young people, primarily white, found themselves increasingly unable to adapt to the changing, post-manufacturing economy without taking on mountains of student debt.  (I say primarily white, because people of color had already been accustomed to dealing with systemic inequality.)  They couldn't become home owners like their parents and grandparents could.  They saw a rigged economy sustained by a rigged political system.  Bernie Sanders didn't so much create this movement as he was drafted into leading it.  It had already begun in 2011 with Occupy Wall Street.

The anti-establishment sentiment this election cycle is palpable.  Hillary Clinton stays afloat only because Donald Trump is a monumentally terrible candidate, and because the old-guard coalition of social elites, activists, academic establishment, and minorities behind her are very powerful.  I am a member of this coalition.

Donald Trump's supporters are hurting.  They feel left behind by the new economy, and deeply resent movements like Black Lives Matter, which they feel trivialize their struggles.  In their minds, all Hillary, Obama, and the establishment elites care about is stacking the deck against them and letting boys who feel like girls use the girls' showers.  I am deeply opposed to this sentiment, but I know it exists, because I encounter it daily.

It is all well and good to attack Donald Trump's plausibility as President.  It looks like it has been a (barely) winning strategy.  What the Clinton campaign should have also done is drop the elitist attitude and address the fact that white men around the country have been left behind by a transforming economy.  Not just call them deplorables.  The biggest reason Trump dropped in the polls, the most devastating thing for him, is not calling a beauty queen Miss Piggy.  It's the revelation that he's just another a-hole elite businessman who avoids paying his fair share and fires workers he doesn't like.

When people find themselves in a situation they don't appreciate it is very normal to blame someone who is not amongst their core group, whether that be immigrants, minorities, the gays, the elites, the "system" or wall street. This is well known. However, I personally doubt the role that economics plays in this. The saying goes that the working class is more hostile towards immigration because it is their jobs that are threatened. This makes sense in a rational world, but I have come to the belief that fairly little of this is actually rational.

Rather, the main driver behind this phenomenon is cultural. Why do I say that? Because the actual flourishing of this sentiment in Europe happened during the boom years of the mid-nineties up until the financial crisis in 2008. Back then, part of the "popular" explanation for the rise in right wing populism in Europe was that people were now so well off that they didn't really bother about economic politics, rather there focus shifted to cultural issues like immigration in particular. As such, the problem was not an economic one, but rather a sense that the world was changing very quickly and in a manner that particularly the older generations did not appreciate.

Now Europe and America isn't one and the same, but we're not that different either. In America the big cultural issues back then was stuff like gay marriage and abortion, which were more or less non-issues in Europe where the cultural debate was totally dominated by immigration.

I believe part of the explanation for this was that in America immigration was seen as a toxic topic due to minorities being such a large voter bloc, which was not the case in most of Europe. But the resentment was there, Trump just managed to tap into it.

For instance, if this was primarily an economic concern, why are Trumps supporters then so likely to be older, even retired? Why are young people so much less likely to buy into these scapegoat theories - they should be more in danger of losing their jobs than anybody else? Because this is mainly a cultural issue. We have regarded it as mostly an economic issue because this provide a rational and fairly non-judgmental explanation for why the lesser educated amongst us are so much more likely to hold intolerant views. The main explanation for this phenomenon, I believe, is entirely different, but also extremely politically incorrect, which is the reason why we politically correct liberals never utter the plain truth behind this phenomenon. Nor shall I do so here, but you all know the explanation deep down. Just like all of the intelligent GOP voters out there deep down know that electing Trump is incredibly irresponsible and morally currupt. :-)

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

BlueSwan, this is the reading of the election from those for whom America has generally worked.  I'm one of those people, so it's tempting to look at things this way.

Now, let me give you a different reading.

This election is a referendum on the direction of this country under the control of an elite governing class that doesn't understand the needs of an electorate that it is failing.  Over the last several decades, manufacturing jobs have disappeared.  Ordinary people have been priced out of homes, and paradoxically, those people who bought homes lost them through mortgage speculation.  Young people can't even afford the education necessary to find jobs in the post-manufacturing economy.

These problems absolutely devastated the white, male base of the GOP, and they revolted.  Donald Trump did two brilliant things: first, he lay the blame for these problems squarely on trade and immigration, playing on the longstanding fears of white men that they would be overrun and become obsolete.  Second, he sold himself as a strong leader with business acumen who would stand up to the corrupt elites who have sold them out to globalism and internationalism.  The GOP establishment had no response to this.  Not even the TEA Party could withstand this onslaught.

The Democrats already had a populist, labor wing, so they were better positioned to take on the revolt, but the it still came.  Young people, primarily white, found themselves increasingly unable to adapt to the changing, post-manufacturing economy without taking on mountains of student debt.  (I say primarily white, because people of color had already been accustomed to dealing with systemic inequality.)  They couldn't become home owners like their parents and grandparents could.  They saw a rigged economy sustained by a rigged political system.  Bernie Sanders didn't so much create this movement as he was drafted into leading it.  It had already begun in 2011 with Occupy Wall Street.

The anti-establishment sentiment this election cycle is palpable.  Hillary Clinton stays afloat only because Donald Trump is a monumentally terrible candidate, and because the old-guard coalition of social elites, activists, academic establishment, and minorities behind her are very powerful.  I am a member of this coalition.

Donald Trump's supporters are hurting.  They feel left behind by the new economy, and deeply resent movements like Black Lives Matter, which they feel trivialize their struggles.  In their minds, all Hillary, Obama, and the establishment elites care about is stacking the deck against them and letting boys who feel like girls use the girls' showers.  I am deeply opposed to this sentiment, but I know it exists, because I encounter it daily.

It is all well and good to attack Donald Trump's plausibility as President.  It looks like it has been a (barely) winning strategy.  What the Clinton campaign should have also done is drop the elitist attitude and address the fact that white men around the country have been left behind by a transforming economy.  Not just call them deplorables.  The biggest reason Trump dropped in the polls, the most devastating thing for him, is not calling a beauty queen Miss Piggy.  It's the revelation that he's just another a-hole elite businessman who avoids paying his fair share and fires workers he doesn't like.

I still stand by every word of this, nearly two years later.

I also still feel like the Democrats don't understand this.