(Please note this topic was diaried by RETIII last week, but I feel the issue’s importance deserves much additional discussion)
As we’re forced to genuflect to the latest round of bitter recriminations over the great Great Calamity of 11/9, where every armchair strategist with an historic axe to grind gets their high and mighty moment in the sun (with bonus points for repeatedly cramming in jargon like ‘neoliberalism(1) and ‘elitist’) to criticize Hillary Clinton’s campaign, that (somehow, to be determined) allowed economic anxiety(2) to propel a bloated narcissist and compulsive liar(3) to the highest office in the land, let us not forget that in nearly every swing state she lost, voters preferred Hillary Clinton to Trump on the economy.
That’s not all. Despite...
Leading the election 48.2% to 46.2% and by a 2.8 million vote margin (and growing), and… Earning the second highest number of votes in history and more than any white man, and... Leading said vote total by a margin greater than many winning candidates, even when adjusted for population increase, and ... The fact that all of this would, in every other democracy, past, present, and future, make her, you know, the winner, except for an anachronistic, undemocratic contraption with an ugly past now used to justify quasi-apartheid for white heartland christian rule,...All these economically anxious voters also preferred Clinton on the economy... but voted to commit National suicide instead. Nice.
There’s more stunning results in these exit polls:
Voters preferred Clinton on foreign policy. They felt she was far more qualified in terms of experience and temperament to be Commander in Chief. Heck, even Trump voters felt Trump was unfit to be President Trump. They said she was far more likable than Donald Trump, despite all the old boys in the newsrooms insisting that she was unlikable and just needed to smile more, which negates the slur she was a bad candidate running a bad campaign.Trump voters were primarily motivated by voting against that woman rather than for Trump (and who’s to blame them), which is the opposite of Clinton voters. And to top it all off, for the first time in history, an overwhelming majority of all voters stated the winning candidate ran a resoundingly deplorable campaign.
And still that wasn’t enough.
It took a September 11 style attack on a Presidential campaign, a black swan event politically indefensible, whereby law enforcement was weaponized and used to craven political ends, to sink a candidate who we now know was winning, and otherwise would have won(4).
All together, this points to a likeable (enough) candidate winning a Party’s third term, a distinctly and impressively rare event per se, on economic policies, only to be torpedoed in the eleventh hour by political assassination.
So what the hell happened?
How was it even this close enough to allow the FBI to throw the election?
In the same exit polls, voters who were most afraid of terrorism and immigration flocked to Trump. And since Trump at least came relatively close in the popular vote, let’s (try and) unpack how utterly preposterous it is that a major chunk of the population is anxious about immigration and terrorism.
Barack Obama was actually the deporter in chief. And let’s also not forget that Barack Obama kept us safe when George W. Bush did not.
Turning out for fear of immigration and terrorism seems like something that would fall somewhere in between choosing Trump out of concern for high inflation and fear of Freemason influence.
As we can see from Gallup, sentiments on the economy can reflect feelings on other issues.
With just the prospect of changing the color of the person in the White House, economic confidence surged dramatically after the election, exclusively due to an uptick in sentiment from one group of people. Guess which group.
I’ve always found it odd that many on the left never questioned why economic confidence ran negative, often profoundly so, during the entire Obama Presidency, despite “More Jobs (+15M), Rising Middle Class Incomes (+$3K), Lower Deficit (-2/3rds)”, and despite routinely touting charts and graphs clearly showing Democratic Presidents performing far better than Republicans(5).
Some of this was due to real liberal concerns over the economy, which didn’t always live up to its top numbers, and which are too numerous to detail here. Suffice it to say, Sen. Bernie Sanders rightly and resoundingly won the argument over the direction of the Democratic Party on economics.
But many times, it was liberals uncritically parroting heartland voter sentiments. If working class people in the Midwest feel the economy is bad for them, it must be bad, right? But what if, in part, that economic sentiment was a lie?
I’m willing to bet good money that economic confidence runs higher during the Trump Presidency, regardless of fact, right up until the impending economic calamity.
So how do square this circle?
There is anxiety alright -- it’s just not really economic(6).
You’ll note that all those Trump voter concerns have xenophobia in common.
Take a trip over to Breitbart; the beautiful, digital distillation of the Trump campaign. Among the other horrors, you’ll find video after video of immigrants (supposedly) flooding borders, endless articles on Europe committing National ethnic suicide by allowing immigrants, and an entire section devoted to (supposed) crime by African Americans.
Between Breitbart and the exit polls, you’ll soon realize we are locked in a death match for our version of a just and free society(6).
Are we a multicultural, liberal democracy with equality for all? Or are we a quasi-apartheid state based on white, (certain type of) christian nationalism?
When you see the struggle through this frame, economic messaging points (which by the way, Clinton won on) have little to no relevance. Voters largely know which party is better for the economy. They voted for the other one.
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(1) Read the definition of neoliberalism, and determine if that is the campaign Hillary Clinton ran on.
(2) Which to our white boardroom denizens and corporate media, and too many of our politicians, means white economic anxiety, despite the fact that today, the working class consists of only two-thirds white folks.
(3) Thank you, Garrison Keillor.
(4) And don’t think for a second such an attack wouldn’t be leveled against a candidate Sanders, and won’t be used in the future against the next Democratic Party nominee.
(5) Here’s a hint: Show a Republican this chart, and they’ll still vote Republican.
(6) Here is Brian Buetler on how economics can be a part of their anxiety.