Trouble lies ahead.
ADVERTISEMENT
It’s stability and the semblance of some recovery versus a psych-ward embrace of chaos theory; the raw, populist pitchfork rage on both sides of the partisan aisle more satisfied with making a point than making meaningful policy.
Anger is just that much easier than governing.
Despite all the warning signs on this road, people are still asking: What happened?
Don’t buy in to the notion this was some anti-status quo election.
Something else deeply sinister, destructive and dark was at work here, in which the electorate found itself enamored with the cheap rhetoric and rather outright racist used-car sales pitch of a candidate who flaunted his narcissism with flair.
Here are some initial thoughts, drawing on observations that might explain it:
1. Forecasters severely underestimated the role of race in this election.
For any number of reasons we won’t fly head first into at the moment, leading media narratives and straight-laced textbook experts stubbornly refused to consider race as the primary, leading factor in this contest.
There was, indeed, a “silent majority” — an angry, full-frontal demographic assault of white working-class voters, along with dispossessed college-educated whites still reeling from 401(k) losses, foreclosures and mounting student loan debt who felt like the black president may have been a “likable” guy but wasn’t doing a damn thing for them.
Yet concerns that sheepish white voters spent months lying to pollsters were roundly dismissed and even laughed at.
The mainstream media, especially, couldn’t imagine that white voters could be that cruel, that twisted and deluded as to pick a guy who grew his political strength almost solely from the white nationalist fiction that the first black president was not from here.
And since the white Democratic female candidate was, in many respects, widely viewed as an extension of the black president, the Bradley effect appeared in full effect on Tuesday.
2. The Republican messaging machine worked superbly.
It was both fascinating and nauseating to watch as the wider electorate, Hillary ClintonHillary Diane Rodham ClintonWhite House accuses Biden of pushing ‘conspiracy theories’ with Trump election claim Biden courts younger voters — who have been a weakness Trayvon Martin’s mother Sybrina Fulton qualifies to run for county commissioner in Florida MORE supporters included, bought in to the notion that she was more corrupt than Donald TrumpDonald John TrumpSenate advances public lands bill in late-night vote Warren, Democrats urge Trump to back down from veto threat over changing Confederate-named bases Esper orders ‘After Action Review’ of National Guard’s role in protests MORE — because of, ultimately, an email snafu.
Yet the incessant mind-drill mantra that Clinton was one of the most nefarious liars on the planet worked brilliantly.
It completely drowned out the brazenly criminal activities of a man who had openly admitted to not paying federal taxes; had swindled unsuspecting citizens out of money to finance a now defunct “university”; spent his business career essentially bribing elected officials; kicked black tenants out of properties; and is now the public target of numerous allegations that he is serial sexual predator.
But the media, Congress, the FBI and the electorate couldn’t keep their eyes off those emails, though.
3. Clinton was just a really, really bad candidate, and her campaign wasn’t much better.
The Democratic Party desperately needs an autopsy as dramatic as what the Republican Party conducted on itself in 2012.
How it expected to win with an overly cautious, graying policy wonk with a tendency toward building bunkers when media scrutiny gets intense will be a question answered by countless studies, columns and unauthorized tell-alls.
But the core problem with this campaign is that it spent more time branding Trump than it did branding its own candidate.
And it seemed just fine with its own arrogance and the self-inflicted wounds of political elitism on display in leaked emails.
Clinton was so busy going about the business of slandering Trump as augustly unqualified that she all but forgot to build an inspiring, motivational case for why she’d be a much better president.
Her constant references to “Trump this” and “Trump that” actually helped enhance his brand and gradually materialize a rationalized image of a Trump presidency.
4. Forecasters also severely underestimated or completely discounted the role of voter suppression.
It was the first election in 50 years without the full protection of the Voting Rights Act, and forecasters — from FiveThirtyEight to the Princeton Election Consortium — didn’t even bother factoring in that widespread voter suppression in states like North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin would indeed play a central role in manipulating outcomes.
It was an election landscape littered with voting machine glitches, early polling location closures, lost ballots, purged voter rolls and long lines at the local precinct.
Even after federal courts ordered states like Texas, Wisconsin, North Carolina and elsewhere to shut down their voter ID and voter suppression games, Republicans couldn’t help but win at all costs — even if some of their methods were patently unfair and all around un-American.
5. Democrats overestimated the Latino vote — again.
In the 2012 election, Latino voters accounted for 10 percent of the overall electorate. That was up from 7.4 percent of the electorate in 2008. By 2016, Latino vote hype was in full effect.
No way Latinos wouldn’t mass up a full electoral court press against the orange-haired border-building bigot, right?
Democrats, along with anxious Republicans, started piling up wagers on the pure skin-color-driven assumption that Trump would get steamrolled by a vote-flexing wall of brown voters looking for political revenge.
It didn’t quite work out that way, now did it?
Not only was Latino voter turnout just 1 point above where it was in 2012, but it went 29 percent for Trump, according to exit polls.
In fact, 33 percent of Latino men voted for Trump, as well as 26 percent of Latino women.
Those numbers were actually higher than 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney’s in 2012!
That wasn’t really surprising, though, since it was always a lot more complicated than that. Trump Latino voter support averaged between 20 to 25 percent in numerous polls, to the dismay of — well — few, since everyone bought into the monolithic theory that Latinos were voting as one big enormous anti-Trump block.
But they weren’t, and didn’t.
Hispanics in the West may have pulled their weight with a Senate win in Nevada, as well as a Clinton win there plus Colorado, New Mexico and California, but they are culturally, socially and politically different from Hispanics in the East, where Cubans and even some Puerto Ricans leaned for Trump.
At the end of the day, Latinos are not a racial group; they are a multicultural language group of different racial backgrounds.
Trump’s promise to keep Mexican “undesirables” out of neighborhoods and homes resonated with older and white Spanish-speaking Latinos.
Finally, it didn’t help that some Latino voters may have found themselves stung by voter suppression tactics, too.
6. Black voters canceled themselves out.
It’s been hard for many in the black political community to digest recent reports of low black voter turnout.
That’s understandable: Hyping the narrative that low black voter turnout contributed to Democratic losses could be viewed as a form of voter suppression or unfairly placing blame on the African-American vote.
Not only that, but we can’t discount the impact of voter suppression schemes in key battleground states.
But black voters didn’t help their cause as soon as early voting started. Black voter turnout was 12 percent of the overall electorate: 1 percentage point less than in 2012, where it surpassed its population count.
A deeper dig into those numbers showed a devastating lack of black voter enthusiasm for Clinton: Whereas President Obama earned 93 percent of the black vote, Clinton only saw 88 percent; In fact, Trump ended up with 8 percent African American voter support, a full percentage point more than even Romney in 2012.
Adding more to it: 13 percent of black men voted for Trump.
7. So, umm … what happened to white women?
There was another common and widely accepted narrative that a massive firewall of women (read “white women”) would jump in to save the day and cement a new chapter in American history.
Observers, for some reason, believed Clinton held a commanding lead with barely a little over 50 percent of female support in polls leading up to Election Day, completely ignoring the fact that Trump was still sporting nearly 40 percent female support.
That was nothing to sneeze at, yet — like the Latino miscalculation above — everyone, including Democrats, seemed to miss that important detail and calibrate accordingly.
Instead, what happened was that Trump exceeded expectations by carrying 42 percent of the female vote — including a majority, 52 percent, of white women voters.
He also carried a majority (close to a full half) of white voters with college degrees, thus validating what we suspected all along: Many white voters feared telling pollster exactly how they’d vote.
Ellison is a veteran political strategist and frequent contributor to The Hill. He is also contributing editor to The Root, Washington correspondent for The Philadelphia Tribune and the Weekly Washington Insider for WDAS-FM (Philadelphia). He is also host of “The Ellison Report,” a weekly public affairs magazine broadcast and podcast on WEAA 88.9 FM (Baltimore). He can be reached @ellisonreport.
The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the views of The Hill.