Hardly anyone saw it coming, except maybe the alt-right
media and the 59 million-some-odd voters who elected Donald Trump the 45th
president of the United States yesterday. I certainly didn’t. Though I was
among the earliest to predict Trump would win the Republican presidential
nomination, I’ve consistently said he would lose the election to Democrat
Hillary Clinton.
Although he will probably win a comfortable 300+
electoral votes by the time the counting is over, at the moment he’s trailing
Clinton by about 170,000 popular votes. That makes this the second-closest
presidential election in modern history after the famous Kennedy-Nixon
nail-biter of 1960.
So, Trump is likely to claim a mandate (that’s what he
does—he’s a winner, right?), but he has one only from his own constituency.
That this is a country sharply divided along racial, ethnic, religious, class,
gender, cultural, and educational lines barely needs repeating, but it pervades
everything. That’s probably the main reason for his victory, but here are five
others:
5. White men without college degrees voted in droves,
while others did not. The turnout in largely white working-class counties was
extraordinary, giving Trump way more support even in areas that supported
Barack Obama in 2012. Macomb County, Mich., a largely white working-class
suburb of Detroit, voted for Obama over Michigan’s own Mitt Romney by four
points in 2012. This time, Trump won easily, 53.6%-42.1%. That’s a stunning
reversal. Some 72% of white men who don’t have college degrees voted for Trump.
How President-Elect Donald Trump could Impact the
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Donald Trump campaigned on his ability to create jobs
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Meanwhile, Clinton won Hispanics and African-Americans
by smaller margins than Obama did, and she didn’t rack up expected big gains
among college-educated suburban women. African-American turnout was down
significantly from 2012. That helps explain her losses in Florida and Pennsylvania.
4. Trump’s political ruthlessness and instinct for the
jugular. From “Low Energy” Jeb Bush to “Little Marco” Rubio to “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz
to “Crooked Hillary,” Trump sure had a way with words. He also broke all the
rules about politics by launching personal attacks from the get-go, and he
never let up and rarely apologized. That bluntness endeared him to the half of
the electorate that was sick of “political correctness” and politicians who
never delivered on their promises. Even his insults of Mexicans, Muslims and
women confirmed what his supporters wanted to hear—a non-politician who “tells
it like it is.”
3. James Comey. The FBI Director’s unprecedented
interventions in the last weeks of the campaign clearly helped Trump. Comey’s
announcement in July that he would not recommend indicting Hillary for the
private email server she used as secretary of state was accompanied by a long
news conference and Congressional testimony that amounted to an indictment in
the court of public opinion. His terse announcement on Oct. 28 (reportedly
prompted by pro-Trump rogue FBI agents who were preparing to leak the news)
that the FBI was investigating “new” emails it found on the laptop of perv
Anthony Weiner threw the race into turmoil and may have clinched the deal for
Trump among many voters. By the time Comey cleared Hillary again last Sunday,
the damage had been done.
And would someone please explain to me how Trump
factotum Rudy Giuliani seemed to know Comey’s announcement was coming in
advance (although he later said he didn’t)?
2. Hillary and Bill Clinton and Clinton, Inc. “Crooked”
Hillary was a typical Trumpian exaggeration, but “corrupt” wouldn’t be a
stretch. The $200,000+ speeches at Goldman Sachs, the Clinton Foundation’s
dealings with big-money favor seekers, etc., etc., brought back memories of the
pay-for-play Clinton White House of the 1990s, when fugitive Marc Rich was
pardoned, the Lincoln Bedroom was for sale, and investigations and “bimbo
eruptions” were regular occurrences. Hillary’s secret email server—set up in an
excess of paranoia—fit perfectly into this narrative, drove up her negatives,
made Trump’s own outrages more acceptable to his supporters, and reminded
people that she was a politician who stood for the status quo, not a good combination
this year.
1. The revolt against elites and globalization. This, of
course, is the big story—how Donald Trump, a billionaire elitist of the highest
order, positioned himself as a “man of the people.” That aside, the populist
rebellion against globalization, open borders and the neo-liberal world order
that emerged from the Cold War, fired its first shot with the U.K.’s Brexit
vote in June, and now has claimed its biggest victory.
I’ve frequently written that free trade, immigration,
and technological change don’t help everyone; in fact, they leave a lot of
people behind, and politicians have done little to help them—or even listened.
That is the truth in the Trump victory, no matter how much of a false prophet
he is. “Attention must be paid,” wrote Arthur Miller in his great play about a
salesman displaced by change. And now it will be.
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