It has been almost 100 days into the Trump presidency, and another 60 or so since the election. The immediate pundit response to “how the Democrats lost” is over, and forgotten. This is unfortunate because the core lessons will have a future impact on the two party system in this country Understanding the Democratic party failure is an important part of re-establishing it in parity in this countervailing process. There are three levels of failure in the process: 1) structural party and system issues 2) specific problems of this election and 3) challenges of the specific candidate.
1) structural party and system issues
The DNC subverted the primary electoral process. From early in the primary, it was clear that the DNC was committed to supporting Hilary Clinton as the next candidate and that they did various things to interfere with the primary process. The relative success of the Sanders campaign should have been an indicator that Clinton was not popular with the electorate but was ignored. The “super delegate” process of lining up delegates not chosen by primary BEFORE the results were understood was especially destructive. In this process the DNC and Clinton herself revealed the fundamentally undemocratic attitude she has about the electoral process. That this information was leaked only made it more obvious to voters.
The geographic and political identity of the democratic party has been shifting. The Democratic party has an urban liberal identity which was intensified during the Obama administration. This includes the majority of the population as the population has shifted, but it does not successfully carry the country by congressional or electoral college tally. Some of this disparity is the result of a concerted effort by Republicans at the state level to gerrymander control of voting state by state in accessible states. This is a slow incremental process begun by Newt Gingrich (!) and Democrats do not seem to have the patience for this task. Also the shift in demographics of the country has been economic but not political. Urban areas are much more likely to be economically advantageous (with certain obvious exceptions in the Rust Belt) but the political distribution of votes and house seats has not adjusted as quickly. (This changes only from census to census.) The Clinton campaign is blamed for the failure to lure rural voters in key states Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. This is partly a demographic issue and partly a problem in strategy of how to engage these voters. The Obama recovery of the auto industry should have been enough, but the Clinton strategy did not know how.
Does the electoral college invalidate votes of the majority? Or even votes of the minority in some states? Though after the election Trump made the comment that it should be abolished, he would have lost without it! For Liberal Democrats it seems like an obstacle to getting the full public vote for President, but what if a demagogue ran uniting White Supremacist voters across many states? Would Liberals be in a hurry to abandon the Electoral College then? It stands as a method of insuring national participation against the dominant role of certain large states: New York, Florida, Texas, and California. Should those states have an outsized role in picking the President?
There is much recognition by pundits that the Democratic party abandoned the lower middle class white voter. This began with Bill Clinton and his recognition of the need for Wall St and Hollywood money. It was continued by Obama, and then Hilary Clinton. Her statement on the “deplorables” of the Trump campaign sealed the rejection of this group. And there are many women in that group who rejected her candidacy as not representing their values. H Clinton was the “women’s candidate” for only a part of the female electorate and barely a majority. In effect the Democrats and Republicans have been fighting for the same educated, economically stable, middle class and upper middle class voters for more than 8 years, with both parties offering false messages to this other lower social group for support that never comes. Neither party has a track record for this group of voters. Trump capitalized on this with a voice honed out of talk radio, Clinton was clueless. One one critic put it: framing debate about overtime etc was more important than transgender bathrooms and sexual abuse.
There are technically more poor and lower middle class people than middle class and rich people, so demographically Republicans should always be the minority party. This has led to several strategies to attempt to counter this problem including “voter ID laws” and limiting poll access by inconvenience to interfere with worker voting. Democrats have responded with motor-voter and other initiatives, and court fights against ID laws. The irony is that while this struggle has been going on, the Democrats have abandoned positions that would maintain the commitment of these voters, so the importance of all this is now unclear. “the election day should be a national holiday” as it is in some countries so voters could have off to vote, but if they won't vote for your party it doesnt matter!
2) specific problems of this election
The Democrats had a potentially successful candidate: Biden but his recent loss of his son and long career in politics made him decide not to run. He seemed the more suitable candidate and the fact that the DNC did not look for a similar person, but opted for Hilary because she had bowed out in 2004 and it was “her turn” was catastrophically stupid.
The Clinton campaign was run more as a media blitz campaign than by the ground game data of the Obama team. Clinton had a data driven ground game and “game plan” but it was not attuned to local concerns according to all feedback, and assumed that certain states were lost and unimportant, and others were sure. These were core strategic errors in the campaigns tactics and represent the kind of central management Hilary Clinton is famous for, and which has caused her to have problems at other times. Is she unable to delegate effectively?
Terrorism and domestic terrorism were issues facing the country as the result of overseas events. Each candidate was required to define a position regarding this. Trump took the extreme view: exclude the bad guys, I will protect you. Clinton took the conciliatory role: we are all in this together, don’t alienate the loyal members of our country. Both positions are valid and could have been effective but Clinton was not an effective presenter of her position and the exclusionary view is always easier to sell. By calling Trump supporters “deplorable people” she undermined her own position of inclusion and seemed to say “Moslems are ok but loud angry lower class Whites are not”.
Pollsters were consistently wrong, even Trump’s, who believed he was going to lose. This led to Clinton slowing down, and probably mis-allocating resources. But it also revealed the inability of pollsters to capture the energy in the society at rallies for Sanders and Trump and the lack of same for Clinton. She was accused of slowing down and being overconfident at the end of the campaign but seemed tired and lacking the energy to push through. (Or it may indicate that Republicans manipulated the vote in some states.)
Johnson (and Stein) seemed to be marginal 3rd party candidates but took more from Clinton than Trump, perhaps even enough to throw the balance in the few key rust belt states. Clinton et al did not take their impact seriously during the election and did not acquire Sanders followers effectively.
There was a strong racial backlash against Obama that was surfacing in the later years of his presidency in the form of murders by police and a “black lives matter” movement. This was potentially lethal to Democrats splitting these voters and they never came up with a workable strategy and lost turnout from both. This broke the Obama coalition which was essential to offsetting this racist backlash. The talk radio, Fox News, etc media blast against Clinton was fierce and constant and help swing voters in key states away from her or away from turning out for her. (But they did as much to Obama and he was able to reverse and use it. She was not.) Trump played this intensively and there is a surprisingly strong racist element in American society at this time. Who they are and why this has emerged is not entirely clear, but Clinton was unable to reverse the tide.
3) challenges of the specific candidate.
Clinton’s failure to define major issues was a problem. The greatest mystery of the campaign was Hilary’s decision to run against Trump’s sexual behavior not his failures in life and policy. This played to a very narrow PC world of sexually reactive women, and did not even have much traction in the “rainbow” community. (It even back fired in the end when Huma Abadin’s husband came into view.) In effect she was running against her husband’s behavior! And this was noted by many and undermined her position: why didn’t she leave Bill if this is so terrible?
Sexual misbehavior is seen by some as a sign of masculinity and harping on this did not help her with key demographics.
Trump harped on the lost jobs, but in fact the economy was growing. He made the issue the Clinton trade deals which HAD lost jobs. The two key issues were manufacturing jobs, and the failure to recover the middle class. Clinton had ideas about these but could never express them in good sound bite terms. Trump had used the very foreign labor that he railed about for his hotels and could have been skewered on this instead of his sexual attitudes. Clinton could not attack corporations like Sanders did because she was beholden to corporate money. She could never effectively frame the economic debate with Trump. Trump was a “blue collar billionaire” who ran a confused disorganized campaign and shoulds have lost. But he was able to verbalize the frustration of marginalized lower class whites in a way that Clinton could not.
She has been accused of arrogance which is more about entitlement. She thought being the “first female president” would speak for itself as the first black president had, and did not appreciate the complex campaigns that Obama ran. “its my turn” did not resonate with anyone. Her inability to accept responsibility is interesting. It was most obvious after the campaign when she began blaming Comey and the Russians in just the way Trump had threatened to do, if he lost. A loser who blames others is not taking responsibility. But in the broader sense she is just not an appealing candidate: her speeches, her style, her gestures have little charisma, and her record is far from stellar.
Both Clinton and her committee failed to understand the issues of internet security and hacking. Even after she had been discovered to allow classified emails on her insecure server, and was warned by the FBI that the committee servers were hacked, she did not recognize the significance. She is of the generation that cannot deal with the internet which was a striking (apparent) contrast to Trump who had advisors who helped him use social media effectively.
What does this tell us about this time in US history? The most important issue is the weakening of the two party system. This is partly the result of economic changes the democratic party has embraced while ignoring the impact on its traditional supporters. But it is also about the importance of building base and structure at the local level. The most Liberal Democrats have had the least patience for that task, while Conservative Republicans have had the most. Maybe this will change things. Regarding the electoral process, first the Democrats ignored all the processes put into place to ensure a more popular involvement in the primary selection. There was a candidate that might have been stronger. Second, a pure media campaign is no longer effective with voters. Social media, BUZZ, and direct charismatic skill have more impact, some would say too much. And a high tech computerized well managed ground game is important. The role of polling is suspect and was clearly almost worthless in this election. The candidate must be carefully focused toward the key voter issues, and polling does not consistently tell what will create "turnout".
The most difficult message of this campaign was why the United States was saddled with two unappealing candidates as the choice for the highest office of the country. Neither primary process adequately enabled more appealing candidates to come forward and be recognized. But who might they be? There is a worrisome sense that being a political candidate and especially a presidential candidate is a tiring thankless job, only taken on by family dynasties and arrogant billionaires.
If there is a serious message for the country in this election, it is that we have lost the fundamental motivation of individuals for public service.
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