General elections are not primary elections. Primaries are between persons, generals largely between parties.
Can a candidate’s reputation hurt a party? Yes. The Democrats who endorsed Hillary took her bad reputation (which is maybe 75% bullshit, but this is politics, so reputation matters) on themselves, and may have wrecked not just their reputations, but the party’s reputation.
Sanders would have pulled in ideological progressives and the “outsider” or “anti” vote in a way Hillary could not. I don’t know if he would have won, but he was reasonably likely to have at least as high an Electoral College result as Hillary pulled in the end. Hillary had a terrible, terrible personal reputation, and didn’t pull from the type of voters likely to be swing voters in the same way as Sanders or Trump could.
If Sanders’ message couldn’t resonate within the friendly confines of the Democratic party primary, I’m certainly not convinced that it would have suddenly struck gold in the general. And, as I mentioned, Trump was largely playing to that same “blue collar white” base with his message as well so it’s not as though Sanders would have had that particular group uncontested.
It’s not about blue-collar white voters, exactly. The politics of that demographic are diverse; some are way to the left of Kucinich, some miss the John Birch Society, some are Randians, some agree with any one of you. White blue collar workers are a demographic, not a political faction. Some are safe Democratic votes, some safe GOP votes. It’s not about that.
It’s about swing voters, independents, and Ross Perot voters—those who want an outsider to come in and shake up Washington. Trump got the Republican Party base and a big chunk of the swing voters, including practically all those Ross Perot voters.
Hillary’s positive support drew almost not at all from the GOP, conservative movement, and Ross Perot voter groups. She was stuck with the left-of-center, the feminists, and some minority groups—and only the subset of those that aren’t already against her. The lack of a broad base of positive enthusiasm for her was why she had to play up fear of Trump. But that didn’t work, because every Presidential election carries the risk that “This clown could start a nuclear war,” and pointing out that Trump is a nitwit is just calling him what any party calls its opponent in any election to anything. In New York and New Jersey, she got a few swing voters who knew Trump well enough to oppose him; but voters in the Great Lakes region don’t know Trump the same way.
But Bernie could compete for the independents, because he’s an independent. Crazy, right? Now, Bernie does not hit the “successful businessman” part of the Ross Perot meme, but he is seen as a reformer with new and different ideas, like Perot was. And he can grab other kinds of swing voters. And he can mobilize the lefties and social liberals that wouldn’t vote for either Hillary or Trump. Also, he doesn’t have the baggage of 25 years of conspiracy theories about murder, rape, warmongering, and so on. Now, Bernie was still going to be sabotaged by machine Democrats, and worse than McCain was sabotaged by Bush Republicans. He might still have lost. But his possible base of support had a higher ceiling, given that it would include both Democratic and independent voters.
OK, I know that didn’t sink in for some of you. So I’m going to ask you to go to the top of this post and read it again.
But wait! you say, Isn’t Bernie super far to the left?
No. Only to the educated. You want to know how a working class white swing voter thinks?
In the USA’s electoral politics, the left pole is not Mao ZeDong, and the right pole is not some historical absolute monarch. Politics is about affiliations, not a one-dimensional right-left plot.
Due to the two-party system, the left pole is the leader of the Democrats, and the right pole is the leader of the Republicans. Being a Clinton-style centrist President, constantly veering to the right while leading a left party, is dangerously incoherent. How do you serve your party if you think they’re extremist nerds?
Working-class people who already believe in a left-right spectrum and care much about the position on it probably already have a party they vote for. But swing voters may simply not care. Bernie came from poverty, he wants to help poor folks like me, sure, whatever he’s proposing might work. It’s not any crazier than conquering Iraq, or voodoo economics, or whatever social justice warrior stuff Bill Clinton was doing. Left-wing economics isn’t necessarily a non-starter to these people. It’s just a thing you can try, like the New Deal or the Interstate Highway System. “Right” and “Left” are labels we stick on these gangs in the political field, but in a practical sense, in a two-party system, their policy directions change all the time with new leadership.
One problem that Hillary Clinton had was a lower turnout among black voters in states that were up for grabs. It’s not at all clear that Bernie Sanders would have been any better in this regard, particularly given the fact that Clinton dominated him with the black votes during the primaries. Clinton did reasonably well with Latino voters and there’s no reason to believe that Sanders would not have done equally well. He also probably would have gotten some white independent voters, though a lot of “independents” tend to lean right economically, so there’s no certainty that Sanders would have found much strength there either.
I think the election dynamics would have been different with a Sanders nomination, but I’m not sure the outcome would have been different, and I’m not as confident as other democrats that Biden or some other big name would have won, either. What fueled Trump’s rise was the determination of the religious right to get a conservative on the bench and a “conservative” in the White House paired up with a conservative congress. In addition to that, however, was a growing sense of white insecurity with an increasingly diverse nation, an anxiety that was at times palpable during an era of America’s first non-white president.
I think there has been at times a little bit of over-analysis regarding the white working class. What exactly are we talking about when we describe the working class? West Virginia coal miners who haven’t been employed in a few years? A white retail store manager in Columbus, Ohio? They’re not really working class at this point; they’re poor now. IIRC, the data show that Trump’s voters were actually wealthier than Clinton’s even among whites. The real divide was education, regardless of income. People with a high school degree only were less likely to vote for Clinton, but that doesn’t mean they were poor or in economic distress. I know and have met many people (mostly whites but not exclusively) who have only a high school education and yet they do pretty well financially, working in everything in fields like construction, pest control, restaurant management, farming, or small businesses. They own their own homes. They don’t have a lot of debt. They pay their taxes, they save what they earn, and live within their means. They don’t relate to people who take out $100,000 in put themselves in debt for 30 years to go better themselves with higher education – they think that’s dumb and lacking in common sense. That’s probably one reason why they disregard academia. That’s not the only reason but I’m sure it factors in somehow. That’s one example of what has fueled Trump’s rise – there are a lot of other factors as well.
Hillary Clinton failed because she simply does not connect with voters in public appearances. When she’s unscripted, she’s actually a very interesting person to listen to and watch. But she just never really seemed comfortable with reporters and never knew how to deal with hecklers and critics. I contrast her to her opponent who, despite having nightmarish rallies that were often chaotic and violent, actually seemed to relish the chaos. Trump loves to brawl and he loves watching others brawl. Clinton likes order. Unfortunately for Clinton, this country is in a mood to fight. Her mood didn’t match that of the country she was trying to lead. And so we’re now led by a president who has been brawling with his opposition since day one, and this country has become only more bitterly divided. I don’t think Democrats are going to be in the mood to pick another Hillary Clinton or buttoned down professional. They’re going to vote for someone who’s ready to scrap.
Hillary tried to sell herself as the first female president but people didn’t really buy into it for two reasons. One is the fact that she’s a household name and she’s just not that special to voters. In fact it almost seems like she’s been the president before in some regards – I mean she did live in the White House for 8 chaotic years.
But the other reason is that she was facing a strong counter-revolution to the Barack Obama revolution. In 2008, for the first time in its history, the United States elected a president who was not a white male. In fact, had Barack Obama been born in Jackson, Mississippi and not Hawaii, he would have been old enough to remember and have experienced having to drink at a separate water fountain from whites. And yet here he was president, and here was America, still mostly white, and still more conservative than progressive, living with a black president. I think that for some, this was a sign that they were losing their country. Throw in a few high-profile manufactured controversies like remarking off the cuff that a white working class officer in Cambridge, Mass. ‘acted stupidly’ and that ‘If he had a son he’d look like Trayvon Martin’ and now you’ve got a combustible narrative going, in which a black president is the president of black America but not ‘your America’. Throw in other political controversies like ‘amnesty’ for ‘illegals’ and that he ‘refuses to say radical Islamic terrorists’ and now you’ve got a flashing ‘code red’ in the eyes of insecure white Americans who look at demographics and see a country that is changing. Why are there so many Hispanic construction workers? Why are there so many Indian and Chinese software engineers? What happened to good jobs for white people?
There were a lot of people who don’t even necessarily see themselves as racists who nevertheless took the troll bait. When they voted for Trump, they rebelled against those smarty-pants academics who took out $100,000 loans to better themselves. They rebelled against the lawyers and journalists and professors ‘who think they’re better ‘n me and keep tellin’ me what I got ta believe’. And take a good look at Clinton and listen to her speak and she, like Barack Obama, sounds just like a college lecturer. Trump was their middle finger to the educated elitist class, the one that pushes for a more diverse America at what they believe is at their own expense.
So the vote here currently matches the UK: Hillary can form a government only with the help of either ‘the people don’t want it’ or ‘Hey, I cleaned the fridge last time’.
Imo, the fridge cleaners sound closer to Hillary’s world, but there is still all to play for …
He can promise to make Trump pay his taxes, for starters. I don’t think that drum was beat nearly as hard as it should have been, nor the “Trump doesn’t pay people who work for him” one. Both would have hurt Trump in the working-class portion of his base, which was essential for his victory.
And while I won’t say that Sanders would have definitely beaten Trump, I will say that head-to-head polling showed Sanders with a bigger lead on Trump than they did for Clinton. Now, it’s possible that the polling was just way off on that, like it was in other respects, and it’s possible that that would have changed if the Republicans saw Sanders as a bigger threat and turned their attack machine on him full force. But it’s also possible that he really would have done better than Clinton vs. Trump.
Yep, rule by ‘minority government’, could be an informal arrangement on key or all policies, right through the spectrum to a full coalition.
Atm, Hillary still has first call on a minority government, if she can persuade another to join with her. And with that, you now fully understand UK politics!
