So How Did This Happen?
So let’s just get this out of the way up front: I voted for Hillary Clinton. Not because I like her – I don’t – but because there are a few issues on which I’m on her side and the prospect of Donald Trump being president scared the shit out of me. I consider myself an independent and think my beliefs fall generally in-line with many millennials. I think everyone should have the right to own a gun, but it should be much tougher to get one and there should be limits on what it can do. I think climate change is a real thing and there’s no reason why there shouldn’t eventually be solar panels on every roof and that the Republicans in the pocket of big oil are shameful and literally ruining the world for their own gain. I think taxes and regulation are too high and unfairly impact the middle class. I think there should be more competition in the healthcare marketplace and I’m already fed up with Obamacare. I think American military dominance is ultimately the thing that keeps us safe and that idealistic liberals are way too naive and fail to understand that simple dynamic. I’m torn on abortion– I think women should have the option, in certain cases, but that we’re way too callous about it, and the first time you see your unborn child on an ultrasound, your opinion changes in some way. You can disagree with me on any of those things. I don’t hate you. I tell you only so you can see where I’m coming from here and that I really didn’t have a horse in this race and seriously considered writing in “my balls” on the ballot, because I really hated both of these candidates.
So how did Trump win? The media, the Democrats, the Republicans, the establishment… no one saw this coming. They underestimated the hurt and struggle for many in this country. They keyed on the hate and the vocal minority of Trump supporters and failed to account for the many, many reasonable others who found something in his message, which was largely the same message Bernie Sanders had. Whether it was the unemployed factory worker, the bigoted hunter, the guy who just saw his health insurance go up 30%, the anti-Hillary moderate, or one of the millions of people on both sides of the aisle who were upset with the status quo, Trump hit on something for many people. The media simultaneously gave him a voice and then acted shocked that anyone was listening. They continuously underestimated and misunderstood what made his message stick.
I’m not defending Donald Trump. I think he’s crazy and I’m terrified that he’s going to be our president. I watched his entire speech last night with my jaw unhinged. But couched in many of the crazy, racist, sexist, xenophobic, hurtful, dumb things he said, there were some accurate observations on the way our country functions. There wasn’t some grand conspiracy for Hillary, but there is a complicit virtuous cycle, an ecosystem of politics, media, lobbying and business that enabled her candidacy to become a foregone conclusion. People hop in and out of politics and the media and back and again. The revolving door is a real thing brilliantly described in Mark Leibovich’s This Town, an incredible (and funny) book about the ridiculousness of Washington D.C. She was a terrible candidate. People simply don’t like her. They wanted change and she represented the complete opposite. It didn’t help that she was perceived as a lying crook. But the establishment and media never questioned her inevitable candidacy. She probably would’ve lost to Bernie Sanders if the Democratic party didn’t bury the primary debates on Friday nights, something the media never questioned and simply accepted. They bought into the Clinton hype machine and failed to consider the endless supply of information (and disinformation) available and the fact that people don’t need the mainstream media to shape their opinions anymore. It’s not just niche cases– everyone has some independent website they read, documentary they like, or podcast they listen to that is free to question the way things are in a way the media doesn’t.
Bernie, whether you agree with his politics or not, hit on many of the same issues that Trump did, and, unlike most ultra liberals, isn’t staunchly anti-gun due to being from Vermont and probably would’ve appealed to many Trump voters. In other words– he probably would’ve won. Hillary essentially had to cheat to beat him. And it shows you just how terrible of a candidate she was that couldn’t then beat a guy who is widely considered and accepted to be a sexist, racist asshole.
Many people feel that Trump won because he’s a sexist, racist asshole, or because Hillary is a woman and the country is still sexist. I think both of the claims ring hollow. I’d argue Trump won despite those things. Sure, there are many people to whom he appealed because of his hateful rhetoric, but there were likely as many, if not more people who were turned off by it and didn’t vote for him as a result. Remember, he went down in the polls after the pussy comment. Never mind the fact that he trounced, like, 10 other guys (and 1 woman) en route to earning the nomination. Hillary was the only one who even came close. In fact, she got more votes than he did. He won because of a silly quirk, or bug, or feature, whatever, in our election system. So the notion that he won because he’s a sexist, racist asshole, I think, is wrong. And Hillary likely earned more votes than she lost because she’s a woman, just like Barack Obama earned more votes than he lost because he’s black. It actually says something positive about our country that the “issue” of Hillary being a woman rarely came up, even by the most awful Trump supporters. In fact, it was the Hillary campaign that kept harping on the topic with applause lines that often rang hollow.
It was frustrating to watch last night exasperated media members – including some on FOX News – who couldn’t believe what was happening. Setting aside the errors in polling and such, the mainstream media is extremely disconnected from the average American, and not only did they fail to account for the real hurt many of them are feeling, but they also further incensed many of the more extreme Trump supporters by playing right into his claims of media bias, complicit-cy and conspiracy. If you set aside the hateful rhetoric and his laughable delivery and just read his words, some of what Trump said in the debates – mostly about the economy, healthcare and trade – made sense. If you could separate Trump the character from his policy, when he actually had one, there were some things to like about Trump the candidate. The media, however, couldn’t do that and focused almost exclusively on Trump the character. I’m not saying he didn’t give them plenty of fodder, but sometimes they went too far. The media worked itself into a lather trying to find anything on Trump. I follow a ton journalists on Twitter. Too many. I’ve been doing this for six years and over that time have followed countless reporters in all verticals and from publications big and small, local and international, mainstream and independent, and I can’t tell you how many times I saw a Tweet containing a hollow bit about Trump. The enterprising liberal who tweeted it thought they had stumbled upon the smoking gun that would bring him down. Often times, it was nonsense, some self-righteous reaction to a relatively mundane factoid about Trump or his family. They were mostly too frivolous to even recall individually, but one story about Trump licensing his name to developers and not actually taking on the risks of development himself at some of his properties really stood out. That wasn’t some gotcha moment– it was simply a description of a common business practice. The liberal media, most of which wouldn’t understand simple capitalism if it hit them in the smug fucking face, smeared Trump over stuff like this, not understanding that they both sounded like idiots and were further fueling his main supporters. Keying on the failures of Trump’s merchandising and branding efforts showed an even greater misunderstanding of how business works. John Oliver’s famous rant, while fun, skewered Trump for failures in things that totally don’t matter– Trump Water, Trump Steaks, and Trump Magazine. These weren’t his main business ventures, they were licensed branding plays. Trump’s company didn’t actually bottle water, source steaks, or run magazines, you fucking idiots, it simply lent his name out (for profit) to someone else who did. There was plenty to dissect about Trump’s business and personal failures, but these ancillary bullshitties served as absurd distractions and often made the media look foolish and biased. Even the stuff that sort of mattered, like Trump not releasing his tax returns or bankrupting his businesses, wasn’t as hurtful to him as the media thought it was. Trump admitting that he took a massive loss and used it to not pay taxes for years is the sort of brutal don’t-give-a-fuck honesty that appealed to his supporters. To them, he exposed a system that needed exposing. The effort to discredit Trump over everything torpedoed the real reporting that largely showed he was unfit to be president. It became hard to decipher what was a meaningful story and what was just hysteric noise to tear him down. The media piled on, to Trump’s benefit, and never stopped to consider what it was in his message that actually appealed to people, pumping up the walking definition of an establishment candidate in the process. Way to go.
Believe it or not, the best explanation of this phenomena came from Michael Moore. FOX News, of all places, commended him last night for spotting this and eloquently explaining it in his TrumpLand movie… or performance. He understood that disenfranchised blue-collar folks who would otherwise vote Democrat saw something in Trump, whose message, as hollow as it may turn out to be, trumped (sorry) Hillary’s stellar ground game. I think I’m registered as an independent, but I had briefly registered as a Democrat in 2008 so I could vote in that primary (for Barack Obama). I got no less than four calls and two text messages yesterday asking if I planned to vote for Hillary. Their effort was downright impressive. I thought it was what would put her over the edge. And yet, it still wasn’t enough to compete with Trump’s reach and his understanding of modern communication. The traditional mechanisms no longer apply. Trump can reach the world with a few taps of his small fingers. He can compel every cable news channel to broadcast his speeches live. He appealed directly to voters.
Of course, the scary part, is that Russia helped him along the way. Hillary’s emails were fair game once they came out, but the fact that it was likely Russia who helped make them public is downright frightening. And hey remember that story from yesterday about the guy who turned up dead in the Russian consulate? Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. I don’t even want to think about that one.
Hillary was a more experienced and capable candidate. She may be a liar, she may have committed a crime, but she was ultimately more fit to be president. Her speech today showed it. That Hillary, the sincere, genuine one who actually demonstrated that she cares about others, would’ve won. But she was establishment to a fault. She couldn’t get out of her own way. She was too rehearsed, too much of a careful candidate in an election that was looking for the exact opposite. I believe there are things she cares deeply about, but it was hard to tell what they were because everything she said and did was focus-grouped to the point of being offensive. Trump, on the other hand, shot from the hip. He told it like it is, or how he thought it should be. The fact that he was an imperfect candidate who made mistakes actually endeared him to many otherwise intelligent people.
The fact is, this whole election was fucked. Everyone missed something. We were given lousy choices and got a lousy outcome because few realized who was lousier. Fingers crossed we didn’t just blow up the whole damn thing.