On November 8, my spouse invited some female friends and relatives to witness what they were sure would be the election of the first female president of the United States. Now, my spouse had been a Sanders supporter, and recognized that Hillary Clinton had a lot of shortcomings, but still, the draw of “the first woman president” was very strong. I feel reasonably confident that there were millions of American women who shared that sentiment. I also feel reasonably confident that there were millions of Americans both male and female who sincerely felt that Hillary Clinton was a well-qualified candidate who would make a good president. I was one of those people.
I’ve read post-mortems here and elsewhere variously attacking the Clinton campaign as terrible; the institutional Democratic Party as corrupt and unwilling to admit mistakes; the Party, President Obama, and many Democratic voters as elitist. A few reactions to those post-mortems:
- For the most part, the writers have oozed contempt for folks like my spouse and her women friends excited about a woman president, or folks like me and others who felt OK about voting for Hillary Clinton. For those expressing such sentiments, let me ask whether you’d like to find common cause in fighting against the Trumpian nightmare and rebuilding the Democratic Party. If you don’t, then I truly don’t understand why you’d want to post commentary here. And please note that we don’t get to rerun the campaign with Bernie Sanders as the Democratic candidate, so while what-if speculation may get your juices flowing, it’s only useful if it points a way forward.
- The Clinton campaign screwed the pooch in many respects. Note, however, that Booman has written to point out how the campaign did meet its goals in urban areas but was swamped by an overwhelming Trump vote in exurban areas. You can decide to read this result as an unmitigated failure. You can also decide to read this result as a partial success combined with a catastrophic failure (say). Neither is acceptable but as the response depends upon the diagnosis, it’s important that the diagnosis not be skewed by either institutional inertia or an unrelenting hostility to and rejection of said institutional party.
- Supposedly the institutional Democratic Party is all into finger pointing, as opposed to the mature Republican Party of 2012 with its post-mortem calling for a more inclusive politics. Is it really necessary to point out that the GOP post-mortem was published months after the election? Or that the prescriptions of that post-mortem were discarded in the most spectacular fashion imaginable? I expect the Democratic Party is going to do its own introspection down the line.
- There are writers here who were rigorously and harshly critical of Clinton but were also writing–before the election–about what a bumbler Trump was, and about their vision for the Republican Party after Trump’s catastrophic defeat. Nobody who wrote in that vein now gets to act like a prophet whose admonitions were ignored.
As the first Republican president said, we must all hang together, or surely we will hang separately.
I’ll be interested to hear reactions of all sorts.
I believe that if the “rebuilding” of the Democratic Party turns out to be just another cover-your-ass facelift…and I think the chances of that facelift response happening are very high considering the sheer amount of economic power that has been invested in buying said party…then real progressives need to build a new party, and quickly. Waste a year or so while the Warren and Schumer wings play bureaucratic hardball and It will be too late to do a damned thing except carry on as we have.
You see where that has gotten us, right?
AG
The failure to rapidly get consensus on a DNC Chair is instructive in this regard. A split party will not survive, and those who led us into this disaster will not change.
I think you’ve nailed the autopsy in 2018: bureaucratic hardball in a split party.
Yup.
So far…
AG
It’s 3 weeks after an election we thought we were going to win.
I wouldn’t trust any consensus that emerged in that short of a time for the simple reason that we don’t know what happened.
We really don’t have data based conclusions at this point. We have suspicions.
I know of efforts in some states to try to understand what happened.
But honestly, unless you saw this coming, why should you think you know what the solution is so soon after an election?
I think we all should employ humility in avoiding putting too much stock in our preferred explanations.
I also think we should consider what we do if the FBI and Justice Department continues to overtly and publicly interfere with our election, and what we do if our preferred political leaders continue to be propagandized against thru misuses of private information. Our humility should extend itself into conceding that the mood of the electorate and the information they received were altered by these actors, and that the various ways those actors were enabled was not predictable.
Hillary will not be the last leader whose campaign was derailed by the propagandistic use of stolen information. After all, it worked shockingly well in 2016. And your favorite politician may be one of the ones next on the block.
I know what the solution isn’t. It isn’t to be seen as conducting business as usual. It also isn’t to be seen as trying to undercut progressive alternatives and moves in the same way business has been conducted for 10 years.
The Chair of the DNC IMHO should be the person driving the process of assessment as realignment. And the person who can get the DNC (the committee) up to speed in working out a strategy going forward. And IMO, the DNC should recede back into the woodwork and Democrats should not consider President Obama their party leader when it comes to strategy about what to do next. The current situation requires new symbolic leadership, not that Obama should be shunned, but there does need to be a new face to the media and it should not be the DNC Chair. Everett Dirksen and Charles Halleck were a team who took the opposition position to the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. But a Schumer/Pelosi show does not speak of a different Democratic Party. But a Senate/House team that reflected Democratic unity with some aggressive criticisms and popular proposals might gain media time. Franken from the Senate might be a strategic pick; Tulsi Gabbard or Sheila Jackson Lee from the House.
There are things that have come out, like the Trump Facebook campaign, that data-based conclusions will not tell them. In fact, data-based conclusions, given the failure of polling are likely to be incorrect to some extent. A preliminary look at the precinct totals is in order to see if there are squirrelly precinct totals like the first ones out of Outagamie County WI.
There is a urgency because the candidate who won the electoral college seems preparing a coup to ensure a permanent Republican majority through gutting voting rights. It would be helpful the Democratic officials who are conducting these post mortems to understand that they are going to be rolled badly if they don’t figure out how to win their states back or gain back the sufficient minority of rural white voters that used to provide a stable firewall against Republican victory.
I would not trust Tulsi Gabbert to be the face of the Party. Not trustworthy in making the case for economically progressive policy, not trustworthy to make the case for a foreign policy which shuns Islamophobia, and particularly untrustworthy for making the public pilgrimage to Trump Tower in order to have her name publicly bandied about for a Cabinet or Administrative post.
Right. Tulsi Gabbard can not be trusted as far as anyone can throw a piano: Narendra Modi idolater full of the Hindu darkness regarding Muslims on the Indian sub-continent. She’d be like jumping from the pan into the fire. No way.
Tulsi Gabbard is a fascist or fascist enabler. She should be primaried. Her stance on Syria and Indian politics are huge red flags. David Duke is fond of her. As is Steve Bannon.
Really?
You “we don’t know what happened?”
The seriously devolved Permanent Government machine was not sufficient to beat a loud-mouthed hustler.
That’s what happened.
Deal wid it.
AG
AG is spot-on here: Democratic Party bureaucratic inertia would be bad enough for rebuilding the party; having that sort of dysfunction in the face of an administration of authoritarian freaks is a terrifying prospect.
Never knew that Benjamin Franklin was the first Republican President, but no matter.
What is needed is a powerful coherent opposition party or coalition to the Trump Republican juggernaut. What we know from the Nixon, Reagan, and W-Cheney administrations is that there were well-developed plans before the election of how the first 100 days would unfold and what would be held for contingencies. The intent was to create a reality that could not be reversed if they lost in four years. I expect the Trump team to be out of the gates faster and that the Congress to be a rubber stamp for a lot of legislation before the summer of 2017. Any reduction of departments will get their legislative repeals as soon as possible in order to draw down their budgets.
I don’t see any institutions ready for this eventuality or how to oppose it. And the way President Obama has responded to street demonstrations forecloses that means of protest because Trump will not need to change the current policy of using DHS Fusion Centers to coordinate the suppression of protests. And the new DHS Secretary will inherity that power but without the norms to check the drive to unlimited power; if it’s Sheriff Clarke of Milwaukee County, the response is likely to be violent and brutal from the beginning. There is no outside game under authoritarians.
The GOP controls the inside game as well until 2018. And the legislative strategy to keep Mitch McConnell especially off-footed will have to be very creative.
So the first step is building opposition coalitions in every state, county, and precinct. That is a huge organizational undertaking even if reaction what Trump does accelerates some self-organization. But it also is very local and requires people to bloom where they are planted. The difficulty are the small proportions of people planted in very Republican-dominated counties and the social pressure to conform.
Which goes to the media environment that preserves and normalizes both the Trump Presidency and the application of social pressure and intimidation. The opposition coalition has to have a fresh and attractive form of media that can have impact in all of the local places regardless of their current alignment. And the task that this media must do is almost impossible–undo the propaganda that thirty years of ring-wing radio has done on a large proportion of Trump’s base while validating their lived experience. This could be a highly local, interlinked endeavor.
The Democratic Party establishment as it exists now will be so trying not to change dramatically (already invested capital expenditures, networks of relationships, sources of funds, and ways of doing campaigning that inhibit change) that it will wind up be working to normalize Trump as just another normal US President who will be restrained by Constitutional restraints. Those who are worried most about Trump will be among those sacrificed first by the Democratic establishment. Indeed the experience of #blacklivesmatter, #occupywallstreet, and #noDAPL shows that if the movement cannot be mined for votes in a near election, the notion of actual justice comes last rather than first. And the very effort of some Democrats to mine these movements for vote subjects them to loss of support from association with institutions that are part of the problem facing the US. The relationship with the Democratic Party which became complex during the Obama administration will either become more complex and see the Democratic Party change dramatically or 2018 will end the Democratic Party as an institution. That means that people like Joe Manchin and Heidi Heitkamp must understand that the Trump domination of their electorate is something to oppose with argument instead of Blue-Dogging it.
The must be unity of opposition on most things in the Congress and no side deals to benefit the fossil fuels industry at the expense of the country. Because I can’t see the Democratic Party in Congress acting with this sort of unity, the institution must be seen as only halfway committed to preventing the devastation that the Trump juggernaut has planned. (If you don’t see Trump in these extreme terms, then you don’t believe that he will do what he said he would do, or you do not believe that the GOP will march lockstep with him.)
The election is over. The audits of WI, MI, and PA, if carried out likely do not alter the results. The electoral college likely will prove its irrelevance in the same way the impeachment power of Congress has proven its irrelevance; it’s use is exclusively partisan and in no way a safety valve that preserves the Constitutional form of government. Clinton is history. Some younger woman will become the first woman President of the US; unfortunately, most likely she, like Thatcher and May, will be a conservative.
Thank you, indeed I mixed up Lincoln and Franklin. I’m now scratching my head about a comparable pithy line from Lincoln :-0
It’s mostly S-IS, although the comments so far have been encouraging.
I saw a lot of anti-HRC posts here and elsewhere that were couched in terms of how bad her FP would be / how many innocents would die. While the basic premise was correct, it was, in a sense, a straw-man. This is because the entire history of our country is steeped in genocide and the slaughter of innocents. Singling out HRC for FP stances that were basically mainstream (historically) makes me wonder if there was a more “real” reason for the opposition. (I will no doubt spark criticism for the last sentence, but I feel it is a fair question to ask.)
Your final sentence in your 2nd bullet-point is spot-on. I think it will take time for the hostility to subside; who knows about the institutional inertia.
I am very hopeful that somewhere down the line Democrats figure out how to counter the very effective negative branding that the right has done to the party. I have no idea how to do this.
For me, I still fell too keenly the loss of this missed opportunity; I am not done grieving, so no doubt I am not looking at the current situation clearly. I still can’t abide the thought that the Republicans’ War on American Government was successful.
Two paths.
After 2008 and 2012 there were no shortage of analyses claiming that the Republicans were doomed unless they were to undergo serious reforms.
Parties are made up of coalitions and the waxing and waning of political and economic currents still largely determine whether one party’s coalition will prevail on election day.
Trump’s election is the exception because he changed the dynamics in a way that could potentially re-orient the Republican party towards right-wing populism from standard conservative orthodoxy. Republicans may decide this is the best path for them to win elections post-Trump.
So, Democrats can either hope there’s enough of a marginal shift in rust belt voting against Trump and Republicans over the next few election cycles or they can commit to a populist working-class oriented agenda. I think the latter is more sustainable and will broaden the party’s appeal outside major population centers.
Democrats need to stop chasing the mythical Rockefeller Republican. Pick a side.
Well put/
Two swings scream out from the exit poll:
White College Graduates: Clinton +10 over Obama
White Non-College Graduates: Clinton -14 over Obama
These are tectonic plates moving. To your point, they suggest a potential re-alignment in American politics.
Understanding 2016 is about understanding the causes of these shifts.
What I do not understand is whether these shifts were inevitable. My own focus has been on Florida.
The collapse in suburbs and exurbs is obvious – in some places at large as 15 points. And you see them in Florida, and in the ring counties of Cleveland and in other places in the Midwest.
Why?
I really don’t know yet. I have focused on the campaign because I think they made horrible tactical and strategic decisions. Some are really without parallel since 1972.
But it feels like something more profound happened. People gave the benefit of the doubt to Obama – maybe because they never saw him as part of the establishment. But Clinton was a different story – is there a more establishment candidate?
Or is this globalization finally come home to roost. Are the working classes here and elsewhere using the ballot box to say no – we haven’t had a raise in 20 years – and goddam it you will pay attention to me.
If this is right the Clinton campaign’s theme of competence could not have been more ill fitted for an electorate that is suffering.
Will be curious to see if they ever break down the counties into economic deciles and see where those low income switchers lived and how.
Third installment from Bill Black on debt and dumb Dems….
We all understand how attractive the myth of the virtuous and frugal Dems producing great economic results under Clinton while the profligate Republicans produced federal deficits and poor economic growth was to Democratic politicians. But the Dems should not spread myths no matter how politically attractive they are. The catastrophic consequences of President Obama and Hillary Clinton coming to believe such myths were shown when, as I have just described in several columns, they promised to lead the long war against the working class that is austerity.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/11/bill-black-howard-dean-wants-to-continue-austeritys-assault-o
n-the-working-class.html
will you be looking at Iowa?
How to conduct a GOTV and Suppress-the-Vote campaign at the same time.
Joel Winston, Medium: How the Trump Campaign Built an Identity Database and Used Facebook Ads to Win the Election
…and why he had very little field organization. In a marketing-oriented campaign, the winners in 1992, 2008, and 2012 got out-marketed.