Ten Things We Now Know About American Politics
Ahem. We seem to have been graced by the Chinese proverb, "May you live in interesting times." The surprising upset by Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton has left many people flabbergasted. Since I live in Los Angeles, it seems a lot of those people live around me.
But there were many hints of this possible outcome going back months if not almost a year. The results seem to have confirmed some new "realities" to replace former "speculations."
The polling surveys proved to be less than accurate-to say the least-but this had been going on since the early primaries. Remember, Trump was never supposed to get past the first couple of primaries. The Hollywood adage that "Nobody knows anything," held true to the end.
The Republican party has been split between its party regulars or leaders and their voters. The voters won handily, now the party will need to respond with some supplication. Trump is a symptom, not a cause. Despite being counted out, the Republicans managed to retain the Senate and the House, awarding President-elect Trump a golden opportunity to enact his agenda, whatever that is.
The Democratic party establishment apparently sold their voters a pig in a poke. It was not hard to see a year ago that Hillary Clinton was probably the weakest candidate the party could have selected given the political climate. She represented the status quo, promising Obama's third-term, after two midterm elections that repudiated his policy agenda. Moreover, she came in carrying a 25 year load of baggage that caused voters to question her authenticity and candor, to put it politely. Her tenure as Senator and SOS did little to promote her candidacy. It seems that the fact that she was the wife of Bill was her most valuable asset, but even that was tarnished as voters were reminded of Bill's former scandals and tawdry reputation. The voters had little choice and Sanders appeal should have been the first clue that things were going very wrong, again, for Clinton. The flip of the Rust Belt is another warning signal that the party has gone astray.
The mainstream media pundits once again have egg on their faces. The politicization of coverage backfired and the more they pushed, the worse it got for their favored biases. They failed miserably at their efforts to shape political opinion instead of informing objectively. Now some of the more prominent talking heads should probably seek a new profession since the public has turned them off. But no, stupid will likely double down, until they discover nobody who matters is really listening.
The Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama/Clinton era is over, as each administration's overreaching came back to bite them with a vengeance. Obama and his policy legacy is a casualty of this collapse of a 28 year party era. As painful as it might seem to some, Obama's presidency helped to bring about the collapse of his party and the rise of an outsider like Trump. He now owns it, just like Bush wears the Iraq albatross.
We have divided ourselves into a 50-50 nation, polarized by population density: urban vs. rural and suburban.* This means the popular vote will be less of an indication of true, broad support and may often diverge from the Electoral College vote. Thus, the EC is crucial to securing a clear electoral and governing mandate. It appears Clinton eked out a popular vote victory, but more importantly, Trump won the decisive margin in the EC. The swing state problem is that we don't have enough swing voters at the center of our divide.
We should probably be thankful that media and political transparency is being forced on us by technology. It is too ironic that we are getting our political insights from hackers and Wikileaks.
"Politics as usual" was a big loser. The people took control of this election, for better or worse, so elites had better pay attention while the rest of us figure out how to move people power toward the broader good, rather than the narrow. When failure occurs, we need to see it clearly and own it. I'm wondering how many can do that after this election. Too many will probably respond angrily, but that's self-defeating.
The wise among us will try to figure out why our popular narrative for understanding American politics has been so wrong and what needs to change. The demonization of voters seems to be highly counterproductive in an open media environment.
Lastly, political correctness and identity politics have suffered a severe backlash. Perhaps it's time to put aside these punitive speech codes and divisive political strategies. We can only hope.
BTW, I voted for Gary Johnson, just for the 2%. He outperformed and got 3%!
*This urban-rural split is a historical divide that has defined much of our nation's politics for the past 200 years. We've managed it thus far and we can continue to do so if we can see it clearly. It's NOT about biological identity - it's about class interests, lifestyle choices, and political priorities. We can find compromise on all these issues.