I think this post by Bob Lefsetz on his blog, the day after Trump was elected, nails it. Hillary Clinton was a disastrous choice by the DNC. Well worth a read:
You can’t say we weren’t warned.
He defeated all his Republican challengers. Brexit told us that the elites were out of touch with the rank and file. The disconnect is not only about economics, but attitudes, education, identity…
That’s right, you went to a good college and pulled yourself up by your bootstraps and…
Everybody else was left behind, and they don’t like it.
The left wing said it was about racism. Pure and simple. That Trump had awakened all the bigoted nutjobs…
But you can’t win with the bigots only. He defeated Hillary fair and square. How did the intelligentsia get it so WRONG?
First, the mainstream press thought people were listening to it. To these holier-than-thou talking heads who are paid millions to bloviate in a world where we get our news from the internet, not television… If you’re still watching TV for the answers, you ain’t got a clue. How did I know Trump was gonna win? Because early in the evening Nate Silver had him ahead. Said his odds were better than fifty percent. The same Nate Silver the “New York Times” let go, because the sports reporters didn’t want to cede turf. If you watched the “Times” odds for the last six months the Donald had no chance, Hillary had it locked up.
But she didn’t.
Not that Nate Silver is infallible. He missed the Trump phenomenon completely. He thought when the other Republican candidates started dropping out there’d be a rally around Rubio or another RNC-approved candidate. But that never happened. Nate said Trump’s appeal had a ceiling. That turned out to be untrue.
But at least Silver had the balls to admit he was wrong, to stand up to the “Huffington Post,” which said Hillary had a lock on the election, when it questioned Nate’s methods.
There are two lessons for you right there. Be willing to change and also be willing to stand up for what you believe in. And in this groupthink world we live in that’s very rare.
That was part of Trump’s appeal. He refused to play by the rules. He said racist stuff, sexist stuff, he committed faux pas after faux pas, he broke taboos. But what the inside the Beltway people and the mainstream media didn’t realize was that you hear this stuff all the time online, hatred rules, it’s a free-for-all with no decorum. So, people were not offended, they brushed these misdemeanors right off.
But Hillary was a bad candidate! And there was the Comey letter!
If you’re depending on those excuses to explain the Democratic loss you’re missing the point. This was not the usual race, everything the pols said counted did not. Trump had little infrastructure, almost no get out the vote effort, yet he won anyway.
Could Bernie have defeated Donald?
Maybe. But the same press that made fun of Occupy Wall Street refused to take Sanders seriously. The same cabal that let the Wall Street rapists not only escape scot-free, but triumph once again. That’s right, in the financial world it’s morning in America.
Maybe not tomorrow, when the markets tank, but…
The conundrum is that Trump’s victory will only make things better for the wealthy. Kind of like the old days, when Republicans ran against gay marriage so they could lower their taxes. But the Republicans own the narrative. And the narrative is that government is a controlling wastrel which bleeds money and that Hillary Clinton is a crook.
And the Democratic response?
Crickets.
Bill O’Reilly is accused of sexual harassment and he fights back, Fox News rallies the troops.
Democrats are accused of misdeeds and they become crybabies.
But it’s not so much that Clinton was a victim of misdeeds, rather she was out of touch with the public. People need hope. Without platitudes. “Stronger Together”? If that resonates with you, you must be part of Hill’s inner circle.
And Hill’s inner circle ran a traditional campaign, by the book. Like a record industry banking on resuscitating the CD, never mind the nitwits invested in vinyl. Times change, and you must too. The public embraced streaming, listens on YouTube and Spotify and Apple Music dwarf those on disc or file. But you can’t convince the old guard, no way.
So how do we get out of this mess?
First and foremost we’re headed for bad times. Trump is inexperienced and expertise is necessary to run any enterprise, just ask Jesse Ventura or Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose reigns were ineffective.
But they were both media stars.
Trump is a media star, anointed by television. In a world where celebrity is everything. Kim Kardashian is a talentless doofus, but she’s got more influence than anybody in Congress, she’s laughing all the way to the bank, it’s not like this wasn’t obvious.
And what’s obvious is we have to go back to sixties values.
I know, I know, that sounds insane on this day, but the truth is we have to help our brother, we’re all in it together. We’ve got to give the poor and disadvantaged a better education and a leg up, a helping hand.
Doubt me?
Then explain the phenomenon of Purdue Pharma. Which single-handedly created the heroin epidemic by stating that its product OxyContin was not addictive. That’s right, you start on Oxy and when you can’t afford it you move on to cheaper heroin. Meanwhile, Purdue got rich.
That’s the problem. The liberals got rich. They became fat cats. They used to care about the working man, now they want nothing to do with him. Sure, Dems may dominate Silicon Valley, creating the products that those in the red states utilize, but they want nothing to do with their users. Not only is there no tech support, these guys, and it is mostly guys, fly private and live in an alternative universe, and you think the underclass doesn’t know?
The underclass knows you can’t afford rent even if you do graduate from college, you’re living with your parents.
The underclass knows that the fortunate have contempt for them.
So the underclass decided to give the fortunate the middle finger.
First they came for your union, then they came for your welfare, are you really gonna believe in the spineless Democrats who refused to stand up for you?
I don’t think so.
Don’t get wrapped up in the cognitive dissonance. How these same people will be worse under a Republican regime, left to forage on their own. Citizens in burgs benefiting from European Union expenditures voted for Brexit, because they didn’t like being told what to do, they’d lost their identity, they wanted to reclaim it.
You’ve lost your job, you can’t find another one that feeds your family and you’re gonna believe the most inauthentic person alive is gonna help you out? That’s right, the Clintons triangulate, they do what’s expedient in a world that runs on instinct. You go with your gut, not the rulebook.
Donald Trump went with his gut, he burned the rulebook, and he’s having the last laugh.
The joke may be on us, but he’s now our President, and with a Republican Congress he’s gonna dismantle Obamacare and Dodd-Frank and people will be worse off. But they wanted change. They’re hurting. They’re open to anything new. Even a charlatan preaching false hope.
But if you want to be angry tonight, be angry at yourself. For drinking the media kool-aid. These are the newspapers we’ve got to save? Not only did they get it wrong, they’re operating in an echo chamber, they’re out of touch, maybe a new model is necessary. Be angry at yourself for not taking a stand against narcissism, for taking your piece of the pie and not giving back, for living on the fruits of the system.
Like musicians, whose goal is to sell out. One song of truth can have more power than any corporation. But no, these soulless “artists” would rather get paid. Everybody’s looking to get paid.
Don’t try to explain this by traditional metrics.
And even though I’m giving Nate Silver some credit, the truth is data did not foresee this. We thought everything could be mechanized, that 0’s and 1’s would save the world, when the truth is it comes down to people, and emotions, and no machine can compete.
Facebook was biased, Google is controlling what we know and see…
Well, if that’s true, how come these left-leaning organizations couldn’t elect Hillary?
No, the truth is we can never know what’s inside another human being, what they feel.
But we can see that most of America was disgruntled with the status quo, it wanted a reset, and it got it.
I can’t even contemplate tomorrow.
But I can see the seeds of discontent. The yuppie movement. The BMWification of the upper middle class. The flaunting of wealth. The separation of them from us.
We’re all just people folks.
One person, one vote.
And the people have spoken.
They want Trump.
