Many theses have been advanced to explain Hillary Clinton’s shocking loss to Donald Trump last week. In order to make sense of them, I have tried to gather what I think are most of the discrete ideas that are being discussed, with a sampling of the evidence for and occasionally against each.
In order for such an exercise to be more than navel-gazing, I firmly believe that it has to come with consideration of what each thesis implies for action; whenever you take a hit like this, assessing your possibilities for control and response is always going to help ground you.
“Part 1” is ambitious, but if this works out I may next look at some of the other questions floating around and what they imply for action (what if anything did the campaign and/or the DNC do wrong? What do we gain from exploring such counterfactuals?).
* Thesis: Trump supporters were motivated in large part by racism, xenophobia and sexism
Evidence:
Alternet link A person who agrees more with the question "How likely is it that many whites are unable to find a job because employers are hiring minorities instead?" was strongly more likely to back Trump; agreement that the word "violent" describes black people and Muslims is also predictive.
NYTimes exit polls Trump won voters whose top concern was immigration -- not necessarily racist on its face, except his support in an area is negatively correlated with the number of Mexican immigrants in the area -- www.naid.ucla.edu/... -- which means that Trump supporters citing immigration as a concern are doing so in a highly abstract way, more likely as a stand-in for racial concerns.
The uptick in violent racially motivated attacks occurring in the days after the election.
Trump support correlated well with indicators of racism such as Google searches containing racial slurs. twitter.com/...
Evidence against: Barack Obama won many of these groups in 2012. But was this simply because his opponent chose not to overtly signal racist beliefs, defusing the issue?
Implications: If this thesis is the case, the entirely rational first responses are anger and sadness, and both are in plentiful supply among authors who subscribe to this thesis: www.salon.com/..., www.slate.com/... , www.alternet.org/...; What can be done if this is the motivation? White people may be a shrinking majority, but as a minority group they will be the largest minority group in the country for a long time. We certainly aren't going to adopt racist policies to appeal to them. I think we have to remember that we have made racial progress, that when you call somebody a racist these days they're usually offended because they know it's a bad thing to be called a racist, that although we take steps backward our efforts, on the whole, are always forward. As a party, though, what is the response to racism in the body politic?
We must respond the way we always have to racism: by being examples of its absence, by supporting policies that make our economy fairer and our society more inclusive. We must response to authoritarian policing and prison proposals with demands for restorative justice and bringing opportunity into the midst of poverty. Waiting for the demographic trends is too long: in 20 years, the GOP will have had 20 years to pitch their message to Latinxs and other minorities, and they will not have sat idly by while we do nothing and propose nothing for the benefit of those and other communities. If we want to address concerns about immigration, we should listen to the people who actually deal with immigration: agribusinesses who want their workers legalized and regulated, immigrant families who want to be safe and secure in a country where they have the opportunity to work and contribute to our economy, and to not fear violence in the streets as a matter of daily life.
We should respond to white supremacists by tearing their ideas apart and encouraging people who want to celebrate their heritage to celebrate something meaningful, not mashed together for the purposes of excluding others: a heritage like Irishness or Scandinavianness or Germanness or any of the other well-defined cultural histories of families we now call white, identities not freighted with the historical sins and present threats of white arrogance.
* Thesis: Trump supporters were motivated in large part by ecomonic malaise in their communities, anti-trade policies, and anti-elite sentiment.
Evidence:
Bruegel study States with higher levels of income inequality were more likely to vote for Trump.
538 post Trump was stronger where the economy is weaker (albeit not necessarily due to import competition).
Evidence against:
NYTimes exit polls Clinton actually won voters with incomes below the median; Trump's supporters had incomes averaging above the American median. I'm not sure how that median holds if black and white support are considered separately (i.e., did Trump also lose lower-income white voters, or was Clinton voters' average income depressed by lower-income black voters?).
Implications: Many establishment Democrats would very much like this thesis to be true because the response is more policy-oriented: we simply have to formulate and adopt more policies that address the concerns of the working class, particularly the white working class. If you were one of the discontents of globalization before Trump, the victory of a protectionist is easy to hold up as vindication of your demand that the Democratic Party move away from free trade stances. More nuancedly, it suggests that a party in favor of free trade should do more to mitigate the losses suffered by those disadvantaged in trade, and to pay attention to those concerned about income inequality. Redistributionist tax policies, minimum wage hikes, fighting the power of large corporations, and infrastructure investments targeting rural areas would all be responses to this problem, as would a return to a vigorous fight for unionization, or for a replacement organization model.
Of course, the Democratic Party already supports many policies that try to help the working class: the ACA would be example one, except. . . for some reason (relentless GOP opposition in the media), Trump's voters don't like it. They like the rule against denying coverage for pre-existing conditions, which Trump has said he wants to keep -- www.ontheissues.org/... -- but, of course, this is impossible to keep without the rest. The real question is whether President Trump signs an ACA repeal that Congress passes. If we are active and loud enough to make it clear that (a) repeal of pre-existing condition coverage is deeply unpopular, and (b) that rule requires the rest of the ACA, then this might actually inspire President Trump to veto such a bill: a dramatic one-man stand against the elite of Washington for the little guy! On the other hand, if it's Congress that Trump wants to be popular with, don't expect a veto for the next four years.
An important point here is that the economy is the reason many Trump supporters claim: if they tell you they're concerned about something, the response "you shouldn't be concerned about that" isn't going to carry much weight. Concern isn't usually a rational thing. The story we have to tell a voter is important. See www.dailykos.com/... .
On the other hand, Charles Gaba makes what I think is an excellent point about racism and Trump support: if a Trump voter didn't vote for Trump for racist reasons, they still didn't think Trump's racism was a deal-breaker. www.dailykos.com/...
* Thesis: Trump supporters were galvanized by FBI Director Comey's intervention in the race
Evidence: www.bloomberg.com/...; "Trump’s analysts had detected this upsurge in the electorate even before FBI Director James Comey delivered his Oct. 28 letter to Congress announcing that he was reopening his investigation into Clinton’s e-mails. But the news of the investigation accelerated the shift of a largely hidden rural mass of voters toward Trump."
Politico Comey letter 1 "Clinton told participants that the campaign's data saw her numbers plunge after the first letter, then rebound. But the second letter, she said, awakened Donald Trump's voters."
Politico Comey Letter 2 "Voters who decided in the last week broke for Trump by a larger margin (42-47). These numbers were even more exaggerated in the key battleground states."
Implications: The two campaigns' takes on the matter are somewhat contradictory in timing, although one can merge the general gist. It may have affected numbers at the margins -- and the margins is what lost the election -- but I would be surprised if it was the major factor. There is also the point that there is little response that can be made to this, if so; should Comey be tried or somehow penalized? How? The FBI already had an institutional norm against politicization; apparently this was not strong enough. Is there a way in which we can strengthen it? With President Trump making appointments at the Justice Department and a GOP Congress approving them, it seems that vigilant oversight is the best response we will be able to muster.
* Thesis: After strong early voting results, Clinton supporters became complacent and turnout suffered in major support areas.
Evidence: www.politico.com/...; This thesis was advanced in a letter from the Clinton campaign: "After seeing record early vote numbers, there was a significant drop in Election Day turnout, particularly among Hillary supporters, and this was noticeable in both larger cities such as Philadelphia, Raleigh-Durham, Milwaukee, and Detroit and the suburbs surrounding these and other cities." I have not seen other evidence to this effect.
Implications: The obvious implication is to get out and vote, and to encourage your friends and neighbors to vote, and that institutionally, ground game is crucial and avoiding complacency is a must. Making it normal to vote every election as a civic duty would be something to push for here; policies to make it easier to vote, e.g. by mail or by making Election Day a federal holiday, would be in this line.
* Thesis: Republican-engineered voter suppression depressed Clinton's turnout differentially in crucial states.
DKOs, Wisconsin voter suppression Wisconsin may have seen voter turnout decline by about 1.5 times Hillary's margin of loss; that is to say, it's actually possible that voter suppression flipped Wisconsin.
Atlantic, NC black early voting North Carolina's 17 "rogue counties" had lowered turnout for early voting, just 72% of 2012 levels.
Implications: Wisconsin and North Carolina would (barely) not have been enough to put Hillary over the top; you’d have to squeeze another state out of it elsewhere. Add this to the pile of effects that maybe contributed generally. Still, it’s unquestionably immoral, might have mattered if it made the difference in another state, and in another year might have been more clearly the crucial difference. However much this contributed, the response is clear, motivated both morally and politically: fight voter suppression efforts everywhere they occur, as a matter of justice and racial equality. Fight them in press, fight them at the ballot box, and fight them in the courts, no matter how many judicial seats suddenly get filled when the Republicans get the Trump appointment machine greased down after gumming it up for years while Barack Obama was in office.
* Thesis: The media stopped discussing policy, made the campaign into govertainment, gave Trump too much free airtime, and normalized his outrageous statements.
Evidence: mediamatters.org/...; "during the Republican primary season alone, the networks spent 333 minutes focusing on Donald Trump. Yet for all of 2016, they have set aside just one-tenth of that for issue reporting."
Implications: Stop making stupid people famous. Consume the news you need from sources that give it to you straight. For every flashing, whooshing dramatic cut from studio to field reporter, turn off the TV for 30 seconds at the next ad break. News broadcasters are profit-making corporations and they will go where the eyeballs go. There isn't really anything else to say about this thesis.
IN SUMMARY: My take is that the racism argument has the strongest evidence as the largest component of Trump's support, but all the others contributed. The racism has to be fought on the narrative and the individual levels, while the other causes all have more direct policy avenues to fight.
At a first cut, then, what do I think are the most important avenues of action we should take, based on the above?
* Our policy priorities should include those that appeal to the working class voter and people in rural areas. Support union building; reinvigorate (first by citizen complaint and lawsuit, when possible administratively) the regulatory counterweight to monopoly power over consumers and laborers; espouse trade deals that provide widespread benefits and that acknowledge and mitigate the costs to those on the short end; tackle opioid addiction in rural communities, hopefully in bipartisan fashion.
* Show vigorous and enthusiastic support of many of the Berner priorities: $15 minimum wage, campaign finance reform, small-donor campaigns among others.
* Organize popular movements again. We may well soon have need of an antiwar movement, a pro-Roe movement, a reinvigorated civil rights movement, and a movement to defend the EPA and the national parks; others can be organized as well. What President Trump sees as very unpopular may cue him to lean away.
* Stop depending on a Presidency surrounded by a GOP Congress, GOP governors, and GOP state legislatures. Activate locally! Obama's popularity never transferred; he brought out voters for the personal first he embodied but never translated this to popularity for other Democratic candidates. We're shorter on governors and state legislators than we were when he entered office (as Presidents often are; I'm not certain whether this effect was larger than usual under the Obama presidency). Relying on the President surrounded by the GOP at every level means when we lost this one big election we have lost it all for years. It's time to power our way past gerrymandered Congressional districts and take back governorships (which affect district drawing in many states) and state legislatures, which affect people's lives directly.
* Show people that politics is more than donating and voting every two or four years. The Democratic Party in your community should be listening to people's local concerns and doing what it can to address them. Down the road from me this red, red year in this isolated part of rural, Upper Peninsula Michigan, a small town voted to stop paying a tax that supported its membership in the local library. Next month I'm going to my local Dem meeting and proposing that we run small, weekly ads in the local paper saying that residents of that town who want to use the library can call up a group of volunteers in member towns that will meet them at the library and check out a few books on their card. And at the bottom of the ad it will say, in small type, "Organized by the Houghton County Democratic Party for the service of our citizens." Maybe it will cost too much for the party's budget and be voted down. Maybe the library will disapprove of the arrangement. But it's a thing, and I'm going to try it.