I got it wrong, but wasn’t alone
Richard Fulton
Wow, was I wrong. As a defense I might point out that I was not alone, most analysts thought that Hillary Clinton was a large bet to win the election. Why? Because they examined the data traditionally used to analyze election results.
This, however, was not a traditional election as it turns out.
I followed the data and now find that it was greatly misleading. Polling data in particular missed the boat on this one badly. This should be a cautionary tale for all future use of polling. People lie to pollsters, pollsters’ techniques are out of date, and polls do not pick up intensity of viewpoints.
Nevertheless, Donald Trump will be our next president. The irony is that only 38 percent of people in exit polls (I know, don’t trust them, but in this case the numbers are overwhelming) say he was qualified to be president. Half of American voters simply didn’t care.
Why did Trump win? Basically, he shrewdly tapped into the great divide in our politics that has been brewing over the past 30 years. The often heard theme of “take America back” resonated with alienated Americans.
Clearly, Trump’s support was anchored in working class, non-college educated white Americans — particularly men but also many women. They have seen a future of minority status in America and one increasingly mired in a nation of haves and have-nots.
They have been caught in historic changes symbolized by globalization, demanding increased international trade cooperation; the rise of terrorism complicating international relations; and economic dislocation, featuring the change to clean energy, technology based industries, and robotics all demanding increased job skills and industrial dislocation.
Caught in the middle of all this has been working class whites overcome by visceral fears of these trends that also include increased immigration, and international trade agreements.
By failing to deal effectively with these problems in the past three decades (even after 9-11 and the 2009 economic disaster) and the fears that they produced, American political institutions simply lost the confidence of at least half of the American people.
You simply cannot continue to nurture a politics of perpetual conflict with a denigration of compromise and common sense without consequences. And Donald Trump is that consequence.
He has been attractive because he disdains the political system he sees. He has no experience in government. Everyone, he emphasized in his campaign, has been lying to the American public: politicians, the mass media, big corporations, and the political elite. And who’s to say he was wrong.
“The system is rigged” resonated with many because it did indeed seem to be just that and in many ways besides the election. Though, for Trump it is rather ironic that he was prepared to perhaps even refuse to recognize the election’s outcome if he lost. But then, he won.
His campaign then was based on a total rejection of political correctness. If inclusion is the wave of the future, Trump attacked minority rights and Muslim inclusion, and the continuing march for complete inclusion of African Americans. He used crude language. He attacked his own party members, including war heroes.
All this very politically incorrect. And meat to his alienated followers.
“It’s time for us to come together” he said in his acceptance speech. But what one has torn asunder may be difficult to put back together.
Clinton was gracious in her concession. “We are all rooting for his success,” she said. Then added the next day: “We owe him an open mind and a chance to lead.” One wonders if these would have been Trump’s words had he lost.
