A popular Qt3 talking point over the last four years has been Hillary Clinton’s failure(s) in sealing the deal in 2016. We’ve uncovered many great truths, enlightened great numbers of readers, and have each come away as better people for the many, many discussions on the topic.
But it’s one thing for a candidate to lose a bid for election, and whole other ball of wax for an incumbent to totally blow it during a reelection. So what do Trump’s failures on this front boil down to? A general feeling of Trump fatigue? Bad luck? Campaign missteps?
Are there several huge reasons, or did his loss mostly come down something much more basic?
Feel free to speculate, surmise, and speak with all the armchair authority you can muster.
Trump reflects something very wrong with the Republican party. What is it? A lot of people think racism, sexism, regionalism, religiousity? All of these are true - but the main one is informational capture by conservative media, i think.
Trump had higher turnout for him then before, and the Democrats lost House seats. Trump gained support with minorities, incredibly.
The annoyingly marginal nature of the Electoral College means very specific regional effects have a very outsized influence. The Comey letter, ect. It might well be Trump lost because of a handful of statewide, specific influences.
Understanding why Trump lost isn’t going to be something simple like “tax policy” or whatever. It’s going to be something about the divisize, polarized nature of American politics on a statewide level. The fact that Trump drove more votes to the Republicans than before is a bad sign for the health of the democratic process, not least of which reasons are making any kind of policy feedback possible almost impossible. It’s true that the economy improved under Trump, but much of that was driven by massive financial by the deficit and basically 0% interest rates. But there’s basically no way to get Republican voters to see the connection between these two things.
My feeling is that covid was the factor that put it over the top. I can’t remember where I read this, Taibbi maybe, but according to exit polls (which are even less useful this year than in the past, so a grain of salt is necessary here) the covid response was the top issue for something like 41% of voters, and they went for Biden 3 to 1, I believe. The economy was a distant second at 28% of voters’ top concern, and these people predictably went for Trump. I think those numbers would be flipped and he might have won if he hadn’t fucked things up so badly.
This feels to me like primarily a turn-out election. Republicans increased their turn out, as I understand it. Democrats increased theirs by much more (and also brought third-party strayers back home).
It may be that issues and even Trump’s unfavorability and even (astonishingly) COVID didn’t change too many people’s minds. Bad policy and negative optics don’t override our partisan preferences and perception of the other party. Passion to stop the other side brought previously apathetic voters out. The lay of the land in the battleground states favored an energized Democratic party, even with Republicans being energized as well.
I have no numbers to support my conjectures, so tear them apart.
I think that without Covid, Trump is re-elected. All the fundamentals were on his side — decent economy, low unemployment, a strong base and a somewhat defeated opposition. But along came Covid and a lot of the population discovered that he was quite happy to leave them in misery, or even actually kill them, without really a second thought. That’s gonna drive a lot of opposition turnout.
The Democrats helped their own cause by nominating the right candidate. I don’t think nominations are calculated, rational decisions as much as they are accidents, so it was somewhat of a happy accident. But they played to his strengths and ran a good, smart campaign.
I don’t know if that’s fair. I think the center-left consciously did come together, realizing that it was critical that we choose someone that had the best chance of winning the election.
I know I’m not alone in saying that Biden was not my favored candidate, but I was very glad when Klobuchar and Buttigieg dropped out to clear a lane for Biden, and O’Rourke further reinforced things by endorsing him.
I’m not opposed to say an Elizabeth Warren Presidency (and I would have been proud to call her my President), but any Democrat in the White House is better than a Republican (and especially a Trump style Republican).
I think a large part of the Democratic electorate did make a rational calculation to back Biden as the most electable and of the available candidates the one that was easiest to actually get a compromise with everyone agreeing to support.
Also I’ve said it before, but big kudos to the left wing for really swinging their wing of the party behind Biden and everyone across the board (“Country of Party Republicans” included) for bringing it home.
Unfortunately I got to agree with your assessment there.
I don’t know that I can agree with that. When Biden surged in the primaries, it felt very much like Democratic primary voters paused, took stock and went “Who in this field can actually beat this misogynistic, racist ass motherfucker in this misogynistic, racist ass country.”.
Agree, and I didn’t mean to minimize the effort by the other candidates and party leaders. I was talking about voters, who are mostly just making a decision of their own, in the absence of a master plan shared with all the other voters. The coalesced on Biden, but I don’t think you could have predicted that, and — at least at the start — no one was following a master plan to do that.
One of the many disturbing things that this all uncovered is that Trump went hard to just reinforcing his racist base with no attempt at all to move to the middle and he still almost won.
Biden tried hard to let both the left and the center know that he was their candidate, yet we almost lost.
There are a lot more proudly racist scumbags (along with those that are more than happy to tolerate them) in this country than I would have thought possible. It’s just depressing.
That’s a really good point @Perky_Goth. It’s astonishing (and depressing) how many things had to come together to overcome Trump.
Let’s hope all of those who registered stay active. I’m a bit worried that if Biden can’t bring some real change, they’ll get disheartened. Change is slow, painful, but I still believe we’re slowly grinding forward – at a two steps forward, one step back pace. But it’s hard to take heart when it’s going so slowly and painfully.
I was wondering if the tsunami of unprecedented endorsements from ex-republicans, newspapers, etc. made any difference. I guess maybe, but I kind of fear that anybody who was going to vote for Trump fully gave 0 shits about rule of law.
