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2016 United States presidential election

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—American Founding Father Samuel AdamsWikipedia, 12 February 1779.[2]
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The 2016 United States Presidential Election took place on November 8, 2016, pitting Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton against Republican Party candidate Donald Trump. After an extremely negative, mud-slinging campaign from both sides,[3] Trump shockingly came out victorious by winning 306 votes in the Electoral College despite heavily losing the popular vote.[4] By appealing to dissatisfied voters in the Rust Belt who were being hammered by rising joblessness and poverty, Trump narrowly won the longtime Democratic stronghold states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan while handily winning the longtime swing states of Iowa and Ohio.[5] Clinton, on the other hand, lost ground in rural areas compared to her predecessor Barack Obama in 2012 while turnout for Democrats significantly dropped in critical urban areas.[6] Trump's victory was the fifth time a candidate lost the popular vote but won the Electoral College.[7] This election was also the first in recorded history where both major candidates had negative popularity in the polls.[8]

From start to finish, 2016 was a chaotic election. Trump's successful attempt to seize control of the Republican Party as a populist outsider candidate cause uproar from within the party and a prolonged battle in the primary season.[9] Over on the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders, a progressive senator from Vermont, staged his own populist outsider attempt to win the party nomination before being stonewalled by the Democratic establishment.[10]

As accusations of a rigged primary mounted,[11] Hillary also faced an American public that increasingly viewed her as being untrustworthy and corrupt.[12] Her campaign dismissed a scandal concerning Clinton's mishandling of classified emails, while many voters viewed it as evidence that Clinton saw herself as a political elite to whom rules did not apply.[13] Clinton's campaign was also dragged down by her own self-entitlement,[14] her lack of charisma and authenticity,[15][16] and her failure to break away from the popular perception that she was a status quo establishment candidate during a time where much of the country was struggling with decreasing living standards and a sluggish economy.[17] The last nail in the coffin for Clinton's presidential aspirations came in the form of an FBI announcement 11 days before the election that it had discovered "pertinent" information in the ongoing investigation into Clinton's emails—just in time for early voting to start.[18] The investigation wrapped up with no evidence of wrongdoing by Clinton, but only two days after the election took place.[19] Hillary has been pissed about this ever since, by the way.[20]

Trump, meanwhile, ran a racist[21][22] and xenophobic[23] campaign based on building a wall across the southern border and somehow getting Mexico to pay for it,[24] banning Muslim refugees and immigrants from entering the United States,[25] opposition to globalization and free trade,[26] and vague condemnations of "political correctness."[27] His campaign—along with the entire Republican Party—was thrown into bedlam in October[28] after multiple audio examples surfaced of Trump crudely demeaning women and discussing sexual assaults he had allegedly committed: "They let you do it. You can do anything. Grab 'em by the pussy."[29] Unfortunately, this was not enough to halt Trump's momentum or prevent his victory in the election.

The atmosphere of chaos persisted during and after election night. While polls seemingly predicted that Hillary had a 90% chance to win, Trump unexpectedly overperformed the polls in many key states.[30] During the official voting of the Electoral College in December, protests swept the nation[31] while seven faithless electors broke away from both candidates. Clinton lost three votes to Colin Powell, one to Faith Spotted Eagle, and one to Bernie Sanders, while Trump lost two votes to John KasichWikipedia and Ron Paul.[32] For years afterwards, allegations swirled that Russia had launched a major effort to interfere in the election on behalf of Trump and that Trump's campaign directly coordinated with the Russians—these allegations were confirmed by a Senate report in 2020.[33]

All in all, a pretty wild election. It's really quite a shame, then, that the next two were even crazier.

Background[edit]

Voter suppression[edit]

Lots of minorities were effectively banned from the polls. In 2013, the Roberts Court struck down a crucial part of the Voting Rights Act, which mandated the DOJ to review changes in states with a history of voter discrimination (i.e., the entire South), to make sure they don't disproportionately affect people of color (and poor whites). This freed up Republicans to prevent as many Democrats from voting as possible.[34] Several hundred polling places were closed in these states, disproportionately in areas with non-white residents, and many had to wait hours in line to cast a vote—if they bothered to show up at all.[35] Voter ID laws, which disproportionately affect people who lack time to register for them (e.g., poor people), also played a role.[36]

Not to be outdone, Governor Rick Scott (R-FL) announced they wouldn't reschedule the deadline for voter registration, even after a hurricane swept the state just days prior. A federal judge overruled him.[37]

Party nominations[edit]

Donald Trump announces that he will run for president at Trump Tower in New York, June 16, 2015.
“”Contented countries don’t produce politicians like Trump. For many years now, a majority of Americans have told pollsters that they believe the nation is on the wrong track. A decade and a half marked by foreign wars, terrorist threats, recession, slow growth, political gridlock, culture wars, and (for many voters) declining incomes have further undermined faith in the political system, creating space for insurgent candidates like Trump and Bernie Sanders.
—John CassidyWikipedia, The New Yorker, 4 May 2016.[38]

The Republicans[edit]

See the main article on this topic: 2016 Republican Party presidential nomination

The 2016 Republican presidential primaries had the greatest number of candidates running at the same time in the party's history,[39] reflecting the discord and discontent into which the party had been thrown following Mitt Romney's major loss to incumbent president Barack Obama. Major contenders were extremist Texas senator Ted Cruz, disliked by his colleagues but beloved by Tea Party conservatives for being an uncooperative and unproductive obstructionist in Congress,[40] the safe and moderate Ohio governor John Kasich, who had no chance at victory for those reasons,[41] Florida senator Marco Rubio, also safe and well-liked[42] and possessing no chance at victory because of those qualities,[43] and un-charismatic former Florida governor Jeb Bush, whose only claim to fame was being the brother of the disgraced George W. Bush.[44] A host of minor candidates dropped out before the voting started due to abysmal polls (Bobby Jindal, Rick Perry, Scott Walker, etc) while others just totally faceplanted with humiliatingly small vote totals as the states started voting (Lindsey GrahamWikipedia, George PatakiWikipedia, Rick Santorum, Rand Paul, etc).[45]

States won by each candidate.
  Donald Trump
  Ted Cruz
  Marco Rubio
  John Kasich
  Uncommitted

The big name, of course, was Donald Trump. On 14 June 2015, Trump came down the elevator to the lobby of Trump Tower in New York City to deliver a meandering 45-minute speech in which he declared the "American dream" to be "dead" before making his iconic promise to "Make America Great Again."[46] With the benefit of hindsight and having just reviewed the other candidates in the race, it now seems pretty inevitable that Trump was going to prevail. Aided by support from far-right scumbag media figures like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, Trump presented himself as an alternative to the failed Republican establishment.[38] His skills at demagoguery and his willingness to crassly insult his opponents helped him tap into the growing fury of the Republican voter base towards professional politicians, a stagnant economy, and the mere existence of President Obama.[38] He turned undocumented immigration into the central issue of the Republican nomination by insulting Mexico and Mexican-Americans while promising to order a wall built along the southern border,[47] differentiating himself from the other Republican politicians with an easy-to-grasp policy and his willingness to embrace the xenophobia of the Republican base.[38]

The Republican primaries saw their highest voter turnout since 1980.[48] The disunited field of Republican candidates stood no chance against the popular enthusiasm behind Trump, and he won early contests in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada.[49] Ted Cruz and John Kasich belatedly teamed up to halt Trump's momentum, but it was far too little and far too late.[50] Kasich, Cruz, and the other Republicans were swamped by the massive voter turnout from Republicans inspired by Trump's candidacy.[51]

Trump's victory was reflected in his receiving an overwhelming 1,441 delegates at the Republican National Convention, whereas his closest competitor Ted Cruz only got 551.[52] This was the first time, but far from the last, in which Trump's willingness to embrace the ugly side of America boosted him to an election victory. It was clear that Trump had successfully tapped into something, and that said something wasn't good.

  • The crowded GOP primary field during the October 2015 debates.

  • Trump emerges from his plane before a rally in Arizona, December 2015.

  • Trump poses with a taco bowl in May 2016.

The Democrats[edit]

States won by each candidate.
  Hillary Clinton
  Bernie Sanders
See the main article on this topic: 2016 Democratic Party presidential nomination
“” At a time when millions of American workers have seen declines in their incomes and are working longer hours for lower wages, the wealth of the billionaire class is soaring in a way that few can imagine. If you can believe it, between 2013 and 2015, the 14 wealthiest individuals in the country saw their net worth increase by over $157 billion dollars. We live in the one of the wealthiest countries on earth, yet children go hungry, veterans sleep out on the streets and senior citizens cannot afford their prescription drugs. This is what a rigged economic system looks like.
—Bernie Sanders, June 2015.[53]

Former senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was the first candidate to announce that she was running for the Democratic nomination.[54] She had previously sought her party's nomination in 2008, but she lost due to her ties to the unpopular Iraq War and a groundswell of grassroots support for Barack Obama.[55] That's foreshadowing, by the way.

Although Clinton was considered the frontrunner from the get-go, Vermont senator (and self-described democratic socialist) Bernie Sanders jumped into the race with a platform advocating for universal healthcare and lambasting longstanding economic inequality.[56] His anti-establishment campaign won him major support from voters under 30 years old,[57] and powered his momentum against Clinton to the point where the press started talking about "the Summer of Bernie."[58] Sanders attacked Clinton for taking money from Super-PACs while both candidates were pledging support for campaign finance reform,[59] but his campaign wasn't completely the "underdog" bid he described it as. Riding a wave of small dollar donations, Sanders impressively outspent Clinton by 50% across many states in early 2016.[60]

After almost tying Clinton in the Iowa caucus, Sanders easily won the New Hampshire primary, lending credibility and momentum to his outsider campaign.[61] He ultimately fell short with Black, Hispanic, and older voters as his coalition was primarily composed of white and young people.[62] As a result, Sanders fell behind on pledged delegates on Super Tuesday as Southern states with high numbers of Black Democrats all fell in behind Clinton.[63] Worse, the Democratic Party establishment locked ranks behind Clinton and funneled more money into her campaign as the primaries went on, while Democrat-supporting pundits wrote hit pieces against Sanders.[64][65][66] Party staffers even decided to highlight the fact that Bernie wasn't a Christian right before key Bible Belt states went to vote.[67]

There were a few moments of accord as well. During a debate in October 2015, Sanders and Clinton laughed together after Sanders told her, "The American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails!"[68]

The Sanders insurgency did have an impact on the race. In response to his popularity, Clinton adopted some of his language attacking income inequality and abruptly decided to oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal that she had spent previous years pushing.[69] The Democratic primary season also contained the first great warning sign of events to come. While polls showed Clinton ahead by 21% in Michigan, Bernie actually went on to win it by 1.5%—"among the greatest polling errors in primary history," as Nate Silver put it.[70] This was the first big warning that Clinton was in real trouble in the Rust Belt. Unfortunately, that warning was ignored.

With the help of the controversial superdelegates,[71] Hillary locked up the Democratic nomination at the Democratic National Convention in July.[72]

  • Hillary Clinton speaks to the press in Iowa, April 2015.

  • Sanders and Clinton on the debate stage, November 2015.

  • Bernie Sanders addresses supporters in Alabama, January 2016.

  • Clinton at the 2016 Democratic National Convention.

The real winner of the primaries: Populism[edit]

“”Trump has positioned himself as the anti-elite candidate, which to some voters has made him more or less immune to criticism from the mainstream parties or the mainstream media. When the press slams him for saying shocking (and often untrue) things, that only heightens the us vs. them dynamic... The fact that Trump been so singularly successful perhaps has less to do with him and more to do with this political moment. From the Tea Party surge in 2010 to the present you can trace an arc of mounting impatience among voters in part of the GOP. That pent-up frustration may be finding its moment — and its voice — right now, in Donald Trump.
—Jeff Guo, The Washington Post, 12 December 2015.[73]

Sanders and Trump showed that if you convince the people you're out to take on the system, you can get a lot further than your actual political acumen would otherwise take you. Trump never had a coherent plan, but it's not like anybody who won this election could have gotten very much through a deadlocked Congress. In terms of policy, Trump and Sanders were on the opposite ends, but very similar in campaigning and tactics.[74]

They both made economically populist appeals to the working class and railed against the political establishment.[75][76][77][78][79] They both sold themselves as anti-"insider".[80][81] Both claimed to be a victim of the media.[82] They both presented themselves as the only man who can clean up D.C. and serve the American people. They both presented their opponents as stooges/sell-outs.[83][84][85] They both had vociferous and loyal supporters.

Campaign issues[edit]

Trump with his supporters at a rally in Arizona.

Immigration and the border wall[edit]

“”When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best.... They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.
—The infamous quote from Trump's candidacy announcement in Trump Tower.[86]

From the earliest moments of the race, Trump successfully made undocumented immigration a central topic of discussion during this election cycle. He presented himself as an immigration hawk who would build a wall to stop Mexican "rapists" and "criminals" from illegally entering the United States, and he appeared at a 2015 rally in Arizona with Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was known for his authoritarian measures against both crime and undocumented immigrants.[87] Trump also attacked other Republican primary candidates as being too soft on immigration[88][89] and raged when they tried to co-opt his wall idea.[90] During the primaries, Trump was called for politicizing and sensationalizing the death of a woman who was murdered by an illegal immigrant—by her brother, no less.[91]

His claim that he would make Mexico "pay for it" was very light on details until Trump came up with a half-baked plan to use the PATRIOT Act to cut off remittance payments to Mexico from Mexican-Americans.[92] This, of course, ended up being completely infeasible, and Trump started insisting after he won the election that he never said Mexico would pay for the wall "with a check."[93]

Nonetheless, Trump's hardline anti-immigration platform was an effective way to motivate the Republican base; for much of the Twenty-First Century, partisan opinions on undocumented immigration had been sharply diverging.[94] Views on why the backlash started among the Republican base range from the voters being more worried about competition for jobs post-Great Recession to the idea that Republican voters just always had harsher views against immigration than the party's politicians had realized.[95]

It should also be noted that Republicans have traditionally avoided addressing those who employ illegal immigrants and gone after the employees.[96] Going after employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers actually ended up being a Clinton idea,[97] while Bush and Rubio's idea for mandatory E-Verify was laughed out of the debates.[98]

Globalization and free trade[edit]

Trump speaks to supporters at a scrap metal facility near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in June 2016.

Somehow sensing an opportunity to expand the Republican Party's electoral appeal in the Rust Belt, Trump co-opted leftist arguments against globalization and free trade to present himself as a defender of blue-collar workers.[99] He did so by promising to rip up the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which was extraordinarily unpopular with Rust Belt auto-industry workers, for example.[100] Trump called NAFTA "the worst trade deal in history," and blamed Mexico's role in the trade agreement for the loss of 800,000 jobs from the Rust Belt.[101] He even went as far as to publicly pledge to stop eating Oreo cookies to protest the Nabisco company's transfer of Oreo production from Chicago to Mexico.[102]

The underlying causes behind the Rust Belt's decline were quite a bit more complex than that,[103] and American manufacturing had and has little chance of returning to the heights of decades past, but Trump's attacks on free trade resonated strongly with Rust Belt voters. The vitriol Trump launched at the concept of globalization proved extremely successful at winning over disaffected Democrats in the region who felt left behind by the Obama administration's commitment to free trade agreements.[104] For example, free trade was extremely unpopular in Ohio, where it was blamed for years of manufacturing job losses.[105]

China was another particular target of Trump's ire. He (truthfully) said that China was manipulating its currency and engaging in unfair labor practices to gain an edge over American manufacturing, and he went on to say, "We can't continue to allow China to rape our country, and that's what we're doing."[106] Trump also attacked Clinton for supporting the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, which was a very flawed trade agreement that would have reduced various regulations and expanded free trade between the United States, Mexico, and various countries in Asia.[107]

Although Clinton backed away from supporting TPP, Trump cynically said "She will betray you again."[108] His attacks on Clinton on the issue echoes Bernie Sanders' criticisms towards her during the Democratic primaries.[109]

Terrorism and the Muslim ban[edit]

Clinton supporters in New Hampshire, August 2016.

The 2016 election took place during the peak of DAESH, a terrorist organization that had seized control of large tracts of territory in Iraq and Syria. By July 2016, Pew Research found in a poll that terrorism was the second-highest prioritized issue for voters likely to participate in the election.[110] In the 12 months leading up to the election, Trump tweeted about "radical Islamic terrorism" almost twice as often as he did about immigration and the border.[111]

Clinton struggled to outline a strategy against DAESH due to the 57% public disapproval of how Obama handled the situation, and she had the added challenge of balancing the Democratic base's distaste for foreign wars with the popular expectation for a strong response.[112] Noting the difficulty in forming a coherent Democratic campaign message on DAESH, Clinton instead focused on attacking Trump's views.[113] To be fair, Trump's proposals were quite abhorrent.

Trump responded to the DAESH crisis with a call for "a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on," and he then endorsed the creation of a database to register Muslims living in the United States.[114] He also said his administration would "strongly consider" forcibly closing down mosques.[115] In terms of dealing with the terrorist group itself, Trump said the US should "take out their families,"[116] and pledged to "quickly and decisively bomb the hell out of ISIS."[117] Trump even was as far as to praise Saddam Hussein for his apparent skill at killing Islamic terrorists: "He killed terrorists. He did that so good. They didn’t read them the rights. They didn’t talk. They were terrorists."[118]

Healthcare[edit]

American politics in the late 2010's, everybody.

Hillary was already bleeding badly on the issue of healthcare upon entering the general election campaign against Trump. During the primaries, Clinton lambasted Sanders' plan for universal healthcare as being costly and unrealistic, thereby frustrating and alienating a large portion of the Democratic base.[119] For context, a Kaiser Health poll from December 2015 found that an astonishing 81% of Democrats at least somewhat supported the concept of universal healthcare (52% were strong supporters) while only 7% of Democrats reported strong opposition to the idea.[120] Clinton instead proposed marginal and uninspiring improvements to the Affordable Care Act and Medicare.[121][122]

In contrast, Trump said the Affordable Care Act was a "disaster" and issued a vague promise to repeal the law and replace it with "the finest health care plan there is."[121] What scant details he offered were just standard Republican talking-points.[121] Importantly, while Clinton staked out a position against universal healthcare that only 7% of Democrats supported, Trump's repeal-and-replace proposal appealed to the over 52% of Republicans who wanted the law repealed and hedged bets with the 24% of Republicans who wanted the healthcare plan scaled back rather than eliminated.[123] Trump's dumbass talking points ended up being a stronger appeal to his own base than Hillary's half-hearted reform proposals.

Also, a huge number of Americans got a big letter one week before the general election showing their health care costs increasing due to the self-inflicted October surprise of an Obamacare rate hike.[124] Nice one!

Political correctness[edit]

Trump supporters in South Carolina, February 2016.

The 2016 election also took place during a broad cultural backlash against the right-wing's much-derided concept of "political correctness"; a study by the London School of Economics during the election found that moderate (and even left-wing) voters were less likely to say they supported Clinton if they had been reminded about the political correctness debate just prior to the question.[125][126] An October 2015 poll cited by PBS News found that two-thirds of Americans (and 81% of Republicans) somehow saw political correctness as a "big problem" for the country.[127]

Trump invested a great deal of time and effort into making political correctness an issue in the campaign, exemplified by his attacks on Obama for not using the term "radical Islamic terrorism" to describe current events.[128] He proceeded to harp on the topic throughout the campaign with statements like, "[T]his political correctness is just absolutely killing us as a country. You can’t say anything. Anything you say today, they’ll find a reason why it’s not good."[129]

As dumb as the anti-PC language might seem, it actually served a critical role in rendering Trump effectively immune to criticism from Clinton or the press. The argument re-contextualized Trump's bullying and vile behavior as being expressions of defiance against the political establishment and as part of a crusade to defend free speech.[130] A lot of voters ended up buying it. The Washington Post noted that Trump supporters in polls and focus groups consistently said they liked him because "he says the things they feel they can't say."[73] A study by the RAND Corporation also found that voters who affirmed the statement, "people like me don't have any say about what the government does," were 86.5 percent more likely to back Trump.[131] In other words, a general feeling of being unheard and not prioritized by politicians was a better predictor of Trump support than many other commonly-cited factors such as age, race, college attainment, income, or attitudes towards Muslims or undocumented immigrants.

Smaller issues[edit]

  • The Supreme Court: Trump won a lot of support from angry conservatives by promising to appoint conservative (and especially anti-abortion) judges to the Supreme Court.[132][133]
  • Climate change and green energy: Saying "Because we're going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business, right, Tim?" in the middle of coal country is actually all the media's fault![134][135] (The context behind that quote is not that great, really.)[136][137]
  • Net Neutrality: Ike attacked the military. Nixon opened China. Reagan fucked the elderly. Bush turned Texas brown. Trump, the first meme President: NET NEUTRALITY MUST GO![138]
  • Campaign finance and Citizens United: In exchange for Bernie's endorsement, Hillary pledged to introduce an amendment to overturn Citizens United in her first 30 days as President.[139] First of all, the lion's share of her big-money donations came from corporations; approximately 27% of it is dark money coming through SuperPACs. This is not the profile of a person who was ever going to turn off the spigot.

The campaign trail[edit]

Democratic Party (United States)
2016 Democratic Party ticket
Hillary Clinton Tim Kaine
for President for Vice President
Hillary Clinton Arizona 2016 .jpg
Tim Kaine November 2016.jpg
Secretary of StateWikipedia, (until 2013) former United States Senator from New York United States Senator from Virginia
Clinton Kaine.svg

The Clinton campaign: status quo centrism wasn't a winning message[edit]

Clinton had a war chest of $1.2 billion (compared to Trump's $600 million),[140] had virtually the entire political establishment behind her,[141] and she still lost the walking dumpster fire that is Donald Trump. The ubiquitous question being asked for months afterward: how the fuck?

The inevitable answer: Clinton ran an arrogant and complacent campaign that had no focus on any substantial message. Take Michigan, for example. During the primaries, her supporters in the state such as Representative Debbie DingellWikipedia were sounding the alarm bells that labor unions were turning against Clinton due her stance on free trade, and then Bernie Sanders won the state in a massive upset.[142] Instead of learning the proper lesson from this, her campaign staffers came to the strange conclusion that Clinton's campaigning in the state amounted to "poking the sleeping bear of the white working class" and that she should campaign less in Michigan.[142] When she did belatedly campaign in the state, she avoided the topic of trade and earned criticism from local press because of it.[142] Her campaign's over-reliance on "data analytics" rather than polling or on-the-ground intelligence led her to mistakenly believe that the Democratic base was enthusiastic about her and that the Rust Belt states were solidly in her camp and therefore did not need much effort.[143] Her campaign's complacency left local Rust Belt Democrats in the lurch.[144] These local organizations, many of which relied on volunteers, understood the way the wind was blowing and tried to hastily cobble together their own fundraisers and campaign efforts with no help from Clinton's own organization.[145]

It's not like Trump had some grand and compelling vision for the future of economy that would help the working class; Clinton just failed to establish a competing message about economics and political power that would appeal to disaffected Americans.[146] A microcosm example: her campaign's struggle to find a slogan. Her campaign tried and rejected various slogans such as "I'm With Her," or "Breaking Down Barriers," before finally settling on "Stronger Together."[147] The common thread, of course, was that no slogan even hinted at an actual vision for the country. Voters saw Clinton as the status quo candidate and a defender of the global capitalist system,[148][149] and her campaign's vague and muddled messaging on the economy gave voters no reason to see her as anything else.[150] Her campaign, particularly her advertisements, focused more on attacking Trump than explaining any real policy objectives.[151] The Clinton campaign left a vacuum. What policies Clinton did run on were uninspired "market-driven incentive" type stuff that played well with donors and fell flat with voters.[152][153][154]

She made little or no attempt to connect with people outside her base of middle-class professionals and wealthy donors. When one reads the post-mortem from the cmapaign, it's like they're trying to assemble this simulacrum half-blind, whereby whatever they decide will be what the candidate (most qualified of all time) not only has always been, but is also ipso facto evidence of her being the most qualified of all time.[155] Clinton accidentally insulted the people who she wanted to vote for her ("...put coal out of business..." "...basement dwellers....", "...basket of deplorables...")[134][156][157] because she thought it was going to be a massive blowout win.[note 1]

More Democrats voted for Trump than Republicans voted for Clinton,[158] despite the "Never Trump" noise.[159][160] Clinton mistook damage control for party disloyalty, and it cost the Democrats big throughout this entire election cycle.

Clinton's conceited handling of the classified e-mail scandal also told voters some damning things about her. If it was a subordinate of hers, they would have been 100% charged. Still, because she was an "Original Classifying Authority" (as per an Executive OrderWikipedia Obama signed), she tried to justify moving the goalposts whenever it was convenient and made rhetorical exercises like there being no proof of intent (which is impossible unless she was dumb enough to put it on paper), even though she was an OCA for the wrong department.[161] Her lawyer husband decided to have an "impromptu" meeting with the attorney general,[162] prompting Lorretta Lynch to recuse herself. FBI Director James Comey confirmed the sketchiness in a July press conference. Nate Silver did the analysis and came back saying that the Comey Letter (which Giuliani boasted about knowing was coming for weeks until people pointed out that it was illegal for him and the FBI to be sitting on) was enough to push Trump over the top at precisely the right time.[163] Clinton collapsed from a 4% lead to 2% in the week following his little stunt.[164]

Finally, it's worth noting that Trump entered the race after a meeting with Bill Clinton, where he was encouraged to "have a bigger role in shaping the future." Hillary and her husband quite possibly handpicked her opponent, and they still lost to him.[165] She even signal-boosted him because she thought he would be easy to beat.[166] And she fucking lost to him.

The Trump campaign: appealing to America's worst impulses[edit]

Republican Party (United States)
2016 Republican Party ticket
Donald Trump Mike Pence
for President for Vice President
Donald Trump (30089639846) (cropped).jpg
Mike Pence by Gage Skidmore 6 (cropped 2).jpg
Chairman of The Trump OrganizationWikipedia Governor of Indiana
Trump-Pence 2016.svg


Trump's campaign rejected many of the Republican Party's orthodox positions, and he won a lot of support by doing so. Gone was the party's support for free trade, interventionism, and small government.[167] His emphasis on protecting Social Security and his various personal foibles did nothing to alienate the Republican base.[167] Also unusually for a Republican, 47% of Trump's party saw him as being either very secular or outright irreligious,[168] but evangelical voters were still firmly behind him.[169] Trump's celebrity status, his high popularity with previously disengaged voters, and his propensity for making outlandish statements won him huge amounts of media attention—and therefore free advertising—that was valued at about $5.9 billion.[170] That phenomenon helped offset the fact that Clinton massively outspent Trump on the campaign trail.[171]

Of course, the defining feature of the Trump campaign was its ugliness. His message appealed strongly to racism,[172] and Trump was even denounced for this by other Republicans (who naturally still supported him anyways).[173][174] Trump's accusations that Clinton was playing "the woman card" spiraled into overt sexism, which his supporters both embraced and promoted with the slogan, "Trump that bitch."[175] Trump even earned the endorsement of the Neo-Nazi Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, who went on to say that his own supporters were the same as Trump's supporters.[176] To Trump's credit, he rejected and denounced the endorsement,[177] but to his discredit, that was only after he tried to weasel out of doing so.[178]

After audio tapes were released of Trump bragging about sexually harassing women and three women came forward to claim that he assaulted them,[179] many Republican politicians tepidly distanced themselves from his campaign.[180] While the so-called "Never Trump" movement from anti-Trump conservatives attempted to win support for their cause from elected Republicans,[181] the movement fizzled out, and most "Never Trumpers" ended up supporting him in the end.[182]

The crowded and raucous rallies for which Trump became known frequently featured assaults by his supporters against protestors.[183] Trump personally encouraged violence at his events with statements like, "Knock the crap out of him, would you?" or "We have some protesters who are bad dudes, they have done bad things."[184] He even at one point promised to pay legal fees for any of his supporters who might end up arrested for physically attacking a protester. Trump's campaign manager, Corey LewandowskiWikipedia, personally assaulted a reporter from Breitbart.[185]

Due to the disgusting nature of his campaign, Trump successfully tapped into a growing phenomenon in the United States: white racial resentment. Post-election analysis consistently found that a sense of "white vulnerability" was a better predictor that someone would back Trump than was genuine economic insecurity.[186] Trump's promise to "Make America Great Again" appealed strongly to voters who felt alienated by social progressivism and changing values and drove enthusiasm for Trump among a large group of white voters.[187] Republican political strategist Steve Schmidt described the phenomenon as "a cultural backlash," and said that, "Millions and millions of people in this country, blue-collar people, feel that their values are under assault, that they’re looked down upon, condescended to by the elites."[127] Patricia Aufderheide, a professor of communication at American University, put it differently: "Trump has given people permission to say things out loud that are usually tucked in until after the third drink at Thanksgiving dinner. But I think they’ve always been there."[127]

Therefore, Trump's ability to tap into the underlying instinct for ugliness in American society, both in 2016 and future elections, is indicative of a serious structural problem within American culture. People liked that Trump's rhetoric racist and sexist. People liked that he repeatedly said idiotic things. People liked that Trump slung playground insults at his opponents. This says a lot about the state of the United States, and none of it is good.

Results[edit]

“”It may be true that sexism was a factor in this campaign—I myself voiced my suspicion months ago that America still hated women more than it hated black men—but, in the end, Hillary Clinton lost because she deserved to.
—Tim Kreider in 2008[188]

Clinton's failures delivered this election result as much as did Trump's luck. The major headline was that Trump flipped the longtime Democratic states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Key to those developments was low Democratic turnout from urban areas: she got almost 36,000 fewer votes in Philadelphia than did Obama, and her vote count total dropped by almost 15,000 in Milwaukee CountyWikipedia and over 93,000 (!) in {wpl|Wayne County|}}.[6] By themselves, the vote dropoff from Philadelphia and Milwaukee account for about half of Clinton's statewide deficit in their states, while the Wayne County dropoff is many times larger. Clinton did significantly improve on Obama's margins in a few places, but those were home to the very wealthy.[189] This is the opposite of the kind of support a Democrat should be getting.

Trump slightly improved from Romney's margins with minority voters: he gained about 2 points with both Black and Hispanic voters compared to 2012.[190] It is a myth, however, that Trump's victory was completely powered by the white working class—turnout from these voters was actually lower than usual even though Trump won them by a significant margin.[191] Clinton did do worse than Obama had with lower-income voters of all races; she won 52% from voters who made less than $50,000 annually, while Obama had won 60%.[191] However, this cohort of voters made up 41% of the electorate in 2012 and only 34% of the electorate in 2016.[191] These are more pieces of evidence indicating that Clinton failed to turn out the Democratic base.

Trump's real win came through driving up margins from rural, conservative parts of the country. In counties that Obama lost in 2012, Clinton got crushed, showing that many Obama supporters from rural regions actually flipped to Trump.[192] Still, that there was some crossover from Democrats to Republicans was hardly surprising given that the Democrats had controlled the White House for eight years already and that the economy wasn't exactly spectacular.[193]

The media is stuck on a very contrarian idea that Trump's win had nothing to do with the economy and that the Electoral College stole the election. They also pretend that Trump's economic message played no part. Still, a state-by-state survey showed that the people who actually matter in Presidential elections care more about economics than people in safe states.[194] In her new book, Hillary instead blames Russia, blames the FBI, blames other people generally, and sexism.[195][196][197]

See also[edit]

External links[edit]

Notes[edit]

  1. ↑ In Shattered, they said that her crew hastily wrote a concession speech that they hadn't prepared yet, so her supporters had to wait until the next morning. The arrogance of not preparing a concession speech and also not be willing to improvise in front of her adoring cult is classic HRC.

References[edit]

  1. ↑ Trump falsely claims biggest electoral win since Reagan Cummings, William. USA Today. FEB.16.17
  2. ↑ Cushing, Harry Alonzo (2024-10-01). "The Writings of Samuel Adams". 
  3. ↑ "3. Voters’ evaluations of the campaign". 2016-11-21. 
  4. ↑ Krieg, Gregory (2016-12-21). "It’s official: Clinton swamps Trump in popular vote". 
  5. ↑ {{cite web | last=Longworth | first=Richard C | title=Disaffected rust belt voters embraced Trump. They had no other hope | website=the Guardian | date=2016-11-21 | url=https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/21/disaffected-rust-belt-voters-embraced-donald-trump-midwestern-obama |}
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 "Hillary Clinton’s Urban Turnout Problem – National Committee for an Effective Congress". 2018-02-23. 
  7. ↑ "EXPLAINER: They lost the popular vote but won the elections". 2020-10-31. 
  8. ↑ Gallup, Inc.; Saad, Lydia (2016-11-08). "Trump and Clinton Finish With Historically Poor Images". 
  9. ↑ "Anti-Trump Delegates Cause Chaos on Opening Day of GOP Convention". 2016-07-18. 
  10. ↑ Klein, Ezra (2017-11-14). "Was the Democratic primary rigged?". 
  11. ↑ "Elizabeth Warren agrees Democratic race 'rigged' for Clinton". 2017-11-03. 
  12. ↑ Gallup, Inc.; McCarthy, Justin (2016-07-01). "Americans' Reactions to Trump, Clinton Explain Poor Images". 
  13. ↑ Cillizza, Chris (2017-09-11). "The mistake Hillary makes in diagnosing her biggest mistake of 2016". 
  14. ↑ Berke, Jeremy (2017-04-22). "Clinton staffers toyed with using 'because it's her turn' as a campaign rallying cry". 
  15. ↑ Keneally, Kristina (2016-02-03). "I can't get excited about Hillary Clinton's campaign – it lacks a raison d'etre". 
  16. ↑ Linker, Damon (2014-06-17). "Hillary Clinton's authenticity problem". 
  17. ↑ Schneider, Howard (2019-12-18). "Much of 'Trump country' was in recession during 2016 campaign". 
  18. ↑ Jacobs, Ben; Siddiqui, Sabrina; Ackerman, Spencer (2016-10-28). "Newly discovered emails relating to Hillary Clinton case under review by FBI". 
  19. ↑ Yuhas, Alan; Siddiqui, Sabrina; Jacobs, Ben; Ackerman, Spencer (2016-11-07). "FBI has found no criminal wrongdoing in new Clinton emails, says Comey". 
  20. ↑ Haner, Joanne (2024-10-25). "Hillary Clinton: Harris doesn’t have Comey ‘waiting in the wings to kneecap her’". 
  21. ↑ Marcelo, Philip (2023-07-28). "Donald Trump was accused of racism long before his presidency, despite what online posts claim". 
  22. ↑ Henderson, Nia-Malika (2016-08-31). "Race and racism in the 2016 campaign". 
  23. ↑ Lind, Dara (2015-07-08). "The real costs of Donald Trump’s anti-Mexican slur controversy, explained". 
  24. ↑ Giles, Christopher (2019-01-05). "Trump's wall: How much has been built during his term?". 
  25. ↑ Lind, Dara (2015-12-07). "Donald Trump proposes “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States"". 
  26. ↑ Jackson, David (2016-06-28). "Donald Trump targets globalization and free trade as job-killers". 
  27. ↑ Weigel, Moira (2016-11-30). "Political correctness: how the right invented a phantom enemy". 
  28. ↑ Collinson, Stephen (2016-10-08). "Trump throws GOP into chaos". 
  29. ↑ Nelson, Libby (2016-10-07). ""Grab ’em by the pussy”: how Trump talked about women in private is horrifying". 
  30. ↑ Picciotto, Rebecca (2024-05-04). "Why election polls were so wrong in 2016 and 2020". 
  31. ↑ "Trump wins electoral college amid nationwide protests". 2016-12-19. 
  32. ↑ Which candidates did the seven "faithless" electors support? Boccagno, Julia. CBS News. DEC.21.16
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  34. ↑ "New Voting Restrictions in Place for 2016 Presidential Election", Brennan Center for Justice (1/5/17 at 7:31 am).
  35. ↑ Berman, Ari, "There Are 868 Fewer Places to Vote in 2016 Because the Supreme Court Gutted the Voting Rights Act", The Nation (1/5/17 at 7:37 am)
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  39. ↑ Linshi, Jack (2015-07-08). "More People Are Running for Presidential Nomination Than Ever". 
  40. ↑ Enten, Harry (2015-03-23). "Let’s Be Serious About Ted Cruz From The Start: He’s Too Extreme And Too Disliked To Win". 
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  51. ↑ Chinni, Dante (2016-05-10). "The Trump Effect: Millions More Have Voted in GOP Primaries". 
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  54. ↑ Keith, Tamara (2015-04-10). "Hillary Clinton Expected To Go Small With Big Announcement". 
  55. ↑ Prokop, Andrew (2015-02-20). "7 charts that explain why Hillary Clinton lost in 2008". 
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  57. ↑ Blake, Aaron (2016-03-17). "74-year-old Bernie Sanders’s remarkable dominance among young voters, in 1 chart". 
  58. ↑ Page, Clarence (2015-07-14). "The summer of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump". 
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  60. ↑ Overby, Peter (2016-04-29). "Sanders Campaign Has Spent 50 Percent More Than Clinton In 2016". 
  61. ↑ Prokop, Andrew (2016-02-10). "Bernie Sanders just easily won the New Hampshire primary. It's a remarkable achievement.". 
  62. ↑ Prokop, Andrew (2016-01-15). "Poll: White Democrats are feeling the Bern". 
  63. ↑ Nelson, Libby (2016-03-01). "Super Tuesday 2016: 12 states are voting. Here are the results so far.". 
  64. ↑ Karp, Matt (2014-01-24). "The War on Bernie Sanders". 
  65. ↑ Michael D. Shear and Matthew Rosenberg, "Released Emails Suggest the D.N.C. Derided the Sanders Campaign", NYT July 2016.
  66. ↑ Borchers, Callum, "Emails show Debbie Wasserman Schultz pressured ‘Morning Joe’ — to no avail", WaPo July 2015.
  67. ↑ East, Kristen, "Top DNC staffer apologizes for email on Sanders’ religion", Politico (23 July 2016, 6:15 PM EDT.
  68. ↑ Condon, Stephanie (2015-10-13). "Bernie Sanders: People are sick of hearing about Hillary Clinton's "damn emails"". 
  69. ↑ Stein, Jeff (2016-06-07). "5 legacies: how Bernie Sanders changed 2016". 
  70. ↑ Bialik, Carl (2016-03-09). "Why The Polls Missed Bernie Sanders’s Michigan Upset". 
  71. ↑ Keith, Tamara (2016-06-07). "How Hillary Clinton Locked Up The Democratic Nomination In 10 Steps". 
  72. ↑ {{cite web | title=Democratic National Convention, 2016 | website=Ballotpedia | date=2016-04-14 | url=https://ballotpedia.org/Democratic_National_Convention,_2016 |
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  77. ↑ Sanders, Bernie, "To Rein In Wall Street, Fix the Fed", NYT op-ed 12.23.15.
  78. ↑ Carey, Kevin, "The Trouble With Hillary Clinton’s Free Tuition Plan", NYT 7.19.16.
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  81. ↑ Debenedetti, Gabriel, "Bernie's Roman holiday", Politico (Updated 04/17/16 11:42 AM EDT). Hit the music!
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  86. ↑ Wolf, Z. Byron (2018-04-06). "Trump basically called Mexicans rapists again". 
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  92. ↑ Gonyea, Don (2016-04-05). "Trump's Plan To 'Make Mexico Pay' For The Wall". 
  93. ↑ McGraw, Meridith (2019-01-10). "Trump claims he 'never said' Mexico would pay for wall with a check". 
  94. ↑ Jones, Bradley (2024-04-14). "Americans’ views of immigrants marked by widening partisan, generational divides". 
  95. ↑ Gonyea, Don (2018-01-25). "The GOP's Evolution On Immigration". 
  96. ↑ Tuttle, Ian, "Donald Trump Thinks American Workers Aren’t Good Enough for the Trump Organization", National Review (2/25/16 at 4:58 PM).
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  98. ↑ Transcript of Republican Candidates Debate in Cleveland, Ohio 6 August 2015.
  99. ↑ Jobson, Barney, "FT survey shows US business balks at backing Trump", Financial Times (5/18/16 at 9:15 am).
  100. ↑ Long, Heather (2017-02-16). "NAFTA is 'killing the American Dream,' Michigan workers say". 
  101. ↑ Gillespie, Patrick (2016-11-15). "NAFTA: What it is, and why Trump hates it". 
  102. ↑ "Trump says he'll bring jobs back to America. Economists are skeptical". 2016-03-14. 
  103. ↑ Trubek, Anne (2018-04-03). "Our Collective Ignorance About the Rust Belt Is Getting Dangerous". 
  104. ↑ Cohn, Nate (2017-08-15). "The Obama-Trump Voters Are Real. Here's What They Think". NYT 2017-08-15. Retrieved 2018-12-19.
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  107. ↑ "TPP: What is it and why does it matter?". 2015-04-29. 
  108. ↑ Corasaniti, Nick; Burns, Alexander; Appelbaum, Binyamin (2016-06-28). "Donald Trump Vows to Rip Up Trade Deals and Confront China". 
  109. ↑ Qiu, Linda (2016-04-10). "Clinton voted for 'virtually every' trade agreement, killing millions of jobs, Sanders says". 
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  111. ↑ Farivar, Masood (2024-06-25). "Once a rallying cry, 'radical Islamic terrorism' fades from Trump rhetoric". 
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  113. ↑ Beckwith, Ryan Teague (2016-06-14). "Read Clinton's Speech Criticizing Trump's Muslim Ban". 
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  115. ↑ Shabad, Rebecca (2015-11-16). "Trump: U.S. should "strongly consider" shutting down mosques". 
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  122. ↑ Kodjak, Alison (2016-05-12). "Fact-Checking Hillary Clinton's Medicare Buy-In Proposal". 
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  130. ↑ Taub, Amanda (2016-01-29). "How Donald Trump uses "political correctness" to make sexist bullying seem like heroism". 
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  132. ↑ Michael Boorstein and Julie Zauzmer, "Thrilling Christian conservative audience, Trump vows to lift ban on politicking, appoint antiabortion judges", WaPo 22 July 2016.
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  168. ↑ "Poll: Trump Not Widely Viewed as Religious - Even By His Own Party". 2016-01-27. 
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  170. ↑ Sultan, Niv M. (2017-04-13). "Election 2016: Trump's free media helped keep cost down". 
  171. ↑ Pramuk, Jacob (2016-11-09). "Trump spent about half of what Clinton did on his way to the presidency". 
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  173. ↑ Steinhauer, Jennifer; Martin, Jonathan; Herszenhorn, David M. (2016-06-07). "Paul Ryan Calls Donald Trump’s Attack on Judge ‘Racist,’ but Still Backs Him". 
  174. ↑ Schleifer, Theodore (2016-06-10). "Romney says Trump will change America with ‘trickle-down racism’". 
  175. ↑ Keith, Tamara (2016-10-23). "Sexism Is Out In The Open In The 2016 Campaign. That May Have Been Inevitable". 
  176. ↑ Domonoske, Camila (2016-08-05). "Former KKK Leader David Duke Says 'Of Course' Trump Voters Are His Voters". 
  177. ↑ Scott, Eugene (2016-03-03). "Trump denounces David Duke, KKK". 
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  180. ↑ Liptak, Kevin (2016-10-14). "Obama on Republicans disavowing Trump: Too little, too late". 
  181. ↑ Isenstadt, Alex (2016-04-22). "Stop Trump movement goes to work on GOP leaders". 
  182. ↑ Peters, Jeremy W. (2019-10-05). "The ‘Never Trump’ Coalition That Decided Eh, Never Mind, He’s Fine". 
  183. ↑ Nguyen, Tina (2016-03-11). "Donald Trump’s Rallies Are Becoming Increasingly Violent". 
  184. ↑ Jacobs, Ben (2016-03-11). "Trump campaign dogged by violent incidents at rallies". 
  185. ↑ Phipps, Claire (2016-03-11). "Donald Trump accuses reporter in assault row of 'making the story up'". 
  186. ↑ Lopez, German (2017-12-15). "The past year of research has made it very clear: Trump won because of racial resentment". 
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  188. ↑ Krieder, "When Will It End?", The Pain 21 May 2008.
  189. ↑ Frank, Robert, "The Rich Vote Republican? Maybe Not This Election", NYT October 2016.
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  192. ↑ Where Hillary Clinton Fell Short, Andrew McGill, the Atlantic, December 2, 2016
  193. ↑ Sure, There Were Some Obama-Trump Voters. Who Cares?, Kevin Drum, Mother Jones, August 15, 2017
  194. ↑ Pacewitz, Josh, "Here’s the real reason Rust Belt cities and towns voted for Trump", WaPo December 2016.
  195. ↑ Engel, Pamela, "New book suggests Hillary Clinton blamed everyone but herself for her humiliating defeat to Trump", Business Insider (1618 April 2017, 6:30 PM).
  196. ↑ Sanders, Linley, "What Happened? In Interview, Hillary Clinton Gives Sexist Argument for Why She Lost the 2016 Election", Newsweek (13 September 2017, 1:08 PM).
  197. ↑ Soloski, Alexis, "He Said, She Said: Gender-Bending the Presidential Debates", NYT 30 January 2017.
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