TPM take - Phony Oppositions and Score Settling
Thoughts on this analysis? Esp, his conclusion and thoughts on what comes next...
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/phony-oppositions-and-score-settling
JOSH MARSHALL Published DECEMBER 15, 2016, 9:22 AM EDT
It seems to me that Democrats are now involved in a pointless proxy battle between what we might call a "deep causes" explanation of the 2016 loss (strategy, ideology, candidate) and one focused on illegitimate outside interventions: Russian hacking and subversion or James Comey's week-out intervention in the presidential race. Any effort to hold these two explanations as alternatives, as though one obviates the other seems either dishonest, pointless, distracting or simply silly.
Just to put my cards on the table, I believe there is a good likelihood, probably even a probability, that if the Russian subversion campaign had never happened and James Comey had never released his letter, Hillary Clinton would be prepping to become our new President. My own guess is that Comey's letter had the bigger impact. These were both profoundly damaging events in the race and Clinton lost by very tight margins in most of the newly (hopefully temporarily) red states. I see little way to challenge this assertion.
But the tiny margins are only one side of the story. Let's take Wisconsin. The final tally puts Trump ahead by .8%, or 22,748 votes. That's a tiny margin. Any number of things could have shifted the balance. Spending the final week of the campaign talking about a new investigation of Clinton's emails was more than enough to tip the balance. But now look at the shift from 2012. The shift in the direction of the GOP was 7.7%. That is a huge shift over four years. Huge. There's no getting around that. If you step back from Wisconsin to the larger Upper Midwest region and indeed the United States you see something more fundamental. Donald Trump did what we all remember Barack Obama doing in 2008: He changed the shape of the electorate.
What all of this comes down to is that something very big happened in this election that was quite separate from Comey and Putin. Let's put a pin in that for a moment before we discuss what that 'something' was. These outside interventions (obviously of very different kinds) were something like the straw that broke the camel's back. I think it's quite likely that without them Clinton would have held on in a tight race. Perhaps the shift in Wisconsin would have been 6% or 6.5% rather than 7.7% The consequences of this defeat, which are frankly massive, would be vastly different. But the shifting politico-demographic shift would be only slightly less steep.
snip - more to read. Thoughts?
= new reply since forum marked as read
I prefer a more "Perfect Storm" theory:
1. Democrats controlled the WH for eight years. Parties rarely hold on to the WH for more than 8 years and haven't since George HW Bush nearly 30 years ago. People seem to want "change" after eight years of one party in the WH.
2. Donald Trump is/was a celebrity and didn't- on the surface- appear to be a completely "typical" Republican on some of his positions, which probably attracted a few people otherwise not inclined to vote Republican or at least encouraged some "down on their luck" people in the midwest to "give him a chance".
3. Trump generated Obama-like enthusiasm on the right that brought the far-right base out to vote for him in droves. There was not, unfortunately, comparable enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton even though she is the first woman ever nominated for POTUS.
4. Intense right-wing hatred and years of Republican-driven/media-driven phony scandals and accusations of corruption (and worse) against the Clintons and lack of focus on Trump's scandals and more focus on concerns about things involving Hillary, including phony allegations against the Clinton Foundation, her private e-mail server, and hacked e-mails from the DNC, none of which was as real or as bad as some of things that Trump was dealing with (Trump Foundation, Trump University, rape lawsuit) but got way more attention.
5. Rightly or wrongly, the e-mail server issue tainted Hillary. The effect of that seemed to have worn off since Comey announced that they had not found any criminal wrongdoing in July and she seemed to have recovered and seemed to be running strong but him coming out with that letter a week (a WEEK!) before the election that generated intense media coverage/speculation instantly put her under suspicion yet again and may have caused some undecideds to break against her at the last minute.
All of these obviously weren't enough to prevent her from winning the PV, but it helped shift just enough votes to deny her the EV needed to win.
