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Don’t Overstate Donald Trump’s Victory
Many pixels have been spilled and there’s been much talk in the last six weeks about Donald Trump’s victory and the larger implications, how everything has shifted, and the ways in which America has changed forever.
Slow down.
First, I heard the same thing in 2004 after George W. Bush was reelected. This was supposed to be a generational shift, setting up Republican dominance for a generation. (Yeah, not so much.) Then I heard in again in 2008 and 2012. Those elections changed everything and America as we knew it was over. (Yeah, not so much.) Indeed, coming into the 2016, I heard much fretting from conservatives about how, because of demographic changes, there probably would never be another Republican president. Demography is destiny, after all. (Yeah, not so much.)
Now I’m hearing it again. The Democrats as a party are over. They’ve lost the white working class forever. They’re now limited to a few enclaves on the coasts. And so on and so on. There’s a natural tendency to think that everything has changed. Well it hasn’t. Donald Trump scored an upset to be sure, but he didn’t win big.
Yes, he won a majority of the America
a majority of those who voted
a plurality of those who voted
just enough people in the right combination of states to eek out a victory. But despite Trump’s claims, his was not an “historic electoral landslide.” He ranks 46th out of 58 in percentage of the electoral vote and far below the historical average.
And like it or not, Donald Trump lost the popular vote by two million votes. Ah, yes, but he won 30 states! And look at that county-by-county map! It’s a sea of red! America has embraced Trump. Yeah, the thing is that those blue islands are where all the people are.
I count 11 states, Mississippi, Arkansas, Kansas, Utah, Nebraska, West Virginia, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming, and Alaska, where Trump’s vote total was less than 769,743. What’s significant about that number? Well, 769,743 is the number of votes Trump got in just Los Angeles county. Trump got more votes in that one county, which he lost by 50 points, than he got in any of those 11 states.
So what’s my point in mentioning all this?
First, there wasn’t some grand Trump earthquake that changed everything. He was running against the most unpopular woman and America. And together, Trump and Clinton were so unpopular that two million people didn’t even vote on the presidential line. Did lots of disenfranchised Rust Belt white people turn out for Trump? They sure did. Some 62 million people voted for Donald Trump. But some 74 million people voted against him.
Second, while it didn’t determine the winner, the popular vote is not without significance. One of the things we learned from the 2000 election is the symbolic importance of the popular vote. And 54 percent of the people came out to vote, voted against Trump. What does that mean? It means he doesn’t have much of a mandate. It would behoove the new President to tread lightly, to think of the 54 percent of folks who voted against him, and to be the President of the whole nation.
Am I suggesting he go all squishy? Certainly not. But when you poke people in the eye over and over, you’re going to create problems for yourself. And if you’re going to be the President of the whole nation, you’d do well, especially after this very contentious election cycle, and an electoral victory where 74 million people voted against him, not to be intentionally antagonistic.
I suggest President Trump learn from the example of his predecessor. Barack Obama had a much larger mandate. For eight years he engaged in scorched earth tactics. He spit in people’s faces. He tried to force through legislation, without trying to compromise, without trying to reach out to the tens of millions of people who voted against him.
And what did he get for his troubles? A shattered party and a legacy that’s in ashes.
Do I expect Donald Trump to heed this suggestion or anything similar? No, of course not. A man who brags about the size of the penis in front of a national debate audience doesn’t do modesty.
But if he were wise, he might consider it.
Published in General
That’s misreading. I don’t mean to speak @fredcole but i think we’re of like mind on this.
Trump didn’t get politics all wrong, he got them all right. And he is getting policy all right. But for what he wants to do. And Conservatives are acting all excited because they are assuming there are only two ways to do things – liberal or conservative. But there aren’t only two. His is a third way.
And while we may like the immediate results of this third way we ought also recognize that his success makes the conservative way an even more difficult sell and that future political battles will be about who gets to impose their will.
That’s not to say i want him to fail. But I want conservatives to wake up to a big political change before we become entirely irrelevant.
Did you even read the post?
I’m curious why his present actions would change your mind though. He’s doing exactly what he said he would do all along.
Ain’t nobody got time for that.
I didn’t trust him to necessarily surround himself with real conservatives while in office or not to swing left once he had the presidency in the bag. I wasn’t opposed to him in the Primaries because there was nothing he said that I liked, but rather that given his history and seeming lack of deep thought on any of this stuff I didn’t trust him to deliver on the things he said that I did like (and there was mixed in with it protectionist and big government stuff that I didn’t like and that still concern me).
But the team he’s picked for his cabinet is largely conservative, and seem specifically designed to strike out against PC nonsense on the environment, education, and immigration. Some of the choices, like Pruitt for EPA, are dang bold and show a willingness to tell the media to go shove it. How can I not be excited about that?
Do I expect Donald Trump to heed this suggestion (to not go all Obama on the country) or anything similar? No, of course not. A man who brags about the size of the penis in front of a national debate audience doesn’t do modesty.
So what part of that closing statement makes you think Fred is not calling Trump an a$$?
And Fred mentions twice that 74 million people voted against him, ok, got it.
The whole point of this post was not to give too much credit or insight on the election of Donald Trump and it having any meaning.
The way Trump has developed his team was unexpected. He’s arguably done a better job than any of the other Republican candidates would have at this point. Similarly, we don’t know how he will actually govern and history shows that we can’t use history or rhetoric to show how he’s going to do things.
We don’t know what he’s actually going to do in office, and we won’t find out for another month. The thing is, he doesn’t have to be the president of everyone. He can’t make everyone happy, nor should he try. The people that are most upset also tend to be the ones that are most wrong. That to me seems like a good thing. I don’t care if certain people feel outcast because they don’t deserve to be involved in the process anyway. It doesn’t matter if you piss some people off if you’re doing the right thing, and graded on the curve of past presidents, there are reasons to be optimistic about Trump.
There’s of course the very real risk that he overshoots like most presidents do, but we have no hard evidence yet that he’s going to do that. Until he starts to actually make things worse, I don’t see the point of fretting in anticipation. Even when he ends up screwing up (which all presidents do), I don’t see how stating concern now helps things.
Objecting to something I didn’t say is ridiculous, too. C- for the strawman.
I was speaking of those who published invective designed to minimize Trump at least, and to help Hillary at worst. If you personally didn’t vote for Trump due to your beliefs, that is fine. If you put up billboards showing Trump with Devil ears and tail, that’s another thing. I was referring to actions in the public sphere, not internal debates and decisions. Obviously, there were enough votes to secure Trump as our hopefully active and effective Republican leader, in spite of a huge media headwind, in spite of feral socialist indoctrination over 60+ years, in spite of the entire DC establishment working feverishly against him, and in spite of spiteful Republicans. Just because he overcame all those obstacles, and for the purpose of this comment, especially the last one, doesn’t give them a pass now. It’s like having the opposing team’s cheerleaders spike the football.
So, I’m willing to get along, but not unless we deal with reality. Sounds like Mr. Prawn is partly in agreement, anyway.
Jamie, you and Fred are in dissimilar positions, you as a private commenter, but him with a megaphone.
You’re probably correct on this. I do think there’s more overlap between conservatism and Trump’s “third way” than there are between conservatives and liberals, and that our odds for advancing conservatism in the near future is much better under Trump than it would have been under Hillary, but it is a fair warning.
Well, I think it’s always best for people to approach things with their eyes wide open and a decent amount of skepticism. I also do think there are those out there who are willing to support and praise Trump does no matter what he says or does (the way the numbers have shifted so swiftly on Republican’s views towards Putin, for example, does unnerve me). Fred Cole overdoes it with his unrelenting negativity towards Trump, but I do think it’s good to have some voices crying out warnings and perhaps making it easier for others to recognize any turns for the worse in the future should they occur.
Overall I agree with your post, though.
In think we give him 2 steps by now, step 1 was the election. Step 2, admin appointments. Step 3 is Supreme Court, Step 4 is where the real uncertainty begins. But, except egos for some, we have all got to be feeling really good / much better at this point.
Not in context of what was written.
But we don’t want to fall into the crying wolf trap the left is diving headlong into. Moderation in all things, etc.
Fred you left out the part about illegals voting.
This was always the weakest, and most demoralizing, argument of the NeverTrump set: that conservative goals could be fought for and won against a Hillary administration, a leftist SCOTUS and loony lefty-packed federally judiciary more successfully than they could be achieved within a Trump administration, a GOP (if not always conservative) SCOTUS and a replenished federal bench.
This Saving Remnant romanticism plagued conservatism until WFB and Frank Meyer killed it like Jason for the sixth time in the Sixties.
Remnantism is appealing for conservative intellectuals. It puts them in charge. It puts them in charge of nothing, but they are in charge.
Libertarians just shouldn’t do politics. No more than drunken teenage boys should shoot skeet.
Libertarians do ideas, often the ideas that rescue conservatism from stale, inert, irrelevance.
For conservatarians successful politics in the Trump administration is going to involve two difficult words:
Co … Co …. Co … Compromise and Co … Co … Co … Coalition.
Neither approach was going to accomplish anything with President Clinton, HHS Secretary Neera Tanden and SCOTUS justices Jacqueline Nguyen and Sri Srinavasan.
Teamwork matters. Sometimes the play isn’t called for your side of the field. But if you block your man, it is surprising how many points can be put on the board.
There were always players on the other side of the scrimmage for the NeverTrumpers to focus their energies on. Many did, like Geraghty and Corombos. Others preferred unsportsmanlike conduct towards their own team.
If your deepest instinctive reaction is to say (or perhaps scream) “What Team?” “Don’t recruit me on to your TEAM!” I respect your reaction.
Do ideas. You will be an abject failure at politics.
Hi Fred:
This is just a fantastic article. I just wish I had written it!
I agree that Trump’s victory margin is not even close to as great as he and his supporters say it is. However let us dispense with the popular vote nonsense. Presidential elections in the United States have nothing to do with the popular vote. To know who would have won an election based on popular vote, one would have to rerun the election with that as the criteria. Doing so would change the whole dynamic of the election. Candidates would have campaigned in and spent money in non-battleground states. Eligible voters who chose not vote because the result was predetermined in those states would have voted in greater numbers. Either candidate could have won such an election. We will never know.
The OP was worth the main takeaway: nothing is forever. Watershed moments in electoral swings can only be determined in history, not present. The outright paranoia of the left show they believe this is the end of a progressive America. I could only hope.
In my estimate, Obama’s hubris after the 2008 election ruined his party in two ways: 1) ObamaCare was unpopular and made healthcare much less affordable for many, and 2) He showed contempt for a lot of people who didn’t vote for him. When your landmark achievement directly costs lots of people money, you swing elections. When you treat conservative Americans as relics and bumpkins, you build resentment.
I’m actually a little optimistic about Trump’s relation to problem 2. He shows plenty of contempt for his media critics, but I don’t see him disparaging urban voting blocks (outside of illegal immigrants who, you know, shouldn’t be voting anyways). He is a coastal urbanite with left of center instincts. Why would he hate his own? In this regard he may even perform better than many other republican candidates.
As for Trump and problem 1, it will rise or fall on the outcome of his agenda.
Oh right. Point me to the evidence of that please.
Bolderdash! The Daily Shot is a delight – even if he dissed Trump – it’s hard work putting out a blast like that every day – I do miss Chef – sigh –
I assume you’re already prepared for the other possibilities.
Brit Hume had a good tweet today that I think is applicable to both sides of this post. “Might be wise to wait to find out what Trumpism turn out to be”
It is also great to see Fred back posting and commenting. He used to be Rambo in many of the longest posts in Ricochet history. I definitely like TDS but I also think his voice in the posts is a boon.
Thanks. It’s hard to crank out extra writing these days. It’s nice to know its appreciated!
Convince me there is gravity.
He showed contempt for a lot of people who did vote for him, too.
comment deleted . . . (and you’re not missing anything)
You’re not floating off into space.
Now stop dodging the question.
I remember hearing this report on the radio the day that it aired. Nothing more after that.
In the report, they tracked down a number of the dead voters and asked them what was going on. By “them” I mean the people living at the last known address of the dead voter :) All the ones that they looked into had voted in multiple elections since their death.
Sure, but neither Fred nor I ever denied that voter fraud happens. It’s the assertion that it happened in sufficient quantities that it would make up for Trump’s deficit in the popular vote that’s objectionable. If I had to guess I’d say it was maybe a few hundred thousand nationwide, and that’s a liberal estimate.
Not that “a few hundred thousand” illegal voters is nothing to worry about, mind you.
Well, how were Alaska and Wyoming supposed to vote more than 769,743. Those states don’t even have than many people including children and infants.
Mitt Romney received 885,333 votes in Los Angeles County.
John McCain received 956,425 votes in Los Angeles County.
… (However,) …
Trump received 4,617,886 votes in Florida.
Mitt Romney received 4,163,447 votes in Florida.
John McCain received 4,046,219 votes in Florida.
…
Trump received 2,970,733 votes in Pennsylvania.
Mitt Romney received 2,680,434 votes in Pennsylvania.
John McCain received 2,655,885 votes in Pennsylvania.
…
Trump received 2,279,543 votes in Michigan.
Mitt Romney received 2,115,256 votes in Michigan.
John McCain received 2,048,639 votes in Michigan.
…
Trump received 684,782 votes in Arkansas.
Mitt Romney received 647,744 votes in Arkansas.
John McCain received 638,017 votes in Arkansas.
…
Trump received 489,371 votes in West Virginia.
Mitt Romney received 417,655 votes in West Virginia.
John McCain received 397,466 votes in West Virginia.