The Trump Win; how we got here

It was a combination of many things, but primarily Hillary's mistakes and weaknesses, combined with shifting demographics and political concerns that transcended party politics:

The Improbable Demographics Behind Donald Trump's Shocking Presidential Victory

[...] The Revolt of Middle America

America is a nation of many economies, but those that produce real, tangible things — food, fiber, energy and manufactured goods — went overwhelmingly for Trump. He won virtually every state from Appalachia to the Rockies, with the exceptions of heavily Hispanic Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico, and President Obama’s home base of Illinois.

Some of his biggest margins were in energy states — Texas, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Wyoming, North Dakota — where the fracking revolution created a burst of prosperity. Generally speaking, the more carbon-intensive the economy, the better the Republicans did. Many of his biggest wins took place across the energy-producing regions of the country, including Ohio, Texas, Louisiana, Wyoming, Idaho, and especially West Virginia, where he won by a remarkable margin of 68% to 27%. The energy industry could well be the biggest financial winner in the election.

The Green Trap

Clinton’s support for climate change legislation, a lower priority among the electorate than other concerns, was seen as necessary to shore up support from greens threatening to attack her from the left. Yet the issue never caught on the heartland, which tends to see climate change mitigation as injurious to them.

This may have proven a major miscalculation, as the energy economy is also tied closely to manufacturing. Besides climate change, the heartland had many reasons to fear a continuation of Obama policies, particularly related to regulation and global trade, which seems to have been a big factor in Trump’s upset win in normally moderate to liberal Wisconsin.

Trump either won, or closely contested all the traditional manufacturing states — Ohio, Wisconsin, Indiana, Iowa and even Michigan, where union voters did not support Clinton as they had Obama and where trade was also a big issue. Trump did consistently better than Romney in all these states, even though Romney was a native of Michigan. Perhaps the most significant turnaround was in Ohio, which Obama won with barely 51% of the vote in 2012. This year Trump reversed this loss and won by over seven points.

Agricultural states, reeling from the decline of commodity prices, not surprisingly, also went for the New Yorker.

Premature Epitaphs For The White Voter

Race, as is often the case, played a major role in the election. For much of the election, commentators, particularly in the dominant Eastern media, seemed to be openly celebrating what CNN heralded as “the decline of the white voter.” The “new America,” they suggested, would be a coalition of minorities, educated workers and millennials.

To be sure, the minority share of the electorate is only going to grow — from less than 30% today to over 40% in 2032 — as more white Americans continue to die than be born. Just between 2012 and 2016, the Latino and Asian electorate grew 17% and 16%, respectively; the white electorate expanded barely 2%.

In Colorado the new minority math was seen, with a strong showing among Latinos, the educated suburbs around Denver and millennials.

That may be the future, but now is now. Exit polling nationwide showed Trump won two-to-one among people without a college degree, matched Clinton among college graduates, losing only those with graduate degrees, a group that has voted for the Democrats since 1988.

But there’s simply more high school graduates then those with graduate degrees. And for now there are a lot more whites than minorities. As we look into the future, these groups will fade somewhat but right now they can still determine elections. Nowhere is this clearer than in Trump’s decisive win in Florida, a state that is home to many white retirees, including from the old industrial states.

Latinos may be the one group in the “new America” that made a difference for Clinton, not only in Colorado, but also in Nevada. Republicans paid a price for Trump’s intemperate comments on immigration and about Mexico.

They also made states like Texas and North Carolina closer, and may have helped secure Clinton’s win in Virginia. In contrast, neither African-Americans or millennials seem to have turned out as heavily, both in numbers and percentage terms, as they did for President Obama. Trump appears to have made some modest gains with both groups, contrary to the conventional wisdom.

Class Warrior

Class has been a bigger factor in this election than in any election since the New Deal era. Trump’s insurgency rode largely on middle- and working-class fears about globalization, immigration and the cultural arrogance of the “progressive” cultural elite. This is something Bill Clinton understands better than his wife.

Trump owes his election to what one writer has called “the leftover people.” These may be “deplorables” to the pundits but their grievances are real – their incomes and their lifespans have been decreasing. They have noticed, as Thomas Frank has written, that the Democrats have gone “from being the party of Decatur to the party of Martha’s Vineyard.”

Many of these voters were once Democrats, and feel they have been betrayed. And they include a large swath of the middle class, whose fury explains much of what happened tonight. Trump has connected better with these voters than Romney, who won those making between $50,000 and $90,000 by a narrow 52 percent margin. Early analysis of this year’s election shows Trump doing better among these kind of voters.

At the same time, however, affluent voters — those making $100,000 and above — seem to have tilted over to the Democrats this year. This is the first time the “rich” have gone against the GOP since the 1964 Goldwater debacle. Obama did better among the wealthy, winning eight of the 10 richest counties in 2012. In virtually all these counties, Clinton did even better.

What does this mean for America’s traditional middle class, whose numbers have been fading for a generation? Long the majority, notes Pew, they are no longer, outnumbered by the lower and upper classes combined. Yet like the Anglo population, in this election what’s left of America’s middle class has shown itself not ready to face the sunset.

Now What?

Given the unpredictable nature of Trump, it’s hard to see what he will do. Although himself a businessman, he was opposed overwhelmingly by his own class. Clinton won more support from big business and the business elite. If you had a billionaire primary, Clinton would have won by as much as 20 to 1.

Initially many of those business interests closest to both Obama and Clinton — Wall Street, Silicon Valley, Hollywood — will be on the outside looking in. Their advantages from tax avoidance could be lessened. Merger-mania, yet another form of asset inflation, will continue unabated, particularly in the tech and media space.

The clear challenge for (I can’t believe I am writing these words) President Trump will not be so much to punish these enemies, but to embrace those people — largely middle class, suburban, small town and white — who are not part of his world, but made him President. If he embraces his role as a radical reformer, he could do much good, for example with a flatter tax system, restoring federalism, seizing the advantage of the energy revolution and reviving military preparedness. [...]

If you read the whole thing, I think you will sense that the author does not like Donald Trump. Which rather makes his astute observations about Trump all the more interesting.

The long and short of it is, the elites in both the Republican and Democrat parties miscalculated a number of things. The Donald spoke to the people most neglected by the elites, and they selected him as their champion. We now have a Populist President, who is not really a Republican or a Democrat, by the standards used up until now.

Is The Donald prepared to lead? He has never been elected to any position, so we can't know how he will govern. Where will he take us, what will he do? We shall see...


Also see:

Doggedness and Defiance: How Trump won

     

South Africa's Next President?

She is the candidate of the country's largest opposition party:


Famed S. African Activist to Run for President

South Africa’s main opposition party – the Democratic Alliance – will run a black woman as its presidential candidate. Elections are expected in April, but President Jacob Zuma has not set a date yet.

The DA has chosen Dr. Mamphela Ramphele, former companion of the late activist Steve Biko. She is also a former World Bank managing director and University of Cape Town vice-chancellor.

Independent South African analyst Delia Robertson said, “Mamphela Ramphele is a longtime political activist. She was a member of the African National Congress. She’s a medical doctor. She was involved in politics at a very young age during the apartheid years…and that is how she met Steve Biko, who was murdered by the police during his detention without trial many years ago.”

The couple had two sons together, but never married.

Ramphele had formed her own political party, Agang, just last year. However, she’s now joined the DA.

“Opposition politics in this country is a very difficult space to be in, mostly because of funding limitations,” said Robertson, adding that “Helen Zille, the leader of the Democratic Alliance, realized that she had an opportunity to get somebody of Ms. Ramphele’s caliber.”

Robertson said that Ramphele is a “good addition” to the DA. The party has its roots in opposition politics during apartheid. When the former ruling National Party folded, many of its members joined the DA giving it a boost in both parliament and credibility. The DA controls the Western Province and Cape Town and hopes to make strong inroads this year in the Johannesburg/Pretoria area. But the Democratic Alliance remains a party with mainly white leadership.

“They’re getting more and moreblack members,” said Robertson, “They have expended into the black community, but not enough. It’s 20 years since the end of apartheid. And for a party to be so top heavy in white leadership at this stage of our democracy is hard to justify morally, I think, for many potential voters…So getting somebody of Dr. Ramphele’s caliber is going to be important for them.” [...]

Dr. Ramphele is an interesting candidate. I wonder what her chances are of winning? If you follow the link, the page has a link to an interview with South African analyst Delia Robertson.

     

Obama: all style, no substance, no leadership

From Neal Boortz:
OBAMA AND LEADERSHIP .. OR LACK THEREOF

With each passing day, the world begins to realize that ObamaLand is nothing more than a Hollywood movie set .. it looks real with the right camera angles, but in reality it is nothing more than flat pieces of cardboard and some paint. In other words .. Obama is all style and no substance. This is actually pretty fitting for our American Idol generation, which ultimately tipped the scales in favor of Obama. They wanted the hot bod and cool campaign slogans, but couldn't tell you the first thing about his policies or his qualifications to be president. Mort Zuckerman says it best in US News and World Report:

"The reviews of Obama's performance have been disappointing. He has seemed uncomfortable in the role of leading other nations, and often seems to suggest there is nothing special about America's role in the world. The global community was puzzled over the pictures of Obama bowing to some of the world's leaders and surprised by his gratuitous criticisms of and apologies for America's foreign policy under the previous administration of George W. Bush. One Middle East authority, Fouad Ajami, pointed out that Obama seems unaware that it is bad form and even a great moral lapse to speak ill of one's own tribe while in the lands of others.

You really do need to read the entire Zuckerman column. The more you understand about the trouble we're in, the better then chance you may actually try to change things this November. Here's the link again.

   

Presidents, Polls, Popularity and Graphs

Here is a link to a really neat inter-active graph that let's you compare approval ratings for various presidents since the 1940s:

Presidential approval tracker

The Gallup organization first started asking Americans how they approved of the job the president was doing in the 1940s. See how each president since then has fared in the approval poll, look at some news events that influenced public opinion and compare how approval ratings evolved for each president. [...]

Be sure and read the article just below the graph, too:

Polls can affect president's hold on party

By Susan Page, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — A president's standing after his first six months in office doesn't forecast whether he'll have a successful four-year term, but it does signal how much political juice he'll have for his second six months in office.

That's the lesson of history.

Barack Obama, who completed six months in office Monday, has a 55% approval rating in the USA TODAY/Gallup Poll, putting him 10th among the dozen presidents who have served since World War II at this point in their tenures.

That's not as bad for Obama as it may sound: The six-month mark hasn't proved to be a particularly good indicator of how a president ultimately will fare.

Two-thirds of Americans approved of the jobs Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush were doing at six months, but both would lose their bids for re-election.

And though the younger Bush and Bill Clinton had significantly lower ratings at 180 days — Clinton had sunk to 41% approval — both won second terms. [...]

I'm sure it is too early to say what the polls portend for Obama. So far his graph compares well with Ronald Reagan's and Jimmy Carters. But if the economy continues to tank and unemployment does not improve, I expect it will go the Carter way, rather than the Reagan one. Time will tell.
     

Sound bites: Obama's Entertaining Audio Book

I knew this Presidency would have some entertaining moments.

Barack Obama is tired of your motherf*cking sh*t

You can follow the link for the audio clips, there's no "beeps"; it's the real deal. Your chuckle for the day.

If a Republican did this, they would be toast. But Democrats get a pass on these things; that's the way it is. Yet keeping it in proportion, I have to admit, compared to what Ted Kennedy did at Chappaquiddick, this is nothing.

I know some people will say "it diminishes the presidency, blah blah blah". But the fact is, Obama was quoting another author; foul language has become common place and doesn't shock like it used to, and is even being called literature now. And let's face it, most of the young people today don't care about this kind of thing at all. They are the future. Welcome to our Brave New World. Won't you come on in? :-)
     

The Fifty Seven States of America?

Anyone can make a slip up in a speech. But you have to wonder where he got 57 from. He claims he was tired; he's used that excuse before. But he's a lot younger than John McCain, who doesn't use the "tired" excuse all the time. Maybe Obama isn't up to the job?

From Tammy Bruce: These 57 United States of America


Eh, whatever.

That's the state count according to Barry Obama. And liberals say McCain is the 3rd Bush! Hahahaha! And hey, it's turning into a Barrypalooza day, and we're still 27 weeks away from the general election.

We all know he doesn't really give a damn about the United States but is it too much to ask him to pretend a little better that he might have a clue about the country? He doesn't mind causing damage by raising taxes. He likes having associations with racist bigots and unrepentant terrorists, and now it's revealed he has no clue how many states are in the union itself. Yeah, that's a man who deserves to sleep where John Adams, Abraham Lincoln, FDR, JFK, and Reagan slept. [...]

Read the rest for the context and details, including his "numeracy" excuse... before his aids cut him off.

He's made numerous mistakes with numbers before. I can sympathize, because I don't always remember numbers well either, but then I'm not running for president. Speaking in a campaign, you can't afford to be that sloppy, that often, unless you don't mind people thinking you're sloppy. Or flakey. And I think I could remember 50 states even if I was tired.

Obama may be a nice guy on a personal level. He has great public speaking skills when he sticks to the script. But at best, he's a junior senator with limited experience. He's too new to the political arena, too much of a light-weight. I really doubt that he's up to the job he is applying for.

Related Link:

Oh boy! Obama!