Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > Trump Didn't Win the Election, Hillary Lost It
________________________________________
Trump Didn't Win the Election, Hillary Lost It
By Guy T. Saperstein [1] / AlterNet [2]
November 12, 2016
Hillary was always going to be a weak candidate and the evidence was there
for anyone willing to see it. The only surprise was how hard many people
worked not to see the obvious. For one, she was exactly the wrong candidate
for 2016. Indeed, in May 2014---two and a half years ago---I wrote on these
pages:
By every metric, voters are in a surly mood and they are not going to be
happy campers in 2016, either. Why should they be? The economy is still in
the toilet, not enough jobs are being created even to keep up with
population growth, personal debt and student debt are rising, college
graduates can't find jobs, retirement benefits are shrinking, infrastructure
is deteriorating, banksters never were held accountable for melting down the
economy, inequality is exploding - and neither party is addressing the depth
of the problems America faces. As a result, voters in 2016 will be seeking
change and there is no way Clinton can run as a "change" candidate - indeed,
having been in power in Washington for 20-plus years as First Lady, U.S.
Senator and Secretary of State, she is the poster child for the Washington
political establishment, an establishment that will not be popular in 2016.
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/seven-things-about-inevitability-h
illary-you-probably-havent-thought-about [3]
This, of course, is exactly what happened, which is why the Washington
Post's chief political writer Chris Cilliza could write today:
This was a change election. And Trump was the change candidate. To me, this
is the single most important number in the exit poll in understanding what
voters were thinking when they chose Trump. Provided with four candidate
qualities and asked which mattered most to their vote, almost 4 in 10 (39
percent) said a candidate who "can bring needed change." (A candidate who
"has the right experience" was the second most important character trait.)
Among those change voters, Trump took 83 percent of the vote to just 14
percent for Clinton.
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/1116/cillizza111116.php3 [4]
On top of this problem---which to be fair to Clinton was not a problem of
her making---she was extremely unpopular and had a long history dating back
to 2007 of polling badly against Republicans. In December 2007, while
leading national polls among Democrats by 26 points, in head-to-head polls
against Republicans, she polled weaker against Republican presidential
candidates than John Edwards and a relatively unknown new black Senator from
Illinois. In fact, when matched up against Republicans---who had a very
weak field themselves in 2008---she even polled behind an unnamed generic
Democratic candidate. We saw this inherent weakness repeated in 2016, when
she was challenged by a 74-year old Senator from a small state who wasn't
even a Democrat, who had virtually no financial base, but went from 3% in
national polls to winning 22 contested primaries and 47% of the votes in
those primaries, in the process regularly pulling 20,000+ enthusiastic
people to his rallies, while Hillary spoke in small gatherings to large
donors and never attracted more than 800 people to an event.
What this obvious lack of enthusiasm for Hillary translated to in this
election is the single most appalling---and definitive---statistic of this
campaign: Hillary got almost TEN MILLION fewer votes than Obama got in 2008,
despite the fact there are millions more registered voters now and six
million less votes than Obama got in 2012. Trump did not win this election.
Hillary lost it. In fact, Trump got fewer votes than Mitt Romney in 2012!
We are not surrounded by more Republicans. We are surrounded by Democrats
who were not inspired by the Wall Street-friendly candidate their party
pushed on them.
Hillary's utter tone-deafness about her connections to Wall Street was
another huge liability. In November 2014, I wrote:
On nearly every important issue, except women's issues, Clinton stands to
the right of her Democratic base. Overwhelmingly, Democrats believe that
Wall Street played a substantial role in gaming the system for their benefit
while melting down the economy, but Clinton continues to give speeches to
Goldman Sachs at $200,000 a pop, assuring them that, "We all got into this
mess together and we're all going to have to work together to get out of
it." In her world - a world full of friends and donors from Wall Street -
the financial industry does not bear any special culpability in the
financial meltdown of 2007-'08. The mood of the Democratic base is populist
and angry, but Clinton is preaching lack of accountability.
She got hammered by Sanders, and later Trump, for her reliance on Wall
Street money, and then added to her problems by not releasing transcripts of
her speeches to Wall Street banks to the public, which exacerbated the
perception that she was not transparent and was rigging the system with the
financial industry in ways that did not serve the public. So when her email
problems arose, it all seemed part of the same pattern of duplicity. Polls
with voters rating her 65% "untrustworthy" soon followed.
She also never explained why she had supported the deregulation of Wall
Street, never explained why she had promoted NAFTA, why she had called the
NAFTA-like Trans Pacific Partnership the "gold standard" of trade deals,
despite the damage NAFTA had caused to America's manufacturing base and the
millions of jobs that had been exported to lower-paying countries. And the
DNC Democrats who fixed the primaries to nominate her have never explained
how they expected to win the industrial mid-west with a candidate who had
contributed to their economic demise or why they favored Clinton over a
candidate who ran ten points stronger against every Republican presidential
candidate, including Trump, in match-up polls.
This election was always going to be a plebiscite on the status quo and the
status quo candidate, Hillary Clinton. For awhile many thought Hillary
could pass it because she was matched against the weakest candidate
imaginable. In the end, she could not overcome her many liabilities, the
fact that her party had forgotten they needed to deliver results to the
working class, nor the surly mood of voters who had figured out what a
rigged system looked like and were willing to try a long-shot who might just
bust up the system.
Guy T. Saperstein is a past president of the Sierra Club Foundation;
previously, he was one of the National Law Journal's "100 Most Influential
Lawyers in America."
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Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/trump-didnt-win-election-hillary-lost-
it
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/guy-t-saperstein
[2] http://alternet.org
[3]
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/seven-things-about-inevitability-h
illary-you-probably-havent-thought-about
[4] http://www.jewishworldreview.com/1116/cillizza111116.php3
[5] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on Trump Didn't Win
the Election, Hillary Lost It
[6] http://www.alternet.org/
[7] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > Trump Didn't Win the Election, Hillary Lost It
Trump Didn't Win the Election, Hillary Lost It
By Guy T. Saperstein [1] / AlterNet [2]
November 12, 2016
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Hillary was always going to be a weak candidate and the evidence was there
for anyone willing to see it. The only surprise was how hard many people
worked not to see the obvious. For one, she was exactly the wrong candidate
for 2016. Indeed, in May 2014---two and a half years ago---I wrote on these
pages:
By every metric, voters are in a surly mood and they are not going to be
happy campers in 2016, either. Why should they be? The economy is still in
the toilet, not enough jobs are being created even to keep up with
population growth, personal debt and student debt are rising, college
graduates can't find jobs, retirement benefits are shrinking, infrastructure
is deteriorating, banksters never were held accountable for melting down the
economy, inequality is exploding - and neither party is addressing the depth
of the problems America faces. As a result, voters in 2016 will be seeking
change and there is no way Clinton can run as a "change" candidate - indeed,
having been in power in Washington for 20-plus years as First Lady, U.S.
Senator and Secretary of State, she is the poster child for the Washington
political establishment, an establishment that will not be popular in 2016.
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/seven-things-about-inevitability-h
illary-you-probably-havent-thought-about [3]
This, of course, is exactly what happened, which is why the Washington
Post's chief political writer Chris Cilliza could write today:
This was a change election. And Trump was the change candidate. To me, this
is the single most important number in the exit poll in understanding what
voters were thinking when they chose Trump. Provided with four candidate
qualities and asked which mattered most to their vote, almost 4 in 10 (39
percent) said a candidate who "can bring needed change." (A candidate who
"has the right experience" was the second most important character trait.)
Among those change voters, Trump took 83 percent of the vote to just 14
percent for Clinton.
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/1116/cillizza111116.php3 [4]
On top of this problem---which to be fair to Clinton was not a problem of
her making---she was extremely unpopular and had a long history dating back
to 2007 of polling badly against Republicans. In December 2007, while
leading national polls among Democrats by 26 points, in head-to-head polls
against Republicans, she polled weaker against Republican presidential
candidates than John Edwards and a relatively unknown new black Senator from
Illinois. In fact, when matched up against Republicans---who had a very weak
field themselves in 2008---she even polled behind an unnamed generic
Democratic candidate. We saw this inherent weakness repeated in 2016, when
she was challenged by a 74-year old Senator from a small state who wasn't
even a Democrat, who had virtually no financial base, but went from 3% in
national polls to winning 22 contested primaries and 47% of the votes in
those primaries, in the process regularly pulling 20,000+ enthusiastic
people to his rallies, while Hillary spoke in small gatherings to large
donors and never attracted more than 800 people to an event.
What this obvious lack of enthusiasm for Hillary translated to in this
election is the single most appalling---and definitive---statistic of this
campaign: Hillary got almost TEN MILLION fewer votes than Obama got in 2008,
despite the fact there are millions more registered voters now and six
million less votes than Obama got in 2012. Trump did not win this election.
Hillary lost it. In fact, Trump got fewer votes than Mitt Romney in 2012! We
are not surrounded by more Republicans. We are surrounded by Democrats who
were not inspired by the Wall Street-friendly candidate their party pushed
on them.
Hillary's utter tone-deafness about her connections to Wall Street was
another huge liability. In November 2014, I wrote:
On nearly every important issue, except women's issues, Clinton stands to
the right of her Democratic base. Overwhelmingly, Democrats believe that
Wall Street played a substantial role in gaming the system for their benefit
while melting down the economy, but Clinton continues to give speeches to
Goldman Sachs at $200,000 a pop, assuring them that, "We all got into this
mess together and we're all going to have to work together to get out of
it." In her world - a world full of friends and donors from Wall Street -
the financial industry does not bear any special culpability in the
financial meltdown of 2007-'08. The mood of the Democratic base is populist
and angry, but Clinton is preaching lack of accountability.
She got hammered by Sanders, and later Trump, for her reliance on Wall
Street money, and then added to her problems by not releasing transcripts of
her speeches to Wall Street banks to the public, which exacerbated the
perception that she was not transparent and was rigging the system with the
financial industry in ways that did not serve the public. So when her email
problems arose, it all seemed part of the same pattern of duplicity. Polls
with voters rating her 65% "untrustworthy" soon followed.
She also never explained why she had supported the deregulation of Wall
Street, never explained why she had promoted NAFTA, why she had called the
NAFTA-like Trans Pacific Partnership the "gold standard" of trade deals,
despite the damage NAFTA had caused to America's manufacturing base and the
millions of jobs that had been exported to lower-paying countries. And the
DNC Democrats who fixed the primaries to nominate her have never explained
how they expected to win the industrial mid-west with a candidate who had
contributed to their economic demise or why they favored Clinton over a
candidate who ran ten points stronger against every Republican presidential
candidate, including Trump, in match-up polls.
This election was always going to be a plebiscite on the status quo and the
status quo candidate, Hillary Clinton. For awhile many thought Hillary could
pass it because she was matched against the weakest candidate imaginable. In
the end, she could not overcome her many liabilities, the fact that her
party had forgotten they needed to deliver results to the working class, nor
the surly mood of voters who had figured out what a rigged system looked
like and were willing to try a long-shot who might just bust up the system.
Guy T. Saperstein is a past president of the Sierra Club Foundation;
previously, he was one of the National Law Journal's "100 Most Influential
Lawyers in America."
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Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/trump-didnt-win-election-hillary-lost-
it
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/guy-t-saperstein
[2] http://alternet.org
[3]
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/seven-things-about-inevitability-h
illary-you-probably-havent-thought-about
[4] http://www.jewishworldreview.com/1116/cillizza111116.php3
[5] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on Trump Didn't Win
the Election, Hillary Lost It
[6] http://www.alternet.org/
[7] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
