Consortiumnews
Independent Investigative Journalism Since 1995
Trump and Democrats Misread Mandates
November 8, 2017
Exclusive: Neither the Democrats nor President Trump learned the right
lessons from the 2016 election, leaving the nation divided at home and
bogged down in wars abroad, writes Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
One year ago, the American electorate delivered a confused but shocking
result, the election of Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton, a quirky outcome
in the Electoral College that put Trump in the White House even though
Clinton got three million more votes nationally. But neither party appears
to have absorbed the right lessons from that surprise ending.
President Donald Trump being sworn in on Jan. 20, 2017. (Screen shot from
Whitehouse.gov)
The Democrats might have taken away from their defeat the warning that they
had forgotten how to speak to the white working class, which had suffered
from job losses via "free trade" and felt willfully neglected as Democrats
looked toward the "browning of America."
The choice of Clinton had compounded this problem because she came across as
elitist and uncaring toward this still important voting bloc with her
memorable description of half of Trump's voters as "deplorables," an insult
that stung many lower-income whites and helped deliver Pennsylvania,
Michigan and Wisconsin to Trump.
For more than a decade, some Democratic strategists had promoted the notion
that "demography is destiny," i.e., that the relative growth of Latino,
Asian and African-American populations in comparison to whites would ensure
a future Democratic majority. That prediction seemed to have been validated
by Barack Obama's winning coalition in 2008 and 2012, but it also had the
predictable effect of alienating many whites who felt disrespected and
resentful.
So, while the Democrats and Clinton looked to a multicultural future, Trump
used his experience in reality TV to communicate with this overlooked
demographic group. Trump sold himself as a populist and treated the white
working class with respect. He spoke to their fears about economic decline
and gave voice to their grievances. He vowed to put "America First" and pull
back from foreign military adventures that often used working-class kids as
cannon fodder.
But much of Trump's message, like the real-estate mogul himself, was phony.
He really didn't have policies that would address the needs of working-class
Americans. Still, his promises of a massive infrastructure plan, good
health-care for all, and rejection of unfair trade deals rang the right
bells with enough voters to flip some traditionally Democratic blue-collar
states to Republican red.
Staying Blind
You might have thought that the Democrats would respond to Trump's shocking
victory, which also left Republicans in charge of Congress and most
statehouses around the country, by launching an apologetic listening tour to
reconnect with working-class whites.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaking with supporters at a
campaign rally in Phoenix, Arizona, March 21, 2016. (Photo by Gage Skidmore)
There also might have been a clear-eyed evaluation of the weaknesses of the
Democratic presidential nominee who came to personify the corrupt
insider-culture of Official Washington, exploiting government service for
financial gain by raking in millions of dollars for speeches to Wall Street
and other special interests.
Clinton also offended many peace voters because of her support for
aggressive war, both as a U.S. senator backing the disastrous invasion of
Iraq and as Secretary of State pushing for U.S. military interventions in
Libya and Syria. Her apology for voting for the Iraq War came across as
opportunistic and insincere, and her undisguised delight over Libyan leader
Muammar Gaddafi's grisly murder ("We came; we saw; he died!") seemed
ghoulish.
And, whether fairly or not, many Americans were turned off by the Democratic
Party's emphasis on "identity politics," the assumption that people would
vote based on their gender, race or sexual orientation, rather than on
bread-and-butter policies and war-or-peace issues.
In other words, the Democratic Party could have looked in the mirror and
seen what many Americans found unappealing about the modern version of a
party that had done so much to build the country, from the New Deal during
the Great Depression through the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, and
taking a leading role in addressing environmental, health-care and other
national challenges.
But today's Democrats instead chose to blame their plight largely on Russia
and its alleged "meddling" in U.S. politics, a strategy that not only made
little sense - given the many other reasons why voters turned away from
Clinton and her party - but delivered a message to white working-class
voters who had gone over to Trump that they were "stupid" and had been
"duped."
Whatever one thinks about white working-class voters who favored Trump,
calling people gullible is not an effective way to woo back a voting bloc
that already feels insulted and alienated.
Missing a Chance
So, when Trump was sworn in last Jan. 20, the ball was largely in his court.
He could have focused on rebuilding America's infrastructure; or he could
have proposed a serious plan for improving access to health care; or he
could have moved pragmatically to resolve a host of international conflicts
that President Obama had left behind.
The crowd at President Trump's inauguration on Jan. 20, 2017. (Screen shot
from Whitehouse.gov)
Instead, President Trump squandered his first days in office by getting into
absurd arguments about his inaugural crowd size compared to Obama's and
denying that Clinton had won the national popular vote. His "alternative
facts" made him a laughingstock.
Last spring, when I spoke with a group of Trump voters in West Virginia,
they were still faithful to their choice - and wanted Washington to give him
a chance - but they already were complaining about Trump's personal
outbursts on Twitter; they wanted him to concentrate on their real needs,
not his petty squabbles.
But Trump wasn't listening. He couldn't kick his Twitter habit. He kept
putting his giant ego in the way.
As his presidency stumbled forward, Trump also brushed aside suggestions
that he reverse his image as a person who had no regard for facts by
declassifying information about the conflicts in Syria, Ukraine and
elsewhere - to reveal situations where Obama and his team played propaganda
games, rather than tell the truth.
And, lacking sufficient knowledge about the world, Trump failed when
presented with sophisticated plans for reshaping U.S. policies in the Middle
East to become less dependent on Israel and Saudi Arabia. Instead, Trump
jumped into the arms of Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Saudi
King Salman.
Pandering to Israeli-Saudi desires - and trying to show how tough he was -
Trump fired off 59 Tomahawk missiles at Syria over a dubious
chemical-weapons incident; threatened more Mideast strife against Iran; and
escalated the 16-year-old war in Afghanistan.
Plus, he blustered about war against North Korea and personally insulted the
country's leader, Kim Jong Un, as "little rocket man." Rather than rein in
neoconservative aggression, he continued to unleash it.
When Trump did address domestic policy, he defined himself as basically just
another right-wing Republican, supporting a health-care scheme that would
have made matters worse for millions of Americans and backing a tax-cut plan
that would mostly benefit the rich while blowing an even bigger hole in the
deficit. All that red ink, in turn, drowned any hopes for investments in a
modern infrastructure.
In other words, Trump exposed himself as the narcissistic incompetent that
his critics said he was. He proved incapable of even acting presidential,
let alone showing that he could use his power to make life better for
average Americans. He was left with little to boast about beyond the economy
that was bequeathed to him by Obama.
Republicans also had little to brag about, explaining why Ed Gillespie, the
GOP's gubernatorial nominee in Virginia in 2017, opted for ugly socially
divisive attack ads as the best hope for defeating Democrat Ralph Northam, a
Gillespie strategy called "Trumpism without Trump."
But Gillespie's approach backfired with a surprisingly strong turnout of
Virginia's voters putting Northam into the governor's mansion and almost
erasing the solid Republican majority in the state legislature.
Trump was left to tweet about how the Virginia results, which were echoed in
other states' elections on Tuesday, weren't a reflection on his own
popularity, ignoring his unprecedentedly low approval ratings for a
president nine months into his first term.
So, the new political question is whether Trump can belatedly learn from his
failures and finally undertake some actions at home and abroad that actually
serve the interests of the American people and the world. Or will he
continue to bumble and stumble along?
A parallel question is whether the Democrats will misinterpret their strong
showing on Tuesday as encouragement to continue ignoring their own political
and institutional shortcomings - and to keep on using Russia to bash Trump.
Neither side has shown much aptitude for learning.
