Election 2016: Something Special and Different, and Something You might Never Think of
While first formulating this essay, I was sitting in a small Ramen Restaurant in the suburb of Tokyo, Japan, looking at the latest election update from the Washington Post app and CNN app, and being speechless. The result was truly surprising. Just a day before the Election day, election maps from all major media showed strong Hillary advantage. I posted the latest election map and wrote: “Now we can go to sleep feeling a bit safe.” Although Hillary had been bothering by the new FBI investigation in the past few weeks, but Donald Trump had been surrounded by all kinds of criticisms for the past a year and half.
It was particularly surprising to see that Michigan and Wisconsin, two states that supported Democrat candidate since Bill Clinton’s first run, turned red. Same case for Pennsylvania, a traditional Democrat’s stronghold, supported Trump in this election. Hillary’s failure to defend these traditionally blue states contributed more to his defeat than not winning swing states like Florida.
Besides just merely expressing disappointment, just like a lot of other articles, I would like to make some observation on the changes and continuities of American politics I observed during this election season.
Radicalization and polarization
This election witnesses the radicalization and polarization of American politics. The 1990s symbolizes the rise of catch-all politics and centralism. Bill Clinton, with his New Left Movement, won big during 1992 election. The New Democrat emphasizes on being centralist rather than traditional leftist. In order to win bi-partisan partnership, the New Democrat compromises and makes deal with Republicans. The general gap between two parties closed during the 1990s. During the Bush administration, bi-partisan cooperation remained in the Senate. However, the Great Recession showed that the centralism brought a crash down rather than everlasting growth. After the Recession, debates and gridlocks between two parties, represented by the 2012 governmental shutdown, smashed the myth of bi-partisan cooperation to shreds. People, especially who were typically ignored by politicians and who sought strong voices, demand greater changes. They want a political revolution that shakes up the American politics.
Both Bernie and Donald emphasized political revolution and built their campaign based on the support of groups that lacks political resources and influences. It is unfair to compare Bernie and Trump. Although I don’t agree with Bernie’s agenda, I do respect his dignity and personality. However, Bernie and Trump occupied the two extremes of the political spectrum during this election season. Thus, there are a few similarities between their campaigns. Also, both Bernie and Trump are political revolutionaries against the current Washington System of politics.
The majority of Bernie’s supports are young Americans, especially college students. Bernie’s proposals, such as making all public colleges free and “taming the wall street”, are certainly appealing (as a UVA student, you know how much money I will save and how much less shit I need to deal with the Student Financial Service every year? Quite a lot!). Young people are enthusiastic of political revolutions. The mass protest in Paris during the 1960s and in China in 1989 were all started by students. Because of the lack of political resources, such as money, and influence, the young people are always ignored by candidates. However, Bernie Sanders built his support in colleges by addressing directly toward these young people and giving them hope and igniting their passion and enthusiasm in political revolution. Bernie successfully mobilized the staggering young educated people who can’t fulfill their American Dream and find their way to success. His elitism view on social justice, civil right, and strong support toward Keynes School of economy appeals to young people who received higher education.
Donald Trump’s campaign built on poor, white, working-class voters. This group, because of their low education background and lack of political resource, failed to make impacts during the national campaign. Because of their lack of education, they cannot fully understand the complexity of domestic and international politics. Polls from recent elections show that poor blue-collar workers usually have a low voter turnout. A Lot of workers vote alongside with their union, which often has special political connections with different candidates. However, Donald Trump’s strategy allowed him to receive wide support from this group. Partially because of his own lack of understanding of domestic and international politics, Donald Trump often provides overly simplified answers that echo to these blue-collar workers. We are losing jobs because Mexico and China are stealing them. The crime rate and drug use are high because illegal immigrants from Latin America are flushing into the United States. They are all criminals. We need to deport them and build a wall to make sure they don’t come again. Terrorism is targeting the United States, so why don’t we just send back all Muslims? There are problems in African-American communities in the inner city, then we need to employ more police forces to control them. Clearly, problems are way more complicated than these simple statements. However, the working class Americans resonate to these statements. Because of their lack of education, they cannot understand long and detailed political analysis. They supported Trump’s statements because compared to the analysis they cannot comprehend, they believed in short statements they can understand. Statistics shows this approach is effective. Trump won 80% of counties where less than 10% of the population graduated from college. Long time Blue states that heavily populated by working classes, such as Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, turned to Trump because of his appealing toward working class Americans.
However, what Trump did, and what these people supported, is simply picking the minority group as a scapegoat and blaming them for everything. Yes, scapegoating is easy and people love scapegoating. For those people who are too weak to change the world and too soft to change themselves, they love to release their anger on those who are different from them and think everything is going to be alright and problems are gone forever. For them, scapegoating is a parade. Being part of the zealous people and tearing the scapegoat apart make them feel secure. But they don’t understand, just as John Rawls stated in his A Theory on Justice, if a group of people can be sacrificed and scapegoated, then no one will be safe.
Want to hear my opinion on political revolution? Throughout history, the word “revolution” is often related with the bloodshed of both power holders and revolutionaries. There is no successful revolution without sacrifices. For those people hoping for a political revolution in DC, how many of them actually know revolution requires sacrifices and are prepared for sacrificing themselves for it? If they can’t answer this question, then their romanticized illusion of political revolution is basically non-sense and dangerous.
Running the best election
Winning the election does not require running a good election. However, the winner does need to run an election better than all opponents. The number one rule of running a campaign is to make as few mistake as possible.
In 2008 election, among the 4 candidates that had the highest winning chance, Obama, Hillary, John Edwards and McCain, Obama made fewer mistakes than the other three candidates. Hillary faced her Waterloo in Iowa after invested massive amount of money but didn’t win. There were also problems inside of Hillaryland. Mark Penn, Bill’s pollster during his campaign and helped him during the most difficult time in his presidency and joined Hillary’s team, was hated by others in Hillaryland. The inner split of Hillaryland widened when Hillary fired Solis Doyle, her campaign manager. Doyle joined Hillary during the campaign for Senator and was Hillary’s most trusted staff. This directly caused chaos in the Hillaryland. McCain went bankrupted even before Iowa caucus and had a rumor of an affair with a Washington lobbyist during the election. His selection of Sarah Palin as Vice President was the result of lack of consideration, especially the lack of detailed examination of Palin’s shameful past. For John Edwards, he got a new son from a woman who is not his wife. In fact, the woman, Rielle Hunter, was his documentary maker he picked up from a bar. This affair can sum up how messed up his campaign was.
In the case of this election, both Donald Trump and Hillary made numerous mistakes, such as Trump’s “locker room conversation” tape and Hillary’s email. However, as Hillary’s email problem re-emerged again and the FBI investigation re-started two weeks before the election, her image was damaged significantly at the most important period. She was labeled as criminal and liar, the image she tried to erase during the entire campaign season, at the most critical period. This contributed greatly to her surprising defeat in the election
Conclusion
This election experienced lots of changes in the American presidential campaign rulebook. Although for a lot of American people, the result was disappointing. However, it was indeed another peaceful transition of power. Throughout the history, peacefully accepting the result of an election without falling into chaos has always been a wonderful achievement. A lot of people might disagree with President-Elect Trump’s policies and agenda, but we still can have the power to build our community stronger and make it a safer and better place by showing love and benevolence to people around us. There are times this great nation faces crisis greater than this, such as the Civil War and the day “which will live infamy”. However, we Americans stayed together and stayed strong, and we took the triumph. This is another time we should come together, not apart, to show what the concept of “America” truly stands for.
