- he used his speech on the eve of the 4th of July at Mt. Rushmore to claim that there was a ‘merciless campaign to wipe out our history’, asserting that “Angry mobs are trying to tear down statues of our founders, deface our most sacred memorials and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities” and declaring, ‘This monument will never be desecrated’
- in a move that was widely seen as backfiring (though it won him support in some quarters), Trump held up a Bible outside a church in Washington, after police had tear-gassed protesters, declaring himself to be for ‘law and order’
- he described the alleged ‘bedlam in Seattle‘ where protesters had declared an ‘autonomous zone’ free of police
- he claimed ‘You won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America‘ because of calls to defund the police
Predictions of a Trump loss and a Clinton win
Inside the Clinton campaign
In Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign, Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes (2017) paint a rich picture of the thinking that drove Clinton’s approach to the contest with Trump.
They argue that Clinton had a preference for arguing on the grounds of policy rather than a bigger-picture vision for the country. Further, her campaign relied heavily on the rigorous analysis of evidence provided by polling and data analytics—‘information number crunch[ing]’ (p. 25).
One senior Clinton adviser is quoted on her approach to policy and public debate: ‘This is her deeply held thing: elections should be about policy… There’s a textbook quality to her articulation of things.’ (p. 6). Policy was ‘the only thing she ever felt comfortable discussing in elections’ (p. 93).
The following quotes point to Clinton’s broad difficulties with political communication, and to areas where greater skill in the use of imagery, narrative and political theatre could have helped her:
Hillary was at her wit’s end when it came to her messaging— dismayed by the campaign’s lack of inspiration. Here she was, a year into her campaign and about to get trampled by a socialist, and “Breaking Barriers” was the best her staff could come up with…In late January, as Hillary’s campaign began to think about “evolving the core message,” Ron Klain [a long time Democrat advisor, campaign aide and political operative] chimed in with a succinct analysis of what was missing. “We need to invest more time in describing what HRC wants to do for America, if she becomes President,” he wrote to her top campaign brass. “What is it that she wants to do as President? How would America be different? What should people be excited about?… What we need to deliver is a more compelling message on America under HRC.”
[Clinton’s chief speechwriter, Dan] Schwerin replied with a telling insight into Hillary that everyone in her orbit understood but couldn’t, or wouldn’t, impress upon her. “I think Ron’s right, but the irony here is that HRC talks about hardly anything else,” the frustrated speechwriter asserted. “Her stump has always been a long recitation of what she wants to do as President. We’ve rolled out a million detailed policies. Our problem is missing the forest for the trees. We’ve never found a good way (or at least a way she embraces) that sums up her vision for how America would be different” (p. 137-8).
for many voters, the term “e-mail” had become shorthand for her untrustworthiness. And, ever since the primary, her “trust numbers were horrifying,” said one source who had seen internal campaign focus group data (p. 342) (emphasis added).
Further, she relied on a strategy managed by Mook, ‘a data analytics disciple who decided where to hire staff, send the candidate, and pay for ads based on the information number crunchers gave him about voters’ (p. 25).
Interviews with the authors: video
‘The right knows what the left refuses to comprehend’
The emphasis above on policy debates, data analytics, information number crunching and the lack of a compelling message stand in contrast with Trump’s use of cultural power compelling images and narratives.
Drew Westen, a neuroscientist, psychology professor and political commentator, provides some perspectives that are relevant to Trump’s defeat of Clinton. He writes:
‘The right knows what the left refuses to comprehend. What moves voters is not primarily the facts but the way leaders present those facts… Facts are politically inert unless they are embedded in simple language, evocative imagery, and compelling narratives, which head off potential counternarratives at the pass’.
He was commenting on responses to the Mueller report, but he is observing a repeated pattern where the right out-campaigns the left. If the focus is on data analytics, textbook articulations of policy and the so-called demographic and economic ‘fundamentals’, cultural power can be disregarded. ‘Evocative imagery’ and ‘compelling narratives’ were not Clinton’s strong point. Trump offered it in spades.
The ‘enthusiasm gap’
A stark ‘enthusiasm gap’ between Republican and Democrat votes was evident as early as late 2015. Politico reported, ‘Republicans are fired up. Ready to go. Democrats? Not so much’. An article in The Hill six weeks ahead of the 2016 election discussed Clinton’s problem with an enthusiasm. It quoted Republican strategist Michael Steele:
You can have all the infrastructure you want, but if people are not inspired or excited to vote for you, then it is not going to do you any good…
You can have very little, or weak infrastructure, but if you create momentum… that wins the argument.
Concerns about an ‘enthusiasm gap’ persisted. See:
- Early voter turnout worries Democrats who fear ‘enthusiasm gap’ for Clinton: Guardian report on early voting ahead of election day
- NBC’s Katy Tur: We See Much More Excitement Among Trump Voters: ‘Meet The Press’ interview 3 weeks out from the election
- Hillary Clinton fighting ‘enthusiasm gap’ among some black voters
- Report that notes that to win, Clinton needed to approach the success President Barack Obama enjoyed among black voters in 2008
- Why were the polls so off? MSNBC post-election review
Once Trump and Clinton became the candidates, Trump’s imagery galvanised his supporters, and Clinton needed to energise her own base. Amie Parnes states in an interview that a key reason she lost is that ‘her base never really came home. Donald Trump’s did.’
Bernie Sanders, of course, generated plenty of enthusiasm, and many of his supporters have argued that he would have defeated Trump in 2016. His capacity to extend enthusiasm beyond his base was never tested in a general election, however he was able to build ‘people power’ in a way that few other candidates have. Yet his experience in the 2020 primary contest with Joe Biden highlights how ‘people power’ – crucial as it is – is one alongside a whole array of dimensions of politics, and other sources of political strength matter as well. Sanders had more ‘people power’ than Biden, yet Biden won the primary contest in states where his own ‘ground game’ was weak- as articles in the Washington Post and Politico discuss.
Identity and ‘racialized economics’ driving politics –
not just economic anxiety
In his article How identity politics elected Donald Trump, Vox’s Ezra Klein discusses how the Republican Party is increasingly organized around white identity politics: ‘anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim… and a whole lot more interested in protecting its numbers and borders than celebrating tax cuts’.
Klein draws on Identity Crisis, an analysis of the 2016 campaign by political scientists John Sides, Michael Tesler, and Lynn Vavreck. He suggests that virtually all politics is identity politics—in the broad sense of the way that who we are shapes our political outlook, including what we believe is true about politics.
It is often said that that economic insecurity can trigger racism, however the argument in Identity Crisis is that racism played its own role in activating a sense of economic insecurity: levels of racial resentment were powerful predictors of economic perceptions.
Sides, Tesler, and Vavreck argue:
Group identities came to matter on issues that did not have to be about identity, such as the simple question of whether one was doing okay economically… these identities came to be the lens through which so much of the campaign was refracted (p. 3).
They elaborate:
Economic anxieities came to matter more when they were refacted through social identities. The important sentiment underlying Trump’s support was not ‘I might lose my job’ but, in essence, ‘People in my group are losing jobs to that other group.’ Instead of a pure economic anxiety, what mattered was racialized economics (p 8).
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Including group identities in the analysis is valuable for making sense of what is going on:
including the cultural power of the stories and images that give content to these identities is valuable as well.