Blindness at Harvard

Looking at the little things.   Missing the big things.

Harvard is an epicenter of coastal elitism, expertise, support for Hillary, and complete astonishment on election night, 2016.

The election of Trump didn't seem remotely plausible here.   This makes my visit to Harvard enormously useful, not as a opportunity to learn "true reality", but as an opportunity to learn how blindness happens.  The experts were looking at the wrong things.

Did not see it coming

E J Dionne spoke to a group of about a hundred people about his new book, One Nation after Trump.  The premise of the book, right there on the cover, is that people would be perplexed.  Later that day Philip Kent, the former head of Turner Broadcasting, led a discussion of a 8 students and guests about politics and media.  How could this happen???

I hear frequent mention here that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote.  That fact obviously irritates Trump but is greater effect is that it distracts Democrats from the real import of the election.   Democrats in denial think that nothing big needs to change.  We really won, sort of, they say.

This allows them to deny the greater reality that there is a problem.  College classmate Tony Farrell in a comment on Facebook made what I consider the correct assessment:  " No one seems to ever note that Trump LOST California by 4.3 million votes, which means he pretty much won the rest of the country (which he only lost by 3 million, vote-wise).  Toss in NY if you want (lost by over a million.)  So, it was pretty bad for Hillary, who was essentially guaranteed CA and NY by dint of being a Democrat.  What a terrible wipe out!"

Trump carried Ohio.  Trump carried Pennsylvania.  Trump carried Michigan.  Trump carried Wisconsin.  The loss of those states is the reality that Democrats need to understand and integrate into their understanding of the election.  They lost upper Midwest states that are not culturally conservative.   They lost states they should have won.

It makes all the sense in the world that journalist E J Dionne and media executive Philip Kent look at media and its effect on the campaign.   The behavior of media is more than sufficient to explain the otherwise unexplainable victory of Trump.  After all, it was a narrow loss.  Any little thing could have tipped the balance.

****Trump was the center of attention, getting six times the free media of the next closest Republican candidate (Cruz) and twice what Hillary got.

****Trump had a well established brand as a decisive leader.

****Trump successfully executed a brave policy of distracting the public from one scandal by substituting another.

****Cable News focused disproportionately on Hillary's scandals.

The media was a symptom, not a cause.

****Trump was a genius at branding himself and others.

****Trump was clear and simple in making memorable slogans, e.g. "drain the swamp", "build the wall", "make America great again."

****Trump successfully created the meme of "fake news at the mainstream media", thus de-legitimizing opposition to a Trump narrative.

****Voters do not exercise good "media literacy" in distinguishing between facts and fiction, between news and opinion.

The response of media observers is accurate--but inadequate.   There was something bigger happening within the voters of America, a profound un-ease with the status quo in two areas.   The discontent was articulated and confirmed by the success of  Bernie Sanders' campaign: a bipartisan pushback against free trade and an economic system that is rewarding ownership rather than employment.   The economic system is not working well for a great many people.   

The other was observed and confirmed by the racial appeals of Trump: white resentment over the competition of new groups--immigrants, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, homosexuals.  There is a feeling that these "outsiders" are stepping into line in front of them, getting unfair advantage, with the implication that whites had had embedded privilege which was unfair and needed to be taken away.   A giant backlash by whites took place, due to some mix of Obama, demographic changes, terrorist attacks by Muslims, call centers in India, Asian valedictorians, Black Lives Matter, drug related criminal activity, affirmative action in employment, college trigger warnings and micro-agression talk, and Hillary speaking of "deplorables."

Chief's of Staff speaking to the next generation

The public--in both parties--voted against this status quo.   Harvard represents the status quo.  Students here are part of "the elect", a modern version of those puritan leaders who understood themselves to be the ones privileged, by the grace of God, for leadership on earth with its attendant political power and material wealth, plus an eternal reward in heaven.   These young and mid-career students on leave from the military, business, and federal agencies, are getting the credentials that are presumed to be the pathway to power within the system.  The comments by the three former Presidential Chiefs of Staff to the audience of three hundred or so students at the Kennedy School affirmed an assumption: these were the future leaders of the government and business establishments of America.  It was a presumption. 

The election of 2016 represented a revolt against that presumption.  The election was more than Hillary being a flawed candidate and Trump an exciting one, or that Trump is a media phenomenon.   The public wanted a more profound change.  Trump was broadly unsuitable, but, nevertheless, he represented change and therefore people decided to take their chances.

What is not clear is that Trump will actually carry out an agenda of change.  The left thinks that his cabinet choices demonstrate that he is captured by the traditional GOP trickle down establishment.  No change there.  The right fears that he may make common cause with Democrats and carry out an agenda that preserves and expands an incumbent semi-welfare state.  Either way, the status quo remains, billionaires on top. 

There are signs out there that the revolt against the status quo continues, is observers look in the right places.   A great many voters are in no mood to be "reasonable."  They are staying angry.   I spoke with a man wearing a "Deplorable" hat.   He was a Bernie supporter.  "I'll never vote for a Democrat," he said.  Facebook chatter suggests the same thing.  The Democratic Party's choice of Hillary over Bernie caused a deep rift.  Comments on this blog and on Facebook express the disillusionment with Democratic leaders.

Meanwhile, Republican voters in Alabama are sending a signal that the revolt is much more profound than can be explained by Trump's successful media manipulation.   Voters are rejecting a traditional Republican candidate for US Senate, Luther Strange, to elect instead a hell raising cultural conservative, Roy Moore, an injudicious firebrand.  He calls homosexuality "horrible, immoral, detestable, and a crime against nature."  He installed a sculpture of The Ten Commandments in front of the Supreme Court in the middle of the night and was removed from office because of it.  That didn't hurt him; it made him even more popular.  He calls Islam "a false religion".  He praises Putin for imprisoning homosexuals.   Voters in Alabama don't want circumspect and respectful.  They want angry.