One Year After. What really happened?

A year ago I predicted Donald Trump would win the election.  I published the prediction in the face of polls that said Hillary would win big.

Politico Magazine has a cover story on Robby Mook, Hillary's campaign manager.  He is at Harvard, teaching at the Kennedy School, making the point that Russia hacked the election and that American elections are facing an existential threat.  Foreign involvement in our elections are the big bear in the room.

Click Here: Politico

They are the one that hijacked the election, he said.  He is described showing his class a big word cloud.  "Jobs. Economy. Work. All that good stuff."  But what the public heard about was "E-Mail"

That is one school of thought about "What Happened":  Russians hacked the election at both the message stage and the ballot stage.   We were robbed.

I got a chance to talk briefly with Mook at Harvard, and I voiced to him my own thought about what really happened, revealed in the premise of my question, "Why didn't the campaign write a speech with a big comprehensive and emotionally appealing message, have Hillary practice saying it until she internalized it, and then send her out with a message that inspired?"

My visit with Robby Mook at Harvard in September

Mook replied that her speeches were just fine.

Clueless.  I thanked him and went away satisfied that I understood a piece of the puzzle: Hillary and Hillary's people were clueless.  They did not understand that they had failed to create an essential ingredient: a message that made sense of what what going on, with a diagnosis of the problem and a prescription for fixing it, so voters recognized that the candidate understood them and they could have hope for a better tomorrow.

From the vantage point of a year after, here is what I think happened.

1.  Trump grabbed the spotlight and kept it on himself.  He understood that the voters and the media would watch a big bold performer.  He amplified his brand as a fearless bully.  The American political system underestimated the appeal of the Trump brand as a decisive leader who was forthright in re-asserting traditional cultural hierarchy against outside interlopers. 

2.  Hillary embraced and tailored her message to a constituency of educated urbanites, and their cultural preferences are interpreted by less educated and more rural American as condescending and hostile--flyover country..  Hillary's biography, the Clinton Foundation, the Goldman speeches, all contributed to amplifying that message and her policy positions confirmed them.   She embraced the losing side of a culture war.

3.  White racial resentments and fears.  Trump's hostility to outsiders was not limited to illegal ones.  ("Mexico isn't sending its best. . . ."   He communicated that he shared traditional white voters' resentments over changes brought by the numbers of immigrants, their origins from Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East, the rise of feminist agitation on harassment, the rise of college political correctness disputes, and affirmative action.  

4.  That big "E-mail" Mook described in the center of the word cloud surrounding Hillary was not because of Russians; it was because Americans put it there, and they put it there because Trump understood that the media was fascinated by a dominating accuser.  Trump accuses, in clear, simple sentences.  Russians didn't create and sell "Crooked Hillary".  Trump did.  The Trump formula of deny, pivot, accuse, works in American media and voting culture.  An accuser is more interesting than an explainer.  Anger is more interesting than reason.  Trump understood what American watch.

5.  Americans have polarized into Republicans and Democrats. There are not a lot of swing voters.  Republicans were loyal to their brand and Democrats were not. The Supreme Court issue and the possibility of a reversal on abortion, public prayers, and re-establishing the primacy of Christianity pulled evangelicals into support.  The gun issue kept potentially-errant rural conservatives in line.  Democrats fractured between the Bernie populists and the Hillary liberal establishment. 

6. Trump had an understandable message and Hillary did not.  Hillary did not get her share of voters pre-disposed to vote Democratic because she did not get her message out through the clutter of "e-mail" and "crooked". 

7.  Political communication is about message that motivates (or fails to motivate) your base.  The messages are big, bold, body language perception of archetype brands.   The Trump brand of dominating pro American unapologetic blowhard was more attractive than the Hillary brand of establishment liberal, a brand to which Trump and Bernie attached the notion of corrupt.  

Posted and circulated on leftist sites.

8.  But what about the Russians?  Is Mook right?  I think not.  The Russians are not dividing Americans.  Americans are.

 It is entirely possible that--right now--Russians are leading or providing fodder for Facebook groups that are "Progressive or Bust," devoted to a sole object of re-electing Trump by dividing Democrats.  There is a large political ecosystem of progressive voters who are more angry with Democrats than with Trump.  Trump is the enemy but Democrats are traitors and thieves--therefore worse.  These organizations and Facebook groups exist in college towns with liberal, multicultural, vegans.  They exist in rural areas that are self-consciously leftists in conservative counties.  They hate Hillary personally and Democrats generally.   

The groups are perfectly designed to re-elect Trump.  Who makes these groups possible?  Americans.

Who incubates them and creates "news stories" that circulate, stories about Hillary-the-murderer, about Democrats disrespecting Bernie? Is it Putin and the Russians?  The Koch Brothers?  The RNC?  The groups are populated by long standing all-American progressive activists who feel strongly that the stories they see and the sentiments they express make sense.  It does not matter whether they are written by an American partisan or a Russian paid piecework for invented stories plausible enough to re-post or re-tweet.  The local organizers of these groups are committed and sincere.  The groups only grow if they are finding a market of Americans who agree with and circulate the stories, whatever their source. Don't blame Russians.

Look inward, not outward.   Robby Mook's interpretation of what happened is a false and dangerous path for Democrats.  He is looking outward and Democrats need to look inward.  Trump was a media sensation with his message of strength, nativism, and resistance to displacement of white Americans as the governing center in America.  Democrats are divided and uncertain of an alternative vision.  If that situation persists Trump will win again in 2020.

The political wheel turns, and in less than two years charismatic candidate of the center left might reunify Democrats.  It could happen, if the far left will permit it. They might not.   Trump is already getting tiresome.  Trump-ism might well last longer than Trump. We will see.