The bad news is that I have failed as a prophet: “My election prediction: 55/45 popular vote split between Hillary and Trump“. The good news is that through the comments section and email we may have found true prophets.
The actual popular vote ratio between the candidates seems to have been almost exactly 50/50 (latimes). In the comments section of the above-cited posting it looks as though “joecanuck” (presumably one of the folks who is going to be running a Canadian welcome center for my fleeing Facebook friends) called it reasonably well with “49-48-3: Trump-Clinton-Johnson”. Also Reha Gur with “49:48 Hillary:Trump – People who support Trump are keeping their heads low. They really don’t want people to know who they are voting for.”
[I did a little better with the markets: “I think the market will go up about 2-3 percent after the election, whoever wins, due to the removal of uncertainty.” We’ll have to check at the end of the week, but right now the S&P is up slightly.]
Via private email and personal conversations, the true prophets included a retired bond fund manager, a Goldman, Sachs VP, and the 12-year-old son of a conservative friend. Their reasoning was the same as Reha Gur’s: people would be more likely to vote for Trump in the privacy of a secret ballot process than they would be to express support for Trump in response to a pollster (what if someone were to overhear?):
I give Trump 52/48 based on my theory that you have at least a 5% handicap due to people not wanting to acknowledge that they are voting for Trump. We saw this play out in the Brexit vote and with the recent Republican primary.
I think trump will do slightly better than the polls show because [my 12-year-old son] said that people would be embarrassed to tell a stranger they are voting for trump.
One thing that I found interesting at a Boston-area election night party and on Facebook was the idea that if the election had been won by Hillary 49/48 then everything would have been great in the U.S. going forward, but if Hillary lost 48/49 then the country needed to split into two parts, one ruled by Hillary and one by the Trumpenfuhrer.
Having been spectacularly wrong on the popular vote numbers, here’s my analysis of why Hillary lost:
- the inherently corrupt structure of being in elected office and having a personal/family foundation to which government suppliants can donate
- attacking Donald Trump regarding sexual and personal behavior rather than concentrating on issues and competence to govern
- saying that anyone who disagrees with Hillary and Obama is stupid, sexist, and racist
Democrats celebrated the fact that nobody could seemingly prosecute and imprison Hillary for the Clinton Foundation under the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard. Yet a structure that is immune from prosecution may still be perceived as corrupt. Here’s one of the few on-record Trump supporters I could find in Massachusetts, a self-employed woman: “If you made over a billion dollars then you must have been selling something. Since Hillary’s only job has been politician, what she was selling was us.” (the Washington Post says that the real number is over $2 billion) Hillary supporters, including at the election night party, concentrated on the fact that the Clinton Foundation per se was found to comply with the various rules that apply to foundations. They simply could not anything questionable about a structure in which a politician can say “donate money here that my daughter will be able to spend on Gulfstream charter 20 years from now”. (Note that if someone had paid Hillary directly to do a favor and she wanted to pass that money down to Chelsea, it would be taxed at a rate of 90 percent; if the money goes into the foundation it is tax-free on receipt, tax-free when invested, and tax-free when controlled is passed to Chelsea. The reduction of the tax rate from 90 percent to 0 is counterbalanced by the fact that Chelsea will have some restrictions on how she can spend the money, e.g., she can organize a big party in Paris but she can’t buy clothes for herself.)
Republicans attacked Hillary for being corrupt (the $100+ million in her pocket and the $2+ billion to the foundation) and incompetent (trillions of tax dollars spent either by her or President Obama to little effect). Plainly Hillary supporters would disagree regarding the merits of these attacks but at least they were in the category of job-related items. Democrat attacks on Trump were basically the same as a typical American custody and child support plaintiff’s attacks on a rich defendant: he sexually assaulted women, he raped children, he wasn’t the kind of person that an impressionable person should be around. These allegations in family court play out in front of a sympathetic audience, i.e., a judge who has chosen to take a job where the daily task is taking money away from a person who works and give it to a person who doesn’t work (or who earns less). (See Real World Divorce for how well this can work.) The family court judge is predisposed to rule in favor of the lower-income plaintiff and may just be looking for some convenient justifications. But the American voter is a neutral audience that can ask simple questions such as “If Donald Trump wanted to have sex with teenagers, instead of exposing his multi-billion-dollar fortune to civil lawsuit plaintiffs, why wouldn’t he fly his personal Boeing 757 to a country where that was legal?” This focus on Trump’s sexual and personal behavior was apparently hugely satisfying to my Facebook friends and Hillary supporters in general but an intelligent listener might respond “If all that they have against Trump is the 22-year-old rape allegation that can’t even be proven under the 51-percent civil lawsuit standard then he probably isn’t that bad.”
A recurring theme in my Facebook feed (see “Haiku contest: Summarize your Facebook feed” and “Facebook makes Americans hate each other?” and “My Facebook Feed on Election Day“) is that anyone who disagrees with Obama or Hillary is stupid, sexist, and racist. This tends to shorten arguments but if anything it reinforces Trump supporters’ position that the Democrats are self-serving elitists. I tried to convince at least 100 Democrats, both on Facebook and face-to-face here in Massachusetts, that it was possible that a person could support Trump due to having a different economic situation from theirs, rather than stupidity, sexism, and racism. That, for example, a Walmart cashier whose job could be taken by an immigrant could legitimately have a different view on immigration policy from them. I can’t remember ever being successful. The answer was always the same: stupidity, sexism, racism. This makes Democrats feel good, certainly. They are the smart and tolerant ones. But it is tough to win votes from people if you dismiss their concerns as being motivated by stupidity, sexism, and racism (or sometimes as stemming from failure and bitterness).
[The “Trump gets sued all the time” meme was popular but also not convincing. One of my friends linked to an article where it turned out that the Trump Organization (not Trump personally) had been sued more than 500 times by the U.S. slip-and-fall personal injury industry. That might be a good reason not to do business in the U.S. (civil law jurisdictions such as Germany eliminate this kind of liability), but it is hardly relevant to Trump the candidate.]
How did suburban Bostonians take the news? The election-night party, in a town where 18 percent of the voters ultimately chose hatred, consisted of all Hillary-supporters with the exception of two pilots, only one of whom revealed (at 2:00 am) her secret attachment to libertarianism. Median income was probably roughly $150,000 per year from a range of jobs including user interface designer, CFO of a public company, music teacher, charter school teacher, public school teacher, successful divorce plaintiff, young lover of successful divorce plaintiff (fortunately I had not made the mistake of bringing this wine to the party), professional pilot, landscape designer-contractor, digital animator, etc. They were familiar with and comfortable with the U.S. welfare state. A young woman said “All that you have to do is pop out a baby. My friend in San Francisco lives in a $5,000/month apartment with her fiance and pays $300/month.” To this another woman responded with a story about, thanks to having obtained custody of a 12-year-old boy “who takes care of himself,” a welfare parent living comfortably without working in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. The face-to-face disagreements at the party were much more civil than Facebook “discussions.” The enthusiastic charter school teacher could talk about his experience as a unionized public school teacher (“no incentive to work” and “most kids didn’t learn that much”) without being shouted down by opponents of the charter school ballot question. All party guests expressed shock regarding the unfolding ascendancy of the Trumpenfuhrer, but the musicians seemed to take the news best. When Trump’s acceptance speech came on around 3:00 am Eastern time, the remaining guests had little reaction. (For me it was only the second time I had seen Donald Trump on television, the first being during the first debate, and I didn’t find anything to fault.)
What was the semi-public reaction of my friends on Facebook?
sequence from an Ivy-educated Berkeley resident: OMG, I can’t watch. What is WRONG with people?! … My son is still glued to the live election coverage. He thinks there’s still a chance HRC could pull it off. How do you tell your kid there’s no hope? … This is a day of mourning. Even those who think they won last night (which, remember, is LESS than half of American voters) are going to discover soon that their lives will become worse, not better. Yes, even the 1%, whose riches will be eroded by the global recession that has already started. … I couldn’t sleep last night for thinking about all the ways in which things are going to get worse: Climate change will accelerate; The worldwide recession will destroy jobs and lives; Racism, homophobia, antisemitism, misogyny–all the prejudices against which we’ve made inroads in the last few decades will resurge; Women’s rights will be rolled back, including the right to choose and the right not to be groped.
old (male) California computer programmer: I need to go pick up my daughter. How can I tell her the guy who brags about sexual assault appears to be winning?
old (male) Boston-area computer programmer: I thought the electoral college was my friend. I feel so betrayed. … I’m happy the market is up but WHY?
Female California burner: We will need to find our courage, maintain our voice, protect those more vulnerable and bring the light…Bright.
Woman in LA: I have started hoping for an intruder to club me over the head with a frying pan.
New England business manager: I woke up this morning so dismayed and troubled that I didn’t want to get out of bed. I feel betrayed by my country. I had always assumed that I could rely on “never here” – that the American people at the end of the day would do what’s right. As with any betrayal I can never trust like that again. … Last night hate trumped love. We may have lost the battle, but we can still win the war.
Boston-area veterinarian: Evil and hatred trumps hope and love.
Successful photographer and publisher in Manhattan: There are no words to describe how this feels other than total despair – I don’t even know where to begin – or try to make sense of this to the kids – Supreme Court, Obamacare, racism, misogyny, the wall, LGBT rights, migrants, world despots like Putin challenging taunting playing him, the environment, clean energy, science, FACTS, decency, generosity, kindness, fairness …. he’s on the wrong side of every single major issue that’s important to our children’s future
Tenure female Bay Area professor: I’m dreading telling our daughter that the man who bragged about grabbing women’s private parts will be our new president.
Ivy League undergraduate: I am heartbroken. I am a first generation American; my parents chose to raise a family in this country for its open mindedness, its propensity to attract people of talent and ingenuity, and its diversity. And last night, this country that I love chose hate and fear. … Trump and his supporters were emblematic of every time I have been diminished, made to feel unsafe, assaulted and subsequently blamed for my level of intoxication. They are everything that has made me feel less.
Liberal arts college undergraduate: hey how easy is it to get into mcgill … i’m so mad because i love america and it just doesn’t love me back. … congrats congrats congrats congrats complacent white voters, 66% of white women, the media!! you did it. you took away thousands of citizens’ rights, including mine. you ruined the economy. you killed the dream of america. you killed the dream of my future. you did it! you did it!
New Yorker: This is how democracy dies. Today we observe the anniversary of Kristallnacht by experiencing the election of a candidate who remained silent when the KKK endorsed him.
Wealthy Boston-area divorce plaintiff: This is what I told my daughter (16) last night: We need to think about what we care about, what we feel passionate about and work for it.
Techish middle-aged female in LA: Machism, Racism, Anti-intellectualism, a corrupted press and class envy have created a revolution that took down the “czars”. Its 1917 for America and for the rest of the world. Let’s be realistic. There is no coming back in our generation. … So this is the part of the story where the bully wins. What now? … Looks like some of us living in California, Massachusetts, Chicago, New York city have been living blindly in an alternate reality…
Tenured (female) professor in Manhattan: My birthday present to me is going to be electing the first female President of the United States. … I’m afraid. Please calm me down. … Now is when we will learn to how to live ethical lives in an evil time.
Western small business owner (female): That we can allow a conman like Trump to reach this point in the electoral process is absolutely insane. … What the hell is wrong with us? … Half my fellow Americans have bought into the lies and hateful rhetoric of a conman. … I blame our education system [run by unionized Democrats?] for failing to teach critical thinking skills that clearly reveal Trump for what he is. … How did they fall for his line of bullshit?
To me the last one is the best exemplar of what I’ve seen on Facebook and heard in person for the last year. A person who doesn’t agree with me politically is stupid (either low native IQ or poor education or both). Evidence of their stupidity is that they fall for “lies” or “fake news” whereas I am able to ascertain the truth, understand expert-authored nytimes content, etc., and therefore support Hillary. My inbox this morning contained a capsule summary of a New Yorker article titled “An American Tragedy”: “The electorate has, in its plurality, decided to live in Trump’s world of vanity, hate, arrogance, untruth, and recklessness”. (This could have been avoided, of course, had the great unwashed listened to daily exhortations from their betters at New Yorker during the preceding six months.)
Some comments on Facebook from independents (or at least “curmudgeons” who enjoyed trashing both Hillary and Trump!):
(in response to the Americans who said that they would emigrate) It sounds entitled to assume a foreign country will simply throw open the doors to you (while a Syrian refugee is stuck in a line) … Trump (and Brexit) represent a rejection of the cosmopolitan globalism of our current elites who feel more loyalty to a lifestyle and other elites than to a country. By running at the merest sign of trouble, you’re proving Trump supporters very right indeed.
If the Clinton foundation is really a charity, and not a slush fund, then, logically, donations to it ought not to drop now that Hillary has lost. Would the people who supported Hillary care to make a prediction on this?
Trump is bad, but a peasant revolt is worse. Consider which side has all the guns and military training, and how bad this could really have been. Democracy worked tonight in the Churchillian sense of sucking, except for all the other ways of exchanging power.
Reports and/or excerpts on private Facebook messages:
from a free-market-oriented friend: Some food for thought. I just counted: since last night, 22 (twenty-two) irredeemable deplorables (almost all with Ivy degrees and/or with top MBAs, many women) messaged me on Facebook privately to cheer for Trump. Not one of them expressed those views publicly neither before nor after the election (as opposed to gleeful cheering followed by emotional hand wringing of Hillary’s supporters). If you’re shocked by the election result, you might want to think about why these voices were absent from the discourse.
in a message about being defriended for questioning a pro-Hillary stance: “I can’t believe there are men that emotional. I would send him a box of tampons but I don’t think he would think it was funny.”
Based on my in-person and on-Facebook research, it seems that the main take-away from the election for Democrats is that a slightly-greater-than-expected percentage of Americans are stupid, sexist, and racist. That leaves us with a private message as the conclusion:
It is we [anti-Hillarans] who are called stupid, sexist, and racist
Republicans don’t say that Democrats are stupid, sexist, and racist
Only that they are self-serving elites
It is not insulting to be called elite
My final point of confusion: We can agree that the two candidates were pretty different, right? How come the popular vote was so nearly balanced?
Readers: What’s the most interesting thing that you’ve seen today in your Facebook feed?
Note: I typed the above while listening to Alondra de la Parra‘s album “My Mexican Soul”.
Right after I posted this, I found this from a Cambridge software developer: “I’ve only cried about 6 times so far today. It could be worse.” His friend responded “I think I can only count the periods I have not cried”. Another response from a guy: “I know how that feels. I cried like a baby last night a few times, and again this morning.” From a college professor: “I need to stop crying before [her son] gets home.”
Slip and fall, etc. are a big business in the US not because we are not a civil law system like Germany but because we, unlike virtually every other country in the world, does not have a loser pays system — so a lawsuit is a free option. That is the major reason why litigation is such a lucrative business in the US — kind of like being able to play the lottery without even having to buy the lottery ticket. In the area of family law it is even worse because the wealthier party may very well have to pay the legal fees of the financially weaker party regardless of the merits of the case. But hey the lawyers have to make a living too.
Saying this probably brands me as one of the deplorable hicks that Liberals despise, but it always seemed obvious to me that Liberal-land is where most of the racists and sexists live. How many of them voted for Obama (twice, but especially the first time) primarily because of the color of his skin? How many of them eagerly voted for Clinton primarily because she has a V-J-J? Both reasons seem utterly racist and sexist to me.
Who do you mingle with, in life and facebook? why? find someone sane (there are sane people of all political denomination, in case people assume I am supporting one side or the other) and spend time with them. You are old enough to know better.
No FB, but the NYer wore me down with their preachy BS these last six months. I did think it was humorous that their hectoring probably didn’t reach the people most of in need of education. I don’t think ‘Deplorables’ subscribe, but let me not engage in gross generalization.
Among the reasons I voted to ‘da Fuhrer was as a contrarian play. Humans are notoriously bad at prediction. Does David Remnick really have a better view of the future than the rest of us?
I thought the whole election was nicely encapsulated in a tweet I read last night:
“liberal condescension is something to behold”
Lynn: You’re definitely a hater!
If you made over a billion dollars then you must have been selling something. Since Hillary’s only job has been politician, what she was selling was us.
This brilliantly encapsulates the whole election.
“Democracy worked tonight in the Churchillian sense of sucking, except for all the other ways of exchanging power.”
Exactly. Counting heads instead of breaking heads.
“My final point of confusion: We can agree that the two candidates were pretty different, right? How come the popular vote was so nearly balanced?”
American politics resembles a football game, with the two sides slamming into each other at top speed and getting nowhere.
One of my Boston friends who is too old to emigrate to Canada posted “I would really hate to be gay, or a woman, or a minority, or an American right now.”
I suggested that he give a sympathy hug to Peter Thiel, visit his neighbor Abigail Johnson, and share a good cry with billionaire Robert Smith.
A Cambridge friend, married to a Harvard professor: “Apparently there ARE enough idiots in this village. I apologize for getting that wrong.”
I asked By “idiots” you mean people who voted for Donald Trump?
He responded with “Indeed. It’s not meant as an insult, just a statement of fact.”
Too many jobs moved to Calif* & NY. People who voted democrat in Ohio & Michigan were now voting in Calif*, so more flyover states became red. The electoral college won’t reflect the exodus from the flyover states until 2024.
The media focused entirely on social media & that still is mainly just silicon valley. They ignored almost the entire human population.
Millenials are determining elections & they’re already getting older & more conservative. The offices in SOMA are moving from basketballs & beer to a land of baby strollers & authentic food.
Democrats have become the party of the rich. It’s now those of us who can’t afford qualifying insurance plans & higher rent from an immigration boom who are obstructing social justice.
Despite blog comments to the contrary, when faced with taking action, people were done with the Clinton family.
“I typed the above while listening to Alondra de la Parra‘s album “My Mexican Soul”.”
Don’t let your facebook friends know you’re appropriating Mexican culture. That’s bad.
Speaking of which, how come everyone wants to emigrate to Canada instead of Mexico? Couldn’t be racism. Probably because everyone likes snow?
Phil will you take me out to lunch because I predicted the results of the election but I did not nail the percentages?
I think people may have also lied to pollsters and friends about supporting Clinton. I know a couple of liberal people who told their liberal friends that they would vote for Hillary but then did not show up to vote because they didn’t like her enough to make the effort.
“We can agree that the two candidates were pretty different, right? ” – Not really. Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum for me. A few short years ago Trump wasn’t even a Republican. Did he change that much, or are the two parties really just two sides of the same coin?
This statement, “A recurring theme in my Facebook feed … is that anyone who disagrees with Obama or Hillary is stupid, sexist, and racist. ” must almost certainly be false. You probably recall that Bernie Sanders disagreed with Hillary Clinton about many things earlier this year. I seriously doubt that many of your Facebook friends called him stupid, sexist, or racist.
And Lynn Clark, your statement is also nonsense. These liberals that you refer to always vote for the Democrat regardless of color or gender.
The last time I remember the general mood of a morning being this gloomy was 9/11. Like that morning, no one I met in public was talking about it, but there was an eerie gloom overlooking everything.
Phil,
As someone who grew up as a poor southerner, I can plainly say the Trump voters here were majority Caucasian and not only worker bees, but many entrepreneurs. Folks here are sick of liberals pandering to a class of our society/country that leeches off of the welfare system, pays very little or no taxes and is involved in the vast majority of violent crime.
I found it amusing that so many experts stated that this was the Republican’s golden moment, since Hillary was such a flawed candidate, yet the Repubs chose the one guy who couldn’t defeat Hillary. Clearly it turned out to be vice versa: The Democrats couldn’t find a candidate to defeat an incredibly vulnerable Donald Trump.
To me the most interesting things that I’ve seen today in my Facebook feed regarding the election have been
http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-talks-about/ and
https://theintercept.com/2016/11/09/democrats-trump-and-the-ongoing-dangerous-refusal-to-learn-the-lesson-of-brexit/
Both are about how the haves does not care much about the have nots and smear them at nearly every oppurtunity. Much in tune with your reports from election night in suburbia.
This really is what has become the typical 8-year cycle between the left and the right (assuming the economy cooperates). The stresses accumulate over time and the country needs a change. If a President is particularly incompetent or overly partisan, then the party in power only gets 4 years in that cycle.
Bush to Clinton; Clinton to Bush; Bush to Obama; Obama to Trump. Hillary just lost to Obama when the cycle was favorintg her party. She was running this time at the wrong point in the cycle. The last time a party went for 12 years was Reagan to Bush and Bush only made it 4 years.
After talks with both Trump and very liberal supporters I seem to understand why the liberals are confused. The Trump supporters seem to support things like term limits, corporate welfare, veteran benefits and large infrastructure spending which are strongly opposed by the newly and previously voted congress members, particularly the ones on the right.
“The Democrats couldn’t find a candidate to defeat an incredibly vulnerable Donald Trump.”
Its worse than that, they didn’t even look for one, and rejoiced when the real Donald became the opponent.
also upvote for “a self-employed woman” and J. Peterson for :
If you made over a billion dollars then you must have been selling something.
Since Hillary’s only job has been politician, what she was selling was us.
This brilliantly encapsulates the whole election.
The Greenwald article that Steven linked above was really persuasive. What a pathetic showing by the Democratic party.
The year of full-throated roar of hate and condescension from the great and the good (Democrat and Republican, not to mention all of obsequious Europe) was something to behold this time. I’ve never experienced anything quite like it. And yet the Americans in the end elected Literally Hitler.
No wonder the Boston Brahmins today are feeling a little glum, perhaps looking over their well-fed shoulders. But don’t worry. You were, it is true, remunerated in ways that might seem unbelievable to the cashier at Whole Foods if you told him, but recall that you were merely paid based on your world class performance and anyway how could the nation keep running without you.
“It is we [anti-Hillarans] who are called stupid, sexist, and racist Republicans don’t say that Democrats are stupid, sexist, and racist Only that they are self-serving elites It is not insulting to be called elite”
While it is true that many Democrats have called Republicans these things, the vitrol flowing in both directions seems pretty equal to me. Since the election, gloating has been added to the mix.
I’m a registered Democrat (lately), and I’ve had versions of the thought you’re describing. I admit I’m wrong. Or, rather, that while there certainly are some stupid, sexist and racist people who voted for Trump and who Democrats point to when backing up such statements (e.g., David Duke and followers), the vast majority of those who voted for him are not any of these things. Any Democrat who stops to let their emotions cool off should know that.
“To me the last one is the best exemplar of what I’ve seen on Facebook and heard in person for the last year. A person who doesn’t agree with me politically is stupid (either low native IQ or poor education or both). Evidence of their stupidity is that they fall for “lies” or “fake news” whereas I am able to ascertain the truth, understand expert-authored nytimes content, etc., and therefore support Hillary.”
This expands on the ‘stupid’ part of the first quote and is closer to how I and, I think, many Democrats have been thinking (but it’s still not quite right). The reason I’ve thought this gets at the central question of your post. We all know about bubbles. I’ve thought this because, from the perspective of my bubble, Trump seems so clearly unfit, and I don’t understand why more didn’t feel the same way. Clinton seems to me like a run-of-the-mill semi-corrupt politician, and Trump seems to me to be different and embodies much more risk.
So, to modify your quote to be what I actually believe:
“A person who doesn’t agree with me about Trump isn’t trying hard enough to inform themselves or doesn’t care about a President’s character in the way I do.”
I’ve changed this to focus on Trump rather than Clinton, and I’ve changed ‘stupid’ to ‘not trying hard enough …’. I’ve also removed the Republican vs Democrat red herring. There are plenty of Republican leaders who took principled stands against Trump and plenty who started that way but whose opportunism won out in the end.
I acknowledge that some Trump voters see something different in him and that some don’t care and voted on other issues. I just thought that more people would react to him the way I do.
I have several friends who supported Trump and one very good friend who believes Hillary has buried 50 bodies and claimed at one point that she may have died during the campaign and that we were seeing a body double. In response to my friends, I’ve tried to balance my reading by looking into their criticisms of Clinton. In general, in the places where I looked, I found innuendo but no there, there. For instance, these quotes:
“If you made over a billion dollars then you must have been selling something. Since Hillary’s only job has been politician, what she was selling was us.”
“Democrats celebrated the fact that nobody could seemingly prosecute and imprison Hillary for the Clinton Foundation under the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard.”
It’s a charity. By independent accounts it has done considerable good and is reasonably efficient and transparent (www.charitynavigator.org). Maybe some of the donors, you know, wanted to help people.
I get the potential conflict of interest and that the appearance of impropriety is treated as guilt during a campaign. I also get that the Clintons are at least tone deaf and arrogant and at most guilty of uncounted misdeeds. But many claim the latter without actual evidence. Sure, the foundation flies them around. But there are rules about how they can use foundation money, and expenses for fundraising are allowed. They are obviously the attraction (in addition to helping people), and it’s perfectly reasonable for them to be be involved in fundraising. They don’t draw a salary. The percentage of expenses for all fundraising is 4.2% of total expenses in the last year I could find as compared to 86.9% spent on programs. As charities go, that’s doing well. I don’t want to defend them, and you might be right about the pay-to-play accusations. But no one has proven it. And the charity does good. Taking it down would hurt actual people. I want more than innuendo, and that’s all I see on 99.999% of the facebook and other posts I see, even those with references. Sorry. I just get irritated at conclusions that just have to be so because they fit pre-existing worldviews.
Democrats didn’t celebrate Clinton’s non-prosecution. Democrats know there’s a stink, but, until some dead fish show up, most of us been willing to make the calculation that agreement on policy is worth it. Have we changed the idea that people are innocent until actually proven guilty? I get that this makes people uneasy, and it should. But why don’t *direct* payments from Trump’s charity to settle business lawsuits seem to make any dent?
The point made later about whether the charity’s donations will drop now that Clinton has lost is an interesting one. I won’t stand by a prediction, but I do think it’s likely that donations will drop, and I also agree that if they do drop, then pay-to-play is one of the explanations. But it could also be that part of what people were donating for is schmooze time with the Clintons, and their value on that circuit will drop now. It could also be that some donors, particularly the countries, gave money for specific charitable ends (the Algerian donation for Haiti earthquake relief is an example) while also hoping that some sort of generalized good feeling about them would result in Hillary and that that would influence her decisions. Absent a specific exchange, that’s right on the ethical line where the Clintons seem to live, but it doesn’t cross it. And there’s that earthquake relief part. I can see how someone could conclude it’s worth it.
Help me to understand my bubble. I’m going to go through a litany of Trump criticisms. I know you and everyone responding to your blog entry knows them. My goal is not to convince anyone but, rather, to explain why I thought Trump was unsuitable and to try to understand why you didn’t.
For the last nine months, I’ve listened to what he has said. When I see a video juxtaposing Trump on video tape saying one thing and then another video in which he completely denies ever having said it, and this goes on for a dozen issues and statements, I conclude that he is a liar. Since he’s usually facing the camera, it feels like he’s lying directly to me. I acknowledge that Clinton lies too, but I think you can see her trying to stay within the bounds of truth when she doesn’t want to admit something. To me, Trump seems to not even try. I bought the politifact analysis that showed Clinton’s lying percentage as normal for a politician and Trump’s as unprecedented. (Was that analysis wrong or the sample of statements included in it inappropriate?) When she says she has a public and a private position, and I go to wikileaks to read the actual passage, she sounds to me like a realistic and experienced politician who has learned over time how to negotiate and bring large groups of people to agreement on things. Has any president ever been different? I think that Trump must be a good negotiator too, although threatening to default on contractual payments to small businesses doesn’t seem like a good negotiating tactic to me.
When he talks about starting a trade war with China, either he’s lying or telling the truth. If it’s the latter, that’ll hurt the people that voted for him and everyone else too. Is that analysis wrong?
When he talks about defaulting on our debt, well, that’s just crazy talk. I ignored it.
When he talks about building a wall that Mexico will pay for, it’s a sound bite for a very complex problem. This one, however, I think I actually do understand. It’s almost certainly not going to happen literally, but it’s code for more enforcement, more deportations and no path to citizenship. That’s a reasonable position, and it’s not like there isn’t a long history of politicians making promises they know they won’t keep. It’s just that Trump is given credit for not being a politician even when he’s acting like one.
When he talks about getting more help from NATO, I can see that. But when he talks about abandoning our treaty obligations, I think he has increased stresses and risk worldwide for political gain.
When he talks about bringing back manufacturing jobs, why don’t his voters know that the lost jobs are more due to automation than trade and the jobs either won’t come back, or they will require government support (a new kind of welfare). Am I in a bubble where the economists I read are wrong about the main reason manufacturing jobs are down? I get that workforce needs are changing too fast and people need help. That’s a very real problem. But Clinton said it that way, and Trump just said he’ll bring those jobs back. Companies will be forced to bring manufacturing back (which might happen) and that that will restore employment in areas that lost factories (which probably won’t). Maybe Trump could have said we’ll replace those manufacturing jobs with new jobs in his infrastructure investment program, which wouldn’t have been so bad. But he didn’t say that. And for this to be code for something else, what would that be? Unlike the wall, not doing this will specifically hurt the people he said he’d help. Deporting more illegal aliens doesn’t count here. They don’t generally compete for the middle-class manufacturing jobs that Trump says there will be more of.
When he indulges in ‘locker room talk’ or has affairs without remorse, I was surprised that 80% of evangelicals still supported him. They consider abortion and gay marriage to be more important than character. I don’t think they’re stupid, and reasonable people can disagree. But I’m Christian, and my reading of the Gospel suggests that it really is all about character.
When he doesn’t understand the nuclear triad, I’m frightened. When he says he believes the idea of global warming was created by the Chinese to make US manufacturing non-competitive, I take him at his word, and I fear for my children.
And so on.
I know we live in bubbles, but I think I’ve tried to look outside of mine. I have tried to read the National Review and Breitbart’s site to counter the NYT and the Huffington Post. Where have I failed in that?
An alternative view is that you see all of the same things I do and don’t weigh them as highly. Maybe red and blue tribes matter more than anything else. Looking at the popular vote over the last three presidential elections …
McCain: 59.9 million
Romney: 60.9
Trump: 59.7
Obama: 69.5
Obama: 65.9
Clinton: 59.7
It looks to me as though the simplest explanation is that Republicans lined up behind their candidate despite any criticism of him, and Democrats failed to line up behind theirs due to her weaknesses and negatives.
Hi Philip,
Canada will welcome your Facebook friends with open arms, particularly if they participated in riots following the election. If they liked Hillary’s symbolic feminism, they’re going to love Trudeau, who not only talked a good game but followed through and made gender quotas a defining feature of his cabinet appointments.
If you ever get tired of the warm New England winter and make your way to freezing Toronto, I’d love to grab lunch (though I don’t think you should pay for it, as you graciously let me attend your RDBMS course back in 2011 even though I wasn’t an MIT student, or a computer science student, or even a citizen)