Did Clinton beat herself?
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/losing-the-popular-vote-wont-rein-in-president-trump
Numbers are only part of any story but this article puts some interesting numbers out there. The depressing one is that as few as 55,000 votes shifted in PA, OH, and MI would have tipped those electors into her column. Voter suppression is a thing, y'all, and I have no clue what we can do about it, especially once President Pussygrabber gets his people on the Supreme Court.
THAT said, there is a very instructive bit in the article showing that Trump not only underperformed Romney (which we knew, but hey there was low turnout all around) but he also underperformed more traditional-Republican Senatorial candidates in states where both Trump and the Senate candidate won. That is interesting because it may mean that Trump's white nationalist brand of demagoguery (sp?) actually caused him to do less well than a traditional Republican would have done. Trump may have held down his own numbers.
Another way to read that is that a traditional Republican candidate would have beaten Ms Clinton by a larger margin, perhaps even taking the popular vote.
And a third way to read that is that news of America's headlong descent into fascism and radical hate may be somewhat premature. Those people who came out to vote (and were able to vote) both preferred the sane candidate and where they had a choice of a sane Republican and an insane one they preferred the sane one, even in very red states and even where that other candidate was one that Trump defeated in the primaries.
As with voter suppression, there are other factors that need to be considered before 2020, including a decade-plus of gerrymandering, liberal flight (Ms Clinton appears to have won California by something like a 2:1 margin despite the Peter Thiel faction), and a host of outside influences all tipping the scale against Clinton. One of those factors, though, may well be that Ms Clinton contributed to her own defeat and Trump was just a handy (if horrifying) vehicle for something that would have happened anyway.
I don't find that super-comforting (see President Pussygrabber) but I do want to believe I live in a country that is not in fact Wiemar America.
Numbers are only part of any story but this article puts some interesting numbers out there. The depressing one is that as few as 55,000 votes shifted in PA, OH, and MI would have tipped those electors into her column. Voter suppression is a thing, y'all, and I have no clue what we can do about it, especially once President Pussygrabber gets his people on the Supreme Court.
THAT said, there is a very instructive bit in the article showing that Trump not only underperformed Romney (which we knew, but hey there was low turnout all around) but he also underperformed more traditional-Republican Senatorial candidates in states where both Trump and the Senate candidate won. That is interesting because it may mean that Trump's white nationalist brand of demagoguery (sp?) actually caused him to do less well than a traditional Republican would have done. Trump may have held down his own numbers.
Another way to read that is that a traditional Republican candidate would have beaten Ms Clinton by a larger margin, perhaps even taking the popular vote.
And a third way to read that is that news of America's headlong descent into fascism and radical hate may be somewhat premature. Those people who came out to vote (and were able to vote) both preferred the sane candidate and where they had a choice of a sane Republican and an insane one they preferred the sane one, even in very red states and even where that other candidate was one that Trump defeated in the primaries.
As with voter suppression, there are other factors that need to be considered before 2020, including a decade-plus of gerrymandering, liberal flight (Ms Clinton appears to have won California by something like a 2:1 margin despite the Peter Thiel faction), and a host of outside influences all tipping the scale against Clinton. One of those factors, though, may well be that Ms Clinton contributed to her own defeat and Trump was just a handy (if horrifying) vehicle for something that would have happened anyway.
I don't find that super-comforting (see President Pussygrabber) but I do want to believe I live in a country that is not in fact Wiemar America.