Lessons From Tuesday

1)“It’s still the economy, stupid.” Governor Clinton won election in 1992 as the economy was coming out of a minor recession. Senator Obama won election in 2008 in the depths of the Great Recession. Donald Trump won election Tuesday because globalization was killing manufacturing jobs in the Rust Belt. 2) The Democrats have been waging class warfare for two decades; it bit back Tuesday 3) The white vote still matters. White voters were 70% of Tuesday voters. 58% voted for Donald Trump. White, working class Americans vote. 4) The Hispanic vote will be critical in future elections; it is already costing the GOP California, Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico, and soon Arizona. Maricopa County (Phoenix) voters out Sheriff Joe Arpaio after 6 terms. The GOP cannot survive as a white only party. California sent three new Latinos to Congress and Nevada a Latina Senator. 5) The Republicans still lag in reaching out to the also increasing Asian American population. 6) Broad generalizations, such as Hispanic or Asian, are a broad disservice since ethnicity is often not a unitary phenomenon 7) The Democrats vaunted ground game failed. 8) Money doesn’t always buy elections Donald Trump was greatly outspent in the primaries while the Clinton Campaign outspent the Trump Campaign 2:1 in the general election. Donald Trump understood the message voters wanted to hear; Hillary Clinton did not. 9) Polling is as much a science as economics; the only poll that matters is the one on election day. Even Nate Silver lost some of his luster. 10) Political pundits are as accurate as the Delphic Oracle 11) The media is not as powerful as it once was 12) The mainstream media, which showed neither pride nor shame in shilling for Hillary Clinton this election, proved it no longer controls elections 13) The climate is changing 14) The Hollywood celebrities threatening to move to Canada or Australia have not been packing their bags. 15) The Democratic Party, which was anticipating a 1964 Goldwater Landslide, suffered its third landslide loss in 6 years (2010, 2014, 2016). The Presidency, Senate, House, 2/3 of the governors, 69 of the 99 state legislative chambers, 29 state attorney generals and 31 secretaries of state, are in Republican hands. They are in full control of 25 states compared to 4 for the Democrats. The Democratic Party is in worse shape than the GOP was in 1964 and 1974. The Democratic Party needs to engage in serious soul searching. 16) About 150,000 voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin decided the Presidency, the destiny of the United States, and decades of the Supreme Court. 17) The national vote may be almost even, but America is much more center right than it is progressive left 18) President Obama did not believe in American exceptionalism and did not understand the American Spirit. He drank too deeply of the Liberation Theology of reverent Jeremiah Wright and thought America, especially white America, was an oppressor nation and people. He did what he could, which was all too much, to destroy that America. 19) Right to Work is coming to Missouri, Missouri, and New Hampshire, joining 26 existing states. Traditional Big Labor is in trouble, unless President Trump can restore the manufacturing base of the United States. 20) The Clintons are a spent force in American politics. 21) “The times, they are a’changing.”