Zakaria: Why Trump won

[yallerdawg]

Source: CNN, by Fareed Zakaria, article is adapted from the conclusion to "Why Trump Won."

*****

Here's the answer: America is now divided along four lines, each one reinforcing the others. Call them the four Cs.

The first is capitalism. There was a time when the American economy moved in tandem with its middle class. As the economy grew, so did middle class employment and wages. But over the last few decades that link has been broken. The economy has been humming along, but it now enriches mostly those with education, training, and capital. The other Americans have been left behind.

The second divide is about culture. In recent decades, we've seen large scale immigration; African-Americans and Hispanics rising to a more central place in society; and gays being accorded equal rights. All of this has meant new cultures and narratives have received national attention. And it's worried a segment of the older, white population, which fears that the national culture they grew up with is fading. One comprehensive study found that after party loyalty, the second strongest predictor of a Trump voter was "fears of cultural displacement."

The third divide in America today is about class. The Trump vote is in large part an act of class rebellion, a working class revolt against know-it-all elites who run the country. These voters will stick with Donald Trump even as he flails, rather than vindicate the elite, urban view of him.

The final C in this story is communication. We have gone from an America where people watched three networks that provided a uniform view of the world to one where everyone can pick their own channel, message, and now even their own facts.

*****

Read it all (and watch the show on CNN!) at: Zakaria: Why Trump won

By the way, Fareed and Nate Silver discuss a fifth C - Comey!

[Dream Girl]

1. He forgot "R" for racism

[yallerdawg]

3. He covered that and more under "culture."

"...large scale immigration; African-Americans and Hispanics rising to a more central place in society; and gays being accorded equal rights."

[MrsCoffee]

5. Don't forget "R" for Russia.

[DavidDvorkin]

2. No, he lost

He's in the White House because of the Electoral College, which was cleverly manipulated by the use of voter suppression and possibly vote-count fraud.

That's what has to be addressed and -- somehow -- fixed. All other talk is meaningless blather.

[yallerdawg]

4. "The real question of the 2016 presidential election isn't so much why did Donald Trump win...

as why did he even get close?"

"All these forces have been at work for decades, but in recent years, the Republican Party has been better able to exploit them and identify with those Americans who feel frustrated, anxious, angry -- even desperate about the direction that the country is headed in. Donald Trump capitalized on these trends even more thoroughly, speaking openly to people's economic anxieties, cultural fears, and class rebellion. He promised simple solutions, mostly aimed at others -- Mexicans, Muslims, Chinese people and, of course, the elites and the media."

[hurple]

6. Absolutely!

His actions from the day he announced all the way through election day should have disqualified him a million times over.

But, they didn't.

How the race was ever close enough for all the manipulation to carry him over the finish line is the real discussion that needs to be had.

[StevieM]

7. Comey was more important than every other factor put together.

Had it not been for his last minute intervention HRC would have won an enormous victory. 8 points, give or take 2 points. 333 to 375 electoral votes.

And she would have won by more than that had it not been for his July press conference.

This election was all about the FBI. It is crazy that the media is downplaying that fact. And it is a fact.

[yallerdawg]

8. Yes, in the show Nate Silver points out...

that after Comey dropped the bombshell that the FBI was "opening up" the investigation into the transmittal of classified material days before the election the polling went from a Hillary victory to a statistical tossup even though she was still favored by almost a 75% chance at FiveThirtyEight aggregate.

That was what made it close enough to trigger the Electoral College tossups, 3 states won by 80,000 votes.

[Igel]

10. It's the "last point" phenomenon.

You're in a basketball game against your school's archrival, and they've won 10 of the last 10 times your school played them. There's 20 seconds until the final buzzer and the score's tied, 120-120. Mr. Q has been on the bench and is brought in for the last 20 seconds.

At 19 seconds Mr. Q is fouled and makes a 1-point shot. The score's 121-120.

Quick: Who's primarily responsible for winning the game? He's responsible, though, for 1/121 of the points.

If any other player on the winning side hadn't made a shot, at best Mr Q would be responsible for a tie. If any of the players who made a 2- or 3-point shot hadn't made that shot, Mr Q would be noted as the guy who brought them up from 118-120 to 119-120. In other words, unimportant. As it is, when Mr Q is picked up and carried in celebration he's going to take the praise. Only later will he say that he owes it all to his other teammates, his coach, his elementary school teacher, friends, his dog, etc.

It took a lot for Newton to say that if he could see farther it was only because he stood on the shoulder of giants.

In Mr Q's case, he's one of the lesser important people. But he's the last one, so all those who went before, those who scored the 120-based that made his point mean anything, are lost in the shuffle.

So if Trump won with 46% of the vote (not gonna bother to check, not important) and 6% is attributed to Comey, there's still the other 40%, every point of which is equally important to each of those 6 points.


So Comey and Nate Silver. A couple of things things. First, on election day the undecideds in the last polls who actually went to vote stopped being undecided. People tend to ignore the undecideds, as well as degrees of certainty We don't know how they shifted at the last minute or how they voted. They're lost in the shuffle. (2) We do know that every poll is based on a small sample scaled up to represent the entire population based on a model of the population and a model of who votes how. You poll 83 blacks for a total of 9% of your sample, you assume more than 9% of the black population will vote so you adjust the figures--for that, and income, education, geography, etc., etc. We also know that the model was wrong, as it often is, so that that particular scaling, that adjustment, was incorrect. That makes it really hard to tell how many (D) voters shifted to (T) voters. Too many moving parts all working all at once.

[BigmanPigman]

9. Yes, if it weren't for Comey Hillary would be president right now

and our country and planet wouldn't be going through this dangerous nightmare.

[SunSeeker]

11. Yep. nt

[Blue_Tires]

12. Fareed is a bit late to the show, isn't he?

I'm trying my damndest to kill two framing myths from 2016 that refuse to die:

1. The "working class" is NOT JUST WHITE FOLKS, nor are their votes somehow worth more than working class minorities (not that we would know this given how much fawning attention the WWC has gotten since November)

2. I refuse to believe some bass-ackwards yokel bumpkin was *SO* fucking offended that some mythical city dweller elitist somewhere supposedly called him a bass-ackwards yokel bumpkin that to prove a point he did the one thing that will cement his legacy as a bass-ackwards yokel bumpkin by honestly believing a New York billionaire who literally shits on a gold toilet is a "Man of the People"