Unpopular Trump

In some true sense Democrats got shellacked in the just completed election. Republicans will control the presidency, both houses of Congress and, soon enough, the Supreme Court.

Much analysis in the punditry now fixates on how Democrats lost their way by trying to ride a long changing demographic wave and over-emphasizing Trump's flaws, while failing to understand that working class voters, especially whites, were tired of being left behind. True enough, this was a "change election."

But how big, really, was the mandate for change? Consider:

Hillary Clinton has a lead in the popular vote that will continue to grow as additional votes are counted in heavily Democratic states such as California, New York, and Washington; that lead could reach nearly two million. Clinton will likely end up with around 1.5 percent more of the popular vote than Trump. (Which is close, by the way, to the margin by which Clinton lead in national polls in the final days. Keep that in mind if you're tempted to think the pollsters got things badly wrong.) As some commentators have put it, Clinton won the vote but lost the election.

[Note: An earlier version of this post referred to a current Clinton lead of 1.8 million in the popular vote, but my source for that figure, The Huffington Post, now says that was a "projection," not a then-current count. As of Nov 16 the Cook Political Report pegs Clinton's lead at almost 1.2 million. Update: Nov 23, 2016 - Politico now reports that Clinton's popular vote lead has passed 2 million. Update: Dec 1, 2016 - Clinton's popular vote lead is now more than 2.5 million. Her percentage of the vote is 1.9% higher than Trump's, a margin better than 10 previous presidents. Update: Dec 15, 2016 - Clinton's popular vote lead is now 2.86 million. She received 2.1% more of the popular vote than Trump.]

Hey, that's how it works in the U.S. (And can you imagine how Trump would have reacted—the system is rigged!—were the tables reversed?)

But consider this too:

Trump's win in the electoral college was, effectively, by a mere 107,330 votes. That's the combined margin by which Trump won Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan—three "blue" states Clinton was expected to win but didn't, and whose loss cost her the election. [Update: Dec 15, 2016 - The latest tallies have Trump winning these three states by a combined total less than 78,000 votes. Here are the results for Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.] Yes, indeed, rural white working class voters were absolutely crucial to flipping these three states and sealing the outcome, but the margin as a share of the national vote was tiny. Had Clinton won 55,000 Trump votes in the right proportions in those three states, she'd now be president elect.

Or this:

Democrats managed a net gain of two seats in the Senate and and a handful in the House. Not nearly what they were hoping for, to be sure, but not an overwhelming repudiation either.

As "change elections" go, this one was long on impact but short on mandate. What's undeniably true is that the country remains deeply, profoundly, divided. It will be fascinating to watch how President Trump and the Republicans proceed to govern. And watch we shall.

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Update: Nov 14, 2016 -  Dean Baker explains that white voters are over-represented in the electoral college because smaller states are whiter and less ethnically diverse, and small states get disproportionately more electoral votes relative to the size of their populations than do larger states. To take an extreme example, Wyoming (which is largely white) gets one electoral college vote for every 195,000 residents, whereas California (which is only 38 percent white) gets  one electoral vote for every 711,000 residents.

Copyright (C) 2016 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved

The latest from Does It Hurt To Think? is here.

Trump Watch: Infrastructure, Debt, Politics

Donald Trump is calling for a large (half a trillion dollars) infrastructure spending program. The nation's infrastructure is in serious disrepair, and such a  program would provide a significant boost to the economy by creating large numbers of well-paying jobs.

This is nothing new. President Obama has been calling for an infrastructure program for years, for the same reasons, but a recalcitrant Republican Congress would have none of it. Will things be different now? And if so, why? A largish infrastructure program was also a central Clinton proposal. Everybody except Republican ideologues understands why it's needed.

Yet to be explained by Trump is how it will be paid for, especially since the huge tax cuts promised by Trump would add greatly to the deficit and debt. Borrowing would be, economically speaking, a fine way to go (although note that Clinton actually had a rather detailed plan for paying for her proposal), but dire debt warnings have been a recurrent feature of Trump's presidential campaign, and debt hysteria has been a perennial theme of Republicans when they're out of power, particularly during the Obama years.

But now that they have a lock on power, perhaps Republicans will  discover once again the debt isn't such a big deal. It's long been suggested that Republicans don't really care about the debt anyway, and there's plenty of solid historical evidence that that's the case. To put it mildly, there's been a lot of Republican inconsistency on debt over the years, depending on whether they're in or out of power.

This is a politically complicated and ideologically muddled topic. Infrastructure spending really could juice the economy, with undeniable benefit to the country and a nice political payoff to the party in power. Is it possible that past Republican opposition has been in large part a way to deny Obama and Democrats  (and, as an unfortunate side effect, the country) that success? Oh yes. And it's despicable. Republicans actively sought to make Obama a failure from the very first moments of his presidency, and have fought to block every Obama initiative, even during the brutal depths of the economic bloodletting, over the past eight years. (Note by way of contrast the poignant and characteristic grace Obama has exhibited by showing even at this very early stage that he is determined to do everything he can, for the good of the country, to help his successor be successful.)

A source of perpetual frustration to me is that a disturbingly large swath of the electorate is of the "low information" variety, and is thus subject to all kinds of ignorance and mythology bandied about by politicians. Such voters understand neither the economics of the situation (particularly what we've been through these past eight years) nor (at the level of attributive detail required) the cynical and destructive games played by their politicians. And, yes, the political dysfunction really is skewed to one side. A Johnny-come-lately Republican infrastructure program would be a bitter irony lost on such voters.

I am straying from my original point now, but Thomas Jefferson warned that the success of democracy requires a well educated and well informed citizenry. If that is so (and how can you think otherwise?), there's much to despair. The election of 2016 seems ominous in that light.

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Update: Nov 14, 2016 - Paul Krugman notes that the promised Trump tax cuts and resulting deficit spending could have a strong stimulus effect in the short to mid-term, even if those tax cuts are less efficient than they might otherwise be by being largely tilted to the rich. The point is that deficit spending right now could be economically beneficial. I underscore my point that Republicans are likely to embrace all kinds of policies under Trump that they considered anathema under Obama.

Copyright (C) 2016 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved

The latest from Does It Hurt To Think? is here.