Dear Liberals — Stop Panicking
Posted: Tue May 10, 2016 11:50 pm
Six months from now, the American people will head to the polls to elect the next president and after great consideration, I really don’t think you have much to worry about. I’m pretty certain that Trump won’t be elected president.
How can I be so sure?
Well, first of all, I’m confident that the same country that twice elected an African-American president and has given the Democratic Party a majority in the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections is not going to embrace a racist, misogynist demagogue.
There’s also the math. Four years ago, Mitt Romney lost the presidency by 5 million votes. So for a Republican to win in 2016, the party nominee has to find a way to increase the number of GOP voters.
The problem for Trump is that he’s moving in the opposite direction. Take for example Hispanic voters. In 2012, Romney lost them 71-27 percent. Trump today has an 81 percent unfavorability rating among Hispanics. Among African-Americans it is 91 percent. Considering that nonwhite voters made up 28 percent of the electorate in 2012 — and it could be an even higher percentage this year — this means that Trump starts the campaign at a huge, nearly insurmountable disadvantage.
"But what about all those angry white voters?" — I hear you ask. I was getting to that.
Back in 2012, Romney won whites by 20 points over Obama. According to the most recent CNN poll, Trump leads Clinton by only 9 points among whites. A lot of that has to do with the fact that he’s unbelievably unpopular with female voters. One poll from mid-April shows him with a 75 percent unfavorable rating among all women ... 75 percent!
Trump might have some appeal among working class white men, but the members of that demographic that like Trump are (a) already Republican and (b) were already likely going to vote for whomever the Republican Party nominated anyway. However, it’s also important to keep in mind that back in 2012, some guy named Barack Hussein Obama won working-class whites in the Midwest. He also won them in the Northeast states, where Trump is allegedly quite popular. Democrats historically do poorly among white working-class voters in the South, but in the rest of the country, they are pretty competitive with this group.
So at the outset of the campaign, Trump looks likely to do
1) worse among nonwhite voters,
2) worse among women, and
3) worse among whites
than did Romney. There aren’t too many other places to make up ground when that is your starting point.
"But wait a minute! I remember everyone telling me that Trump couldn’t win the Republican nomination, and it looks like he has. Why can’t he do the same thing in the national election?"
Not everyone said he couldn’t win. But the Republican electorate is not like the rest of America. According to the most recent YouGov/Economist poll, Trump has a 62 percent favorability rating among Republicans. But among Democrats, he’s about as popular as poison ivy at a nudist colony. Trump has a “very unfavorable” rating of 73 percent; and only 9 percent view him “somewhat unfavorably”. Among independents, 49 percent have a “very unfavorable’’ view; only 11 percent fall into the “somewhat unfavorable” category. So it’s not that non-Republican voters don’t like Trump — they're way past that; they loathe the man. And they’ve felt this way about him for the entire campaign.
Even many Republicans don’t like Trump. His unfavorable rating is 37 percent, which includes a 21 percent “very unfavorable’’ rating. This might be his biggest problem. If a sizable chunk of Republicans stay home or even vote for Clinton — and if the swing is even as little as 15 percent — he’s got no shot at all.
Independents? Well, they claim to dislike Hillary Clinton; however, according to that same YouGov poll, Clinton is as unpopular among independents as Trump is, and still leads him by 3 points overall (though this seems like an outlier since, in more recent polls, Clinton generally has a larger lead). I'll agree, Clinton is not well liked, but she’s also incredibly well known by the public so it’s not as if Trump’s attacks are going to change a lot of minds. The bottom line is that she couldn’t be luckier to be facing off against a candidate as broadly loathed as Trump.
All those Sanders supporters who say they’ll never vote for Clinton? Meh. At the tail end of tough primaries, supporters of losing candidates say lots of mean things about the winners — it’s part of the five stages of political grief. Remember the "People United Mean Action" supporters from 2008 who said they’d never vote for Obama? Guess what — the vast majority supported Obama in November. There’ll be a few who will stand by their vow to the bitter end, but the vast majority will vote for Clinton, even begrudgingly.
And don't even mention the e-mail business — Hilary is not going to be indicted; it's as simple as that. There’s no evidence she broke the law or that she willfully intended to do so, which is what would have to be proved in order to even charge her with a crime. And I am pretty confident that even if she were indicted, she’d still win in November. Heck, I think she could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue in New York and still win....
It’s easy to look at someone like Trump — and his success — and recoil in horror. But I prefer to look at the Trump phenomenon in a 'glass-half-full' manner. The fact is, there’s just not a single piece of empirical evidence that suggests Trump is gaining support outside the Republican Party. Democrats hate him; independents hate him; women hate him; Hispanics and blacks really hate him. And they’ve hated him from the moment he began his campaign by calling Mexican immigrants “rapists.”
Rather than being shaken by Trump’s rise, think about the fact that Americans have made clear in poll after poll that they reject his ban against Muslims and his call to deport all illegal immigrants, and they are appalled by his crudeness and his misogyny. And even if you like Trump but disagree with some of the harsh things he says, by November I think it will that much harder to overlook and compartmentalize his excesses. Republicans might find Trump’s message appealing — and that certainly is disturbing — but that’s more an indictment of the modern GOP, not the American people as a whole. Frankly, I’m betting my chips that there are a heck of a lot more empathetic, non-xenophobic, egalitarian Americans out there than there are Trump supporters.
-"BB"-
How can I be so sure?
Well, first of all, I’m confident that the same country that twice elected an African-American president and has given the Democratic Party a majority in the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections is not going to embrace a racist, misogynist demagogue.
There’s also the math. Four years ago, Mitt Romney lost the presidency by 5 million votes. So for a Republican to win in 2016, the party nominee has to find a way to increase the number of GOP voters.
The problem for Trump is that he’s moving in the opposite direction. Take for example Hispanic voters. In 2012, Romney lost them 71-27 percent. Trump today has an 81 percent unfavorability rating among Hispanics. Among African-Americans it is 91 percent. Considering that nonwhite voters made up 28 percent of the electorate in 2012 — and it could be an even higher percentage this year — this means that Trump starts the campaign at a huge, nearly insurmountable disadvantage.
"But what about all those angry white voters?" — I hear you ask. I was getting to that.
Back in 2012, Romney won whites by 20 points over Obama. According to the most recent CNN poll, Trump leads Clinton by only 9 points among whites. A lot of that has to do with the fact that he’s unbelievably unpopular with female voters. One poll from mid-April shows him with a 75 percent unfavorable rating among all women ... 75 percent!
Trump might have some appeal among working class white men, but the members of that demographic that like Trump are (a) already Republican and (b) were already likely going to vote for whomever the Republican Party nominated anyway. However, it’s also important to keep in mind that back in 2012, some guy named Barack Hussein Obama won working-class whites in the Midwest. He also won them in the Northeast states, where Trump is allegedly quite popular. Democrats historically do poorly among white working-class voters in the South, but in the rest of the country, they are pretty competitive with this group.
So at the outset of the campaign, Trump looks likely to do
1) worse among nonwhite voters,
2) worse among women, and
3) worse among whites
than did Romney. There aren’t too many other places to make up ground when that is your starting point.
"But wait a minute! I remember everyone telling me that Trump couldn’t win the Republican nomination, and it looks like he has. Why can’t he do the same thing in the national election?"
Not everyone said he couldn’t win. But the Republican electorate is not like the rest of America. According to the most recent YouGov/Economist poll, Trump has a 62 percent favorability rating among Republicans. But among Democrats, he’s about as popular as poison ivy at a nudist colony. Trump has a “very unfavorable” rating of 73 percent; and only 9 percent view him “somewhat unfavorably”. Among independents, 49 percent have a “very unfavorable’’ view; only 11 percent fall into the “somewhat unfavorable” category. So it’s not that non-Republican voters don’t like Trump — they're way past that; they loathe the man. And they’ve felt this way about him for the entire campaign.
Even many Republicans don’t like Trump. His unfavorable rating is 37 percent, which includes a 21 percent “very unfavorable’’ rating. This might be his biggest problem. If a sizable chunk of Republicans stay home or even vote for Clinton — and if the swing is even as little as 15 percent — he’s got no shot at all.
Independents? Well, they claim to dislike Hillary Clinton; however, according to that same YouGov poll, Clinton is as unpopular among independents as Trump is, and still leads him by 3 points overall (though this seems like an outlier since, in more recent polls, Clinton generally has a larger lead). I'll agree, Clinton is not well liked, but she’s also incredibly well known by the public so it’s not as if Trump’s attacks are going to change a lot of minds. The bottom line is that she couldn’t be luckier to be facing off against a candidate as broadly loathed as Trump.
All those Sanders supporters who say they’ll never vote for Clinton? Meh. At the tail end of tough primaries, supporters of losing candidates say lots of mean things about the winners — it’s part of the five stages of political grief. Remember the "People United Mean Action" supporters from 2008 who said they’d never vote for Obama? Guess what — the vast majority supported Obama in November. There’ll be a few who will stand by their vow to the bitter end, but the vast majority will vote for Clinton, even begrudgingly.
And don't even mention the e-mail business — Hilary is not going to be indicted; it's as simple as that. There’s no evidence she broke the law or that she willfully intended to do so, which is what would have to be proved in order to even charge her with a crime. And I am pretty confident that even if she were indicted, she’d still win in November. Heck, I think she could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue in New York and still win....
It’s easy to look at someone like Trump — and his success — and recoil in horror. But I prefer to look at the Trump phenomenon in a 'glass-half-full' manner. The fact is, there’s just not a single piece of empirical evidence that suggests Trump is gaining support outside the Republican Party. Democrats hate him; independents hate him; women hate him; Hispanics and blacks really hate him. And they’ve hated him from the moment he began his campaign by calling Mexican immigrants “rapists.”
Rather than being shaken by Trump’s rise, think about the fact that Americans have made clear in poll after poll that they reject his ban against Muslims and his call to deport all illegal immigrants, and they are appalled by his crudeness and his misogyny. And even if you like Trump but disagree with some of the harsh things he says, by November I think it will that much harder to overlook and compartmentalize his excesses. Republicans might find Trump’s message appealing — and that certainly is disturbing — but that’s more an indictment of the modern GOP, not the American people as a whole. Frankly, I’m betting my chips that there are a heck of a lot more empathetic, non-xenophobic, egalitarian Americans out there than there are Trump supporters.
-"BB"-
