Amateur general election post-mortem:

Obviously there's tons to say (like how completely wrong my predictions were, for one
thing), but before you blame the non-coastal US for electing the bad clown man and
start accusing them of being irredeemable racists/sexists/fascists/etc., consider the fact
that maybe the DNC made its own bed.

Their hubris in nominating Clinton was staggering. She was unlikable and unpopular,
she exemplified the entrenched political ruling class which has been the subject of
intense populist backlash all season, and she was under active investigation for felony
level misconduct in her role as secretary of state. Clinton was caught with donations
from everyone from Wall Street to the Saudis to the Islamic State. She was the second
most disliked and distrusted candidate in American presidential history, and she should
never have been nominated. I've said many times over the course of this election that
Trump is the only candidate that Clinton had a prayer against, but last night we saw that
that went both ways. Had the Dems nominated Sanders, I believe they would have won.

The DNC completely misunderstood the strength of the populist movement this election
cycle. The fact that a 75 year old, oddball, social democrat senator from Vermont stood
against the full strength of the Democratic machine and came within 6% of winning the
primary (despite the fact that the DNC was actively rigging it in Clintons favor!) should
have woken the Dems up to the fact that whoever was positioned as the establishment
candidate was going to lose this election.

Its no coincidence that the critical states to turn red this year were in the Midwest.
These states once had a strong manufacturing economy, and have been largely left to rot
in the age of global free trade. Many of the people in these states dont exactly
understand the economic or political mechanics at play, but they do know that they have
been actively screwed over by the political ruling class (Republican and Democrat) over
the past 25 years. They have lost their steady jobs, seen their quality of life drop
precipitously, seen opiate epidemics ravage their towns, and they worry about their
childrens futures. They know that a vote for Clinton is a vote to continue the type of
progress that champions social movements theyre uncomfortable with (LGBTQ
rights, abortion rights, Black Lives Matter, hip-hop music) while totally ignoring the fact
that Middle America has been left to stagnate.

And Clinton ignored these voters concerns. Instead of acknowledging the fact that
these people were casualties of the neoliberal globalist system, Clinton deflected
attention to Trump voters supposed racism and sexism. She started characterizing his
supporters as a basket of deplorables, who need to be shown how to behave by the
cosmopolitan urban elite. In order to pander to her coastal base, she patronized the
living shit out of Middle America, further calcifying their disgust with her as the living
embodiment of the government elite thats been screwing them over and belittling them
for decades. (Even her choice of celebrity endorsements worked against her. Beyonce,
Jay-Z, Lady Gaga; two hip-hop musicians and a gender-bending art-pop star are, at
best, irrelevant to most of Middle America, and are at worst an insult to their values). It
is no mystery why white Midwestern voters deserted Clinton; the only question is why
they didnt do so sooner.

Sanders acknowledged these voters issues and legitimized their feelings of indignation
and abandonment. He tried to educate them about how the system was rigged against
them and the larger economic mechanisms responsible for their communities decline.
He won the Michigan primary by 1.5 percentage points after being projected to lose by
21 points; an upset which, in retrospect, should have warned us that the Midwest might
swing against Clinton. He also carried Wisconsin with a nearly 14 point lead. There is
good reason to believe that Sanders could have carried at least Michigan, and perhaps
even Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, or Ohio too.

It wasnt just the Midwest that ruined Clintons chances, however; Clinton
underperformed with the key demographics she spent the last two months of the
election focusing on. Turnout among African-Americans was much lower than Clinton
hoped. Again, no one should be all that surprised. Is it a shock that black voters arent
overly eager to vote for a woman who characterized their sons as super predators who
need to be brought to heel? For the wife of the man whose tenure and criminal justice
reforms saw the exponential increased the incarceration rate of young AfricanAmericans? It was foolhardy for the Clinton campaign to bank on winning anywhere
near the same percentage of the African-American vote as Barack Obama did in 2008.
He was positioned as our first black president and as a relatively fresh-faced outsider
who would bring miraculous-but-nebulous change to the nation. Clintons late-term
adoption of social justice rhetoric was pathetically hollow, and she completely failed to
energize her voting base, who largely conceded that she was forced into most of her
progressive positions through an unexpectedly tight primary race with Sanders.

The relatively low level of support from Latino/a voters was somewhat more surprising.
Trump spent much of the campaign antagonizing the Hispanic community, and its
difficult to explain why this didnt translate into more widespread voting against him.
Again, it seems plausible that the Democrats themselves are to blame. Perhaps it was
completely tone-deaf messaging from the Clinton campaign, which gave the distinct
impression that Hispanic voters were a puzzle to be solved by inserting the right cultural
cues, and not individual voters with critical thought and agency. In any case, though,
Clintons last two months of campaigning was misspent on demographics which didnt
come out in the numbers she needed.

Clinton was never a fit candidate for office. Rather than blaming Middle America for
electing Trump, blame the party that put them in the position of choosing between
Trump and the smug, living exemplum of government disdain for them and their way of
life.