If we had a dollar for every explanation published in the last week for the defeat of Hillary Clinton, the National debt of the United States would likely remain as deep and dirty as the ocean. Still. That’s what happens when you use public funds to fix a broken private banking system, but who wants to talk about money?
Well. Actually, a few people do. We’ll briefly review their claims that the finance sector and its champion, Hillary Clinton, won a world, but lost an election — claims, by the way, my friend and colleague Bernard Keane vehemently dismisses as both “Trotskyite” and obliviously white. But let’s look briefly at the primary causes named for the defeat, and see if we can’t agree that the ascension of Donald Trump to President — when will that not sound like a prank? — has multiple causes.
1. Sexism
In the US, Amanda Marcotte, political correspondent at Salon, has been unstinting in her claim that opposition to Clinton derives from social disgust for the female. The Trump win, she says in a piece typical of our era’s hyperbolic writing, is not the unlucky result of an election with low voter turnout but a “misogyny apocalypse”. Previously, Marcotte has remarked that female supporters of the successful Democratic nominee were apt to “soften my heart” , while those of nominee Bernie Sanders were “maniacs” and “brogressives”. Australian writer Van Badham had an identical take, chiding all those, presumably male, persons who had an unfavourable opinion of Clinton as driven by “testosterone”.
It was generally agreed in such accounts that women who opposed Clinton did so only due to “internalised misogyny”, or, as Gloria Steinem said during the primaries, because they were hungry for dick. As this respected founder of second-wave feminism had it, “the boys like Bernie, and the girls go where the boys are”. In the same weekend, former secretary of state Madeline Albright addressed a crowd of Clinton supporters with the advice that there was “a special place in hell for women who don’t help women”. Which will be welcome electoral news for Marine Le Pen, a woman herself divulged from hell.
Writing in the New Statesman, Laurie Penny, who claims to be red like the blood of the proletariat, echoed the sentiment of the woman who once shrugged of the death of half a million Iraqi children, when she implored those who did not support Clinton to look in the mirror, “and ask yourself, truly, if you might not be a little bit sexist”.
In short, many men hate women and many women, dodging the brutal fist of the patriarchy, affirm the sexist theatrics of Trump, or retain their girlish attachment to the gentler daddy, Sanders. I’m just telling you what I read.
2. Racism
There is a great, and not unfathomable, frustration that commentators who insisted that Trump was elevated by the issue of class alone were unable to see America’s racism. David Masciotra expresses this succinctly when he writes: “Many leftists won’t acknowledge the totality of what Trump has exposed about America.”
Vox has published many widely read pieces about the role racism played in this election. Bernard Keane is also of the view that it was racism that seduced voters, whose stories of economic and social hardship had been falsified by Trots.
[Razer: Clinton’s concession speech will be long remembered, but it was too little, too late]
While some black press, like The Root, tends to offer compelling, if depressing, accounts of strategies for survival under (another) racist leader, white liberal press has approached the matter of race much as it did gender. Which is to say, by upbraiding the economic left — what shred of it remains — for its insistence on being so damn economic.
3. Money
Well, Bernard may have a point about the overwhelming paucity of this argument. While there are panoramic accounts, notably by Brown’s Mark Blyth — if you have a spare 90 minutes, this lecture is a very rewarding way to spend them all — on the role that global capital played in this and in other Western elections won by nativists, there is also a lot of shit. And it’s mostly written by Brendan O’Neill, fond of denying the racism that fuelled Brexit, or by the fools of Twitter.
Economic, or material, leftism is a very new concept to many young Westerners. It may have been around for almost two centuries, but there are many kids, from many different identity groups, who have only just picked it up — and Brendan never got the hang of it in the first place. These youngsters are yet to get to the older, more difficult Marx, where they will grapple with the idea of how a complex of material relations forms between persons, and currently on the social internet, it’s a lot of “people are poor and that’s why they voted for Trump”. This is sometimes accompanied by a link to one of Clinton’s leaked Goldman Sachs speeches, or, to Bernard’s vexation, the word “neoliberalism”.
4. The People
The people no longer trust professional media. Media, in turn, have forfeited their trust in the public. They would like to elect a new one. Peter van Onselen says that he cannot “excuse the collective failure of voting a deplorable human being into the White House”. Laurie Penny, the well-known writer who asked you to gaze into the mirror to see the serial abuser of women looking back, says of democracy, “Just because millions of people believe something does not make it right.” The very good political correspondent Katharine Murphy is similarly perturbed by a people who seem to come to such terrible conclusions, for which she tries, and fails, to accept some responsibility as a member of the press.
The people, in short, are idiots.
5. The Media
Everyone, even media, is blaming media, for the successes and the failures of both Trump and Clinton. Breitbart blames the liberal press. The liberal press blames the few socialist writers who can actually get work. Murphy blames Fox News, and nearly everyone has had a go at blaming WikiLeaks, curiously charged with the crime of being a publisher that publishes things. Those journalists who still can stomach the thought of the people, or at least just realise that they will probably always vote, write long accounts of why the people should trust them.
[Razer: WikiLeaks does good work. It’s not Assange who’s gone off the deep end, it’s us]
Then there are a few precious journalists who understand why their profession is hated. One of these is Glenn Greenwald, whose work in The Intercept across the election has been peerless. Here, he speaks candidly about why the people are entirely justified in their disdain for media. While feebler analysts say that media was too soft on Trump, and that in their failure to “call him out” they “normalised hate”, etc, Greenwald saw the Trump problem in a different way.
The out-and-out refusal of media to take Trump’s policy pronouncements seriously, to say instead that he was a buffoon billionaire with a gold elevator or a guy in league with Russia, was, Greenwald said in interview during the election, bad for readers. Perhaps he would now say that this approach, this refusal to really analyse anything the man proposed, turned out to be very bad for the nation.
Murphy might decry “post-fact” journalism, but she works for a publication that presented unsubstantiated assumptions about Trump as fact. As did the New York Times. It was in July that Greenwald was frustrated by the paper when it suggested “that Trump was literally putting in a request to Putin for the Russians to cyberattack the FBI, the United States government, or get Hillary Clinton’s emails. That is such unmitigated bullshit.” And the people do not trust the media, and the media demand a new people.
***
In my view, all of these accounts have individual substance. We do live in a sexist and a racist West. Many of our lives have been reshaped, particularly over the past few years, by a reduction in real wages and a diminished access to social services, or to community itself. Towns are all but shut down. Dentists are rare. Democrats might defend Roe, but you try getting access to an abortion in the towns that Hillary forgot. There are people in the rust-belt who are strip-searched before walking kilometres a day in an Amazon warehouse. There are those who work for Walmart, the nation’s largest employer, who can still remember something better. There are also people who are quite comfy, but idly decide to blame their lack of a vacation house on the Muslims nonetheless. Trump did score higher with white voters, but he did better with minorities than Romney. He will benefit the investor class and he can’t bring manufacturing jobs back, but he did secure a good portion of the vote in regions where there was little job security. He is a racist clown, but Hispanic male voters did swing to him. And, yes, the people are terrible, and so are media, just as unable to see beyond their own extreme liberalism as certain white Americans are beyond their cultural privilege.
All of these accounts have something to say on their own. It is when they are taken together, however, that they form a more reliable picture. There are a few commentators who have done this, including Thomas Frank, Greenwald and Blyth. But the people prepared, or even able, to tackle more than one explanation, in an era that has settled on niche markets, are rare.
It’s not very modern to say that big events are complex. It’s better and more profitable to say that they derive from a single cause. In the past week, many commentators have accrued many page views in behaving like a Rorschach oracle. It’s this, they say, so it can’t be that. And if you say that it is not all that, then you are a racist/capitalist/communist cheerleader for sexual assault.
This, an analysis of the motivations of millions, is not intellectually useful. It’s astrology, or, at best, it’s the Barnum Effect. This term, used by psychologists to rightly malign the unscientific foundation for popular “psychometric” tests like Myers-Briggs, means that people like the delusion of “There’s Something For Everyone”. In press and on social media, there’s a Trump-splanation tailored to many different interests.
The only problem is that what we need right now is probably not what we find most self-affirming.
Many of these explanations have value when considered as mutually constituting — for example, race and economic class have long produced social friction in nation-states, like Australia and the US, founded on immigration. Some of these have little value for anyone but the outlet that published them.
The Guardian out-guardianed itself when it printed a cri de cœur by a Hallmark liberal asking how she could explain Trump to her little girl.
If commentators are so reluctant to explain Trump, and the Western rise in right-wing populism of which he forms a, frankly, more moderate part, fully to themselves, I don’t know how they hope to explain it to an infant. But good luck to those who think they know the answer. I’ve read a hundred infographics and at least a million words of text this election, and all I can currently agree with is the analysis offered by the AFR’s wisest subeditor, World is Fukt. World is fukt, and the people want it back. On this occasion, they may have erred tragically.
“World is fukt, and the people want it back. On this occasion, they may have erred tragically.”
I suggest that the US problems are deep and multilayered. I am doubtful that Trump will prevail against the vested interests – not least because the US has a system for emergency management if Washington D.C. is destroyed in an attack. Thus there is a system designed to bypass the POTUS, the Congress and the Senate. Who controls that?
Yes, it’s hugely complex, and any one scenario to explain the phenomenon misses all the others. I have rejected elsewhere that racism and sexism played a part in this, although it is fair to say they both played at the margins, it’s just that no-one can reasonably say to what extent or even what direction, although that is assumed.
Apart from this good summary, so much looks like a solution to a complex problem that is neat, elegant, and wrong.
Of course you can analyse how voter attitudes correlate with voting preferences and thereby contribute to a result. There’s no need to read entrails.
This is an example:
http://www.salon.com/2016/11/13/yep-race-really-did-trump-economics-a-data-dive-on-his-supporters-reveals-deep-racial-animosity/
Archibald, hard to know where to start, it doesn’t seem to be a response in any way to my observation, but as it is appended as a reply to me I am assuming it is.
Correlation isn’t causation. Correlation is actually nothing at all, and provides no insight to why anyone voted for anyone, which is actually the key point of the article, I thought. I very much doubt that they asked the question “Are you a racist, and who are you voting for?”
That statistical analysis is full of holes. Among many assumptions is that anyone who thinks that white people might be losing jobs to minorities is a racist. In many cases that will actually be true, a real lived experience. In any case, it’s just correlation, and correlation explains nothing at all.
Sure, Archibald. Salon is very devoted to that line. But, Nate Silver is not. And some Hispanic writers, some of who long ago gave up on Obama, the deportation president, see the male swing in that identity category toward Trump as making some sort of crazy sense. You can post opinion pieces all you like that derive from one statistical reading. You can say that 50 million people, more of whom were from minority groups than voted for Romney, supported Trump for a single reason. Or, you can say that Salon, who has also run a gender line ceaselessly, because let’s never talk about the economy and pretend it’s all about personal prejudice and that people never vote from their hip pockets and they are just plain bad and mean, has backed a particular horse.
I tend to think there are many reasons. I think if we try to work out what these are, we could maybe outrun the very real threat of the populist right.And we can just ignore that this movement runs a consistently socialist (and cynical) economic line. We can just overlook that part of the appeal. But, no. I guess it is more important to call out racists and prove yourself to be on the side of true justice.
Racists can vote against their racist instincts. In this instance, what would have been enough in enough cases to elect Clinton? Who knows. Too complex. But in the meantime, consider this:
“During the 2008 election, FiveThirtyEight relayed an anecdote from the campaign trail:
So a canvasser goes to a woman’s door in Washington, Pennsylvania. Knocks. Woman answers. Knocker asks who she’s planning to vote for. She isn’t sure, has to ask her husband who she’s voting for. Husband is off in another room watching some game. Canvasser hears him yell back, “We’re votin’ for the n***er!” Woman turns back to canvasser, and says brightly and matter of factly: “We’re voting for the n***er.”
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/11/why_did_some_white_obama_voters_for_trump.html
In its narrowest sense, Clinton’s defeat can be “explained” by accounting for 114,000 votes in a couple of swing states. It can be seen as a major but superficial inflection point ultimately produced by deep shifts. My comments are directed more towards the superficial “114,000 votes short” level.
Clinton won the Democrat nomination because because she was a hard-working, talented party insider-loyalist who had suffered a lot and waited patiently and it was her turn. She was certainly not nominated as a response to any of the primary issues eating their way through US society. In the larger electorate, “her turn” became a reason, perhaps even an over-arching reason, to vote against her. If it was her turn, she was obviously part of the problem, however defined.
The party – the Democrat technocratic attempt to manage post-Reagan capitalism in a benign way – was over. Bill got rid of Glass-Seagal, Obama bailed out the banks… now it was the woman’s turn. Something in this reminds me of Kirner, Keneally, and even Gillard.
It wasn’t Bernie’s turn – fair enough too, he wasn’t even a Democrat – but it may next be the turn of the movement he aspires to lead, if that movement can begin the task of winning back the states, one by one, for a renewed Democrat party or replacement. Obama’s eight years show that without the states and their gerrymander powers let alone their legislative clout, the presidency cannot be transformative. The states should be the priority, the presidency can wait – though it may be possible to walk and chew gum at the same time. And however it is done, and however it is led, it has to be driven by the energy of people under the age of 40.
” she was a hard-working, talented party insider-loyalist ”
I think you are extremely generous. Google: Clinton deaths. 57 million hits – but only a 50 to 90 body count.
Yep, another elephant in the room.
What about the Clinton Foundation? Check to see where the money goes. Helen, pleeeaaassse. check it. It’s sickening. That is, if you are a normal human being which I am sure you are.
You guys are making out like I am some sort of Clintonista who affirms the branded nonsense of a large corporate introduction agency.
Not to be one of those people who say “you just proved my point”. But I kinda feel that if I have proposed that there are many reasons for voters to vote as they do, and then several commenters say “no, there is only one and there must only be one!”, then, I guess I have failed to be clear.
“You guys are making out like I am some sort of Clintonista who affirms the branded nonsense of a large corporate introduction agency.”
Helen, that was actually very funny. I laughed. But people long for journalists who research to the death. Crikey journalists are in danger of becoming very msm and pushing a single desk ideology while blind-sided to the facts that may dispute their own party line. Generally you are not inclusive of this and quite balanced. Maybe not today.
Helen. I might be a woman.
Helen, your comment here appears under mine so I hope I’m not seen as one of the “several commenters” who insist on mono-causality. I think there is a simply expressed reason for the Democrats ensuring the nomination of Clinton (her turn). As for the election, I’m with you that this stuff is complex – even within the minds of individuals. What may have surfaced in the minds of a sufficient number is, “The country’s fukt. We don’t need another insider just because its her turn.” What is meant by “fukt” and by whom is an entirely other and more mysterious matter, or series of matters. Finally, I think material-left explanations persuasive and indispensible – which is why I read your columns.
No, Keith1! Actually, your comments offered some respite. There is a great tendency after an election to ask “what does this mean?”, when sometimes, all it meant was some quirks of distribution to one of the two parties that people usually vote for.
I meant the comments that said “why are you denying race, you racist, here’s an article I just Googled” or those that said “Why are you sucking on the teat of lame-stream media, you liberal whore?”.
Now, I happen to think it is a really good time to talk about race and class in particular (or gender and class for that matter) and see how these two things, so persistent and destructive in societies, constitute each other, your sensible comments about electoral business-as-usual notwithstanding.
And, frankly, to charge me, of all tedious pro WikiLeaks, anti-liberal commentators with not seeing the “real” Killary (I think I have linked to the Podesta emails in recent weeks on Crikey about one hundred times) is just more of the same “it’s either one or the other” is just the sort of nonsense I am talking about.
I mean, sorry to diss you guys. But race and class and other everyday experiences work together. Of course racism played a part. And of course the false solidarity of the white working class has long been expressed as racism in the USA since 1865,
And of course Trump made an appeal to people on both racial and putatively pro-labour grounds. So, why are we saying that one is more important than the other, when they are both there, front and centre?
We can choose our team. Or, we can say devise ways to talk our way around this frankly terrifying rise of nativist loops. Erasing one thing or the other helps no one but the powerful.
This is how she was seen by the party and that’s why they made sure she got the nomination.
sorry – in reply to Nota Bene
But Helen, if the US economy had been roaring along magically at top speed, say with robust employment growth nationwide abreast a programmatic reinvention of rust belt economies (I did say magically), would Trump have ever stood a chance? And by implication, would sexism, racism, anti-elitism and/or pig ignorance have been variously thought of as critical to the election’s outcome? No, surely not.
Rural and rust belt economic malaise (entirely unaddressed after 8 years of Obama, though by no means entirely his fault) cost the Democrats the support of the working class, the same working class that has always everywhere been a bastion of sexism, racism, anti-elitism and proud pig ignorance. Trump simply broadcast bigotry and ignorance as a means an end: To convince the working class that he, a New York billionaire, was authentically on their side and genuinely understood their grievances. And we now know it was this working class – who had previously voted for Obama twice – that delivered Trump his victory. Had economic times been good for them (and not just for the rich) the working class would surely have laughed Trump off as an amusing but altogether unnecessary risk.
Which means – and this is the critical thing – the Democrats now have to rise above their fixation with the identity politics of gender and race (i.e. symbolic injustice) and reconnect with the class politics of material injustice. That is, the Democratic Party now needs to fight the monster of neoliberalism they did so much (under Bill Clinton) to unleash upon the American working class. Because, if they don’t, and continue taking the fight instead to sexism, racism, anti-elitist and pig ignorance, it will be EXACTLY what the Republicans are praying the Democrats will do. It’ll be attacking the symptoms and not the cause of the Democrats nationwide routing from the institutions of power, and entrench work class contempt for the ‘crooked’ Democratic political machine.
Will! Did I not say that the economy *must* be considered as a factor, alongside those others? I mean, entre nous, I think the material organisation of societies determine their fate at most every level. But I am not such a “material only!” bore that I won’t say that there are not other elements that play a part in the decision making of 50 million folks. My point (I thought I had made it clear) is that stuff is complicated.
Helen! With all due respect, the whole point is that these are *competing* explanations for the fall of the “Blue Wall” (and the broader Republican resurgence nationally). If the appeal of sexism/racism/anti-elitism is responsible, the Dems had the right message (neoliberalism-lite) but just chose the wrong candidate to deliver it. If however the economy was fundamentally to blame, the Dems need a whole new paradigm (because neoliberalism-lite is what delivered that economy in the first place).
This isn’t boring economic determinism, it’s an explanation for why overt sexism/racism/anti-elitism were so effective in hiving off formerly Democratic votes to Trump. Lumping these competing explanations together with an “it’s complicated” doesn’t make anything clear at all, when the whole point of the analysis must surely be to find a way to win back those votes (and swing over new ones).
Hey! watch out for the elephant. It’s standing right next to us but nobody sees it. All these ideologue agenda driven critics make me sick. They continually skirt the real issues. For the real reasons, how about the simple things like having a job when 10 million illegal immigrants won’t let you. How about lessening the need for imports and sustaining the manufacture base to maintain employment. Will they ever own their own home?And how about stop making this a gender issue for God’s sake ( not you Helen, the critics ). In a democracy, the voters will let you know when the shepherds have gone astray. Get over it and accept it.