I know there are already a million postmortem diaries. I will try to keep this mostly constructive and blame-free. My main point is focused upon our future, not just as a party or a nation but perhaps even as a species.
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I'm a data monkey by day. So, it's not surprising that I'm looking in the data for answers. It is apparent now that all of the demographic divisions we were so focused upon were red herrings. The electoral victor on Tuesday won a higher percentage of blacks and Hispanics than Romney had. The 19th amendment people were not any more united for Hillary than they were for Obama. Some cite hate of the establishment, but the election of incumbents brings that into question. My incumbent Republican congresswoman defeated my Democratic Progressive Bernie-blue outsider. Ouch.
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The primary demographic division that has come to the forefront is college education. Some of the polls cited this prior to election, but mostly as a footnote. Fivethirtyeight has an article demonstrating that women were split largely by education:
fivethirtyeight.com/...
PEW has additional numbers, and adds some historical perspective:
In the 2016 election, a wide gap in presidential preferences emerged between those with and without a college degree. College graduates backed Clinton by a 9-point margin (52%-43%), while those without a college degree backed Trump 52%-44%. This is by far the widest gap in support among college graduates and non-college graduates in exit polls dating back to 1980.
I know many are in an uproar over the popular vote, understandably so. Many are also pissed at the electoral college, me too. However, I don't think a campaign to tear it down is going to go anywhere. What's more, that argument will only continue to alienate "the uneducated" that so enthusiastically voted for Trump.
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My own family is a microcosm of America. My parents were the first children in their large families to graduate from high school. My own limited slice of post-secondary education is an extreme rarity among my extended family. You can only imagine my Facebook feed. Rampant anti-intellectualism is real, I saw it in every argument posted and meme shared. There was no use in fighting back, you don't bring "reals" to a "feels" fight. There are a ton of people who feel invalidated, and it is so easy for those of us in our echo chambers to discount them. We did. They felt it. However, going forward, I'd rather not. For one reason, I actually love some of them and recognize them to be good human beings in most areas of their lives. For another, if given the option, almost every one of them would want a college education for their sons and daughters. If it didn’t feel so far out of reach and hopeless for them, they would want to be on the other side. So, here we are.
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Unfortunately "here" happens to pose an existential threat to education. Republicans now hold all the cards, and I am concerned how little power we have. But, where we have any power or capital at all, I would go ALL IN to support and defend quality public education from preschool to graduate school. I care deeply about civil rights, reproductive rights, climate change, gun control, and immigration reform. I fear the next addition to the Supreme court, which would seem like the most crucial long-term concern. But, after this election…
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If I had to choose one single issue to die on, it would be education.
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If Republicans succeed in gutting education, then they succeed at gerrymandering our electorate. Trumps School Choice and Education Opportunity act is the first shot across the bow: Redirects education dollars to give parents the right to send their kid to the public, private, charter, magnet, religious or home school of their choice.
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How do we stop it? Barring that, how do we mitigate the damage?
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If we allow an erosion of education and corruption of critical thinking skills we will greenlight Reality TV politics forever more. There will be no more candidates of substance. Entertainment will defeat experience and pandering will win over policies. Emotion will replace thought and evidence in our political consciousness.
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There was a prescient line about the future in Cline's Ready Player One, which was written in 2011. In this world everyone can vote instantly online:
...the only people who could get elected were movie stars, reality TV personalities, or radical televangelists
I hope we can keep it from being so.