I spent most of last night at an election party for a State Senate candidate that I’ve been volunteering for and eventually working with part time for the past 5 months. Being 25 turning 26 next week, I was glad that I finally had a job that was better than my one shift a week position at a Sandwich shop and it felt like I could be part of something bigger than myself. Then the results came pouring in and it became clear that we were going to lose to a guy that claimed IVF treatment was considered adultery by a 2-1 margin. I was disheartened, but I thought it’d be okay because I was sure that Clinton would win.
I was badly mistaken.
I left after hearing Trump won Florida and ended up screaming in my car on the way home. I went to bed depressed and angry at the thought Trump was actually going to win. I woke up feeling more angry and depressed than ever at seeing Trump actually win everything and that my family’s native state of Minnesota had to wait until morning to be called when it should have been called for Hillary immediately when polls closed.
After all the sadness, depression, and frustration, I noticed something else.
I was tired.
Not tired of the election, but tired of the fact that this has happened for 3 out of 4 of the past elections. We get our hopes up believing that we’ll do great thanks to optimistic polling, and then we suffer dramatically terrible results as seen in 2010, 2014, and now in 2016. We’re suffering from constantly making the same mistakes and it’s getting to the point where we don’t reflect on them and just rush to blame each other instead. We need to stop finger pointing and look at what I believe are the major takeaways from this campaign.
- Personality will beat Policy
It’s a hard truth to accept, but people tend to want to vote for the person they want to have a beer with, not the person who will explain exactly what they are going to do. Look at the elections from the last 36 years and you’ll see the person who is more charismatic will, more often than not, win the election. Hillary has a very caring personality, but got weighed down from all the ginned up negative scandals such as a stupid email server and Benghazi. Trump managed to come off as anti PC and said whatever he wanted which appealed to people’s base emotions. Trump’s scandals were far worse, but barely made any damage until the “grab them” comment got air time. Then that was negated by Comey’s letter. Trump was also the master of generating soundbites for his positions that would make them easily understandable to any person. Any future Democratic Presidential candidate needs to be able to come off as more charismatic by the public along with being a better presenter. Also, I’m not sure Bernie would have done better given that he had a whole lot of skeletons that hadn’t gone mainstream yet
- Media will always claim false equivalence.
The News channels are never going to be on our side since they love to say “both sides do it” over and over again. The unprecedented nature of Trump having the power to end the world was barely touched upon along with him never getting pressed on his policy specifics. We can’t hope that they’ll uncover something to help take down Trump since he’s too good for their bottom line according to the heads of CNN and CBS.
- Polling is no longer accurate or trustworthy
While polls have always been known to not always be reflective and accurate, the degree that the polls have been so wrong in the last 2 elections has been unprecedented since Truman defeated Dewey. We thought that we were safe thanks to Sam Wang and Nate Silver. But neither took into account the degree of the turnout of Non-college educated Whites for Trump so everybody was completely blindsided by this win and the wave of Republican wins that followed. From now on, we can never get complacent when it looks like we’re ahead because our leads can disappear in an instant.
- We have a Midwest problem.
While we’ve been focused on the changing demographics in places like Texas, we’d forgotten the immediate concerns of the people in rural areas of the Midwest like PA, MI, and WI. The manufacturing towns were considered strong Democratic territory in the past, but NAFTA ended up ruining more lives there then it helped. Mostly due to that, they gave Trump a chance at bringing back their old livelihoods while they thought Clinton would come take away the rest of the jobs they have left. We can’t dismiss rural voters as rednecks since they’re more likely to vote and have real pressing concerns about keeping their families fed. I know for a fact and even the Kansas diary here shows that just talking to rural voters can go a long way in establishing trust with them and earning their vote. I once even managed to convince a Strong Republican woman to vote for my candidate. The fact that MINNESOTA of all places was considered close shows that the Democrats need to get out and interact with people all over the states they are in and not just in urban areas. We can’t wait for Texas indefinitely so our pressing concern should be to make sure the main Midwestern states turn back to blue which is very feasible since their margin of victory for each state was extremely close.
We all know today really sucks. But there are 2 silver linings. The first is that Trump is entering office with one of the highest disapproval ratings ever and with the Republicans in complete control, they completely own everything he does and can’t blame us for any problems they have. The second is that with Trump’s high disapproval ratings, it would help us a lot in the 2018 midterms to motivate turnout which is crucial to getting rid of the gerrymandered districts in Congress. While the Senate is out of reach again, The Governor’s races aren’t and they will be critical to getting in the Statehouses to having some form of control over the redistricting process.
The Republicans were in our exact same position 8 years ago and gained back control with underhanded tactics. I hate to say it, but we’re going to need to resort to their tactics in order to keep Trump from doing anything destructive. Schumer would need to be as willing as McConnell to use the filibuster and there’s a good chance McConnell might eliminate it altogether. However, McConnell will need it in order to find a way to keep blaming everything on the Dems for his problems like usual. Also, he wouldn’t like to get rid of his favorite toy.
This whole diary may come off as rambling, but I’m sick and tired of feeling hopeless every 2 years believing things would be fine after every election and I don’t want to sit around feeling hopeless after one of the worst elections of our lifetimes. I’m still alive and if I die in 60 years or next week in a truck accident, I want to know that I was doing everything I can to help the Democratic Party rebuild and to destroy the legacy of Trump once and for all. No matter what happens and whatever the Republicans throw at us, we can’t give up on the Party and what this country truly represents. Not the embodiment of racism and white entitlement, but the embodiment of freedom and opportunity for any person regardless of race.