When Nixon won in 1972, Pauline Kael of the New Yorker famously said she couldn’t
understand how he won since virtually nobody she knew voted for him.
If you now wonder how the media, the pollsters, the pundits
and the Democrats could have been so wrong on this election,
remember Pauline Kael. She summed up back then why so many in the
political and media establishments didn’t see the Trump victory coming.
Nobody they know – nobody they associate with – was voting
for Trump. Or at least acknowledged that they were voting for Trump. People
they polled who were actually planning to vote for Trump either blew them off
and refused to answer, or lied to them.
So everybody was sure Hillary had this in the bag. All their
friends were for her. All their
colleagues were in her camp. The people
who eagerly answered their polling questions said they were for her. The
political establishment knew Hillary had the big money, big stars, big ground
game, big campaign consultants and the Obama Coalition which in their world
were all certain precursors of a win.
Plus, she’d take millennials, the African-Americans, Latinos
and of course women.
Some predicted she might win in a landslide, maybe even over
300 Electoral College votes. They cast
this as a result of the shifting demographics of a changing nation – where
increases in the numbers of the young and Hispanics, and the gender gap, all favored
Hillary.
They forgot to really talk to people outside their insular
world.
Like the working class men and women of all races and
ethnicity many of whom had lost their jobs and incomes through jobs moving to
other countries. They forgot to listen to the small
business owners and their employees getting hammered by ObamaCare’s skyrocketing
premiums and exorbitant deductibles. They forgot the middle class men and women
who dropped out of the workforce, were underemployed, or whose wages hadn’t
increased in a decade. They forgot those
whose household income had actually declined over that time.
Sure, the media and political elites saw the numbers, but
hey … they themselves were doing very well. Big salaries, nice vacations, dinners at fine
restaurants, hobnobbing with the rich and famous, first-class travel and
treatment wherever they went.
In a world like that – their world, with private schools, economically
segregated neighborhoods, nannies and housekeepers, first-class train and plane
tickets – there’s little chance of mixing with people outside their social or
economic circles.
And they didn’t.
Since they never really talked to – much less tried to
understand – the millions of people already increasingly angry about the
direction of the country politically, economically and culturally, they believed
everything was just fine. None of the people they knew had these
concerns.
When they saw the Trump rallies, they laughed at the people
there. When they saw signs protesting
illegal immigration, they dismissed the holders as bigots and racists. When they saw people waving American flags
they snickered.
When their New York-based TV shows mocked Trump and his
supporters as bozos, rubes, and ignorant hicks, they laughed and laughed and
laughed.
They never realized there was a whole world – another America
– outside of the world they knew. In
that other world, people were actually offended by the antics of the cultural and
political elites. The people the
elites mocked didn’t find the jokes at their expense to be funny at all,
especially when they were constantly portrayed as know-nothing clowns.
The arrogance of the cultural and political elites cost them
the election. The other America – the one
they laughed at – came out and voted.
And stunned the powers that be. Or now, were.
Clinton promised another four years of Obama policies. Her
friends in the media and the financial and entertainment industries couldn’t
understand why anyone wouldn’t want to continue forward with more of the same;
everybody they knew agreed.
The people they didn’t know didn’t agree.
On Tuesday, the people they didn’t know upset the world they
thought they knew.
I was struck by the maps on election night showing which counties voted for Trump or for Clinton.
In state after state, if became clear that most states were almost
entirely red (for Trump) with only a few blue spots (for Clinton) concentrated
almost exclusively in the big cities.
Obama promised to transform America. Clinton promised to continue and increase that
transformation even more. People in most
states – enough to win the Electoral College vote by a wide margin – decided to
put a stop to it. So they did. That’s democracy in action.
Liberals and mainstream media talking heads are still aghast
at what happened. Precious little
snowflakes on college campuses across the country are having meltdowns. They
simply cannot understand how this could happen.
Remember Pauline Kael.
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