Reasons That Donald Trump Was Elected (and how that s connected to our class studies):

Transcription

1 Reasons That Donald Trump Was Elected (and how that s connected to our class studies): 1. MAIN REASON: The Electoral College worked in Trump s favor Even though Hillary Clinton got almost 3 million more votes than Donald Trump, he won the majority of the votes in the Electoral College. This system for electing the president and vice-president of the U.S. was established along with the acceptance of the U.S. Constitution as the basis for establishing a unified federal government for the United States (officially ratified in 1789). The reason for the Electoral College system was that the South was not as populated as the North, so the South wanted a weighted system that would give them a more equal chance to elect a president (otherwise the South refused to agree to be part of the union of states into one federal government because the South suspected that the North would try to abolish slavery). The agreement on how this system would work was that each state would get as many electoral votes as the number of representatives they had in the House of Representatives (based on the population of the state) plus the number of Senators the state has (almost all states have 2). o Part of the political deal-making for accepting the Constitution was the Three-Fifths Compromise, an agreement about how the population of each state would be counted. As a concession to the South, for the purposes of population-counting (which is done every 10 years in a national census), each slave would be counted as 3/5ths of a person. o The effect of this Electoral College agreement was to give the Southern states a third more seats in Congress and a third more electoral votes than if their slaves had been ignored, but fewer votes than if slaves and free persons had been counted equally. (This compromise basically allowed the slaveholder interests of the South to dominate the government of the United States until 1861). Since the presidential election of 1788 (which elected George Washington, a Southerner, from Virginia), there have been 57 elections in the United States using the Electoral College system. Only five times in U.S. history have the popular vote and the electoral vote been different: o The 10 th election, in 1824 There were four candidates: John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts [Republican/Whig]; William H. Crawford of Georgia [Democratic-Republican]; Henry Clay from Kentucky [Democratic-Republican]; and Andrew Jackson of Tennessee [Democratic-Republican]. Because the votes were so split, none of the candidates got a clear majority of the votes, although Jackson came in first and Adams came in second. The fact that there wasn t a decisive vote total meant that (according to Article 12 of the U.S. Constitution), the election was decided by the House of Representatives -- and John Quincy Adams won that election. (The Jackson supporters were furious, declaring that the 1824 election was rigged. But Jackson s supporters got organized, American Politics election of

2 and in 1828, Jackson won, running as a Democrat. This was the beginning of the modern Democratic Party.) o The 23 rd election, in 1876 There were two candidates: Samuel J. Tilden of New York [Democrat] and Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio [Republican]. Tilden won the greatest number of popular votes: more than 50% of the total, and more electoral votes 184 to Hayes 165. The problem was that there were 20 electoral votes that were hotly disputed. These were from 4 states: Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Oregon. Instead of the House of Representatives deciding the election, the two political parties worked out a compromise (called The Compromise of 1877 ). In this deal, Tilden (the Democrat) conceded the election and Hayes (the Republican) then became president after promising that he would immediately call a halt to the federal government s occupation of the South (called Reconstruction, that took place after the end of the Civil War in 1865). [The Compromise effectively gave power in the Southern states to the Democratic conservative, pro-business faction (mostly former wealthy plantation owners, professional class, and businessmen) who went on to pursue their agenda of returning the South to a political economy resembling that of its pre-war condition, including the systematic disenfranchisement of black voters.] o The 26 th election, in 1888 The two candidates were Grover Cleveland (a Democrat, and the incumbent president, running for re-election) vs. Benjamin Harrison (a Republican). Cleveland won 48.6% of the popular vote (more than Harrison s 47.8% by about 90,000 votes), but he lost the electoral vote (he had 168 to Harrison s 233). [Issues: Harrison took the side of industrialists and factory workers who wanted to keep tariffs high, while Cleveland denounced high tariffs as unfair to consumers. Cleveland s opposition to Civil War pensions and inflated currency also made enemies among veterans and farmers. Basically, the North went for Harrison, the South and west coast went for Cleveland.] o The 54 th election, in 2000 The two candidates were Al Gore (Democrat) and George W. Bush (Republican). Gore won 48.4% of the popular vote, while Bush won 47.9% (a difference of about 543,000 votes). The problem was the electoral vote, and it came down to Florida, where the election-night reported a thin difference between the two candidates that was in favor of Bush. However, there were reported irregularities in the vote count in Florida (where Bush s brother, Jeb, was the governor and thus oversaw the election). The narrow margin triggered an automatic recount but lawsuits were then filed on both sides that complicated things. (These arguments were over which late-arriving overseas ballots should be counted, whether the recount of votes should be by hand (meaning counted by humans) or by machine, the deadlines for when recounts had to be tallied and reported, etc.) Twenty days after the election, the official Florida election board total said Bush won the state by 537 votes. Gore contested this in a formal legal complaint. A Florida state court ruled against Gore, who then filed suit with the Florida American Politics election of

3 Supreme Court. The Florida Supreme Court overruled the lower court and ordered some 70,000 undervoted ballots (meaning those ballots that had been unable to be read by vote-reading machines) to be counted by hand. The next day, the U.S. Supreme Court [most of them Republican appointees], voted 5-4 to overturn the state court s ruling and halted the re-count (based on the ruling that the counting of ballots of questionable legality did irreparable harm to the case of George W. Bush). By this time Dec. 12th Florida s mandatory vote-reporting deadline was looming in two hours and so the recount was effectively ended, with the final count being the one that had been reported as the official Florida election board number (that Bush won by 537 votes). Gore accepted this Supreme Court ruling and conceded the election. [Why did Gore accept the Supreme Court ruling and concede? The state of Florida election board had met and was ready to affirm its slate of electors all supporters of the governor, W. s brother Jeb Bush and with no official recount to prove that errors had been made, these Florida electors would have awarded the state to Bush, based on the official ruling. Or, if Gore had refused to accept the U.S. Supreme Court s ruling and had appealed to the House of Representatives, it wouldn t have changed things, because the House was dominated by the GOP at that time and they would have simply awarded the election to Bush.] o The 58th election Hillary Clinton (Democrat) won the popular vote (by about 3 million votes) vs. Donald Trump (Republican) who won the Electoral College (304 to 227). FINAL ELECTORAL COLLEGE VOTES American Politics election of

4 2. What does the outcome of this election mean? A. This was a change election apparently to a far greater extent than had been expected. A change election means that more people were apparently dissatisfied and wanted major changes in the way things are being run in the country than most political strategists (especially in the Democratic Party) thought. It was reported that many people viewed Hillary Clinton as being a status quo candidate someone who (despite her agreeing to accept Bernie Sanders progressive ideas in the party platform) did not seem to many voters like she would change things. Most people who had been Bernie Sanders supporters voted for Hillary Clinton, but there were some Democrats who apparently got discouraged and didn t vote at all. It s estimated that the voter turnout was only 55.3% (as compared to the election of 2008, when 58.2% voted). There were 3 rd party candidates, too, who didn t pull that many votes (appx. 4% in all, nationwide). Some say that if these 3 rd party candidates hadn t been running, Hillary Clinton would have had enough votes to win. Others say that if the 3 rd party candidates weren t in the race, the people who didn t want to vote for the two major candidates would simply have stayed home rather than vote. B. Both candidates had a lot of negatives, but Hillary may have had more of them. (Many people who voted for Trump may have been voting against her rather than for him.) Negatives in politician-speak refers to how a candidate is viewed by the public. Hillary Clinton has been in the public spotlight for the last 25 years or so. Many people saw this as an advantage, that she was someone who, with all her experience -- as First Lady ( ), Senator from New York ( ), and Secretary of State ( ) clearly the most experienced and capable candidate for the office she was running for (compared to Donald Trump, who has never held public office of any kind). However, the right-wing press (especially Fox News on TV and Rush Limbaugh on the radio) has been criticizing Hillary practically nonstop for the last 25 years, blaming her for the Bengazi episode when she was Secretary of State and her use of what turned out to be an insecure private computer server for her personal s. The conspiracy theory alt-right press has been attacking her constantly for 25 years (among other things, she has been accused of murdering her aide, Vincent Foster (who committed suicide) as well as all manner of bizarre things (like the recent fake news episode on social media which said she was involved in a kiddie porn ring that was being run out of a Comet Pizza store in New Jersey prompting a foolish man to selfinvestigate with a loaded rifle (of course there was nothing of the sort going on). In addition, the FBI director s intervention a few days before the election (saying some suspicious s had been found on one of her assistant s home computer that might be classified information but turned out to be of no consequence) didn t help. (No government official has ever made a public statement like that before. They are prohibited by law from saying something like that so close to an election.) American Politics election of

5 Basically, if Hillary Clinton s campaign made mistakes, they were probably (1). that she primarily ran against Trump (focusing on how unsuited he was for the office) instead of running either for herself or for the issues she believed in [related to this was the complaint that she didn t inspire passion in the voters or cause them to be sufficiently enthusiastic not like Bernie Sanders had done, for example] (2). that she took for granted that those who had voted Democratic in the past (like during the 2008 and 2012 election) would vote Democratic in this election (whereas in the actual vote, she got fewer votes than Obama did in those two elections) (3). that many voters didn t trust her to fully support a progressive platform (since she had gotten much of her campaign money from big-money supporters on Wall St. and other wealthy donors) It was a close election, overall. Hillary Clinton, the first woman candidate in a major party to run for president, was certainly qualified for the office and had lots of experience. She handled the debates and many difficult challenges with dignity and intelligence. She didn t win, though. So: Why did people vote for Trump? A. They wanted a change. Polls taken after the election showed that the issues of most concern to those who voted for Trump were immigration and terrorism. (Basically, they felt that illegal immigrants were taking their jobs and that aliens in America were bringing in a culture that they didn t understand and that they were dangerous able and willing to harm Americans. Both are not really true, according to current data.) B. They felt that they and their needs were not being listened to in Washington, DC. The three battleground states that had previously voted Democratic that voted for Trump were Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania all in America s Rust Belt where there were previously great numbers of goodpaying manufacturing jobs. Trump promised to bring back manufacturing (as well as coal-mining) jobs. C. They felt that rebellious, and resented that they (and their communities) were being looked down on by the city people who didn t care about them. This was actually a major factor. Most of HRC s supporters were in the cities while most of Trump s supporters were from smaller communities. Most of Trump s voters were white, most of them men, most over 40, and most with no college degree. Most said they went to church weekly. (All of these factors indicate small town people. Basically, things in small-town America are changing -- especially for those men who used to be the most respected community leaders -- and they don t like it one little bit.) American Politics election of