Election of 2016, reflections

January, 2017

I have been, like many, reading the post mortems on this campaign, and it has been very frustrating. I see intellectual arrogance and naive realism (tendency to think that everyone views the world in the same way) aplenty. And I know of what I speak as I have been intellectually arrogant and suffer from naive realism myself. As I tend to always look internally when I am wrong, I have been doing much soul searching. I worked on the Clinton campaign in 1992, at the DNC and several other gubernatorial campaigns before becoming a History, Anthropology, and Economics teacher. I thought I had a good grasp on politics. Apparently, I don’t. But some clarity has arisen for me. In the back of my mind, I always had these nagging questions.



How could blue collar democrats vote for Reaganonomics, which was so obviously skewed to help the wealthy, in 1980?


How did Dukakis have a 17 point lead in the summer of 1988 when statistically the country was doing well and the sitting President had high approval ratings?


How did George HW Bush have approval ratings in the high 20’s to low 30’s after winning a war when the mild recession of 1991 was clearly, and statistically ending?


How did Bill Clinton, known as slick willy, beat an incumbent President, despite affairs and other scandals?


How did George Bush come close enough to win the 2000 election that it took a recount, when he was running against Al Gore, who represented 3% unemployment, budget surpluses, and peace internationally?


How was I so wrong about America being willing to elect an African-American man as President, twice, by relatively large percentages?


How was I so wrong when I said that Obama voters would never, in any large numbers, become Trump voters?


The historian in me says to evaluate each event as a single distinct event, but the anthropologist says that there are broad cultural trends at work in all societies. Finally, the anthropologist is winning out. And it is as simple as the Clinton slogan from 1992 - it’s the economy, stupid. Rather, it’s long term economic trends and anxiety, stupid. And I am calling myself stupid here.


As a white male professional, I am almost completely insulated from the real world effects of the “business cycle” of growth and recessions. The credit crisis of 2008 did not affect me at all. Nor did it negatively affect anyone I knew well. But I am in the minority. Only slightly north of 25% of Americans have a four year college degree, and only slightly north of 50% of Americans have some college, or a two or four year degree. A slight minority of Americans has a high school diploma or less. So imagine this story:

Joe was born in 1955. His father worked in the local plant, owned his own home, had a car and a television set. He grew up with strong community values. He got a good education at the local public schools. When it came time for college, the recession of 1973 had hit and he put it off. He joined his father at the plant where he had only a few years left before retirement. He fell in love, got married, took out a mortgage. It was good, honest work for a fair wage that promised a similar lifestyle to his childhood. He started a family. Then plants like his started closing all over the country. His father was retired early. He lost his job over and over. Sometimes there would be work for 6 months or a year. His wife went back to work, and they got to spend less time raising their children. He watched as the town he had grown up in began its inevitable decline. 

By 1980 he was sure that there had to be a better way than this and he became a union Reagan supporter. But things didn’t get better. Sure the news kept telling him how the economy was improving, jobs were being created, but that was not the life he was living. Storefronts were empty. Downtown was dangerous. The school district budget was shrinking. And the jobs he was qualified for were fewer and more far between. 

 By 1992 he supported Clinton and his message of hope and change. But nothing changed for him. He kept hearing how millions of jobs were created but all he saw was more fast food restaurants, liquor stores, and mini-marts. George W Bush promised a return to the prosperity he had known as a child in the 50’s and 60’s and so he voted for him. But that turned out to be a disaster. Two unwinnable wars, an unregulated Wall Street that created the worst financial crisis since the great depression, and a massive national debt to boot. So he heeded Barack Obama’s call for change. Even gave him four more years because of the giant mess he inherited. But was there any change? Not for his life. And the bastards who had caused the problems in the first place were basically left alone. The government had become corrupt. Half of the representatives were now millionaires. They came by every so often to tell him how if they just tried more big spending, his life would improve. Or if he let them deregulate the markets, then capitalism would do its miracle and his life would improve. But he heard this all before, and nothing really changed. 

So in 2016 when given a choice between more of the same and even more radical change, he votes for change. He knows that Trump is sexist, maybe racist, and maybe truly unfit to be President, but what has he got to lose. He is 61 years old. He has three thousand dollars in the bank and debt up to his eyeballs. His children are having their own hard time. He feels like somehow someone must be to blame. He was willing to work hard. He did too. And he was always looking for more work. It just wasn't there.

Think about that: That’s almost two generations of struggling against global forces that destroyed his future. Politicians promised that they would help, and none did. To our mythical friend Joe, all politicians are liars. In fact, I was just at a party and I heard these exact words. And so many decided for political gains to blame something other than globalization and the very structure of the corporation for Joe’s woes: Blacks, Immigrants, the undeserving poor, women's rights, gay rights, whatever. And maybe Joe even began to believe it all. But here is the most important point: The racism is not the cause, it is the EFFECT. In fact, this is what is so frustrating, we are mixing up cause and effect.


While I grant that each event has specific historical causes which are unique, this is not sufficient to answer my series of questions above. Yes, we have a long history of teaching the next generation to be racist, misogynist, and nativist. But this does not explain the pattern of Eaton County, Michigan, for example. In Eaton County, the electorate voted for change every EIGHT years since 1980, with 1988 being the only time they voted to allow a third term to one political party as Dukakis lost his lead by running the most inept campaign I have seen. Reagan, Reagan, Bush, Clinton/Perot, tie, Bush, Bush, Obama, Obama, Trump. Now this county is certainly cherry picked (but I did not have to look hard to find this county) but this is what the country did as well. We are actually relatively patient, and give eight years, but then it’s time for a change. In short, despite overall economic statistics, large swaths of people have been hurting since globalizing economic forces took hold of the economy as evidenced by the fact that real wages have not increased for lower and middle class people for 40 years.


If I am (finally) seeing this correctly, so what?


End those evil globalizing forces? Hell, no. Globalization is responsible for the creation of massive wealth, has brought billions out of poverty. Free and Fair Trade makes all parties better off...in the long run.


Return to the mythical economic growth of the 50’s? Thomas Piketty, in Capital in the 21st century, has effectively and convincingly argued that the 50’s were the historical anomaly, and that the pattern we see now, slow and uneven growth is the end result of traditional policies designed to “create jobs.”



All this evidence leads me to believe that we must re-imagine “work”. Former development economist, David Korten, argues effectively for changing our conception of work from “jobs” to sustainable livelihoods.


How might we get there? Minimum income, shorter working weeks, higher education for free which will increase human capital, making sure that the “losers” from globalization do not continue to get left behind. These are just a few of the ideas that already exist. These need to be examined, and to do so we must re-think many of our assumptions about capitalism, the american dream, the corporation, and, most importantly, our assumptions about human nature.