In 1684, The French author Jacques Abbadie wrote the following in “Treatise on the Truth of Christian Religion”… “It may have deceived some men, or deceived them all in certain places and at certain times, but not all men, in all places and in all ages.”
Since then, that old adage has been modernized and credited to everyone from Abe Lincoln to P. T. Barnum and now it reads as follows, “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time.” Or can you…
The outcome of the 2016 Presidential election fooled almost everyone. To say the least, people around the world were shocked. How could Donald Trump win the ultimate game of “Let’s Make a Deal”? Why did 62 million Americans want to find Trump behind Door #1, Door #2 and Door # 3? How did Mr. You’re Fired convince millions of Americans to vote for him?
Or did he…
Maybe he got too much credit. Did he get help from the Russians, or from red-state voter suppression, or from Sanders voters who wouldn’t vote for Hillary if Hell froze over? These factors could have contributed to Trump’s razor thin margins in swing states but there is much more to the story.
Something else went terribly wrong with the democratic process in 2016, and it began long before the national conventions, because if common sense had prevailed, the least qualified and least presidential Republican candidate in a hundred years would have never been nominated, and if nominated by some fluke, he should have lost every major state except Texas. Instead, he became the leader of the free world.
It’s time for the corporate establishment wing of the Democratic Party to accept blame for the outcome of the 2016 election. It’s time for the Wall Street democrats to leave the stage and surrender to the democratic wing of the Democratic Party.
Donald Trump owes his presidency to the miserable leadership of the Democratic Party. The DNC’s determination to nominate Hillary Clinton was inexcusable at a time when the momentum, energy and enthusiasm was clearly surrounding Bernie Sanders.
The Machiavellian tactics employed by the democratic leadership defeated the party’s best candidate and some 8th-grade math will prove it.
Forty polls were taken during the year prior to the 2016 National Conventions. When all these polls were totaled and averaged, Sanders led Trump by 10.4% for a full year.
More importantly, had Sanders been nominated, he would have overwhelmed Trump in November, especially in the swing states of Pennsylvania by 12.7%, in Wisconsin by 19% and in Michigan by 19%.
Now, subtract 5% for third-party voters and another 3% for the margin of error and Sanders wins Pennsylvania by 4.7%, Wisconsin by 11% and Michigan by 11%. This would have shifted the electoral count by 46 votes.
With 270 votes needed to win, Sanders would have earned 278 votes and Trump 260. In this head to head match up, Sanders could have probably won Florida with its 29 electoral votes.
It should be noted that Sander’s margin over Trump increased as the date of the conventions grew near, while Clinton’s margin over Trump fell below the margin of error.
This analysis also suggests that Clinton’s small margin was an attractive target for any country, group or organization wanting to alter the outcome of the election. Conversely, with Sander’s consistent double-digit poll advantage hanging over Trump, nothing done by Russian hackers or red-state election officials could have prevented a Sanders landslide in November.
The corporatist puppeteers who lurk in the shadows above both candidates must have realized that Sanders had to be stopped before the convention or it would be too late. Both parties had a strong incentive to stop him.
Only tight elections can be stolen. Elections are stolen on the margin. It’s impossible to steal a landslide victory without a violent revolution and anyone who has managed a high stakes political campaign knows it.
The poll numbers above make it clear that Sanders would have won if he had been nominated. Instead, the democratic leadership literally stole defeat out of the hands of victory in 2016 by its insistence on making Clinton the nominee.
For millions of Americans, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back and their response was, “a plague on both your houses.”
It seems impossible, but the Democratic Party lost the hearts and minds of working class people to a billionaire with an authoritarian ideology. Did working class Trump supporters get duped into voting against their own self-interests and the self-interest of their families and communities? Did they willingly exchange their dwindling economic power and personal liberty for what appears to be a draconian central government? Time will tell.
H.L. Mencken captured the essence of the 2016 election in the September 19, 1926 edition of the Chicago Daily Tribune. In the article, Mencken harshly criticized tabloid newspapers and superficial political candidates in this ageless statement…
“No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”
Thanks to “Real Clear Politics” for their contributions to this blog.
