Reflections on the 2016 election and Trump’s Presidency, and the argument against polarisation.
I don’t think I’ll ever forget the night of November eighth, 2016. I was watching the election coverage at one of the Royal Holloway campus bars and, as I suspect many others, I was sure that the Trump campaign was destined to end up as an amusing footnote in American history. Surely no candidate as scandalous and prone to misogynistic and racist remarks could stand a chance. Furthermore, it seemed every pollster and media outlet under the sun had declared that the election was a done deal; a Clinton victory seemed inevitable. It’s a bit cliché to say that pundits took Trump literally but not seriously while his supporters took him seriously but not literally, but that was very much the feeling I got from those of us at the election watching party.
Early during the night there were cheering when Trump won his first states, and feigned outrage and disappointment when Jill Stein and Gary Johnson lost. As the night progressed and the preliminary results from more states were announced the mood turned from excitement to shock when it became increasingly clear that a Trump win was not only possible, but likely. The talk for the next few weeks revolved around a few themes; the “death of truth” and the failure of election forecasting. I don’t have much to say about election forecasting, as I like to say predictions are hard, especially about the future. In a way the failure from most to predict the outcome was a useful reminder that polling is as much an art as a science, and that we shouldn’t take an outcome for granted just because polls indicate that it’s likely.
The “death of truth” was the idea that the truth no longer matters, that political echo chambers have gotten so disconnected from reality that people with differing ideologies could no longer agree to basic facts, making constructive debate impossible. This view is too pessimistic, I refuse to believe that Americans are too ignorant to be able to have constructive political discussion, in my view the real issue is partisanship. Liberal commentators sometimes act as though Republican politicians are too craven to confront Trump when he does or says something questionable and that the Republican grass roots are too brainwashed by the conservative media ecosystem to understand that the President isn’t infallible, but expressing such sentiments only harden conservatives’ view that Democrats don’t respect them and think they’re dumb. One of the keys to understanding Trump’s appeal in the 2020 election is to understand how important parties are to many in the electorate’s identity. Many of Bernie Sanders’ supporters will no doubt vote for Joe Biden simply because Biden is a democrat, and any democrat is better than a republican. The same is true for Trump supporters, I’m sure that there are many republicans who are very uncomfortable with Trump’s rhetoric and policies but chooses to vote for the incumbent anyways as they’d rather have a republican they dislike than a democrat in the White House.
Biden’s campaign emphasises decency as one of the key reasons to vote for him, and I sincerely hope that whichever candidate wins they’re able to treat their political rivals with decency and that they seek to reconcile divisions instead of scoring easy points with their own base by characterising the other side as fascists or snowflakes. Trump wasn’t voted into office because of republican malice towards immigrants and minorities, nor was his transgressions overlooked because his base are fanatics. Trump was voted into office because America is politically polarised to the point where people don’t trust their political rivals to act in good faith to better the country for everyone, and Trump’s divisive rhetoric and liberals’ subsequent outrage hardens both sides in their beliefs that the other side will deliberately sabotage them out of spite should they win the election.
Unless things change drastically in the coming week covid-wise I don’t think I’ll be able to go to an election watching party this year. In Swedish an election watching party is called a ‘valvaka’, which literally translates to an ‘election wake’. Let’s hope that we’ll be holding a wake for a failed campaign rather than for failed American trust in their political system.
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Written by Karl Johansson
Cover Photo by Sawyer Sutton from Pexels, edited by Karl Johansson.