This post is a “post-mortem” of the 2016 presidential
election. This was a winnable election
for the Democratic party. This post
analyzes the reasons for that loss.
Short Version
Hillary Clinton was groomed for a presidential run since
2001. The decision to develop her as a
leading candidate inexplicably ignored her known unpopularity. Since the earliest days of Bill Clinton’s
administration, Hillary Clinton has been a lightning rod for conservative
opposition. For
the past 25 years, few other people have motivated and energized conservative opposition
as much as Hillary Clinton. Beyond conservative opposition, many people across the political spectrum found Secretary Clinton unpleasant. (I asked my wife for a single word which described Hillary Clinton, from the time before her candidacy. This is the word she chose. This is the same sentiment that I heard from many of my acquaintances, who nevertheless supported Clinton in the election.)
Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State must be judged
as a complete failure on the basis of results.
There are civil wars in Ukraine, Syria and Libya, and unresolved
conflict in other parts of the world, strained relations with other world
powers, and disruption of the European Union.
The humanitarian disasters resulting from failure to curtail these
conflicts threaten to overturn Western nations and progressive values.
In particular, Hillary Clinton demonstrated a blindness to
real and apparent conflicts of interest.
In event after event, Secretary Clinton and her family enriched
themselves far beyond any reasonable compensation. The appearance of systematic corruption was a
clear factor in her defeat.
Secretary Clinton lacks the personal charisma and speaking
ability of other presidential-caliber candidates. People in a number of different demographics
groups found her personally unlikable.
Despite these serious negatives, Hillary was the presumptive
candidate from the earliest days of the campaign, with committed support from the
great majority of party super-delegates.
Clinton’s ability to direct SuperPAC money to state party organizations
raises more questions about corruption.
Secretary Clinton and President Obama pursued issues on the
liberal agenda that alienated many conservative voters. Leading Democrats should have recognized
which battles are worth fighting, and which battles might lose the war.
Finally, there are external factors in the Democratic
loss. American political sentiments
swing like a pendulum, and conservative sentiment was rising in 2016. Also, right-wing propaganda has become a
routine feature of our cultural landscape.
Misinformation and distortion are heard from major candidates, from
leading news organizations, on social media, and from fake news sites. The Democratic Party found no way to fight
the onslaught of propaganda.
In conclusion, the Democratic Party nominated a flawed
candidate. Secretary Clinton had a known
and deserved reputation for apparent corruption, and became an easy target for the
opposition. Surely focus-group studies
in critical states and in critical demographic groups would have shown her weaknesses. The nomination of Secretary Clinton was an
act of almost willful self-destruction by the Democratic Party. It is
difficult to understand why Clinton persisted in her campaign, and why she had the
support of the Democratic Party leadership in seeking the presidency. Secretary Clinton’s loss in the election will
set back the party, the nation, and the causes which she worked to advance.
Long Version
Amid the cacophony of voices analyzing the recent election,
perhaps there is room for one more. I
have thoughts that I have not seen elsewhere, so it might be worthwhile to
write another article.
Democrats have been asking the question “Why Did Hillary
Lose?” It’s a good question, and a
question the Democratic party must answer if the party wants to win
presidential elections.
This was a winnable election for the Democratic party. Donald Trump was initially seen as a joke, as
sideshow freak, a reality-show imbecile.
Trump was the butt of jokes among late-night comedians, politicians, and
liberal communities on social media. In
pre-election polling, Trump had the highest unfavorability rating since such
figures were first gathered in the 1950s or 1960s. And yet he won.
In an act of almost willful self-destruction, the
Democratic Party ran the candidate who was most likely to lose. Hillary Clinton had the second-highest
unfavorability rating of any modern candidate.
The blame for nominating an unsuccessful candidate must be borne by the
entire Democratic Party, but especially by Barack Obama. The President is the de facto leader of the
party, and more than anyone else, bears the responsibility for choosing and
grooming candidates for succession. The
choice of Hillary Clinton was a poor decision.
Grooming for Presidential
Candidacy
Hillary Clinton was groomed as a candidate for president
from the last day of Bill Clinton’s presidency.
She was given the nomination for Senator in the deeply Democratic state
of New York, which virtually guaranteed her election to the Senate. After her unsuccessful run for the presidency
in 2008, she was named Secretary of State, presumably to improve her foreign
policy credentials for a run in 2016.
Following the Benghazi embassy attacks and subsequent criticism, Obama
replaced Clinton as Secretary of State – perhaps before events could do further
damage to her chances for election.
It seems to me that both posts – Senator and Secretary of
State – were handed to Hillary Clinton on a silver platter because she was the
wife of the former president. She did
not earn these posts by merit, and was not sufficiently tested by the process
of competition.
Tenure as Secretary of State
U.S. foreign policy under Clinton as Secretary must be
judged in terms of results. Clinton
established policies that elevated human rights and women’s rights as critical
to U.S. interests. Clinton and Obama
continued the aggressive promotion of democracy begun during the second Bush
administration. Key events in her tenure
included the uprisings of the “Arab Spring.
Also, an initial effort to “re-set” relations with Russia failed after
the U.S. State Department actively promoted the eastward expansion of the
European Union into Ukraine. Clinton
advocated aggressive responses to tyranny and oppression, supporting military
intervention in the Libyan civil war and by training and arming the Syrian
rebels.
I have to wonder whether Hillary Clinton’s aggressive policies
as Secretary of State arose from idealism, pragmatism, or from a desire to burnish
her record as a tough leader, for her eventual presidential candidacy. In any event, the results of her tenure have
been terrible. The prospect of improving
Ukraine’s ties to the west ended in a brutal civil war and the annexation of
Crimea by Russia. Libya and Syria have
collapsed into chaotic and ongoing civil wars threatening global peace. One-third of the population of Libya has fled
the country. In Syria, hundreds of
thousands have died in the fighting, and twelve million refugees have been
displaced from their homes. About five
million refugees have sought shelter in neighboring countries, and about one
million have sought shelter in Europe.
The refugee crisis has contributed to a backlash in Europe, threatening
the unity and stability of the European Union.
By any measure, Secretary Clinton’s legacy in foreign relations is a
disaster.
Appearance of Conflict of
Interest
Secretary Clinton carries a reputation that she is dishonest
and untrustworthy. In polling leading up
to the election, as few as 11% of voters characterized her as honest and
trustworthy. That reputation was
established very early in her public life, and her actions during the years
leading up to the election did little to dispel that perception. I will discuss only the earliest and the
latest of scandals involving Secretary Clinton; there were many in
between.
Commodities Trading Scandal, 1978 - 1979
Hillary Clinton was involved in a commodities trading
scandal in 1978 and 1979, beginning just weeks before Bill Clinton’s election
to Governor of the State of Arkansas, and continuing for most of the first year
of Clinton’s term. The general counsel
of Tyson Foods (the largest employer in Arkansas) encouraged Hillary Clinton to
trade in commodity futures, although Clinton had no experience in such
trading. Clinton made an initial
investment of $1000, which over the course of ten months was successfully parlayed
into $100,000. This is about a 12,000%
annual rate of return. Needless to say,
that is unusual. An economics journal
calculated the likelihood of her results at one in 31 trillion.
Clinton did not make the trades herself, but allowed her broker to make the
trades, often without her knowledge. The
broker was a former Tyson executive. The
broker placed trades for various clients, betting both ways against the
market. At the end of the day, the
broker would assign winning trades to Clinton, and losing trades to the other
clients. The broker was later
investigated by the SEC for various technical violations, fined and suspended
from trading for three years. Clinton’s
supporters at the time defended the legitimacy of her trading.
What I find unbelievable is that this smart woman, this Yale
Law School graduate, was apparently unable to recognize a bribe when it was
given to her. Tyson Foods was one of the
largest businesses in Arkansas, and necessarily had many regulatory issues
before the state government. Through
illicit means, the company found a way to funnel $100,000 (about $300,000 in
today’s money) directly to the newly elected governor’s wife. But Hillary Clinton never renounced the
gains, and never admitted any wrongdoing on her own part, or the part of Tyson
Foods or its associates.
Speaking Fees
Speaking fees are a fixture in Washington DC. It is customary for public officials to
receive exorbitant fees for giving speeches.
Bill and Hillary Clinton have been masters of this process of
accumulating wealth. Bill Clinton
received $131 million dollars for speeches given after leaving the presidency
in 2001, until 2015. Hillary Clinton
earned an additional $21.6 million, in less than two years, between 2013 and
2015. For reference, a net worth of
$150,000,000 is five times the threshold for the 99.9th percentile in
net worth in the United States.
Hillary Clinton’s minimum speaking fee is $225,000. A large majority of the organizations who
engaged her are also engaged in lobbying the Federal Government; many have
Federal contracts and/or previously lobbied the Clinton State Department. About 40% of the organizations engaging
Clinton were trade organizations; financial institutions were the
second-largest group.
These are enormous sums of money. And the organizations paying these speaking
fees had reason to look for favorable treatment in the event Hillary Clinton
became president. It gives the appearance
of a quid-pro-quo.
Chelsea Clinton’s Contract Earnings
Chelsea Clinton is no longer young; she is an independent
adult in her mid-thirties. Nevertheless,
she is a Clinton. In 2014, NBC News signed Clinton to a one-year contract for
$600,000 as a news commentator.
Simultaneously, in that year she earned $300,000 as a board member for
IAC/Interactive Corporation, a media company.
She was a board member for other organizations, and presumably also
received compensation for that work.
Also in 2014, she earned a PhD in International Relations, and gave
birth to her first child. One can only
wonder how she divided her time in each of these endeavors.
It is unusual for someone to earn $900,000 or more in a
year. It is clear that Chelsea Clinton
was given these contracts and compensation because she was a Clinton. It appears to be another way of currying
favor with a powerful family.
Clinton Foundation Scandals
Let me first say that the Clinton Foundation is a legitimate
charitable organization, doing good in the world. That is not at issue. The issue is that contacts established
through donations to the Clinton Foundation appear to have carried over to
the Clinton State Department. Clinton’s
personal secretary fielded requests from Clinton Foundation donors for access
to Secretary Clinton. While some of the
requests were denied, it seems that there was a back-door to official channels
at the State Department. The existence
of the Clinton Foundation set up the potential for conflicts of interest in
performing the duties of Secretary of State.
Summary of Conflicts of Interest
In my earliest ethics training at my career employer, I
learned that it is insufficient to avoid wrongdoing; it is necessary to avoid
conflicts of interest. Further, it is insufficient to avoid conflicts of
interest; it is necessary to avoid the appearance of conflicts of
interest.
Hillary Clinton failed to avoid conflicts of interest, and
her actions gave ample appearance of conflicts of interest. As a candidate, Hillary Clinton earned her
reputation with voters as an untrustworthy person because of her actions. Clinton greatly increased the wealth of her
family, through actions that gave the impression of conflict of interest.
In a 2016 interview, David Gergen, a senior advisor to Bill
Clinton in his presidency, was discussing the Whitewater scandal (another
scandal, which I will not take the time to discuss). Gergen said of Hillary Clinton: “She does not
see the world in the same way that others do, when it comes to transparency and
accountability.”
Although the practices of speaking fees and foundations may
be typical of Washington, these conflicts of interest are real. Just
because everybody is doing it doesn’t mean that it isn’t a bribe. Voters understand the appearance of
corruption. And Hillary Clinton must be completely
tone-deaf to not understand the implications of those appearances.
Charisma and Oratory
I listened to Hillary Clinton’s stump speeches during the
campaign, and compared them to speeches I heard from Barack Obama, Elizabeth
Warren and Bernie Sanders. In my
opinion, Clinton sounds wooden by comparison.
Her speeches do not show insightful reasoning and logic. To me, Clinton’s speeches consisted of a lot
of clichés strung together.
In debate, her logic sometimes completely departed. For example, the “Stop and Frisk” method of
policing was a topic in a debate with Donald Trump. Trump defended the practice, which had been
found to be unconstitutional by the courts.
Clinton commented that the practice had been discontinued because it was
“ineffective”. This shows a complete misunderstanding
of the issue – “Stop and Frisk” was discontinued because it was
UNCONSTITUTIONAL!
Clinton simply did not seem to have a fundamental grasp of
issues or the necessary intellect to think on her feet and reason
persuasively.
The Fix Was in For Hillary
Clinton
In the earliest days of her campaign, Hillary Clinton had
received the support of about 90% of the super-delegates to the Democratic
National Convention. These
super-delegates are Democratic Party officeholders and officials, guaranteed
seats and votes at the convention.
Secretary Clinton was in a position to direct SuperPAC money
to state parties. The apparent trade of
campaign money for super-delegate support gives yet another appearance of
corruption to Secretary Clinton and her campaign.
It may be important for the party to coalesce support around
a single candidate early in the campaign, but the process in this case
short-circuited the primary process and the voters. By making the process a coronation, instead
of a competition, the Democrats lost the opportunity to engage the voters. Voters care about the process, and were not
pleased that Clinton was given the prize before the race.
Popularity
As mentioned at the beginning, Hillary Clinton was an
unpopular candidate. She has been
unpopular with almost half of the nation for nearly a quarter of a
century. Hillary Clinton has been one of
the most hated politicians among Republicans.
There are few other Democrats who can motivate and energize the
Republican base as much as Hillary Clinton.
Well before the campaign, in polls and among my personal acquaintances,
Hillary Clinton was deeply unpopular among men, unpopular among older women,
and unpopular among Millennials. She
was highly popular only among professional women between the ages of about 35
and 60.
So what were the Democrats thinking??
Why did Barack Obama choose to groom Hillary Clinton for a presidential
run? Why were there no other serious
mainstream Democratic candidates? Why
did Clinton have 9/10ths of the super-delegates wrapped up on the day she
announced her candidacy? Why did the
Democratic National Committee act to ensure that Clinton won the
nomination? Did no one think to run a
focus group in each state, and seriously consider the results?
Losing Issues
In politics, as in all things, you have to pick your
battles. In the 2016 election cycle,
Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration chose badly. Although I agree with the President and
Secretary Clinton on these issues, I recognize the political expediency of not
fighting losing battles. This is
especially important with regard to fighting battles that cause you to lose the
war.
In the early 1990s, the majority of Americans supported gun
control. There was a bi-partisan consensus
that some regulation was necessary, and that these restrictions did not infringe
on the Constitutional right to own guns.
But the issue became a major political divide following aggressive
campaigning by the National Rifle Association (NRA). Democrats lost control of Congress to
Republicans in 1994, largely on the issue of gun control.
In the aftermath of mass shootings in the United States,
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton spoke out on the issue of gun control. This was a political mistake. The issue of gun control in the United States
was decided in the 1990s. It is a losing
issue for Democrats. In the face of
atrocities due to guns, it is necessary to ask Republicans to lead any efforts
on gun control. Efforts to push gun
control on the nation in the face of Republican opposition are doomed to
failure, and will lose all progress on other critical progressive issues, such
as gay marriage, climate change, financial regulation, public assistance,
etc. I know that over 10,000 Americas
die each year because they are shot by other Americans. Another 20,000 Americans die each year in
suicide by guns. But there is no way to
win on this issue – pursuing gun control will simply lose elections for
Democrats.
Another losing issue was the issue of transgender access to
bathrooms. Unlike gay marriage or
abortion rights, this is truly a fringe issue, but it became a defining issue
for liberal politics. By pushing Federal
rules on access to bathrooms, Democrats alienated conservative voters. There are people who feel their privacy or safety
might be threatened, if access to public bathrooms was granted to people of the
opposite biological gender. Those
feelings cannot be dismissed as not legitimate.
There are few transgender individuals in the country, and one way or
another, they have been able to deal with this problem without Federal
assistance. This was a losing issue, and
pursuing this reform as a headline issue was a mistake for Democrats.
The Loss of Middle
America
Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by a convincing margin,
but lost the election due to the structure of our republic. Small states have disproportionate power by
design of the Constitution. To win the
Presidency, it is necessary to win support across a broad cross-section of the
country, and that includes conservative Middle America. Hillary Clinton disparaged Middle America
voters, calling half of them “a basket of deplorables”. Hint – this is not the way to win hearts and
minds. Secretary Clinton needed to
listen to these voters, and accept their criticisms of American
Government. Clinton had no response for
the manufacturing job losses in Middle America.
Clinton had no answer for declining standards of living among
middle-class workers. Clinton did not
accept or listen to the discomfort of white America with the growing diversity
in the country. Clinton did not have
answers for the stagnation of black America in terms of opportunity, hopelessness
or the prevalence of crime (and the consequent racism and fear among white
Americans).
If Democrats are to win the presidency, it is necessary to
raise Middle America in prosperity and opportunity. As another presidential candidate once said, “It’s
the economy, stupid.”
The Swing of the Pendulum
Power in American national politics swings from party to
party on roughly an eight-year cycle.
Since 1825, only rarely has a party held the presidency for longer than
12 years. It is the natural state of our
democracy that citizens demand some change and improvement. That is probably healthy.
Hillary Clinton was fighting against the current of public sentiment in this
presidential campaign. But still,
considering the state of the country and the economy, the Democratic Party
should have won this election.
Propaganda
During Bill Clinton’s presidency, Hillary Clinton famously
complained about “a vast right-wing conspiracy”. She was correct.
Right-wing media blossomed and flourished – or rather,
spread like a cancer – over the past 20 years.
Fox News became the nation’s leading television news source; right-wing
radio bashed Democrats and President Obama 24/7 on multiple channels; religious
television became a megaphone for right-wing politics; internet media such as
Brietbart and The Daily Caller, became dominant in internet news feeds, and
were amplified on social media. All of
these new sources play fast and loose with the truth; their “reporting” was
designed primarily to undermine the legitimacy of the Obama administration
through an unrelenting barrage of falsehoods, distortion and negative
innuendo. Completing the spectrum,
foreign parties created counterfeit news websites, and populated those websites
with fake news, that was regarded as truth by right-wing voters. It is likely that some of the false stories
were deliberate attempts to influence the election by Russia; campaigns of
Russian dis-information are a standard feature of elections in the former
Soviet Republics.
Republican Party leaders and candidates, especially Donald
Trump, also seem to have lost all respect for the truth. The Trump campaign misrepresented the
condition of the country on substantive issues of unemployment, immigration,
crime, and taxes. The lies and
misrepresentations accumulate faster than they can be refuted. It is unclear whether Trump is misinformed
(some of his sources are the aforementioned false news sites) or if he is
lying.
Right-wing propaganda is one of the most troubling
developments in the 2016 elections cycle.
Some conservatives would say that the process goes both ways, but there
is truly no equivalence. A quick check
of Snopes, Politifact, FactChecker.org, or articles reviewing false news will
show that right-wing falsehood exceed left-wing falsehoods by a magnitude of at
least ten-to-one. And it is clear that
the propaganda is effective; voters believe the lies circulated on social media
whether those lies were told by candidates, by right-wing news organizations, or
fake news sites.
The Democratic Party (and the nation) need to figure out how
to respond to the right-wing propaganda campaign. Propaganda threatens the fabric of society;
it threatens our democracy, and it is a slippery slope into fascism. Democracy cannot function if voters are
hoodwinked; we cannot have decency in politics without a common understanding
of what is truth. I don’t know what to
recommend to the Democrats, and I don’t know how we will solve this problem as
a nation. But I believe that we must.
Conclusions
In 2016, the Democratic Party lost the presidential election
that they should have won. Many factors
played into that loss, but the most important factor is that Hillary Clinton
was a flawed candidate.
The Democratic Party needs to address the processes that
generated such a deeply flawed candidate. Part of the problem is that the party is doing a very poor
job of developing candidates and leaders in local elections. I have observed many local races in which
there is no Democratic candidate. The
unions appear to be the only truly organized part of the Democratic Party in
identifying and running strong candidates.
An example of how to develop a candidate can be seen in the
career of Dan Sullivan, the current Senator from Alaska. Sullivan is originally from Ohio. He graduated summa cum laude from Harvard,
and earned a law degree from Georgetown cum laude. Sullivan served in the Marine Corps from 1993
to 1997, and continued in the Marine Corps reserve, with later periods of
active duty. Sullivan moved to Alaska in
1997, and was soon named Alaska Attorney General by governor Sarah Palin. After a year as Attorney General, he was
appointed to the important post of Commissioner of Natural Resources, until his
campaign for Senate in 2014. I believe
that Sullivan was identified as a potential candidate very early, and groomed
for a Senate run through developmental assignments. I do not believe that the Democratic Party is
actively or successfully developing candidates in this fashion, or targeting
states in which a talented candidate might succeed.
The selection of
Hillary Clinton as Democratic candidate for president showed a complete
disregard for her weaknesses as a candidate.
These weaknesses included a poor performance as Secretary of State, and
a reputation for corruption that goes back for over two decades. To me, it is incomprehensible why she was
groomed for a presidential run by Barack Obama, supported by the Democratic
National Committee, and backed by the vast majority of party super-delegates
before primary voting had even begun.
The Democratic Party
must learn from the defeat in the 2016 Presidential Election. The party must do more to develop young and
talented down-ballot and local candidates.
Some of these candidates will develop into leaders of national
caliber. The party must subject
potential candidates to competitive processes, to weed out flawed
candidates. The party must improve its
ethical standards, and must not tolerate leaders with real or apparent
conflicts of interest. The party must
find a way to combat right-wing propaganda.
The party must also develop policies which address the needs and values
of conservative middle America.
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References
Multiple polls show
that 59% to 68% rate Clinton as dishonest and untrustworthy, with dates ranging
from May to August 2016. At the time of
the Democratic national convention, two polls approached 70% of people rated
Clinton as dishonest and untrustworthy.
Superdelegate support
for Hillary Clinton was obtained in a quid-pro-quo deal, through Clinton’s
allocation of SuperPAC money to state party organizations.
Superdelegate support
for Hillary Clinton was obtained in a quid-pro-quo deal, through Clinton’s
allocation of SuperPAC money to state party organizations.
Between 40% to 60% of
responders rated Clinton as not honest and trustworthy, in polls dating from
2006 to 2016. (pg. 7).
Clinton’s standard
speaking fee is $225,000, and she collected over $21.6 million in two years.
A list of organizations which contracted with Secretary Clinton for speaking engagements. About 40% of the organizations were trade groups, and nearly all of the organizations engaged in political lobbying.
Bill and Hillary
Clinton received $153 million for speeches over the period 2001 – 2015.
Chelsea Clinton had a
contract with an annual salary of $600,000 in 2014, working for NBC news. At the end of the term, her contract was
converted to month-to-month, with undisclosed terms.
Daughters of
President G.W. Bush and Senator John McCain received similar contracts.
Chelsea Clinton was
34 at the time of the contract.
Chelsea Clinton simultaneously
earned a $250,000 grant of restricted stock and a $50,000 retainer from Barry
Diller’s IAC/Interactive Corporation.
Chelsea Clinton also completed work on a doctorate in international
relations and gave birth to her first child in 2014. Chelsea Clinton’s estimated net worth is
$15,000,000.
