SEATAC, Wash.–The divides and changes in the country that are raw and obvious this year aren’t going to go away with the November elections.
After joking that if he were writing a book about the current election it would be titled, “OMG! We’re All Gonna Die!” Sean Trende turned serious about the issues that have been exposed in the current election that will need to be dealt with and will continue to affect elections in the years to come.
Trende, senior elections analyst for RealClear Politics, told the Northwest Credit Union Association’s Maxx annual meeting that while Donald Trump “may go away, Trumpism will not.” In other words, the strongly held sentiments Trump has tapped into in his presidential bid, including appealing to voters who have traditionally voted Democrat, will remain volatile and in play.
Trende explained that elections can be forecast using sophisticated models involving probability theory—and yet also flipping a coin can sometimes be just as reliable a tool. He noted, for instance, the New York Times provided five different forecasting firms with the exact same polling data and got back four different forecasts as the result of the different ways the companies weight certain data.
Trende, who expects Clinton to win the general election in November, offered his assessment of the current and future political climate as well as insights into what the future might hold for future races and politics in the United States.
Here’s a look at some of what he told the meeting:
On The Month Ahead
“The trouble this year is that Trump isn’t just any candidate. This is not your generic, average race. (The Access Hollywood tape) isn’t the Democrats’ best shot; they are going to drop others. This is how you disintegrate an army. You pound them hard, let them regroup, pound them hard again, and over time the army disintegrates. I think every three or four days there is going to be a new revelation and it’s not going to let Trump get back on his feet. If this is the last revelation, this race will get tight again.”
The Longer Term
“Trump will go away, but Trumpism is a fascinating phenomenon. There are deeper causes of Trumpism that I think we will have to grapple with over the next decade. In a poll Trump supporters were asked why are you supporting this candidate, and the strongest predictor of support was agreeing with the statement, ‘People like me don’t have a say anymore.’ People left behind by globalization are real. Free trade in the short term has caused disruptions, and when it’s not addressed by the political parties people start to radicalize. Job growth has been in low income jobs and high income jobs without a whole lot in the middle. And the income for the high income jobs has been growing, while it hasn’t for the low-income jobs. That explains the Trump phenomenon and the Sanders phenomenon. This would not have happened 20 years ago, a Republican winning non-college educated, working class white people.”
Random Outcomes
“Elections are fundamentally random. This will be the 41st election since the Republican party was created.” Looking at the outcomes of elections since that time, Trende showed how the actual results aren’t really any different than had a coin been flipped. “(Marco) Rubio blows a debate. Random outcome. Stock market collapse in 2008 in September, not December. Random outcome.”
The Republican Party
“Things look worse for Republicans than it did in 2014, but it’s not a blowout. If the bottom falls out for Republicans as result of this tape and civil war, that could be a surprise on election days. A lot of Republicans are in a terrible position. They need Hillary Clinton voters to win. Do they disavow Trump? Do they hang on to their base? A lot of Republican politicians are in a bind. For the Republicans to win they have to put together these white working class workers who used to be the backbone of the Democratic party, but the question is how do they do that without alienating college educated voters and non-white voters? Question is how saleable is Trumpism without Trump?
The Democratic Party
“The Democratic party is being very aggressive in identifying as the party of the ascendant.”
All Teed Up, And Swing & A Miss
“This is the biggest missed opportunity (after Perot) in past 100 years for a third or fourth party. We have two unpopular candidates and a giant Millennial generation ripe for the picking by (Libertarian) Gary Johnson.”
The Future of the House
“No one thought the House was in play. Democrats were expected to pick up about 15 seats. Now we don’t know if Republican voters will decide to stay home. If that happens we could have shock and awe on election day. People we thought were never vulnerable, if their voters never show up…”
Who Wants to Be Speaker? Anyone?
“Paul Ryan signed up for the most thankless job in politics. The Republican party is really two parties. There is this traditional establishment Republicanism, and there is this insurgent populist conservatism. Ryan is thoroughly from the establishment portion, and he has to govern this caucus. Plus, he is from a swing district and doesn’t want to suffer (former Speaker) Tom Foley’s fate. (Foley lost his re-election even though he was Speaker.) Assuming Paul Ryan is still speaker, and the House could flip, in 2017, if Trump loses by one or two points, the blame will be put squarely on Paul Ryan’s shoulders. He’ll have the Democrats gunning for him and half his own party gunning for him.”
The Past as Prologue
“If the economic naysayers are right and the days of 3% and 4% growth are behind us, it has the potential to really remake our politics. The Internet is giving rise to a lot of the anxieties we are seeing. It’s like the Industrial Revolution of the 1870s and 1880s.”
Armageddon? No
“It’s going to be OK. This is the greatest country on earth, and that doesn’t come from politicians, it comes from us. And it will be the greatest country on earth after the election.”