The United States (US) has completed its quadrennial presidential elections to elect the 45th President on Tuesday, the 8 November 2016. The Democratic Party had Hillary Clinton as its candidate while the Republican Party had Donald J. Trump. Hillary Clinton, as the wife of Bill Clinton, had a long exposure to politics, first, when Mr. Clinton was the Governor of Arkansas state, and later for eight years (1993-2001) as President of the US; she was the first lady in the Governor’s office and the White House, respectively. She was also a Senator from New York for two terms between 2000 and 2012.
On the other hand, Mr. Trump had extremely limited exposure to politics. He was earlier a registered Democrat, but later switched his political affiliation to the Republican Party. Many establishment Republicans thought of him as a Democrat in Republican clothing! At a meeting of journalists in Washington, DC in 2011, he had expressed his ambition to run on the Republican ticket. Though Trump had boasted of his presidential ambitions on quite a few occasions, none took him seriously in the US. Hence, Hillary Clinton’s defeat in the election was a stunning event in American electoral politics, and victory of Mr. Trump too is an equally surprising outcome in many respects.
Why stunning?
Pre-election opinion polls had shown almost continuously a rising trend of Mrs. Clinton’s popular acceptance. She was leading over her Republican rival. There were ups in the lead-percentage; Trump was bridging gaps occasionally in the poll prediction-percentages between the two candidates. But no significant polling agency had predicted a victory to Donald Trump – may be with the exception of Chennai-based Chanakya – (see Times of India, 8/11/2016) a fish, which had predicted Trump’s triumph! Even on the day of the elections, CNN had predicted a victory of Hillary Clinton with, a three percentage points. If that had happened it would have been the first ever election of a female politician to the highest executive position in the US – the first in the American history after women were enfranchised in 1928.
Trump is a businessman totally without any political experience – in the sense of contesting local or state elections, let alone holding of any elective positions at the federal level. Once he entered Republican primaries in different states, he defeated one by one 17 Republican politicians – the largest ever number of candidates trying their luck for Republican Presidential nomination in the American history so far – like Ted Cruz, Texas Senator, Jeb Bush, Governor of Florida, Bobby Jindal, Retiring Governor of Louisiana, Mike Huckbee, former Governor of Arkansas, George Pataki, former Governor of New York, and so on.
Hillary’s defeat
How does one explain Hillary’s defeat? First, in retrospect, none of the un-American statements made by Trump, either helped Mrs. Clinton or harmed Trump. Liberal media thought that these factors might help Hillary, negatively affecting Trump’s success. A few of such critical utterances of Trump are highlighted here. He made a preposterous suggestion to build a wall on the US border with Mexico to prevent illegal immigration. He called Mexican immigrants “rapists.” Hispanics, rationally known to vote Democrat, didn’t see Clinton as a better choice, however. She only got 65 percent of their votes compared to 71 percent of Obama in 2012. Trump received 29 percent of their votes!
His anti-Muslim statements, his proposed policy of banning entry of Muslim immigrants invited rebuke from liberals. In an American society made of immigrants that has seen immigration as an economically beneficial factor, it was expected to influence minorities like Latinos or Blacks to massively vote for the Democratic candidate. American experts have pointed out that that has not happened in crucial swing-states like Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. In a closely contested election, for a winning candidate, success in these three states was crucial. But Clinton didn’t get the support of minorities as much as what Obama had received in 2012; hence she lost the swing states.
Trump’s anti-trade pact pronouncements promised to bring back American jobs home from countries like China or Mexico, rattled multinational corporations. While Hillary got corporate donations for her election fund, it alienated traditional Democrats’ votes as these voters were angry at loss of well-paying jobs, contributing to her defeat.
Second, despite Trump’s contemptuous references to women, Hillary didn’t win women’s votes as much as Obama in 2012.
Third, it is evident that Hillary ignored some crucial states which have traditionally voted democrat like Wisconsin. She didn’t campaign even once in that state which had voted with Democrats 16 times in the past. Had she also given equal attention to that state, possibly, in hindsight, victory could have been hers.
Fourth, Clinton could not overcome negative impact of breach of protocol in using her private email id while she was Secretary of State in Obama administration’s first term. While campaign was in its last phase, additional emails were released. The fact of Clinton’s indiscretion and the contents of disclosure were used by Trump fully to discredit her. When the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) Director, gave her a clean chit on the issue, Trump challenged the FBI’s ability to read such a huge number of emails in such a short time! Fifth, in the Democratic Primaries, the last one to survive to challenge Hillary Clinton, was Bernie Sanders, a popular and powerful Senator. Though while retiring from his challenge to Mrs. Clinton, he had promised full and united support to her, his hardcore supporters did not accept her as their candidate too. Hence, the Bernie factor in her defeat cannot be ignored at all.
Sixth, Hillary faced formidable negative factors which were beyond her control. Thus, for instance, in the post-World War period American polity has cultivated a healthy democratic trend that normally has not elected a president from the same party for more than two terms, with the exception of George T.W. Bush who was elected after Republican Party’s Ronald Reagan enjoyed two terms in the White House. But despite his claimed success in Iraq War in 1991 that forced Saddam out from Kuwait, he was not re-elected for the second term in 1992. Finally, constitutional lacunae also contributed to Trump’s victory. She got more popular votes than Trump in the indirect election of President, because he got more Electoral College votes mainly because of ‘winner takes all’ system. This is not the first time that this kind of anomalous situation occurred in American political system. In the 2000 elections, Democratic candidate, Al Gore received more popular votes than his rival George W. Bush.
Trump’s success explained
Be that as it may, now that Trump is elected President, Pundits are finding out reasons for his success. He could accurately read the pulse of different sections of the society and correctly read their concerns. To that extent his opponents in the Republican Party and Democrats were not able to understand that. This has been admirably summarised by Bernie Sanders in his recent opinion article in New York Times, in which he said that Trump reflected his programmes like, affordable childcare, health insurance, quality education and housing. But he asks: “Will he have courage to implement the change demanded by the majority of voters, or go as other Republicans elected since Ronald Reagan to satisfy corporate greed”?
[/column][column size=”4/5″]
Dr. Kamath
Dr. Kamath, former professor of Politics, Mumbai University is currently, chairman and Hon. Director, VPM’s Centre for International Studies (Regd.), had American Government and Politics as an area for specialisation for research and teaching while in the University. With his 12 visits to the United States, he has continued his interest in the subject and written on various aspects of American Government and Politics.[/column]