The Morning After

Posted on by lhl

In 2004, I was in NYC right after the election. Kerry had lost and Bush had just been re-elected, and I was at a gathering of young progressives and civic hacktivists trying to come to terms with what had happened, and to make plans for the future. The event was cheekily entitled “the mourning after,” although it didn’t feel like much of a joke at the time. In 2008, I worked on digital infrastructure for the Obama campaign for the final push (the end of the primaries to election night), the results of which, looking back, were a bit of a payoff on work that had started four years prior.

Part of the shock from yesterday I think was from people assuming Trump couldn’t, or at least, wouldn’t win. Maybe this was how some felt back in 2000 (my first elections, while I was in college – I don’t think I have a proper perspective) – there was a lot of fear and uncertainty back then, although more about policy, then perhaps any potential danger to core principles and institutions of the republic.

I’ll be collecting my thoughts over the next couple days and will be updating this as I go along.

As far as the election itself, I don’t want hem/haw or overanalyze – I’m sure over the weeks, there will be plenty of punditry covering it from every angle, but it’s important to put things in perspective. Clinton and Trump basically tied – final voter turnout/votes are still to be counted but here’s a quick per-candidate comparison to 2012 and rough totals for the past 4 elections – overall turnout down 4M from 2012, 6M from 2008 (the recent highwater mark of 57.1%) – According to the Federal Register, 2015 had a VAP of just shy of 248M (Pew demographic report), which would put total votes just north of 50% this year. Using those numbers, about 24% chose Clinton, 24% chose Trump, and the rest (half the country) didn’t care enough or wasn’t able to vote. It’s worth noting that there isn’t anything conclusive that can be said about how the majority of the country feels, because the majority didn’t vote (ok, maybe you can draw some conclusions from that). A tiny change in turnout or vote-location would have changed the results.

If there are any demographic takeaways:

It’s also worth pointing out that while the working class shift did tip the scales against HRC during the election (PA, MI, WI), the swing was only about 10%.

Michael Moore laid down that aspect of a couple weeks ago, to a tee:

We’ll see how that works out.

OK, with that out of the way… onto what a Trump presidency means in terms of… policy.

People to follow: