THE TRAIN TO THE PRESIDENCY

In the days before the 2016 election, some big political bombs dropped on the Hillary Clinton campaign – Russians, Wikileaks, and Comey. But still most people and almost all pundits believed that her victory was inevitable. And why on earth was the Trump campaign wasting their time and resources on reliably blue states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin?

What a bunch of amateurs! Those states were so in the Democratic bag that even Hillary wasn’t bothering with them.

However, there were a few pundits, most notably filmmaker, Michael Moore and former Pennsylvania governor, Ed Rendell, who warned us that we should in fact worry about those battle fields where the Red Army was showing up and the Blue Army was not.

They warned us that Hillary had not been listening to angry blue-collar voters, who were losing the jobs, the security, and most of all the respect that had made the party of FDR their political home for generations.

The 2016 election came down to 77,744 votes in three states – Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

When the dust settled, Trump won Pennsylvania by 0.7 percentage points (44,292 votes), Wisconsin by 0.7 points (22,748 votes), and Michigan by 0.2 points (10,704 votes).

If Clinton had won all three states, she would have won the Electoral College 278 to 260.

She would have won those states if black voters had showed up in Obama numbers.

She would have won those states if so many white suburban women had not stayed home on election day or had not cast protest votes.

She would have won those states if white blue-collar voters who had voted for Obama had not felt so abandoned by the political establishment that they saw nothing to lose by voting for a wrecking ball.

In March of 2016, a tone-deaf Hillary Clinton, answered a question about her energy policy by saying, “We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.” Perhaps that was not the best way to win the support of those who had become losers in the new economy.

News reporters sat down and spoke with unemployed coal miners and their families, who were running low on money, hope, and dignity. Hillary tried but failed to undo the damage.

All Donald Trump needed to do was to declare himself their champion, promising to stop the “war on coal,” and bring back those jobs – as only he could. At every such opportunity, Donald Trump had an empty promise ready to go.

Michael Moore said this:

Whether Trump means it or not is kind of irrelevant, because he’s saying the things to people who are hurting. And it’s why every beaten-down, nameless, forgotten working stiff who used to be part of what was called the middle class loves Trump. He is the human Molotov cocktail that they’ve been waiting for, the human hand grenade that they can legally throw into the system that stole their lives from them.

By the time 2018 election campaigns came along, most 2016 wrong-way voters and stay-at-home voters realized that they had made a colossal mistake. On the campaign trail, Trump tried to sell caravan craziness, while Democrats pushed health care sanity. Republicans countered by trying to tell us that by dismantling Obamacare, they would make health care better than ever.

In congressional districts across the nation, the right Democratic candidates stepped forward – candidates, ranging from radically progressive to traditionally moderate, and right for their districts, and in essence said:

Do not listen to the Republican noise. They are desperate, out of ideas, and are owned by a narcissistic demagogue. They are peddling fear of immigrants and they are counting on you to buy it. But I know this district. I know the factories that are still closing, the middle-class jobs that are not coming back, the medical bills that are no longer covered.

And, the map flipped Blue in record numbers.

Now, the race for 2020 is underway, and it is possible that we will have as many as twenty-five or twenty-six contenders by the start of the debate season at the end of June. Many of you are worried that having too many contenders will result in handing the nomination to a candidate who will lose to Trump. I do not agree. I am happy to see so many quality job applicants, and I will be excited to see how each one of them performs on the debate stage.

At this point, I would not hazard a guess as to who the nominee will be, nor do I think there is a best fit for the times, based on race or gender. But I do think that the eventual winner will be the man or woman who genuinely understands the significance of this iconic story:

When FDR’s funeral train made its way along its route, greeted by large somber crowds, a man who was noticeably sobbing was asked:

Did you know the president?                                                                             

The sobbing man replied:

No, I didn’t know him, but he knew me.

        

I predict that after our ordeal of surviving Trump, the next President of the United States will be someone who knows that the coal miner is us.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

WOMEN AND THE MARCH TO THE MIDTERMS

For the first time in U.S. history, a woman was on her way to becoming President of the United States. Her opponent’s view of women was revealed to the world in the now famous Access Hollywood Pussy-Grabbing tape.

Hilary turned out to be more unpopular than almost anyone would have predicted. Still, she was eminently qualified to hold the office and she was running against a famous misogynist.

Women would help her make history.

Even women who did not love Hillary would surely support her over the detestable alternative.

Wouldn’t women turnout for Hillary the way Blacks turned out for Obama? And, wouldn’t Blacks and Hispanics turnout for Hilary because the misogynist was also a proud racist?

Well it began with this: according to the United States Election Project, 46.9% of eligible voters did not vote in the 2016 presidential election. I am sure they had their reasons – some understandable and others inexcusable.

I watched an interview before the election. A college student, eligible to vote, announced that he would not be exercising that right and that he was actively advising other students to do the same. His reason: There is no difference between the candidates. They are both products of a rigged, corrupt system. To vote would only help validate that system.

Overall turnout among women was only 1% higher than in the 2012 election. How many women who sat out the 2016 election did so because they also believed that there was no real difference between Clinton and Trump?

Without a doubt, if any one group of voters would carry Hillary over the finish line it would be college-educated white women. After all, Hilary was being held to a higher standard than her male counterparts, and those who were leading the charge against her, beginning well before she won her party’s nomination, were white male, Benghazi-breathing Republicans.

The image of grandstanding Republican men skewering Madam Secretary of State should have been a sharp poke to the inner Feminist of all women who had an inner Feminist.

So when you hear that only 51% of white women college graduates cast their ballots for Hillary Clinton, while 45% voted for Trump, you begin to get at the heart of the problem. Winning this group was supposed to be a slam dunk.

What about white non-college educated women? Surely we could expect 51% support for the first woman president. Wouldn’t they want their daughters to grow up knowing that one day they too could be President of the United States?

Well, that group went for Trump 62% to 34% -- an absolute thrashing. The education gap among white women is a huge part of this story.

Remember when the Republican Party was going to become a big tent party? That was when they thought they would lose the presidency and Congress, and that their future beyond the 2016 election looked bleak.

Well black women obviously figured out that the tent expansion project was designed to accommodate mostly white men. College educated black women voted for Hilary 91% to 6%. Non-college educated black women voted for her 95% to 3%. No education gap here!

College educated Hispanic women voted for Hilary 65% to 28%, and non-college educated Hispanic women 70% to 20%. 

I have a funny feeling that between arresting and deporting hardworking, law abiding fathers in front of their horrified children, continuing to refer to Mexicans as murderers and rapists, separating babies from their mothers at the border, abandoning Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, and referring to shithole countries, Hispanic women are now more unified when it comes to choosing the more hospitable tent.

The Woman’s March on Washington stole the thunder from Trump’s inauguration – not just in Washington D.C., but all over the nation and the world. Crowd counting is an inexact science, but best estimates place the attendance at over 4 million marchers in at least 653 U.S. cities and towns, making it probably the largest one-day protest in U.S. history.

As the marches played out, in multiple cities, viewed on split screens, commentators said again and again that though the march was impressive, it would amount to very little unless it produced practical, ongoing results. Would it? For most of us, that question will be answered by the midterm elections.

The marchers were multi-racial and multi-generational. They marched for their own causes – health care, social justice, gun control, the environment, immigration, women’s rights, gay rights, civil rights – all things targeted by the Trump agenda.

The organizers had successfully formed a broad big tent coalition, but did they create a movement?

And should any of this reassure us that Democrats will retake the House in the midterms?

Here is what reassures me:

So far, state primaries have produced 73 female nominees in 67 districts. 63 are Democrats and 10 are Republicans. As more state primaries take place, more Democratic women will be added to this list.

At this point in 2016, only 41 women had been nominated in those same states.  At this point in 2014, the total was 36 women.

Where did these women candidates come from? The majority of them had never before run for office.

Do you think they might have looked at the 4 million marchers and said to themselves:

This is different! If I run, with a positive message, I will have a constituency of energized voters waiting for me!

I am sure of it.