Tom Keane

Understanding The Election: Pollsters, Pundits and Principles

Let the questions, second-guessing and recriminations begin.

* Pollsters are in for a period of introspection. The day of the election, the Huffington Post put the odds of a Clinton victory at 98 percent (which, come to think of it, are about the same odds as the sun will rise tomorrow morning). The Reuters/Ipsos States of the Nation project gave her a 90 percent chance of winning. Nate Silver’s Five Thirty-Eight was more modest, but still put Clinton at 71 percent. To a degree, those failures are reminiscent of the 2008 real estate collapse, where mortgage-backed securities seems absolutely risk free but really were built on pillars of sand. For the pollsters, the sand was individual state polling. Get a couple wrong – and that’s what happened – and the whole edifice collapses.

* Pundits are in for a period of introspection as well. The journalistic class is largely urban based, mostly concentrated in two large swaths of America, the east and west coasts. Trump’s rise to the nomination flummoxed them. His win against Clinton left them in a state of disbelief. That speaks to the isolation of the coasts and to what passes for punditry these days: talking to your friends and thinking they represent all of America.

* Speaking as a white male, could you please stop blaming us men for Hillary’s loss? It turns out that white women didn’t vote for her either. Of course, if you want to blame white people in general – yeah, guilty.

* The glib take on Trump is that his win proves Americans are sexist, racist and bigoted since Trump himself is sexist, racist and bigoted. Some Americans are, no doubt. But Trump, I think, won despite those qualities, not because of them. He was an imperfect messenger for a deeply desired message of change. And even though Clinton was not sexist, racist or bigoted, her fundamental message – “more of the same” – had little resonance.

* If you want to understand the Americans that voted for Donald Trump, you might want to read J.D. Vance’s "Hillbilly Elegy."

* In the wake of the election, Boston schools said they would be providing counseling and support for students upset by the outcome. If Clinton had won, do you think the Jackson, Mississippi, school system would be doing the same?

* Anticipating that they might be able to take control of the Senate, Democrats were saying they would get rid of the filibuster rule that allows a minority of senators to hold up Supreme Court nominees. I bet they don’t feel the same today.

* I wonder what James Comey gets for putting his finger on the scales. Can a president grant knighthood?

* If there’s any solace liberals can take in Trump’s win, it’s that the man seems genuinely unprincipled – possessing no core beliefs. That gives hope he perhaps would govern as a pragmatist, doing whatever works, trying to be a success as president. On the other hand, the folks he is talking about putting in his cabinet – Newt Gingrich for secretary of state, Ben Carson at Health and Human Services and Rudy Giuliani as attorney general – do have principles. Not especially progressive principles, either. And they’ll be the ones doing all the work.

* In the run-up to the election, the talk was about the day of reckoning facing the Republican Party. Split by Donald Trump, suffering major losses in the House and Senate, it was going to have to figure out its purpose and destiny. It’s safe to say that the GOP’s day of reckoning is now on hold. The Democrats, however, now need their own reckoning. Being the party of the special interests clearly is not a winning path going forward.

* For what looks to be the fifth time, the winner of the popular vote lost the electoral college. Should we still have an electoral college? Probably not. But you’re not going to see an amendment to that effect pass by a two-thirds vote in the U.S. Congress.

* “Stunning” will continue as our most-used word for the next several days. But eventually people will calm down. Trump’s president, not dictator. The Constitution still stands.

* As returns were coming in and Trump’s chances of victory turned from unlikely to certain, the Canadian immigration website crashed. Ordinary citizens and celebrities had promised to leave the US in the event of his win and it looks like they were thinking of making good on their plans. How many actually will? Very few, I suspect. And they shouldn’t. If you’re not happy with the government you have, you don’t run away. You stay and try to change it. The midterm elections are less than 730 days away.

This column was first published by Cognoscenti on November 11, 2016.

Election Day Abstinence: A Coward's Way Out

Governor Charlie Baker voted for no one for president. Principled? Hardly. In fact, it’s downright undemocratic.

I get it. Baker's a Republican but he loathes Donald Trump. Understandably so: The real-estate magnate fundamentally betrays the values of the Grand Old Party of Abraham Lincoln. So then, why not Hillary Clinton? She’s got “believability” issues, Baker says. And of course, the governor is a GOP office holder and she’s a Democrat. Maybe he feels party loyalty demands he not cross the aisle.

Either way, it’s a coward’s way out.

Many — perhaps even most — of us voting this year are unhappy with the two principal nominees. Trump may be undesirable but Clinton too has problems. Picking one or the other means picking the less-bad alternative. But it’s that way, frankly, in most elections. Rarely do any of us have the opportunity of voting for someone with whom we agree completely, in whom we have absolute and utter trust. So we sometimes hold our noses. Refusing to vote at all is a luxury we don’t have.

I suspect that, if pressed, Republican Baker would prefer Clinton. “Believability” issues aside, no one fears her finger on the nuclear trigger. Yet by not voting at all, Baker actually helps Trump.

Why?

Because if he had voted for someone, anyone, he would have become part of the denominator (that is, the total number of people who vote for president). By blanking the ballot, however, he’s not part of the denominator, making the votes of other folks even more important.

Think of it this way: If only 3 people voted in the election, and 1 picked Trump, Trump’s percentage would be 33 percent. But if one of those voters — Charlie Baker, let’s say — refused to vote, that 1 vote for Trump would be 1 out of 2 — or 50 percent. That may not matter in Massachusetts, where a Clinton win is a certainty. But if folks in swing-state New Hampshire followed Baker’s example, it could throw that state’s electoral votes to Trump.

Compounding the problem, Baker’s a high-profile figure and he’s sending a message that ultimately depresses overall turnout — especially by Republicans. After all, the presidential race is the big draw. It’s why folks stand in line for hours. But if potential voters were to follow Baker’s example, they’d likely just stay at home, meaning they wouldn’t be participating in any of the down-ballot elections either.

Democrats, perhaps, might cheer this news, since fewer Republicans at the polls mean Democratic candidates and Democratic issues should do better. But while Democrats may cheer, small-d democrats should not. Government “of the people, by the people, for the people” doesn’t happen if the people don’t vote.

Charlie Baker, of all people, should know this.

This column was first published by Cognoscenti on November 8, 2016.