{"id":185,"date":"2016-09-21T09:50:27","date_gmt":"2016-09-21T00:20:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/us-election2016\/?p=185"},"modified":"2016-09-21T09:50:27","modified_gmt":"2016-09-21T00:20:27","slug":"les-mis-us-election-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/us-election2016\/2016\/09\/21\/les-mis-us-election-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"Les Mis: US Election 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"

Les Mis<\/em><\/h2>\n
by Prof Don DeBats<\/h6>\n

 <\/p>\n

US Election Day: fewer than 50 days now remain and the US electorate faces, at the top of the ticket, the two most unpopular presidential candidates since modern polling began. Gallup\u2019s polls go back to the 1950\u2019s identifying the most popular major party candidates (Eisenhower in 1956 and Johnson in 1964) and the least popular. In that long history, only three candidates scored more \u201chighly negative\u201d views by voters than \u201chighly positive\u201d views: Barry Goldwater in 1964 (17% highly favorable to 26% highly unfavorable), Hillary Clinton (22% highly favorable to 33% highly unfavorable), and Donald Trump (16% highly favorable to 42% highly unfavorable).\u00a0 Trump in these measures, taken in mid-June, is indeed more disapproved of than Clinton.<\/p>\n

The more telling point is that never before in modern presidential elections has the US electorate faced TWO <\/strong>such poorly regarded candidates. This is a presidential election in which \u201cneither of the above\u201d is the clear winner. It remains to be seen how many voters will vote for the Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party candidate, or Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate; in the end probably not much more than 10 percent in all. But that is more than enough to make a difference in an election between the main party candidates who many voters regard as \u201cdeplorable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hillary Clinton of course has recently placed that term at the center of the final stretch of the election campaign, and perhaps created a new collective noun, by declaring that, \u201cyou could put half of Trump\u2019s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables\u201d because of their views on women and various minorities. \u201cUnfortunately,\u201d she said, \u201cthere are people like that. And he [Trump] has lifted them up.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Clinton\u2019s words, it is not just that these people have deplorable attitudes, or attitudes she wishes they did not have, or views she might hope to change, but that as people, as people, they are deplorable. And, she added, \u201csome of these folks \u2013 they are irredeemable.\u201d This in fact is indeed a deplorable attitude \u2013 condemning the sinner not the sin — and it is a further intensification of elitist dismissal of the people with whom elitist candidates disagree. And this is from candidates who aspire to be, and must be, the president of all the people, not just a fraction of the people.<\/p>\n

Clinton\u2019s image of \u201cthe basket cases\u201d was neither a simple accident nor an irrational enthusiasm; nor was it the product of exhaustion, on last week\u2019s funding raising event at \u201cCipriani\u2019s\u201d (on Wall Street) for which a thousand of New York City\u2019s rich and powerful paid between $1,200 and $10,000 (some up to $50,000) per ticket. Clinton had used the deplorable-people-in-the-basket analogy at previous fund-raisers for \u201cmoneyed enclaves,\u201d as The<\/em> New York Times <\/em>puts it, in the Hamptons and in Martha\u2019s Vineyard from which the press was barred. The line resonated, just as it did at this event, producing laughter and applause.\u00a0 Ever more confident, Clinton said something similar the day before on Israeli tv. And the Wall Street function was open to selected members of the press.<\/p>\n

It coarsens then-candidate Obama\u2019s 2008 disdainful dismissal, delivered at another elite fund raising crowd, this time in San Francisco, explaining to the privileged few how it was with the unprivileged many: \u201cYou go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing\u2019s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it\u2019s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren\u2019t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.\u201d \u00a0Then-candidate Clinton was quick to deplore such an attitude, only now, eight years later, to enunciate an even more categorical condemnation of the same group, who have endured another eight years of politics which has continued to fail them, and even more tragically, their children. Obama at least was interested in, and in a sense sympathetic to, the sinners.<\/p>\n

Nor are Establishment Republicans immune from lofty dismissals. In May, 2012, in the midst of his campaign to unseat President Obama, Mitt Romney attacked \u201cthe 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it\u2026[and] they will vote or the President no matter what.\u201d And then the dismissal of nearly half the electorate: \u201cThese are people who pay no income tax\u2026[M]y job is not to worry about those people. I\u2019ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is something unjust about picking on such comments in this election cycle. There are half-truths in all three of these examples. Clinton went on to be sympathetic to the \u201cother half\u201d of Trump supporters, just as she bracketed her boast in the March Town Hall debate that “we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business”<\/a>\u00a0with a far more positive message: “We’re going to make it clear that we don’t want to forget those people,” Clinton said. “Those people labored in those mines for generations, losing their health, often losing their lives to turn on our lights and power our factories. Now we’ve got to move away from coal and all the other fossil fuels, but I don’t want to move away from the people who did the best they could to produce the energy that we relied on.”<\/p>\n

Trump on the other hand, has based his campaign on consistent and unmitigated disparagement of women and Hispanics, mocked the disabled, and denigrated any and all who opposed him.<\/p>\n

Perhaps then this is only a question then of who is winning the race to the bottom?<\/p>\n

Not really. The race this year is being run differently, and that is beginning to show. However flawed is Trump as a messenger, he has a message. Any political figure knows that a good way to lose a fight is to provide your opponents with a mobilizing collective identity, especially if they are widely dispersed and defined by anonymity and social dislocation. It is soccer\u2019s \u201cown goal.\u201d Trump flirts with this in respect to Hispanics and they have mobilized against him. But Clinton has done so for a significant swath of American citizens who do vote, who lacked an identity and were once defined by their isolation, their anonymity and their social dislocation. They are now, this significant swath of the American citizenry, \u201cthe deplorables.\u201d<\/p>\n

Already the tee shirts, baseball caps, coffee mugs are available on-line. Bumper sticker makers and tee shirt designers and political sign makers are going to have a field day furthering the identity and white hot anger of \u201cthe deplorables.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even before this faux paus Trump supporters were far more energized than Clinton supporters. The Washington Post\u2019s <\/em>recent survey is full of warning signs for the Clinton campaign, especially given<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
 <\/td>\nPercent Almost Certain to Vote<\/td>\nPercent Very Enthusiastic About Candidate<\/td>\nFollowing Election Very Closely<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Trump<\/td>\n93<\/td>\n46<\/td>\n61<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Clinton<\/td>\n80<\/td>\n33<\/td>\n45<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

that this is the point in the campaign where pollsters shift their attention form \u201cregistered voters\u201d to \u201clikely voters\u201d as a better guide to an outcome now just six weeks away.<\/p>\n

That sense of differential enthusiasm is palpable. Over the past weekend on a road trip through Virginia and North Carolina, two pivotal states in the election outcome, I saw not a single Clinton yard sign, banner, pin, or bumper sticker. There were not a great many Trump self-advertisements either, for these are deservedly unpopular candidates, but all that there were, were his.<\/p>\n

Today, one of the most respected polling voices, Larry Sabato\u2019s, made a sudden correction to the predictions of the Electoral College votes that will determine the presidency. Previously his predictions had been in accord with almost all others: a massive Electoral College win for Hillary Clinton: \u00a0347 to 191 where 270 Electoral College votes wins the White House.<\/p>\n

In the past week 17 states have been re-evaluated and every one moved in the direction of Trump, from \u201cLikely Republican to \u201cSafe Republican\u201d (5): from \u201cLeans Democratic\u201d to \u201cLeans Republican\u201d (2); from \u201cLeans Democratic\u201d to \u201cToss Up\u201d (3); from \u201cLikely Democratic\u201d to \u201cLeans Democratic\u201d (6); and from \u201cSafe Democratic\u201d to \u201cLikely Democratic\u201d (1).<\/p>\n

Today Sabato\u2019s prediction is Clinton 272, Trump 215 with three states now toss-up states: Florida (29 Electoral College votes), North Carolina (15), Nevada (6) \u2013 with the presidential election in the balance.\u00a0 No doubt the odds still favor Hillary Clinton, but not the way they once did.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, in Miami on Friday night, Trump addressed his supporters as \u201cthe Deplorables,\u201d as did the on-screen labels. Ever conscious of the grand entrance, Trump emerged to a new musical tune, walking around the stage, conducting with his arms, urging the audience to join in, as they did, shouting out the stirring cadences of Les Miserables\u2019 theme song: Do you hear the people sing?<\/em>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u2026<\/p>\n

Singing the song of angry men?
\nIt is the music of the people
\nWho will not be slaves again!
\nWhen the beating of your heart
\nEchoes the beating of the drums
\nThere is a life about to start
\nWhen tomorrow comes.<\/p>\n

Will you join in our crusade?<\/p>\n

Who will be strong and stand with me?
\nBeyond the barricade
\nIs there a world you long to see?<\/p>\n

Not only an identity, but an anthem too\u2026..<\/p>\n

Perhaps this is just the pollster\u2019s wish for a horse race and perhaps Trump\u2019s moment, and his sudden spurt of support, will finally energize the Clinton supporters, if only from fear rather than from conviction.<\/p>\n

But right now there is the feeling in the air\u2026..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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