We can all agree that the 2016 election results were bad, right? And that none of us wants to repeat those mistakes? We agree, right?
Great! I strongly believe that the best way to do that is to understand what happened in 2016 so that we don’t do it again. Because it’s election season again, the old false narratives about what happened in 2016 are back in full force so let me walk you through what happened.
First, I have to go back to 2008. In the 2008 general election, one out of four Hillary primary voters ended up voting for McCain. You read that correctly, 75% of Hillary primary voters voted for Obama in the general election. Hillary supporters said that they were going to do exactly what they ended up doing. The polls that asked about future behavior lined up almost perfectly with the polls that asked about past behavior so there’s absolutely no reason to doubt their accuracy. Those links I provided include a lot of interesting information that I’m not going to get into, so I highly suggest you take a look at them.
That first link I shared shows us that in a giant poll of over 64,000 people in a study found that 87% of Bernie primary voters voted for Hillary in the general. Polls are considered to be accurate when they use sound, unbiased methodology and gather around 1,000 responses. A poll of 64,000 is so massive that it’s hard to dispute. The lowest number I’ve seen in any poll is 85%, and that was a much smaller poll but let’s go with that number since it’s the worst case scenario. That still means that twice as many Hillary voters defected in 2008 than Bernie voters did in 2016. I’m not lying to you. That’s really what happened, and I’m pretty confident in this data after having sifted through the methodology.
Here’s another interesting thing.
It looks to me, like Sanders support was about 50% democrats, 40% independents, and 10% straight up republicans. More of those independents were democratic leaning, but a big chunk were republican leaning. Most of his voters who voted for Trump were never going to vote for Hillary.
I don’t share this data with you because I want to relitigate 2016. I don’t share this data with you because I want to take a swipe at Hillary. She’s not running this time, so I don’t have any interest in Hillary one way or another. I don’t share this data with you to defend Bernie. He didn’t do anything, and he’s not my daddy anyway so I don’t have an emotional urge to elevate him.
I share this with you for the reason I stated in the opening paragraph: I do not want to repeat 2016.
In 2008, we elected a candidate who set the world on fire. He was attracting tens of thousands of people to his rallies. The excitement was palpable. In 2016, we elected a candidate who was holding events at local YMCAs. She never once filled an arena. The excitement simply wasn’t there, and she wasn’t able to build a strong enough coalition to win the general election.
You can blame the Russians if you want, but that doesn’t explain why Obama was able to win the general with twice attrition numbers that Hillary had. I strongly believe that propaganda only works on people who are willing to receive it. I don’t believe that a single Russian bot changed a single Hillary supporter’s mind. The propaganda just reinforced feelings that people already had.
We have to pick a candidate that inspires. Every single election is about turning out your base. No election has ever been won by trying to change anyone’s mind. That’s why, if you’ve ever done door knocking for a candidate, you get sent to knock on doors of people who are registered to the party of the candidate that you’re door knocking for. If you’re volunteering for a democrat, you’re only going to call or knock on doors of democrats. I know the person who ran the analytics operation for Obama in 2008. We’ve discussed this at length. She never spent a minute of her time figuring out how to get republicans to vote for Obama. You have to vote for a candidate who inspires and excites the democratic base. If you’re voting based on who you think can get the most disgruntled republicans, you’ve made a horrible miscalculation based on literally no historical precedent whatsoever. And we are so polarized that, in order to get republicans, you’re most certainly not exciting the democratic base. There’s no way I can see to thread that needle, so it’s a fakakta strategy all the way around.
2004 and 2016 should have been unlose-able elections. We lost them because we elected the YMCA candidate, instead of the candidates who were attracting thousands (or tens of thousands) of people to their events.
Please, I’m begging you – let’s not do that again. No republican strategist or voter for that matter, has never thought about electing a candidate that democrats can vote for. Why do democrats insist on playing that game?
