During the 2016 Election campaign, all of the polls showed Hillary Clinton beating Donald Trump by a wide margin, or at the very least, beating Trump in all of the states she needed to win.
The states she needed were the states President Obama had won twice, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, Virginia, Florida, New Mexico Colorado, New Mexico, In addition to the Northeastern and western states.
She was required to defend the so-called blue wall.
Still to this day almost four years later, not a single political scientist, pundit or pollster has explained what the hell happened on election night 2016.
Was polling outdated as a barometer of understanding voter sentiment? Or did polling simply settle in as to what they really are, [snapshots of moments in time]? Or did something sinister happen that can only be explained by the intelligence agencies?
It has been remarkable to hear media types opine that maybe people simply lied to pollsters, or maybe pollsters over-sampled Democratic voters.
If either of those narratives is true then the entire discipline of polling as a sort of quasi-science is now dead.
During the 2016 Election, my wife and her mom, and two of our sons were on the way to South Carolina, we decided that we would drive down. I decided to avoid the DC traffic so I took the long way along Route 81 down through the Pennsylvania backcountry, a little way through West Virginia, and I was shocked at what I saw.
Literally, every yard was littered with trump signs.….….. People stick political signs on curbsides, at stoplights on entry and egress points to and from Highways, etc, that’s par for the course.
When they place them in their yards or allow someone else to do so that means they have a devotion or at least intend to vote for that candidate.
Look, I will always be skeptical of the fact that Trump won the election in three states, ‑Pennsylvania, Michigan & Wisconsin by less than 70,000 votes.
If you ask me, it just seems much too surgical to me to be accepted particularly when Hillary Clinton won the raw total by over three million votes. It just seems a tad bit too surgical, a tad bit too precise right down the middle of that blue wall.
But then again those yard signs, right?
I really had a funny feeling from as early as August of 2016 that Hillary Clinton was going to be toast. For the entire month of August 2016. For the entire month of August 2016, Secretary Clinton did not do a single large campaign event. At the time I wrote that she was throwing the election. Donald Trump having eviscerated all of his primary opponents, was putting the large Trump emblazoned plane at every airport hangar he could and was drawing humungous crowds.
Even though the elections were for Hillary Clinton to lose, she went ahead like Al Gore did before her in 2000, and gave the election to the Republicans.
Actions have consequences, inaction sometimes has even more devastating consequences. And so elections matters, before this is all done, even though the American voters turned out and gave Democrats the plurality of their votes in 2000,& 2016 Democrats allowed themselves to be railroaded and now the Country is in dire straits as it faces the distinct possibility of a second Trump term in office, having appointed three Supreme Court Justices and placed over 200 of the Federal Appeals bench.
Potentially even before the elections are through, there will be a 6 – 3 Republican majority on the highest court, placing in jeopardy all of the progressive gains that have been made arguably since the 1960s.
Elections are not always won on who is right on the issues, they are not about who has the better policies, if that was so Donald Trump would not be sitting inside that old house at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue watching FOX and rage tweeting. That honor would have been Hillary Clinton’s.
Much of what elections are about is pressing the flesh, being there, people tend to acquaint that with caring, instead of blatant vote pandering. Polls carried out before the George Bush presidency, revealed that some voters said they would vote for Bush because he seemed like someone they could have a beer with.
The sad reality is that their chance of having a beer with Bush was less than being struck by lightning twice, but they voted for him based on those perceptions.
Which begs the question of why would people who worked hard to make a living all their lives would find common cause with a life-long draft-dodging con-artiste who lived 50 floors up into the Manhattan skies in a gaudy, gilded penthouse?
He pretended to share their pain and that’s all they cared about. Not all of those people are racists, but Trump knew the issues that they cared about, as I explained in the linked article above, he exploited those concerns to the maximum and has solidified his support with that base of support, to the point he need not worry about their vote, even though he may not have delivered on his promises to them.
He continued to speak to those wedge issues they care about, the supreme court,(on that he has delivered), Immigration, and a range of other issues. He hates the same people many of them hate, and now they hate the people he hates.
It is a cult following that has only hardened since 2016, that will not be deterred by any news that may surface about Donald Trump. One such Guy said he went to a Trump rally and based on where he was standing he could not hear what Trump was saying but he so loved Trump he clapped simply because they were clapping. Such is the level of fealty and loyalty that they have for him.
The first of what should have been a debate ended with Donald Trump telling the [proud boys] white supremacists group to “STANDBACK AND STAND BY”. It was not a debate, it was an embarrassing display of bullying and out of control behavior by Trump, not only could Trump not say he would abide by the election results, he called on white supremacists groups to stand by.
Years ago I wrote that American was flirting with another civil war.…… My God, I never thought that I would live long enough to hear an American president call on a Militia to stand by to fight if he lost the elections.
Mike Beckles is a former police Detective corporal, businessman, freelance writer, he is a black achiever honoree, and publisher of the blog mikebeckles.com.
He’s also a contributor to several websites.
You may subscribe to his blogs free of charge, or subscribe to his Youtube channel @chatt-a-box, for the latest podcast all free to you of course.
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