Seven things to learn from this election

1.      It’s still the economy, stupid. It was true when Bill Clinton first said it. It’s still true. Liberals may think immigration policy or women’s rights are more important to the voters. Conservatives may think Christian values or gun rights are more important to the voters. Both are wrong. In the end, if people can’t find jobs or can’t find a way to pay their bills, THAT is what is most important to them. Trump understood that, Hillary didn’t, even though Bill Clinton tried his best to tell her that. The Obama administration tried its best to convince people the economy was good - and it is great for the top 10%, the CEOs and top executives of corporations, Wall Street investors, and all the lobbyists and experts who feed off of Washington,  but it has been disastrous for many others.

 2.      Don’t trust the mainstream press for accurate information. The press and the network talking heads and the Op Ed writers have gotten this election wrong right from the beginning. They saw what they wanted to see, not what was actually happening.  Trump didn’t fade from the primaries, despite their confident predictions. Trump won the Republican primary, despite their confident predictions otherwise. Trump won the general election, despite their confident predations that he would lose. The stock market didn’t crash the next day, despite their confident predictions – in fact it hit new highs. (They predicted Brexit wrong too) The mainstream press is establishment, and portrays the establishment views, largely liberal. It doesn’t portray reality. It is not unbiased. The coverage was not in the least balanced in this election – Trump’s outrageous comments made better headlines, so they often ignored bad news about Hillary’s scandal of the day. (And Trump wisely used that very flaw to con the press out of billions in free political advertising).

Remember two things about the mainstream press. First, it exists primarily to sell advertising, which means sensational news that will draw readers is more important than accurate news. Second, all mainstream press has a reader base, so the news it distributes will be slanted to what the reader base wants to believe. Liberal press will be slanted to liberal readers, conservative press to conservative readers.  It is hard, but not impossible, to find fairly balanced sources (The Economist is pretty good, for example.)

3.      Don’t trust the web for accurate information. Facebook and Twitter and the various websites like The Huffington Post (liberal) or the Drudge Report (conservative) were full of misinformation, fake stories, doctored facts and videos, etc. etc.  Mainstream reporters, biased as they may be, have to have at least some basis for a story, even if they have to work hard to spin it the way they want it. Website stories and Twitter and Facebook posts can be (and often are) complete fabrications.

4.      Identity politics doesn’t work reliably.  Hillary just proved that.  Political strategists may see all women as a voting block, all African-Americans as a voting block, all Evangelicals as a voting block, all Hispanics as a voting block, all gun owners as a voting block, etc, but many, perhaps most of them, don’t see themselves that way. They self-identify in many other ways.

5.      Extremes don’t win elections – the majority in this country is moderate. Obama went too far left for the country, and Hillary, pushed by Sanders, did too in this last election. Republicans, driven by evangelicals and social conservatives, have gone too far right.  If Cruz had won the Republican nomination I think he would have done poorly because of that.

6.      In this election a third party finally won. Yes, Trump ran as a Republican, but he is no more a Republican than he is a Democrat (and in fact he has registered as both at various times in the past).  Trump’s positions in the campaign were neither traditional Republican nor traditional Democratic positions.  And he probably won because a lot of people are unhappy with the policies and the actions (or inactions) of both parties.

7.      Emotions matter more than facts in a campaign. Trump won because he engaged the emotions of a large segment of the population who felt left behind. In fact it is not clear he (or anyone else, for that matter) knows how to solve their problem, but he at least paid attention to them and acknowledged their pain. When Obama won his first term, it was because he stirred hope in many people, even though there was no evidence that he could deliver on that hope, or that he had any background that equipped him to deliver on that hope (and in the end, he didn’t deliver, of course).