kwarrtz said: Don’t worry, intelligence and knowledge of American politics are about as corellated with accuracy in predicting...
kwarrtz said: Don’t worry, intelligence and knowledge of American politics are about as corellated with accuracy in predicting elections as the length of winter is with some groundhogs mood
in 2016 the smart money was confident that Hillary would beat Jeb.
The election of Donald Trump taught me two things:
1. In one sense, American presidential elections are actually far more democratic than anyone thought. This man, almost uniformly opposed by everyone in every single major center of power in the country—corporate, military/intelligence, academic, media, bureaucratic—was somehow able to fucking win despite it. Deeply undermines the notion that elections are just for show and the candidates are pre-approved in smoke-filled rooms to both be someone acceptable to the Elites™.
2. No one has any fucking idea what they’re talking about when it comes to like history or politics. Literally no one would’ve predicted something like the Trump presidency would happen. No smug asshole who acts like they’ve figured out the formula for American history and already know how the next 50 years are going to play out predicted something like this would happen.
I think both (1) and (2) are wrong, or at least extraordinarily overstated. In 2016, the economy was okay-but-not-great and we’d had a Democratic president for two consecutive terms. A fundamentals model would predict that Generic/boring Republican Senator would have narrowly won the popular vote and easily won the electoral vote. Instead, even against a Democratic opponent who was also uniquely hated by much of the electorate, Trump badly lost the popular vote and just squeaked out a win thanks to narrow electoral vote wins.
People didn’t predict the realignment of voting patterns that would allow Trump to win the upper Midwest while badly losing the popular vote. That’s pretty much the extent of what people got wrong.
It’s interesting that, having won the primary, Trump did only a little worse than a generic Republican. But the fact that he won the primary instead of a generic Republican is what suggests that US democracy has real effects.
(… although one could argue he did then just kind of implement generic Republican policies, so who’s the real winner there?)
I predicted it, by 2014 at least I knew what would have to happen (but the GOP didn’t have anyone lined up right), which is how the day after Trump came down the escalator I was insisting to one of the more influential staffers on Capitol Hill, the guy who made “Cocaine Mitch” happen (, who I went to college with) that he was gonna be the next president.