A review of the campaigns for the 2016 U.S. Presidential election to help us understand the strategies, personalities, and dynamics of the process. A discussion of the potential outcome of the election and the consequences for Canada.
2. Rosalind Warner, PhD
College Professor of Political Science
Okanagan College
Email: rowarner@okanagan.bc.ca
Twitter: @rwarner23
Blog: http://rozwarner.wordpress.com/
3. The Campaign So Far
How did this happen?
Why did this happen?
What does it mean for Canada?
Click Mouse Reveal Next Phase
17. Rick Santelli, commentator on CNBC
Bank bailout would ‘subsidize losers’ mortgages’
& called for a Chicago Tea Party to protest gov’t
intervention in the housing market
18. Although started as a critique of Obama’s
policies, the TEA party quickly morphed into
the ‘birther’ movement, questioning Obama’s
ethnicity, religion, and US citizenship.
19. Inspired by the
Arab Spring,
Khale Lasn called
for the US to
have its own
‘Tahrir Moment’
with this cover of
Adbusters
Magazine
20.
21. In Iowa, New
Hampshire, and
Nevada
primaries,
more than 80
percent of
voters under 30
years old voted
for Bernie
Sanders
25. Economic upheaval gave rise to
New social and political movements on
the left and right in response
Motivated by issues of inequality,
insecurity, & alienation from the
‘governing’ class
31. …Similarly, the NRA’s concentrated strategic
campaigns against gun control made action
impossible
Demonstrated the power of the fringe for
influencing the agenda
32. Demonstrated the power of
statistical profiling and targeted
campaigns
Karen Blutcher of St. Augustine
37. J-curve Description of Revolution
Source: Derived from Davies 1971.
Not rising, but
frustrated
expectations….
38. “Many, however, had been poor as children and felt
their rise to have been an uncertain one…We have
our American Dream, but we could lose it all
tomorrow.”
~Mother Jones, September/October 2016, page 25
Half of all
supporters
earn at least
$50,000/year
One third
earn more
than
$75,000/year
39. They don't hang out
with regular folks
like us, who like to
hunt, and fish, and
pray, and actually
work for a living.
43. In 1984, American
breadwinners who were
sixty-five and over made
ten times as much as
those under thirty-five.
The year Obama took office, older
Americans made almost forty-seven
times as much as the younger
generation.
The War Against Youth
esquire.com
"The United States spends 2.4
times as much on the elderly as on
children”
•Millennials are the most educated generation ever – they have the college
debt to prove it
•15.8M are unemployed – over a 1/3 of the entire group
55. 57 percent say international
trade is good for the US
economy, and 65 percent say
it is good for their own
standard of living.
Christian Science Monitor
Only 40 percent see trade
as a positive factor in
creating jobs in the US
59. It was a sharp
reminder of the
crucial trade
relationship between
Canada and the U.S.,
which has been
estimated at $2 billion
a day, both ways.
There are 200 million
border crossings a
year.
60. From 1970 to
2005, inequality
and polarization
have increased in
Canadian citjes
and
neighbourhoods
61. Whether we blame it on class
inequality, culture wars, gender,
generations or the effects of long
wars….
The trends are global, not unique to
the US
62. The Campaign So Far
How did this happen?
Why did this happen?
What does it mean for Canada?
Click Mouse Reveal Next Phase
63. • Benwell, M. (n.d.). Donald Trump “word for word” repeating claims
of conspiracy theorist who thinks Hillary Clinton is a demon | The
Independent. Retrieved from
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-
elections/donald-trump-alex-jones-hillary-clinton-barack-obama-
conspiracy-theories-jon-ronson-infowars-a7365346.html
• Bui, Q. (2016). How to View a Richer Year for the Poor and Middle
Class - The New York Times. Retrieved from
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/15/upshot/picturing-a-big-year-
for-the-poor-and-middle-class.html?_r=0
• Danziger, J. N. (2015). Understanding the Political World. Pearson.
• Fournier, R. (2013). The Outsiders: How Can Millennials Change
Washington If They Hate It? - The Atlantic. Retrieved from
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/08/the-outsiders-
how-can-millennials-change-washington-if-they-hate-it/278920/
64. • Friedersdorf, C. (2012). What High School Taught Millennials About the War on Terrorism -
The Atlantic. Retrieved from http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/11/what-
high-school-taught-millennials-about-the-war-on-terrorism/265192/
• Hochschild, A. R. (2016). The Origins of Trump: Investigating the deeper story behind his
movement. Retrieved from http://www.motherjones.com/toc/2016/09
• Isenberg, N. (2016). White trash : the 400-year untold history of class in America.
• Kendall-Taylor, A., Frantz, E., & Wright, J. (2016). The New Dictators | Foreign Affairs.
Retrieved from https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2016-09-26/new-dictators
65. • Lynch, C. (n.d.). Populism makes two comebacks: The progressive left and the reactionary
right battle for ownership in 2016 cage match Populism has had the limelight in this year,
but many are still making a huge mess of its meaning. Retrieved from
http://www.salon.com/2016/09/18/populism-makes-two-comebacks-the-progressive-left-
and-the-reactionary-right-battle-for-ownership-in-2016-cage-match/
• Marche, S. (2012). Young People in the Recession - The War Against Youth. Retrieved from
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a13226/young-people-in-the-recession-0412/
• Smith, B. (2011). An Occupy Wall Street/Tea Party Venn diagram - POLITICO. Retrieved
from http://www.politico.com/blogs/ben-smith/2011/10/an-occupy-wall-street-tea-party-
venn-diagram-040116#.Tp93kbxdckI.twitter
66. • Walks, A. (2013). Income Inequality and Polarization in Canada’s Cities: An Examination and
New Form of Measurement. Retrieved from www.neighbourhoodchange.ca
• Yglesias, M. (2015). Why a resurgent, unapologetic left is on the rise globally - Vox.
Retrieved from http://www.vox.com/2015/9/16/9322625/sanders-corbyn-mulcair
• Zumbrun, J. (2016). Not Just the 1%: The Upper Middle Class Is Larger and Richer Than Ever
- Real Time Economics - WSJ. Retrieved from
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2016/06/21/not-just-the-1-the-upper-middle-class-is-
larger-and-richer-than-ever/
Editor's Notes
Businessman and reality television personality Donald Trump became the Republican Party's presidential nominee on July 19, 2016, after defeating U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, Governor of Ohio John Kasich, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and other candidates in the Republican primary elections.[1] If elected, Trump would become the oldest president to take office.[2] Former Secretary of State and U.S. Senator from New York Hillary Clinton became the Democratic Party's presidential nominee on July 26, 2016, after defeating U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. If elected, she would be the first female president.[3]
Various third party and independent presidential candidates are also running in the election. Libertarian Party nominee and former Governor of New Mexico Gary Johnsonhas ballot access in all 50 states.[4] Green Party nominee and former physician Jill Steinhas ballot access in enough states to win the electoral college. Johnson and Stein (who also ran as their parties' presidential nominees in the 2012 election) have appeared in major national polls.[5][6] At least 24 other third party candidates and independents will appear on the ballot in at least some states, or are running as write-in candidates. Most notably, independent candidate and former Chief Policy Director for the House Republican Conference Evan McMullin has led in opinion polls in his home state of Utah. No third party candidate has carried a state since 1968.
November 8, 2016, with 34 of the 100 seats in the Senate being contested in regular elections whose winners will serve six-year terms in the 115th United States Congress until January 3, 2023.
Elections will be held to elect representatives from all 435 congressional districts across each of the 50 U.S. states.
gubernatorial elections of 2016 will be held on November 8, 2016 in the states ofDelaware, Indiana, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oregon, Utah,Vermont, Washington, and West Virginia.
“Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics”
Slug,
“Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics”
Slug,
Edward Hallet Carr called the inter-war period the Twenty Years’ Crisis – a great interregnum in which Americans confronted both themselves, their country, and their place in the world---
-Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal led to the emergence of a massive labour movement during the Depression
-reaction against this movement in the form of a racial and ethnic nationalism, as well as social and cultural conservatism in reaction to calls for women’s suffrage, are all familiar issues to us today
-anger against Eastern European, Catholic and Asian immigration was rampant
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson asked Congress to establish a $700 billion fund to keep the economy from seizing up permanently.
After the plan’s enactment, Paulson, acknowledging that his approach would not encourage sufficient new bank lending, did a U-turn. The Treasury would instead invest most of the newly authorized bailout fund directly into the banks that held the toxic securities (thus giving the government an ownership stake in private banks).
The catalyst for what would become known as the Tea Party movement came on February 19, 2009, when Rick Santelli, a commentator on the business-news network CNBC, referenced the Boston Tea Party (1773) in his response to Pres. Barack Obama’s mortgage relief plan. Speaking from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Santelli heatedly stated that the bailout would “subsidize the losers’ mortgages” and proposed a Chicago Tea Party to protest government intervention in the housing market.
The Tea Party movement’s first major action was a nationwide series of rallies on April 15, 2009, that drew more than 250,000 people. April 15 is historically the deadline for filing individual income tax returns, and protesters claimed that “Tea” was an acronym for “Taxed Enough Already.” The movement gathered strength throughout the summer of 2009, with its members appearing at congressional town hall meetings to protest the proposed reforms to the American health care system.
THE 2010 MIDTERM ELECTIONS
Sarah Palin
Michelle Bachmann (in Michele Bachmann)
Cain (in Herman Cain)
Cruz (in Ted Cruz: Biography)
“We just felt America was ripe for a Tahrir moment of its own,” said Mr. Lasn, referring to the throngs who congregated in Cairo’s central square earlier this year to bring down Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak.
The group conceived a centre spread in the magazine’s July edition, depicting a ballerina delicately balancing on the iconic Wall Street bull, with the words: “What is our one demand?....#OCCUPYWALLSTREET, September 17, Bring tent.”
-Occupy Wall Street brought a number of new things to the discussion:
A new language to understand income inequality: 1% and the 99% really did have opposing interests
-revealed the role of money in politics and the corrupting effects of Supreme court’s decisions People United, which granted that donations to political candidates were a form of free speech
-began the movement for raising the national minimum wage
-brought innovative new ways of dealing with housing and student debt through a National Jubilee
-jump started the environmental movement and galvanized the anti-Keystone XL protests a few years later
, a democratic socialist so outside the mainstream of his party that he’s not even a member.
Rodrigo Duterte, President of the Philippines
Vladimir Putin
Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage in the Brexit Debate
Not necessarily new - Joe McCarthy, Herbert Hoover, Richard Nixon and ‘House Un-American Activities’ Committee active in the 1950s
Here is Senator McCarthy, speaking in June 1951 about the parlous situation of the United States:
How can we account for our present situation unless we believe that men high in this government are concerting to deliver us to disaster?
As Richard Hofstader wrote in 1964, the paranoid style in American Politics is alive and well – conspiracy theories abound
With his ranting style and outlandish claims, the right-wing radio host Alex Jones has claimed that Clinton is a ‘demon’, the the Sandy Hook massacre was a fake, that there was no drought in California, and that the US election was rigged
“too fast for the Truth”
It is not our consciousness that determines our social existence, but our social existence that determines our consciousness. -Marx
James Fallows -
“Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics”
“Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics”
The NRA also spent $28,212,718 on outside political contributions during this period, which includes ads paid for directly by the NRA. That makes it the tenth biggest spender when it comes to such political spending.
“Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics”
During the 2012 campaign for the Democratic nomination and subsequent presidential election against Mitt Romney, a sequestered army of geeks in the basement of the Obama headquarters noticed that Obama’s support with women aged 35-50 was slipping. They also noticed that women aged 35-50 were big fans of George Clooney, a prominent Democrat.
With election coffers a little light, the quants recommended that the campaign start a donation raffle to win tickets to the event, with the grand prize being an invitation to the fundraising event and a chance to meet George Clooney, along with Robert Downey Jr. and Billy Crystal.
The 150-person event, held Thursday night, brought in $15 million, from both ticket prices — $40,000 per person — and donations of $3 or more that entered donors into a raffle to win tickets to the event, according to the Los Angeles Times. Tens of thousands of donors contributed an average of $23 in hopes of winning a ticket, theLA Times reported, raising almost $10 million for the campaign.
Numerous celebrities attended the fundraiser, including Robert Downey, Jr. and Billy Crystal.
Karen Blutcher of St. Augustine won a raffle to attend a $40,000-per-plate fundraiser dinner for President Obama's re-election campaign at film actor George Clooney's home in Studio City, Calif., after donating to the campaign online.
She and her husband Patrick were flown to Los Angeles and back, and provided with a night's stay at the Los Angeles Sheraton in addition to the fundraiser, attended by several movie stars and President Barack Obama. Dinner was prepared by chef Wolfgang Puck. Blutcher said it was a "once-in-a-lifetime thrill" to meet the president.
Donald Trump literally:
Said he “could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and … wouldn’t lose any voters.”
Suggested the mother of a fallen Muslim American soldier did not speak at the DNC because her husband wouldn’t let her: “Maybe she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say—you tell me.” (In reality, she has a hard time discussing her late son in public because she is still grieving the loss)
Said John McCain was “not a war hero” because he “like[s] people who weren’t captured.”
Encouraged a foreign country to commit espionage in the U.S., calling on Russia to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails.
“You are patiently standing in the middle of a long line stretching toward the horizon where the American Dream awaits. But as you wait, you see people cutting in line ahead of you.---many of these line-cutters are black – beneficiaries of affirmative action or welfare. Some are career-driven women pushing into jobs they never had before. Then you see immigrants, Somalis, Mexicans, the Syrian refugees yet to come. As you wait in this unmoving line, you’re being asked to feel sorry for them all. You have a good heart, but how is deciding who you should feel compassion for? The gov’t has become an instrument for redistributing your money to the undeserving. It’s not your gov’t anymore, it’s theirs.”
The ideology of the American dream leads man middle-class Americans to assume that only immigrants and racial and ethnic minorities are poor in America.. Racial difference is exploited to make poor whites feel superior.Accepted terms used to define white trash have been numerous, scathing, dehumanizing.Certain politicians have presented a "common man" image to which lower-class white voters respond positively.
They don't hang out with regular folks like us, who like to hunt, and fish, and pray, and actually work for a living.
That was Duck Dynasty star and self-described redneck Willie Robertson at the Republican National Convention, sticking it to the so-called media elites and their contempt for what he calls regular folks.
-very different points of view on race
-Balck Lives Matter fueled not only by statistics like this one, but also by the perception that officers seem to be acting with impunity
-Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson Missouri, and the protests that followed, revealed a long-festering sore --- arising mainly from the failure of integration and the re-segregation of America
In 1984, American breadwinners who were sixty-five and over made ten times as much as those under thirty-five.
The year Obama took office, older Americans made almost forty-seven times as much as the younger generation.
"The United States spends 2.4 times as much on the elderly as on children”
The federal government spends $480 billion on Medicare and $68 billion on education. Prescription drugs: $62 billion. Head Start: $8 billion. Across the board, the money flows not to helping the young grow up, but helping the old die comfortably. According to a 2009 Brookings Institution study,, measured on a per capita basis, with the ratio rising to 7 to 1 if looking ju
Millennials are the most educated generation ever – they have the college debt to prove it
15.8M are unemployed – over a 1/3 of the entire group
-in the 1920, rural white Protestants spearheaded Prohibition, the 1925 Scopes Trial that pitted religion and science against each other is a close parallel with debates about climate change today
The Ku Klux Klan revived in the mid-1920s fueled by anti-Semitism, anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant sentiment and traditional gender norms
The Supreme Court in 1922, in Ozawa v. the United States,held that most Asians were not “white persons,” and were therefore ineligible for naturalization. With similar laws introduced to limit immigration from Eastern Europe ----- Latin Americans were virtually ignored, since Latino immigration supplied the farmlands of California with cheap labour and so was sometimes encouraged
non-Northern European immigrants and African Americans, newly assertive women, political leftists, and intellectuals untied to religious edicts—
Today, these forces have both less and more power than they did in the 1920s. According to the Pew Forum, only 34 percent of Americans are white Protestants. For the first time in history, there are no white Protestant members of the Supreme Court. On civil rights, feminism, and gay liberation, the forces of cultural modernity have seemingly triumphed. Women not only have the vote today, but also have a significant public presence in every aspect of American life. Labor is today a much more cosmopolitan movement than ever before and has been a key advocate in the “fight for 15” movement among low-wage labor, and vital to sustaining the debate about income inequality (even as its actual membership has declined dramatically since its postwar high). Black Lives Matter has exposed and protested police violence against African Americans all over the country. Liquor is again legal almost everywhere, and even marijuana is now legal in a couple of states. Same-sex marriage—utterly incomprehensible in the 1920s—is now the law of the land.
In an interview broadcast on Sunday he tried to explain how Trump’s call to “take the oil” of Iraq fit with the nominee’s past demands to “declare victory and leave” and reduce American intervention abroad.
“It used to be ‘to the victor belong the spoils’,” Trump said in a televised NBC forum. “Now, there was no victor there, believe me. There was no victor. But I always said: take the oil.”
The Republican nominee has also proposed killing the families of terror suspects and a return to torture. Those policies and “taking the oil” would likely violate the Geneva Convention, experts say.
-why do these ideas resonate? The same white Protestant rural families that support Trump have also disproportionately enlisted – they personally experienced and bear the brunt of the costs in the form of walking wounded - they perceive the lack of funding for Vets and for Veteran services as an affront to their sacrifice
-the War in Afghanistan and Iraq has been America’s longest and least satisfying in terms of outcomes
On globalization and international trade, two-thirds say increased economic integration is generally good for the country, while 57 percent say international trade is good for the US economy, and 65 percent say it is good for their own standard of living.
On the other hand, only 40 percent see trade as a positive factor in creating jobs in the US – but that number is up slightly from a decade ago. And in another surprising shift, Democrats are now considerably more supportive of globalization than Republicans, with a 15 percent gap opening up between them.
Indeed the Chicago Council survey confirms findings from the Pew Research Center this year that Republicans, traditionally most supportive of international trade and the free-market system, are turning against those ideas even as Democrats increasingly open up to them.
The story first appeared in print in the Boston Globe on September 13, 2001, and was later picked up by the Washington Post, the New York Post, and the Christian Science Monitor, and later continually repeated, despite the decisive correction provided by the 9/11 Commission and efforts of a number of ambassadors and foreign affairs officials.
In 2005 a United States senator claimed that the terrorists who struck the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001, entered the country from Canada---Montana Senator Conrad Burns, a Republican, made the charge during a news conference at which he said the "porous" stretch of border between Montana and Alberta is a prime route for drug runners and criminals travelling south from Calgary.
In a special episode of the television series The West Wing aired after 9/11, terrorists crossed the border from Ontario to Vermont (notwithstanding the geographic inaccuracy). More seriously, the claim was repeated as late as 2009 by Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano on her first visit, and reiterated soon after by Arizona Senator John McCain, prompting Canadian Ambassador Michael Wilson to issue a statement yet again reminding Americans that, as fully demonstrated by the 9/11 Commission report, no 9/11 terrorists came from Canada.
-A more ominous sign appeared two days after 9/11, when the lineup of trucks trying to enter Detroit over the Ambassador Bridge at Windsor backed up 36 kilometres. It was a sharp reminder of the crucial trade relationship between Canada and the U.S., which has been estimated at $2 billion a day, both ways. There are 200 million border crossings a year.