Democrats went into 2016 Divided and are entering 2017 the Same Way

The Democratic National Committee’s interim chairwoman, Donna Brazile, Tuesday announced that a “new advisory group” would be named to study the 2016 results. Liberal donors are convening to plot the course ahead at a retreat in Florida in January. Progressive activists are angling to seize control of the DNC chairmanship. Moderate Democrats are trying to stage a coup in House leadership. Others are looking farther into the future, to gird for the next round of congressional redistricting.

The various factions don’t even agree on how big a problem the party faces. While many are stunned by the 2016 results and see a fire raging, others are warning against overreacting. They note that Mrs. Clinton won the popular vote and that the Electoral College outcome was decided by a narrow margin in a handful of states; that camp views the problem as one of communication, not policy.

“Democrats do have to do some thinking about how do we make sure that the message we have is received effectively and results in winning elections,” Mr. Obama said at a recent press conference. “I don’t think that there has to be a complete overhaul here. I think that there does have to be better organization, a smarter message.”

Another venue for Democratic debate is being convened by Clinton ally David Brock, head of a network of liberal advocacy organizations, including the opposition research group American Bridge 21st Century and the press watchdog Media Matters for America. Mr. Brock has invited 400 liberal donors to a retreat in Palm Springs, Fla., in January, during inauguration weekend, to participate in an election postmortem and strategy session.

Updated unofficial results show Trump beating Clinton by 10,704 votes

Source: MLive

Republican President-elect Donald Trump beat Democrat Hillary Clinton in Michigan by just over 10,000 votes, updated unofficial results from the Michigan Secretary of State's office show.

County canvassers were required to certify and send their unofficial counts to the Secretary of State's office by Tuesday under Michigan election law. The Board of State Canvassers meets Monday, Nov. 28 to formally certify the results.

Some national news outlets, including the Associated Press, have not yet called the state for Trump because the margin over Democrat Hillary Clinton was so slim.

Secretary of State spokesperson Fred Woodhams has said it's unlikely that Trump's lead over Clinton would be reversed.




Read more: http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2016/11/updated_unofficial_results_sho.html

How the Rust Belt Delivered Trump the Presidency: a Deep Dive

The Rust Belt has a lot of black people, but few Latinos. When workers were in unions alongside others who had different color skin, holding together a viable multiracial working-class coalition was possible. But unions have been destroyed, with the Democratic Party complicit, and stunning economic decline has made it easy for narratives of zero-sum competition between different social groups to take hold.

Democrats have offered precious little to prevent people in the Rust Belt from feeling embattled and forgotten. More to the point, the Clintons are avatars of free trade, financialization and identity politics, a triumvirate of characteristics that associates them pretty directly with what many people associate with the causes of Rust Belt decline and crisis.

But it didn’t matter that Democrats stood for these things when Republicans stood for most of them as well. When lines of political conflict were organized around abortion, guns and taxes, as the Republican operative Grover Norquist wanted, there was no room for a distinctively Rust Belt politics.

When Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort laid out a strategy that included Pennsylvania, most treated it with contempt. When commentators like Michael Moore and Thomas Frank pointed out that there was possibility for Trump in the Rust Belt they were mostly ignored or, even more improbably, accused of being apologists for racism and misogyny.

The votes that switched were in the Rust Belt. Depressed Democratic turnout did matter, but this wasn’t indifference or apathy alone. It was also because Clinton was a terrible candidate for the Rust Belt, a region with a lot of people who were particularly likely to remember Bill Clinton’s move to free trade and abandonment of manufacturing as well as Hillary Clinton’s advocacy for TPP and defense of Wall Street.

Trump beat Clinton in counties where more jobs are at risk because of technology or globalization

In the months leading up to Tuesday’s vote, experts debated how much Trump’s support was driven by economic anxiety or by racism, xenophobia or other factors. These reasons are not mutually exclusive, of course, and the debate will continue long into Trump’s presidency. But county-level voting results suggest that economic issues underpinned at least some of Trump’s support.

Economic anxiety is about the future, not just the present. Trump beat Clinton in counties where more jobs are at risk because of technology or globalization. Specifically, counties with the most “routine” jobs — those in manufacturing, sales, clerical work and related occupations that are easier to automate or send offshore — were far more likely to vote for Trump.

Instead, to understand what drove Trump’s victory, we can look at how Trump’s margin against Clinton in 2016 compared with Romney’s against President Obama in 2012. Sure enough, the swing toward Trump was much stronger in counties with a higher share of routine jobs; the swing toward Trump was also stronger where unemployment was higher, job growth was slower and earnings were lower.

Still, it is clear that the places that voted for Trump are under greater economic stress, and the places that swung most toward Trump are those where jobs are most under threat. Importantly, Trump’s appeal was strongest in places where people are most concerned about what the future will mean for their jobs, even if those aren’t the places where economic conditions are worst today.

The Numbers: How Hillary Clinton Lost

The quickest way to get a sense of what happened is to compare the exit polls from 2012 and 2016. What we're looking for is demographic groups that differ from -4% by a significant margin. As it turns out, there aren't very many. Clinton underperformed Obama across the board. She did somewhat better than -4% with seniors, college grads, married voters, and high-income voters. She did worse with low-income voters, union households, and unmarried voters

This was not a "white revolt." White men followed the national trend (-4% compared to 2012) and white women did better for Clinton (+1%). Black men and Latino women underperformed for Clinton by significant margins.

The big surprise here is that Clinton did so much worse with unmarried voters. She underperformed Obama among unmarried men by a whopping 10 points, and among unmarried women by 5 points. What's up with that? I would sure like to see a crosstab of unmarried men by age, race, income, etc. Latino voters are also a surprise. Clinton only did slightly worse than Obama, but surely she should have done much better.

Stop Obsessing Over White Working-Class Voters