More Processing

Another day and the sun came up again.

And Obama and Trump met today, so there is that. Oh, and people are protesting. More on that separately.

Lots of things coming out about the election - details and such.

One thread emerges to me - across the board, Clinton failed to close.

With women.

With the white working class, especially in the Rust Belt. (More on this later).

With Bernie supporters.

With her own people (turnout in general).

With Black voters.

With Hispanic voters.

Johnston got more than enough votes in key states - especially Florida and North Carolina - that even if Clinton would have gotten a third of those numbers, she probably wins those states and wins the election.

The Rust Belt states abandoned her - probably because they felt abandoned by her. Remember, most of those states went for Obama TWICE. Stories of how her husband, former President Bill Clinton, tried to raise warning bells about this abound.

She clearly did not convince enough Americans that she could be competent on foreign policy, which is disappointing because from what I could tell, she probably would have been educated enough and aggressive enough that she would have been quite competent on the most important issue for the presidency - being the Commander in Chief. Two things hurt her here, I think. One, clearly Benghazi. Whether she was as incompetent as the Republicans painted her or not, it hurt her ability to really assert a strong presence. Two, though, were people in her own party. Especially as Obama had taken a very dove-ish position, in over-reaction to the missteps of George W. Bush's administration, I don't think she would have been able to take a strong position in a public way. Either way, there were clearly people who did not vote for her because they did not believe she could keep them safe. Which, again, is the primary job of the President.

She looks like she will win the popular vote. Yay?

People are bashing the pollsters. Why? I think all of them expected the turnout to be better than it was, and as Nate Silver has shown, most had it with her up 3-4 points - which is tight. She loses enough margin through a lack of turnout, and bingo. While I think Five Thirty Eight could have been more circumspect, Nate was clearly saying that the numbers were soft.

Comey. I hate to think this is possible, especially considering there wasn't any substance to it, but what if that hit she took - and clearly didn't fully rebound from - due to his unprofessional and unnecessary announcement was enough to depress voter turnout/votes for her by a few hundred thousand in just the right states? Again, if she wins Florida and North Carolina, she is the President-Elect.

Lots of stuff to chew on. Overall, though, I am encouraged by a lot of the energy that is coming from this election. While the form may be . . . somewhat problematic in places, clearly, more people are going to be politically involved now. On the other hand, I am incredibly sympathetic to those who are afraid of a Trump Presidency. Here is where his irresponsible actions and statements to rile up crowds and get Twitter hits is coming back to haunt us. A lot of women, a lot of children of various races, religions and creeds are afraid because Trump's actions normalized things that have no business being normalized in a representative democracy.

But bottom line - politics is such a complicated beast. It does appear that Trump is well into the overwhelming nature of the job he has won, so hopefully he will now have more respect for those things. And overall, this election gave us LOTS of things to learn about ourselves. Not the least of which is that portions of America need to engage each other. A lot.

One of these things, and the key thing I take away from this election, is the Rust Belt and the white working class. Those states went for Obama twice. So while there are threads of racism in places, you can't say that they are racist enough that this was THE reason Clinton lost there. So what really changed there? I think Bill Clinton nailed it with his concern about the WWC. Whether it was wanting to push climate change, or whether it was just taking them for granted - either way, they did not feel like they had a place in the Clinton tent, and it is for that reason, not racism or sexism, that major states that went for Obama in 2012 went for Trump in 2016.

And I was saying it in March - there IS a component to Trump that needs to be spoken to. And that was it. And while Sanders spoke to it some from the left, once he was out of the race, that was never addressed in enough detail. Whether that was Clinton not engaging the Sanders supporters enough, or whether she didn't have a message that resonated with them enough, the bottom line is that she lost those states because of the wants and needs of a large population of Americans, and you don't win the Presidency that way.

Two other topics I am kicking around - the protests and the fear. I think both are worth discussing. Also, an overall, revised "We are not enemies, but friends" post. Feel free to let me know here or on Twitter if you have other topics you'd like me to kick around.