2016 Election Lessons Learned: The Campaign

The 2016 presidential campaign became a spectacle unlike any other US political campaign in memory.  It went to places that shocked most, and unleashed fear, hate, and divisiveness that has not been seen in this country in decades.  There will be no recollection of the specific shameful behavior here.  To call attention to it, only amplifies it, and it is already a matter of public record that is widely known to all.  We do however need to understand the fear, hate, and divisiveness that was created during this spectacle and how these things are still tearing through the fabric of this nation as these election results transition into this very new and potentially dangerous next phase of actual governance. 

How Anger Shaped the Campaign

The anger in the electorate both the righteous and especially the nefarious set a tone in the primaries that prevailed all through the rest of the campaign.  Trump and Sanders both benefited from the righteous anger directed toward the party establishments and their favored candidates.  They both reveled before an electorate righteously angry about a disparity in government that obviously favored the rich.  Trump, however, also made the decision to court the nefarious anger of the racists and xenophobes creating a witch’s brew of campaign turbulence that has left a very bad taste.

Instead of a campaign that focused on issues and qualification with occasional sideshows of mudslinging and character assassination, the sideshows of mudslinging and character assassination took center stage.  The only issues and qualification reviewed in this election were ultimately reduced to the two candidate credentials of 1) not being beholding to any particular billionaire (being a billionaire seemed to not be a problem) and 2) being as loosely affiliated with a political party establishment as possible.  Any further discussion of qualifications became a non-issue.  Everything was reduced to this very personal context.

Mudslinging and character assassination are a messy business, and this messiness was quite obviously reflected in all the candidate’s demeanor and decorum during this campaign, but it was especially obvious in the demeanor and decorum of one candidate in particular, the Trump campaign.  The Trump campaign rallies appeared to be modeled after the Jerry Springer tabloid talk show.  The audiences were stirred with such frenzy that they frequently resulted in mindlessly chanting of hateful things, aggressive shouting directed at anyone thought to be against them, and even physical confrontation. On some occasionally, this hostile frenzy was racially directed at dark skinned attendees who in some few cases were actually at the rally in support of Trump.

Candidate Qualifications

There are two important perspectives voters must consider in assessing a candidate's ability to accurately represent their intent into important government decisions that establish the rules of governance.  There are the personal issues that traditionally center on the matters of moral fiber and likeability, and the more technical issues of knowledge and experience. 

Personal traits are evaluated in a more subjective manner as a gut feel primarily fueled by emotion.  The technical issues of knowledge and experience can be very objectively determined by those voter who have some rudimentary understanding of the issues and the background of the candidate. As already discussed above, the voter access to this rudimentary understanding of the issues and the background of the candidate has been compromised by weakness in the education and commercial news services.  Good voting is the result of a balanced blend of both these types of evaluation.

In recent years, there has been a very strong tendency with candidates to focus their campaigns much more heavily on these personal matters instead of current pressing issues. As a results, our elections have denigrated into character assassination and general mudslinging.  The benefit in this approach is character assassination and general mudslinging can be very effective even if it is only loosely based in reality, and in this most recent election, any basis in reality seems to no longer be a requirement.   

This strong reliance on emotional gut feelings about personal traits creates the potential for two types of problems.  The first and most obvious of these is that the voters are unable to perform a complete review of the candidate.  The other potential problem stems from the fact that emotional gut feelings review of personal traits creates a glitch in the electorate that makes it much easier to manipulate election results. 

Democrats don’t typically do as well with this type of campaigning.  That is not to say, they won’t take advantage of a scandal if it comes up.  They are not even above looking for possible scandals to expose, but they are much less inclined to simply make things up.  The Republicans on the other hand are very adept at this campaign style and are not in any way constrained by the truth.  As such, it has become their campaign style of choice.  They have perfected these techniques and are not even afraid to use them on their opposing Republican candidates in the primaries. 

Take for example a ploy from the 2000 Republican presidential primaries.  John McCain was favored to win the South Carolina presidential republican primary until Bush strategist Karl Rove invented a story that his operatives would circulate via a phony poll. The poll asked voters if they "Would you be more or less likely to vote for John McCain…if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?"  This question generated a whisper campaign by introducing a completely false premise for voters to build their own racist backstory about McCain’s dark-skinned daughter who had actually been adopted from Bangladesh. The ploy generated the intended sway on the voters and enabled Bush to win South Carolina and secure the Republican 2000 presidential nomination. 

Democrats tend to favor campaigning on issues and policy, but campaigns that are waged largely on the matter of issues are a much more risky venture.  For one thing, such campaigns require more of a technical review from the voters that most voters do not have the time, patience, and sometime understanding to perform.  Today’s voters are much more attuned to campaigns that are based on the play of subtle innuendo and emotional manipulation.  That was the case in spades with the 2016 election.

We already know the issue and policy positions of the Republican Party.  They want to reduce taxes and eliminate regulations (for their rich wing), oppose gay rights, abortion, and religious freedom for non-Christians (for their religious right wing), and obstruct immigration reform and defend discrimination and intolerance (for their racism/xenophobia wing).  All of these positions are known to fail (e.g. the 2008 Great Recession), and none of these positions have majority support in the electorate.  Republicans don't want to discuss their already well know positions.

Political Moral-Low-Ground

A tradition that is perhaps as old as politics itself has become a major element in current day US politics.  It evolves from the realization that there are only two ways to attack a political opponent.  The moral-high-ground approach is to display superior knowledge of the issues and exhibit a keen understanding of ways to address these issues for the voters.  The moral-low-ground approach is to resort to mudslinging and character assassination of one’s opponent.  

A now classical example of the moral-low-ground approach occurred during the 2004 presidential election campaign from the politically motivated Swift Vets and POWs for Truth group of Vietnam War veterans and POWs.  It was formed to oppose John Kerry's presidential candidacy.  Their contention was that Kerry was unfit to serve as President based on their members (all of whom were politically motivated) recollection and understanding about Kerry's own conduct during that war.  They also challenged the legitimacy of his combat medals and the disposition of his discharge.  

All these claims were later called into question because the accusers had not been in places with direct access to Kerry and most of the Vietnam veterans who had served with him supported Kerry's version of events. They contention with Kerry was more driven by the anti-war stance that he assumed after returning from is distinguished military service.  These swiftboat allegations were actually in conflict with the facts in his actual military records which supported his version. The political pejorative "swiftboating" to describe an unfair or untrue political attack comes from this political attack. 

In the 2016 campaign, Trump embellished the delivery mechanism of the half-truth (in many cases no truth) and innuendo.  He didn’t wait to have these message delivered on his behalf by PACs.  He developed his on system for delivering them during his live presentations to his followers.  He simply prefaced these innuendo with phrases like 'People are saying' and 'I've been hearing' after which he would tell all manner of half/no truth statements.  He seemed to not be concern about getting his hands dirty.

Two weeks before the election, the Clinton campaign was blind-sided by communication from FBI Director James Comey to the RepublicanHouse  leadership about reopening the Clinton email case after new emails had been discovered in an evolving investigation into an ‘online sex with minors’ case of one Anthony Weiner.   Clinton’s double digit lead instantly shrank to low single digits.   

Whether intended or not, this Comey communication tanked her campaign was deliberately done or not is still a matter of debate.  .  If it was not deliberate, it was perfectly delivered at a critical time from which it could not recover and contained by coincident restatement of the Clinton email investigation and a mention of the political scourge of disgraced former Congressman Anthony Weiner. 

In parallel with these Clinton email revelations, the FBI was also investigating accusations that Trump had been compromised by the Russians and that was the reason they were helping to get him elected.  No mention of this ongoing investigation was ever made public until after the election.

Shortly after the election, Comey announced that nothing new had been found and the FBI would not be pursuing the investigation any further.  Why should they.  The mission was complete.

Foreign Interventions

During the campaign, there was considerable fretting about the possibility of the Russians actually trying to hack our election hardware and software apparatus.  Why would anyone bother with all this technical hassle when the US electorate is already so primed and vulnerable to external manipulation?  

The US electorate has been trained to knee-jerk react to all manner of whisper campaign and subtle innuendo.  These techniques have been used by campaigns for some time to significant positive advantage for their candidates.  A primary function of Political Action Committees is to conduct these dirty little campaigns so as to not smudge the hands of the actual candidate with this kind of behavior.  Unfortunately, this dynamic creates an opportunity for unwanted others to also participate.

Russia who clearly has an interested in affecting the outcomes of our elections was harvesting fuel to feed this mudslinging fest by progressively disclosing at very strategic times in the election process.  Apparently, they and all the rest of the world are onto the times in our election process when the most damage can be done (e.g. October surprise) and the targeted candidate is least able to ward off the attack.  

It is certainly easy enough to say shame on Russia for fueling our mudslinging process, but the mechanism used to ultimately disseminate these data into our political process were ones that we created and routinely use ourselves.  The Super PACs whose job it is to spread this type of trash had no qualms about taking the material in these hacked emails even though there was strong suspicion of Russian involvement.  

The Super PACs did not care that these materials were likely supplied by Russia for some advantage to Russia.  They were hungry for their red meat and took it without hesitation or any concern about the possible long term implications.  They were even visibly disappointed on October when WikiLeak's Assange failed to deliver a promised release of this information.  The Russian ploy would have been useless without them. 

But even more disturbing, is the creation of fake news by simple citizens of other countries who have no real interest in the political outcome.  Impoverished, unemployed youth in the places like Macedonia were generating Internet pay per click advertising money from interest they created with fake news stories.  They had no interest in the election results.  They just wanted to get paid.  They actually made fake stories about both Clinton and Trump, but they found that Clinton fake stories made more money because the Trump supporters were much more inclined to frenzy click.

BuzzFeed and the Guardian traced more than 100 fake news domain names to Veles, Macedonia.  Almost a quarter of Macedonians are currently unemployed and  word quickly spread when some of the local young people discovered how to make money creating fake news using among others. Online advertising services such as Google AdSense that allows websites to make money were exploited by these unemployed youths.

Their fake news posts were made to originate from other websites or content taken from mainstream media organizations inserted with invented details and are published on websites that look like NBC News, Fox News, the Huffington Post and others. with the only clue that it is fake being the URL that goes unnoticed by most making internet hits. One particular story describing these fake news sources was posted by NBC News. 

It is hard enough to just understand the issues and make good personal assessments of the candidates, but the process is further complicated by all the information that flooded people who want to fool us.

These stories though complete fabrications had considerable impact on the US presidential election particularly in the waning days of the election.

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2016 Election Lessons Learned:  The Electorate

2016 US Election Lessons Learned: The Electorate

Every democracy's foundation is a secure and effective process to collect the 'consent of the governed'.  In our democracy, this collection is in the form of votes cast in popular elections to select government officials who act by proxy in the government on behalf of those who elected them.  

Ideally, these elected officials are selected by the voting citizens based on a best judgment assessment that those selected are the ones most likely to accurately convey the voter's intent into the government institutions where important decisions are made to establish the rules of governance.  If a particular elected officials fails to perform this accurate conveyance of opinion to the satisfaction of the majority of their constituents, they can be voted out of office in the next election cycle.

This process seems straightforward enough in theory, but in actual practice across the many millions of citizens in this country, there are several issues that could conceivably upset the process of conveying majority intent into the governance of this country.  Certainly, there is a danger that these issues can be triggered inadvertently, but more recently, there is a much greater threat that these issues can be deliberately manipulated to slant the outcome of elections in a particular direction.  These issues have never been more apparent than during the 2016 presidential election.

At the top of this list of these election issues is the matter of the US electorate.  The most destructive thing for any democracy is an electorate that is not reasonably informed about current events that matter and sufficiently educated enough to understand the implications of these events. A democracy can only be effective if its electorate is engaged and informed.  That is not to say that everyone has to be experts, just reasonably and sufficiently informed. 

Poorly Educated

After winning for his third straight primary victory in the Nevada Republican caucuses in Feb 2016, Trump told supporters in Las Vegas "I love the poorly educated."  Was Trump in that moment moved by the disadvantage these poorly educated must experience every day to survive in our sophisticated, technical world?  Not likely given his undeniable narcissistic personality disorder.  It is much more likely that his love was based on how pliable the poorly educated voters were to his sloppy style of campaigning, and the ensuing realization that they were the only opportunity for his flailing campaign to actually succeed.

Many, perhaps even most, children in this country attend good schools and get good educations, but there are too many children who do not.  Their schools and the resources in those schools are substandard, and so is the education they receive.  They in turn grow up to be the poorly educated that Trump has come to love. 

It is incumbent on this nation to ensure that every citizen no matter their social status is properly educated.  Sadly, there is evidence that education in the United States can only be considered average when compared to the rest of the world ranking 14 out of the top 20 (top 20 Education Systems).  Teachers are the front line of this education endeavor, and across the country, they are increasingly expressing a general dissatisfaction with their leadership, salary cuts, and a lack of resources due to serious government budget shortfalls. 

Most if not all of these budget shortfalls are a direct result of tax cuts that have been put into place that largely benefit the very wealthy.  Government subsidies to wildly profitable corporations such as those in the collectives of Big AG and Big Oil can't be cut according many elected officials who receive large donations from them.  Military spending is at record highs, but for some obscure reason, the education of our future generation of voters can be can be seriously compromised.  Education is critical for our future generations if they are to be competitive in our increasingly technical world, and they also need to be properly educated to become good citizens who can actively and constructively engage in our democratic process.

If our children are not properly educated, their future is in jeopardy and our democracy is vulnerable to the darkness that comes from being ignorant and uninformed.  It appears that our country is guilty of becoming increasingly apathetic about educating our children even though the potential damage this apathy poses to our democracy is staggering.  Education issues should have a very high priority and receive the funding that it requires.  The future of our democracy depends on it.

Ill Informed

Technology makes us feel very well informed about what is going on around us, but the reality is sadly very different.  Many of us can tell you what a casual friend had for dinner yesterday from a picture they sent in a text message, but they can only draw a blank when ask to name a world leader.  Just ask Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson.  

Most people are not really as savvy as they would like to believe about the process of keeping themselves informed.  It requires great skill to maneuver through the mass of information that is available on the Internet sorting through all the trivial and unimportant and in some case downright false information to get to the real meaningful news.  This winnowing through the chaff is why we have traditionally had journalist working in our free press unencumbered to get us the correct information that we need to know. 

But there are indications that our free press needs to do a better job of keeping the electorate informed.  A number of issues have been observed as news services have transitioned from focus on serving the public to making huge profit margins.  This new focus makes them much more concerned about selling advertising for news programs than presenting a balanced perspective and thorough reporting of the things our citizens really need to know. Numerous issues exist such as poor coverage of important events with much more focus on the sensationalism that sells advertising.  These news reporting issues are reported in much greater detail at the Daily Source .

This sad commentary of the state of our 24/7 news networks is underscored by the fact that many (myself included) go to various comedians who have stepped up to fill this information void.  We are fortunate to have their commitment to distributing real news that needs to be reported but does not make the 24/7 coverage cut.  None of these show exist on the 24/7 news networks.

Semi-Engaged

Estimates show more than 58 percent of eligible voters went to the polls during the 2016 election.  The most logical reasons for the other 42% who did not vote is that voting was either too inconvenient for them or they just deliberately for some reason did not vote.  The matter of inconvenience will be discussed in greater detail below, but the matter of simply did not vote will be further dissected here.

The matter of not caring enough to vote falls into two major categories of why.  Clearly, there are some people so caught up in their personal life dramas that they simply do not care to vote, possibly are not even unaware that an election is ongoing, but others did not vote because they did not feel they had a clear enough understanding of the issues and candidates to be able to make correct voting choices.  

This lack of understanding is a symptom of our average, underfunded education system and news reporting that is more focused on sensationalism rather than important events foreign and domestic.  The process of voting is relatively simple, but casting a well thought out vote is not that easy.  If voters are sufficiently educated and reasonably informed, it is reasonable to assume they will want to be engaged in the process.  

Very Enraged

Above all else, one thing is crystal clear.  Our current electorate is very, very angry. 

One aspect of this rage is the righteous anger that is appropriate and deserved by the way that greed has beset our election process and government.  We are rightfully angry because the political agenda of the last several decades appears to have grossly favored the few who are rich over the many who are not.  We are angry because we have been told lies to solicit our voting support to elect leaders who do these favors for the rich but ignore our specific needs. We are angry because every recent election has been preceded by a shameless parade of candidates going to curry favor from one of the several billionaires who likes to have political pets to be their stooge.

The rich in this country are seriously being favored by the trends in government particularly in the last 30 years, and they are recently (i.e. since the Citizens United decision) very brazenly and openly trying to buy politicians and elections to have these trends to continue and perhaps even be extended.  The rest of us, Republican, Democrat, and Independent, are righteously angry about these things, and this righteous anger has generally forced the election away from the typical rational analysis of issues and facts into a much stronger emotional context.  It is reasonable to expect people to be angry about their government for legitimate reasons, and for our election process to be able to tolerate this type of strong emotional context generated by anger that is rationally based in reality. 

The real problems begin with the inclusion of much more nefarious types of anger.  This anger is not based on real world issues, but rather, this anger is stirred up by fringe groups who exist to promote their particular angry blend of racism, xenophobia, and religious intolerance.  It is not based in reality.  It is just pure hatred.  These fringe groups from the far right wanted to inject their particular flavor of anger into the already boiling mix hoping that it would simply, seamlessly blend in the mix without being noticed. Unfortunately for them, their irrational hate that exists at the basest levels humanity generates a much more powerful form of anger that is hard not to notice. 

This nefarious anger has been fueled in recent years by the ongoing war with terrorists who are disproportionately religiously aligned with Islam.  Additionally, racial tensions have been exacerbated by video recordings of unarmed blacks (men and children) being gunned down by police, and the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement that was created to not let these matters slip away from public attention.  These new racial injustices and the baseline racism that has simply never gone away have reignited decade’s old racial tensions.

Another very conspicuous focus of this nefarious anger is the fact that the current second term president of this country is a man of color who pulled the country back from the precipice of the 2008 Great Recession.  He has been able to be reasonably successful even in the face of near complete obstructionism from the party of ‘No’.  He has been demonized and the object of overwhelming criticism that have no real basis in reality.  Though most of his detractors would be quick to point out that they are not racist, they most certainly without a doubt are.

An emotional campaign has been forced to an even more dangerous place by this nefarious anger that has further clouded this election process and created tensions that have spilled out generally into our society.  An election process that had already been pushed from its typical rational analysis of issues and facts into a charged emotional context that quickly escalated through irrational to an hysterical frenzy.  This shift to this very volatile and dangerous environment created the perfect storm of the 2016 election.

Part two of this discussion The Campaign is located here.