Defying the Odds Read online

  Defying the Odds

  Defying the Odds

  The 2016 Elections and American Politics

  James W. Ceaser, Andrew E. Busch, and John J. Pitney Jr.

  ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

  Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

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  Copyright 2017 by Rowman & Littlefield

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Ceaser, James W., author. | Busch, Andrew, author. | Pitney, John J., Jr., 1955– author.

  Title: Defying the odds : the 2016 elections and American politics / James W. Ceaser, Andrew E. Busch, and John J. Pitney Jr.

  Description: Lanham, Maryland : Rowman & Littlefield, [2017] | Includes index.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017003382 (print) | LCCN 2017005702 (ebook) | ISBN 9781442273467 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781442273474 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781442273481 (electronic)

  Subjects: LCSH: Presidents—United States—Election—2016. | Political culture—United States. | United States—Politics and government—2009–

  Classification: LCC JK526 2016 .C43 2017 (print) | LCC JK526 2016 (ebook) | DDC 324.973/0932—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017003382

  The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library

  Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Contents

  Preface

  Acknowledgments

  1 Twenty-Four Years Later: 1992 and 2016

  2 From Little Rock to Chappaqua: The Democratic Nomination Contest

  3 Trumped: The Republican Nomination Contest

  4 Race to the Bottom: The General Election

  5 Red Down the Ballot: Congressional and State Elections

  6 Aftermath and Future

  About the Authors

  Preface

  Bitterness and joy, outrage and satisfaction, shame and pride, escapes to safe spaces and displays of celebration—these were just a few of the conflicting reactions that greeted the election of Donald Trump on November 8, 2016. Feelings in the aftermath ran so high, dividing families and testing friendships, that finding anything that both sides could agree on seemed a near impossibility.

  One point, however, lies beyond dispute: the selection of Donald Trump as the forty-fifth president of the United States was an event that defied all odds.

  Start with those who know the business of odds making: When Trump descended the escalator from his $100 million penthouse in June 2015 to announce his candidacy, the world’s premier political betting firm, Paddy Power, set his chances of becoming president at 100 to 1. As late as October 2016, he was listed as less than one in five. Paddy Power even began payoffs to preferred customers who bet for Hillary Clinton. In the end, the firm admitted to being “thumped by Trump,” leaving it “with the biggest political payout in the company’s history and some very, very expensive egg on our faces.”1

  Turn next to the political pundits, the experts in the study of campaigns: Analysts over the years have developed a catalog of critical assets that help explain success, but Donald Trump was deficient in almost all of them. Here is a partial list: (1) A record of public service. All previous presidents have either held elective office or served in a high administrative post. Donald Trump did neither. (2) A well-organized and professional personal campaign organization. Trump never had one—at least in comparison to his principal foes. He was woefully behind Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz in the nomination contest, and Mrs. Clinton in the final election campaign. (3) Money. True, Donald Trump had his personal wealth and spent some of it, though never as liberally as many expected. But he was outspent by rivals at the key points in the nomination campaign, and hugely so by Mrs. Clinton in the final election. (4) Endorsements of important political leaders. Trump had no more than a handful until near his nomination, and he struggled even afterward to round up support from many Republicans. (5) Favorable media coverage. Trump certainly managed to get his share of coverage (and then some), but the slant of articles from the major media sources, both television and print, was hostile. When it came to endorsements by newspapers, the number Trump received can practically be counted on one hand. (6) Backing of public intellectuals and opinion makers. There was scarcely a figure of major significance who backed Trump during the nomination contest. Many conservative writers refused to rally to him during the campaign.

  These critical assets were often arraigned in 2016 not just to be unsupportive but specifically to oppose Donald Trump. Trump was a candidate with a target on his back. Many in the donor class of the Republican Party sought at a late point in the nomination campaign to block his path to becoming the party’s standard bearer. Political figures in both parties singled him out as the one person uniquely unqualified to be president. And opponents in the Republican Party joined in a movement under the label of “Never Trump.” The antagonism was unprecedented.

  Pollsters, another important institutional player in presidential campaigns, also acted against him. The overwhelming view among analysts was that Hillary Clinton would be elected president. Greater prudence in their prognostications was no doubt warranted, as the average of the major polls showed that the race was frequently within or near the margin of polling error. Perhaps the analysts’ overconfidence was conditioned by the fact that, after the conventions, Mrs. Clinton was never behind. Whatever the explanation, the effect was to create an expectation that Trump would go down to defeat. His victory therefore appeared as a stunning upset. It reminded people of Harry Truman’s surprise victory over Governor Thomas Dewey in 1948, an event made famous by the photograph of a smiling Harry Truman holding up a newspaper with the headline “Dewey Defeats Truman.” Something reminiscent of this event played out on the television networks on election eve. Anchors began coverage with an all-going-as-expected tone, but it began to fade as the actual voting results came in. The disbelief and shock were palpable.

  If you happened to have fallen asleep at 8 p.m. in the East and awoke a few hours later, you might have thought yourself, in an accelerated version of Rip Van Winkle, in a different world. And perhaps you were.

  TRUMP’S VICTORY

  How was it that Donald Trump managed to defy these odds, improbably capturing the nomination of the Republican Party and then going on to win the presidency? There is obviously no single answer, and this book will set out the different reasons for his success at each stage. But there is one general explanation that stands out, and it is connected to the same set of reasons that lengthened the odds against Donald Trump. In a feat of political alchemy, Trump ran against the assets (or establishments) that normally contribute to success, and he turned these deficiencies into advantages. Stated differently, he was an outsider at a time when many Americans craved an outsider.

  Look again at some of the items on the list of assets. Trump made the fact that he had not held elected office a primary virtue. The politicians, as he c
alled them, did not know how to solve problems, and they were tainted by the need to solicit favors from others. In contrast, Trump offered himself as an entrepreneur who had built a great company. He showed that he could get things done. Trump also ran against the donor class and against Wall Street generally. Pledging to make his nomination campaign self-financing, he could be independent of the usual ties that bound candidates to the big interests. Trump was the people’s billionaire, offering unashamedly what the average American wanted, a Trump steak or a night at a casino, or showing the kind of luxury people could only yearn for, like a personal airplane. Donald Trump ran against the media, courting their disdain in order to build up his own support, and he challenged many of the higher-ups in the party, claiming that the party needed to be shaken up. Finally, Donald Trump did not need a large professional personal organization, because he developed a direct relation to the people. He was the spokesperson of a popular movement.

  There were others in the nomination races in 2016 who caught this spirit of outsiderism, whether by their personal situation (never having held office) or by their ideas (opposition to the media or to party elites), or both. There was Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, and Ted Cruz. Yet Trump was more entertaining and thoroughgoing, and he proved by the end to be the most popular in the group. And in the final election campaign against Mrs. Clinton, he had full title to this outsider argument and ran on this theme until the last day.

  This was the orientation or style, but what was the substance? Donald Trump in the final election reached out to “the forgotten,” the blue-collar Americans who had not kept up with the gains made by those living on the coasts. Here was the pivotal group that Trump picked up in the upper Midwest and Pennsylvania, enough to push him over the top. Take, for example, counties right in the heart of Wisconsin—Juneau, Adams, and Marquette—which Obama had carried in 2012, but which Trump captured this time; or in Michigan, Lake County in the west and Macomb County in the east, which Trump flipped; or in Michigan’s “thumb” or in western Pennsylvania, where he upped the percentage of those who supported him. In places like this, microcosms of the rest of America, Trump found his margin of victory.

  The reasons for the change were no doubt partly economic. This circumstance accounts for Trump’s pledge to build a wall along the southern border and his promise to level the playing field in trade negotiations. People, he argued, would be protected from the ravages of unfair job competition and the danger of unjust exchange. But the cultural element was just as important. Many in this group had seen their views pushed aside or ignored, as if they could be forgotten in the changes taking place in American politics. They were, in words that Mrs. Clinton would come to regret, in the “basket of deplorables,” the “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic— you name it.”2 Trump would be their spokesman.

  BY THE NUMBERS

  Each national election is, of course, unique—that is one of the things that makes them so interesting. But there is still much that can be learned from comparing a president’s election with those of his predecessors. Trump was elected by earning 56.9 percent of the Electoral College vote, ignoring here the faithless electors. Compared to the thirty preceding presidential contests since 1896—often counted as the beginning of modern presidential politics—Trump’s self-proclaimed electoral-vote “landslide” is an exaggeration (see table P.1).3 The size of presidential victories over the period have varied greatly, ranging from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s massive win in 1936 to George W. Bush’s squeaker in 2000, but Trump’s victory falls on the lower end of this spectrum, ranking twenty-sixth out of thirty-one.

  Many prefer to measure presidential elections by the nationally aggregated popular vote. Donald Trump fares similarly here, ranking twenty-eighth with 47.0 percent of the popular vote. Because of votes for third- and fourth-party candidates, many presidents have been chosen without receiving an outright majority of the ballots cast. The more notable point, however, is that Trump received fewer votes than Mrs. Clinton, placing him with George W. Bush in 2000 as the only presidents in the modern period to have won in this way. Both Mrs. Clinton and Donald Trump knew, of course, the system they were in, making it impossible afterward to proclaim that they were unjustly denied the presidency. But the question of whether this system will continue remains open.

  In comparing elections, it is most helpful to focus on “like” cases in which the structural circumstances are the same. The most important category is that Trump was running in an election following at least two terms in which the same party has held office and is running without an incumbent. This situation, often referred to as the sitting president’s “third term” election bid, has been a fairly common event in modern presidential politics, occurring ten times since 1896. The question in such elections is whether the sitting president can pass the baton to a successor, further confirming his vision for the country and cementing a legacy. Would-be successors often try to create some distance from the president, establishing themselves as their “own person,” but they are inevitably viewed as connected to the incumbent. Hillary Clinton chose to tie herself as closely to the incumbent as anyone in this group, rarely breaking with President Obama and relying on him and the First Lady to campaign regularly on her behalf. For his part, Obama went to great lengths to seal this bond, suggesting that not voting for Clinton would be “a personal insult, an insult to my legacy.”4 Here was truly a case in which, at least during the campaign, both the candidate and the president treated the election as a “third term” bid.

  A rule of thumb in American politics is that candidates seeking a “third term,” like Hillary Clinton, fare poorly. They have prevailed in just three instances. The reason usually offered is that, after eight years of one-party rule, the public is inclined to seek change. By this view, history was working against another Democratic victory in 2016. Yet the matter is not, in the end, so clear. A look at table P.2 shows just how narrow the victories of the repudiating candidates can sometimes be. The category contains three of the closest elections in American history: Kennedy’s win over Richard Nixon in 1960, George W. Bush’s over Al Gore in 2000, and now Donald Trump’s over Hillary Clinton. If there is a breeze blowing at the back of the change candidates, it is much milder than many assume.

  Finally, there is the question of Donald Trump’s relationship with Congress. He had an unusual reaction to other Republicans, having taken the nomination away from those who were much closer to them, and his positions were not fully in the mainstream. But after the election they were in it together, and Donald Trump had control over both houses of Congress. In fact, the Republican Party was at or near its high point, with fifty-two seats in the Senate and twenty-four in the House, as well as control of thirty-four governors, thirty-five state senates, and thirty-two state houses. Whether this remains the case is in the hands of this new leader.

  NOTES

  1. See http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3924156/Bookmakers-Paddy-Power-lose-4-5million-Donald-Trump-s-shock-win-paying-1million-punters-backed-Hillary-Clinton-election-over.htmlixzz4VBLkpFHj.

  2. See http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-10/hillary-calls-half-trump-supporters-racist-sexist-homophobic-basket-deplorables.

  3. While two of Donald Trump’s electors ultimately voted “faithlessly” on December 19 in the states’ Electoral College meetings, throughout this section we tally the electoral returns as if all electors followed their expected pledges. Five of Clinton’s pledged electors also voted faithlessly, although the bulk of those votes were part of an effort to defeat or undermine Donald Trump, not to defect from Mrs. Clinton. According to Kyle Cheney of Politico, 2016 had the largest number of faithless votes ever cast in a single presidential election; the previous record set in 1808, when five Democratic-Republican electors voted against James Madison. See Kyle Cheney, “Electoral College Sees Record-Breaking Defections,” Politico, December 19, 2016, http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/electoral-college-electors-232836 (last accessed Dec
ember 30, 2016).

  4. See http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/09/17/obama_i_will_consider_it_an_insult_to_my_legacy_if_you_do_not_vote_want_to_give_me_a_good_send_off_go_vote.html.

  Acknowledgments

  We would like to acknowledge the research assistance of Nicholas Jacobs at the University of Virginia and Ellen Lempres at Claremont McKenna College. We would also like to thank our friends Lloyd Green, who provided valuable research advice, and Steven E. Schier, who read the manuscript under serious time pressures and offered many useful suggestions and insights, not least on the role of demotic rhetoric in Trump’s ascent. We owe a debt to the staff at Rowman & Littlefield, especially Kate Powers and Patricia Stevenson, who supervised production, and the inestimable Jon Sisk, whose commitment to this project dates back to 1992. Finally, and not least, we thank our families for their patience, which has to be renewed quadrennially. In particular, we dedicate this work to Lisa, Mindy, and Blaire.

  Chapter One

  Twenty-Four Years Later

  1992 and 2016

  Election Day marked “the end of an Alice in Wonderland year in which American politics seemed to be turned upside down and inside out.”1 That description, which applies so well to the 2016 campaign, comes from the opening line of the first book in this series, Upside Down and Inside Out: The 1992 Elections and American Politics.

  Think of the 2016 election as the Coen Brothers’ version of the 1992 race. Joel and Ethan Coen have made wonderful films (Barton Fink, Hail Caesar) that take scraps of history and quilt them into radically new patterns. Like the earlier campaign, the 2016 contest included a Clinton (Hillary instead of Bill), a Bush (Jeb instead of George), and a fiery progressive outsider (Bernie Sanders instead of Jerry Brown). The winner was a Coen-esque mashup of three figures from 1992. Like Bill Clinton, Donald Trump had skirted Vietnam-era military service and enjoyed a louche personal life that enriched supermarket tabloids. Like independent candidate H. Ross Perot, he was a bombastic billionaire fond of trade protectionism and factless pronouncements. And like Pat Buchanan, who mounted a right-wing challenge to Bush in the 1992 GOP primaries, he indulged in nationalistic rhetoric that drew accusations of racism and anti-Semitism.