Thoughts on the US Election

This is going to be an unorganized rip through my thoughts on the US election.

Since the winner was a narcissist, I will begin with some ego-aggrandizement of my own. I predicted (not here, but on facebook) that Donald Trump would win the election, while losing the popular vote by over a million. The first thought is blatantly true (I had no idea he would win so much, though), while it appears the second thought may come true soon. Also, and this I felt essential, voter turnout was much, much lower than in 2012. Isn't it amusing to know Mitt Romney got more votes than Clinton?

Nonetheless, my thoughts are certainly with the protesters. It's hard to defend a man being elected in such a dubious way, and clearly the electoral college needs to be abolished. Get working on a constitutional amendment, now.

My other thought concerns the importance of messaging during an election. Here I will draw comparisons to the last two elections I voted in: Canada's last October, and Alberta's in April, 2015. I really think Hillary Clinton suffered for lack of a message; when during her concession speech, she said, "this was never about me," I had to laugh. Your election slogan was "I'm with her!" and beyond that, she had no ideas about the shape of things to come, just that she had more experience than Trump (which isn't hard. Arguably, so do I - at least I was in an actual military).

Experience can be good or bad. In Clinton's case, unfortunately, her experience resonated with Americans as being of the negative sort. It is ok to be sceptical of "experience" being a primary factor in hiring a politician anyway. While Americans wondered just who she owed debts to, I think historically to the disastrous governments of Lloyd George after WW1 and Winston Churchill in the 1950s. Experience isn't everything. Canada has enjoyed a relatively successful history of experienced leadership. If a Prime Minister served longer than two terms in office, they seem to do a good enough job to earn a place on our money.

Two-terms (8-9 years) seems to be a big barrier, especially to Conservatives, to break. Borden needed to leave office, having nearly destroyed the country (and conveniently fallen in with the British establishment). Mulroney resigned as the most unpopular Prime Minister ever, and last year, Stephen Harper went down to colossal defeat. With his cabinet members abandoning ship, Harper still charged into the election believing his experience alone would vanquish his rivals.

When the Liberals swept Atlantic Canada, I was surprised only that the NDP didn't win a seat. Having family from there, and keeping track of their affairs, it did not shock me that they universally rejected a party that patronised and insulted them. My neighbours here in Alberta, on the other hand, wondered just how dumb they could be. I hear echoes of this discourse in the aftermath of the American election.

Harper's record, outside of Alberta and Saskatchewan was pretty shit, and he should have known it. Those two provinces, insulated by oil economies, survived Harper's time as PM as the only two which enjoyed any real growth. His stewardship of the rest of the country was undeniably worse. British Columbia saw it's average annual income drop year after year. Economic decline in the rest of Canada was concealed by blowing up the housing market to titanic proportions. Now the country is worse off than the USA in 2007-2008, and the new Prime Minister is doing a great deal to try and diffuse it. So, campaigning on experience when most of the country hates you we must admit is a poor formula. That the Clinton and Harper campaigns couldn't believe the facts must point to a great amount of conceit in both groups.

As a last word on messaging, I would like to compare the "surprise" NDP government of Alberta to that of the perennial heirs-apparent, the Wild Rose Party. Notley's victory in April 2015 is, depending on your point of view, intensely correlated to the fact that she had a positive message that resonated with the province. The late Mr. Prentice was eternally trying to remove his foot from his mouth, and most importantly, the Wild Rose Party, didn't have a message for Albertans. Who can forget the debate, when Brian Jean successfully imitated a medieval monk with his mantra of "no new taxes." The NDP won because in April 2015, they appeared to be the only option.

So Donald Trump won, too. He acknowledged there was a problem in the way the USA was doing things. The people who had suffered from decades of de-industrialization and mergers and downsizing who spoke up and handed him power. This possibility was always present; it was the failure of the Democrats, and pollsters, and media, that they ignored the data they did not welcome.

Will they learn from this? Not by the looks of it.

Thanks for reading.