Haunted by 2016

As we careen closer to Halloween and a fateful election day, I'm not the only one who is haunted by the specter of 2016. 

 I have the advantage--if you can call it that--of this blog, which was very active during the 2016 campaign.  My 199 posts speak of shock and outrage and disgust at the lying and vitriol of the Republican candidate's campaign--a figure who I soon began to call Homegrown Hitler, a dictator wannabe.  

But Hillary Clinton remained comfortably ahead in the polls, and it seemed inconceivable that she would lose against a so clearly unqualified, unfit and utterly vile opponent.  And there's plenty of other resemblances to this year's campaign.  There were warnings of the dangers he posed.  Towards the end of the campaign, amid big rally appearances by Barack and Michelle Obama and, yes, Bruce Springsteen, Hillary told voters, "I'm all that stands between you and the apocalypse."

Pollsters and their ilk began to offer percentages of probability on the outcome.  Hillary was touted as having a 90% chance of winning.  One site--was it the Huffington Post?--gave her a 100% probability.

I was so disgusted and disheartened by the tawdriness of the campaign and the media coverage of it that I began to post videos of various versions of the song, "On the Sunny Side of the Street,": everybody from Gale Storm to Willie Nelson with Tony Bennett, and Esperanda Spalding's performance of it at the Obama White House.

So I sang that song to myself as I walked to my polling place, encouraged by the actual sunny day, and I voted (as it turned out, for the last time in person on Election Day as I had for every election before it since 1972.)

That night I started out on my computer staring at the New York Times now infamous needle of probability.  The evening began with Hillary having more than an 80% chance of being elected President.  Then it began to slip away.  Suddenly it was at 50%.  Then it fell to the other side of the dial, never to return.

To call that night and the subsequent weeks traumatic is to suggest why I am still haunted (and as I mentioned in my Halloween origins post, haunted means to be inhabited by.  These days we say "lives rent free in my head", which does not quite evoke the same emotional weight.  Haunted says it better.)

So much is different in 2024, and yet so much is repeated.  The candidate I now refer to as Chaos is even more openly running for tyrant, even more obviously unhinged and vile, with no limit to the ugly pernicious lies.  His opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, is saying, though in different words, that this time she really is all that stands between us and the apocalypse, and with overwhelming evidence that this time it may be literally true.

Commentators may say that we're in the classic campaign mode of Republicans being overconfident and Democrats dizzy with worry.  Maybe so, but once traumatized, twice shy.  Haunted by 2016, we anxiously examine any evidence that we're for an even worse shock this time. 

 In conventional political terms, by every measure, there has never been a worse candidate than Chaos.  But the conventional wisdom is that the election is still up for grabs, and at the moment, I detect the sense of the New York Times, for instance, and other mainstream media outlets that Chaos is more likely to win.  It may be that after stories about the women's vote and abortion, the youth vote, the absolutely unprecedented flood of Republican former officeholders and even current officeholders continuing to come out for Kamala, their reporters have rediscovered working class discontent, now (perhaps) moving beyond white men.  Or they think they know something.

That impression is bolstered by the utter cowardice exhibited by the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times--and especially their billionaire owners--in preventing planned endorsements of Kamala Harris and suddenly deciding not to endorse for President (despite endorsing for other offices.)

 Think about the ignominy of this.  Who in this world risks less in speaking their minds than multi-billionaires?  There are Republican politicians who have seriously risked their careers by endorsing Harris.  There are women who have risked retribution by telling their stories of the deadly effects of abortion bans, and publicly endorsed Harris.  Yet these billionaires who fear that regulation, taxes, investigations might cut into their profits when they already have obscene amounts of money, don't want to offend Chaos more than they have. They dishonor the traditionally great newspapers they own in the bargain. But their cowardice also looks like an indicator that they believe Chaos has a good chance of winning. 

There are more conventional issues that could go against Harris. I've written before that in my lifetime the one economic phenomenon that most upsets voters has always been higher prices.  Grocery prices, housing, fast food prices-- there are going to be voters for whom this is paramount in voting against somebody that is associated with somebody they think is responsible.  Such issues link up with latent misogyny and overall resentment.  And it's true that a society that continues to operate with the very rich getter immeasurably richer and everyone else sliding down is going to face a reckoning sooner or later.  That this is precisely the wrong way to express it--that it will only make matters worse and further empower the very rich--is a true thought, but not a feeling.

At the Atlantic, Tom Nichols argues a variation on this: he writes that some of this resentment is so strong that anything that Chaos says that outrages those perceived as better off pleases them, and makes Chaos more attractive.  It's the old "owning the libs" refrain, but extended.  He loves Hitler?  He says he'll send armed soldiers after television personalities who criticize him?  That's taking it to them.  The more chaos that Chaos creates the better--that is, until prices go up 20% and recession hits, Social Security goes broke with a 30% cut in current benefits, all results of announced Chaos policies economists predict.  

Chaos pushes his extremist lies about immigrants, but Democrats only ignore these statements and their effects.  They talk about Chaos as a fascist.  But judging from his huge Madison Square Garden rally, right out of the Hitler playbook, there is a market for fascism.

They don't even need to be a majority.  We're forced to accept the reality that this election is going to be determined in a few swing states, and therefore by a minority.  The last Republican candidate for President to win the popular vote was GW Bush in 2004 (and he didn't win it in 2000.)  Hillary won the most total votes for President.  But it didn't matter.  (I should add that this year, there is some possibility that another state or two beyond the designated swing states could turn out to be surprising and decisive.)

Now most political analysts still feel Harris will win, but until recently, people like Nichols and Nate Silver haven't said out loud that they feel it will be Chaos.  So it's time to listen to somebody like Simon Rosenberg. 

 He's a numbers guy and veteran of nearly 40 years of Democratic campaigns.  He warns against the flood of specious Republican sponsored polls that are again trying to screw with expectations.  He says that a real pollster for the Republican party recently told him he sees the race shifting back to Harris.  Some analysts see evidence in recent polls of a late break towards Harris. Rosenberg also notes that Chaos got fewer votes than his opinion polls suggested he would in nearly all of his primaries--which means that this flood of Republican support for Harris has some political basis among Republican voters.  

Rosenberg touts the Democratic ground game, money for ads, Harris being seen as more likeable than Chaos, her drawing even on the economy, and the massive enthusiasm for the Harris campaign that has the potential of bringing in new voters and motivate them to vote.  That's in addition to the expected power of women voting especially on the abortion issue, as evidenced in virtually every actual election that's been held since the deep-sixing of Roe v. Wade freedoms.  He praises the Harris campaign as the most skillful and savvy in modern history (as do others.)  Harris held the largest Arizona rally in that state's history, and the latest in Atlanta was 23,000.

While the folks Nichols references are happy with unhinged Chaos, Rosenberg cites focus groups that show other voters are increasingly disturbed by Chaos rhetoric and behavior.  He believes--as the Harris campaign evidently believes--that this is a winning issue, especially with Republican voters who can no longer stomach Chaos.  (The Harris campaign is also hammering the issue of reproductive freedom, which I'll expand on in a later post.)

 To me Rosenberg is a little less persuasive in talking of the Harris campaign money advantage, especially for ads, because Hillary had a similar advantage, and there's a huge amount of dark money being spent on Chaos.  But undoubtedly the bulge of official contributions to Harris financed hiring staff for sophisticated voter outreach, organizing events in swing states that go way beyond the big rallies and so on. Getting out the vote is not necessarily going to show up in polls (although the latest national poll, by ABC, shows a Harris surge.)  But closing strong is the key to the Harris campaign strategy.

 Rosenberg is a persuasive and articulate voice--he even advises on how to survive the negative noise, and maybe even the haunting of 2016.  (Like don't dwell on it, as I've just done.) "Worry less, do more" is his closing mantra. In addition to his videos he has a campaign news site called the Hopium Chronicles, which I'm certainly going to be checking.  

I've voted by mail, and my vote has been confirmed and is on the books here in California.  I've contributed to the campaign.  All of my eligible family members in western PA are voting Kamala. I'm getting "President Harris" on repeat in my head. Despite my 2016 haunting, I'm daring to once again direct my feet to the sunny side of the street.