On November 19th, Rudy Giuliani and other members of the Trump legal team held an extended press conference to discuss their claims of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election. While this event will be remembered as the occasion where Giuliani’s hair dye dripped down the sides of his face, it was more notable for the bizarre claims made. We shouldn’t be surprised, because the press conference is consistent with the Republican “paranoid style” championed by Donald Trump.

Conspiracy Theories: For the last 70 years, there’s been a faction within the Republican Party that promotes conspiracy theories.  This began with the 1950 claim, by Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy, that Communists had infiltrated the State Department.  The assertions by the Trump legal team are part of this tradition.

Giuliani began his November 19th press conference with this claim: “There was a plan from a centralized place to execute these various acts of voter fraud…in a  number of states.”  Trump legal team member Sidney Powell elaborated: “What we are really dealing with here, and uncovering more by the day, is the massive influence of Communist money through Venezuela, Cuba, and likely China in the interference with our elections here in the United States.”  Powell described the mechanism for interference: “The Dominion voting systems, the Smartmatic technology software and the software that goes in other computerized voting systems here in as well, not just Dominion, were created in Venezuela at the direction of Hugo Chavez.”  She claimed the Dominion company has a relationship with George Soros, adding “There are ties of the Dominion leadership to the Clinton Foundation and to other known politicians in this country.”  Giuliani told reporters: “I would love to release all the information that I have… Except most of you wouldn’t cover it… The censorship that is going on in this country right now by big tech and by big media, is almost as dangerous as the election fraud that we’re revealing.”

This isn’t the only conspiracy that Republicans are concerned about.  On November 22nd, Republican Congressman Devin Nunes referred to former President Barack Obama as President-elect Joe Biden’s “overlord,” calling for a special counsel to take over the investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe. (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8975595/Rep-Devin-Nunes-claims-Barack-Obama-Joe-Bidens-overlord.html )

Conspiracies swirl around Donald Trump.  At various times, Trump has tweeted conspiracy theories about the Coronavirus: it was a Chinese bio-weapon; the U.S. numbers are overstated — the pandemic is not as serious as health authorities say it is; etc.  He has also tweeted conspiracy theories about Barack Obama and Joe Biden: they illegally spied on his campaign; Biden is semi-senile and only appears normal because of his use of performance-enhancing drugs; etc.  Recently, Trump’s most venomous theory is that use of mail-in ballots leads to widespread voter fraud. (https://www.vox.com/recode/21546119/trump-conspiracy-theories-election-2020-coronavirus-voting-vote-by-mail )

Many Trump supporters subscribe to the QAnon conspiracy theory (https://www.nytimes.com/article/what-is-qanon.html .  According to the New York Times: “QAnon is the umbrella term for a sprawling set of internet conspiracy theories that allege, falsely, that the world is run by a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles who are plotting against Mr. Trump while operating a global child sex-trafficking ring.  QAnon followers believe that this clique includes top Democrats including Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and George Soros, as well as a number of entertainers and Hollywood celebrities…”  (Trump refuses to disavow this group.)

Trumpism: Some political observers have dismissed Trump as a performer, observing that he has no deep political beliefs; that he is guided by the maxim: “do whatever it takes to win.”  Another way to view Trump is as an “extreme” Republican; that he represents long-standing Republican tendencies taken to the extreme.  For example, “isolationism:” since before World War Ii, the Republican Party has been the “isolationist” Party; Trump has taken this tendency and promoted objectives such as the U.S. leaving NATO.  As another example, since passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and the political realignment, the Republican party has been the “White folks” Party.  Trump has played to this and been the most overtly racist President in modern times.

Most relevant to the present moment is the fact that, since 1950, the Republican Party has been the conspiracy Party; there has always been an element within the GOP that believed “socialist hordes are at the gates,” and promoted stories about “the Communist menace.”  Once again, Trump has taken this to an extreme.  Not by emphasizing Russian communists but rather by demonizing Chinese communists and fomenting a conspiracy theory linking communists/socialists, AntiFa, leaders of Black Lives Matter, and violence in American cities.

Donald Trump has championed paranoia.  He’s distributed paranoia through his public statements and the conservative media silo.

The Paranoid Style:  The Republican tendency to engage in conspiracy theories was analyzed in a classic 1964 political essay, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” (https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics/ ) written by historian Richard Hofstadter.  “There is a style of mind that is far from new and that is not necessarily right-wing. I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind.”  Hofstadter linked the paranoid style to Joseph McCarthy and Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater,  Hofstadter described three aspects:

First, there has been the now-familiar sustained conspiracy, running over more than a generation, and reaching its climax in Roosevelt’s New Deal, to undermine free capitalism, to bring the economy under the direction of the federal government, and to pave the way for socialism or communism…The second contention is that top government officialdom has been so infiltrated by Communists that American policy, at least since the days leading up to Pearl Harbor, has been dominated by men who were shrewdly and consistently selling out American national interests.  Finally, the country is infused with a network of Communist agents…so that the whole apparatus of education, religion, the press, and the mass media is engaged in a common effort to paralyze the resistance of loyal Americans.

Summary: Considering Hofstadter’s words, It’s easy to see Donald Trump’s 2020 political campaign as a manifestation of the Republican paranoid style: Trump claimed the United States was under attack by socialists (and Antifa), the Democratic Party had been infiltrated by these socialists, and socialists had subverted the mainstream media — with “fake news.”

From this perspective, the fact that more than 73 million Americans voted for Trump is not surprising.  They did not necessarily vote for the man, they voted in support of the notion that the United State is under attack and Republicans can save it.  In 2020, Republican voters were motivated by paranoia.

At this writing, Joe Biden leads Donald Trump by 5.9 million popular votes and 74 electoral college votes. Nonetheless, the election was closer than many Democrats expected. There are several important lessons to be learned.

1.Trump had a strategy. And it almost worked.

Since his inauguration, Trump has been historically unpopular.  According to the 538 website (https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/ ), during his presidency, Trump’s approval ratings never got to 50 percent; he typically ranged between 41 and 44 percent.

Many political observers felt that, given his lack of popularity, Trump could not be reelected unless he made a concerted attempt to reach outside his base.  Trump made no attempt to do this.  He made no effort to “reach across the aisle” — to attempt to work with Democrats.  He seemed to revel in disparaging Democratic leaders, such as Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.

But Trump did have a strategy.  Part one was to increase the size of his base.  Trump started his re-election campaign on January 21, 2017.   Over the course of the next 3+ years, Republicans registered and mobilized 3 million new voters.  In 2016, the vote breakdown by Party was 36 percent Democratic, 33 percent Republican, and 31 percent Independent.  In 2020, the breakdown by Party was 37 percent Democratic, 35 percent Republican, and 28 percent Independent.  Republicans increased their Party registration by two percentage points and increased their voting loyalty by 5 percent (88 percent voted for Trump in 2016 versus 93 percent in 2020.)

Part two of Trump’s strategy was to suppress the Democratic vote.  Since Trump never expected to win the popular vote  — in 2016, Trump lost the popular vote by 2.9 million votes — he focused his efforts on suppression in key swing states: Florida, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.  Republicans unleashed their typical dirty tricks: savage voter purges, new “voter identification” requirements, changing polling places, etcetera.

At Trump’s direction, Republicans attacked voting by mail-in ballots as “fraud.”  A New York Times article by Jim Rutenberg and Nick Corassniti (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/15/us/politics/trump-voter-fraud-claims.html? ) details the years long effort to build this nefarious case: “From the start, the president saw mail-in ballots as a political threat that would appeal more to Democrats than to his followers. And so he and his allies sought to block moves to make absentee voting easier and to slow the content of mail-in ballots.  This allowed Mr. Trump to do two things: claim an early victory on election night and paint ballots that were counted later for his opponent as fraudulent.”

Part three of Trump’s strategy was to drive down Joe Biden’s favorability ratings.  Just as he had done with Hillary Clinton, Trump tried to paint Biden as dishonest — as illegally benefitting from Hunter Biden’s business activities.  When this didn’t work, Trump switched to attacking Biden as senile — too old to be running for President.  None of this worked — Biden’s favorability actually increased over the last few months before election day.  Nonetheless, in certain parts of the country, more general attacks on Democrats did resonate.  (For example, accusations that Dems wanted to “defund the police.”)

Part four of Trump’s strategy was to monopolize the Republican information silos: Fox News, Rush Limbaugh radio, and conservative social media pages.  This worked.  Voters who only listened to these silos acquired a warped perspective on Donald Trump; for example, they thought he had done a good job managing the the Coronavirus pandemic.

2.Trump increased his popular vote.  In 2016 Donald Trump got 62,985,106 votes.  At this writing, in 2020 Trump has 73,703,919. 

Trump overwhelmingly carried non-college-educated white voters (67 percent).  The New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/16/us/politics/election-turnout.html ) observed: “Statistically, whether or not American voters had college degrees was by far the most significant predictor of where the 2020 tide of additional turnout was highest, and who won it. This metric is a stand-in for socioeconomic status — closely following patterns of higher income. Thus it could also be an indicator of cultural security, comfort and enfranchisement. There was a stark schism in the white vote apparent along this fault line: Populist areas, highlighted by concentrations of white voters without a college degree, moved toward Mr. Trump. White areas with better-educated populations, whether cities, suburbs or college towns, moved decisively away.”

There’s a rabid Donald Trump voter, who supported him and the other Republicans on the 2020 ballot.  These voters  made a big difference in contested Senate and House races.  It remains to be seen whether these Trump devotees will show up when Donald Trump is not on the ballot.  They didn’t in 2018.  (In 2020, in four California swing congressional districts — CA 21, 25, 38, and 48 — the Democratic incumbent would have prevailed if Republicans had voted at 2016 levels; in 2020, Republicans significantly increased their vote and as a result recaptured two of these seats, with the other two undecided.)

3. Money isn’t everything.  Democrats were eager to take control of the Senate and poured millions of dollars into Senate races.  They didn’t have much to show for this.  For example, in Kentucky, Democratic challenger Amy McGrath raised $90 million versus Republican incumbent Mitch McConnell’s $51 million.  Nonetheless, McConnell won by 400k votes (57.8 percent to 38.2 percent).

The most glaring failure was in Maine where Dems were convinced they would replace Republican incumbent Susan Collins with Democrat Sara Gideon.  Gideon raised $69.5 million versus $24.2 million for Collins.  Nonetheless, Collins won by 72k votes (51.1 percent versus 42.2 percent.)  The New York Times did an analysis of this race (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/17/us/maine-susan-collins.html) and concluded: “[Maine] voters thought the reasons [for Collins victory] were clear: The Gideon campaign, they said, was too focused on national politics. It was too negative, they complained. And it cost too much money, too much of it from outside the state.”

What we can learn from this is that for any particular political contest it’s not sufficient to have more money.  Democrats can only be assured of a victory when they have a better organization.  Ultimately, that’s why Biden prevailed over Trump.  (and that’s why, in Arizona, Mark Kelly defeated Martha McSally.)

That’s a cautionary tale for the contested Georgia Senate races.  Democrats will win if they have the better organization — of course, this costs money.

Summary: Whether we may feel about Donald Trump, he is a force in contemporary politics.  Democrats should be very wary of rabid Trump voters.

We’ve had more than a week to consider the election results and several things jump out:

1.It was a big win: The Biden-Harris campaign brought out a huge vote.  538’s Nate Silver estimates: “Extrapolating out from current vote totals, I project Biden winning the popular vote by 4.3 percentage points and getting 81.8 million votes to President Trump’s 74.9 million, with a turnout of around 160 million.”  To put this in perspective, no previous candidate has ever garnered more than 70 million votes.  (Biden’s win was the largest popular vote margin since Barack Obama defeated John McCain in 2009.)

Biden flipped the 2016 results and garnered 306 electoral votes.  This included the key Democratic objective of carrying the mid-West “blue Wall” states (Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) along with Arizona and Georgia..

Trump joined the infamous “one-term” President club, alongside Herbert Hoover, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush.

2. Trump got a lot of votes: Biden brought out his voters.  But so did Trump.  In 2020, Trump got 12 million more votes than he did in 2016.  This turned the tide in several states.  For example, in 2016, Trump won Texas with 4.6 million votes; in 2020, Biden got 5.2 million Texas votes, but Trump prevailed because he increased his vote total to 5.8 million.

How did Trump increase his vote count?  Two explanations: First, in the last two weeks of the competition, Trump developed a compelling message.”Biden wants to shut down the economy, I want to open it up.” New York Times exit polls indicated that a significant percentage of Trump voters decided to vote for him in the last couple of weeks. The most important issue for Trump voters was the economy.  Exit polls indicated that Trump supporters strongly supported this position: “Rebuilding the economy now, even if it hurts efforts to contain the coronavirus.”  (Versus the position that Dems supported: “Containing the coronavirus now, even if it hurts the economy.’)

The second explanation: Republicans registered and mobilized 3 million new voters.  In 2016, the vote breakdown by Party was 36 percent Democratic, 33 percent Republican, and 31 percent Independent.  In 2020, the breakdown by Party was 37 percent Democratic, 35 percent Republican, and 28 percent Independent.  Republicans increased their voters by two percentage points and increased their voting loyalty by 5 percent (88 percent voted for Trump in 2016 versus 93 percent in 2020.)

The fact of 3 million newly registered Republican voters accounts for some of the election poll errors.  That is, the Trump voters who didn’t show up in the polls weren’t “shy” they were too new to show up in the polling data bases.  (In addition, pollsters probably underestimated the enthusiasm of Trump likely voters.)  In the New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/12/us/politics/election-polls-trump-biden.html?referringSource=articleShare ) David Leonhardt suggests another reason for the poll errors: “The most likely explanation remains an unwillingness among some Republican voters to answer surveys. This problem may have become more acute during Mr. Trump’s presidency, because he frequently told his supporters not to trust the media.”

3. The Coronavirus pandemic was a wedge issue.  Out here on the Left Coast, we thought that Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic would finish him off — lead to a ‘blue wave.”  It didn’t turn out that way; “Machiavelli Trump” managed to use the pandemic to further his objectives: first, he ignored the health issues and mounted a ferocious voter registration and get-out-the-vote effort.  (Democrats, sensibly, didn’t do this — for example, in most states, Dems didn’t go door-to-door as they usually do.) On election day, massive numbers of Trump supporters showed up, in person, at polling locations.  Democrats saved the day by virtual canvassing and generating 80 million votes, many of which were mail-in ballots.

The second way that Trump responded to the pandemic was to promote a false coronavirus narrative. During the last two weeks of the campaign, Trump’s core message was: “The Coronavirus pandemic is not serious enough to justify shutting down the economy.”  Of course, Trump had contracted COVID-19, been hospitalized, and recovered.  Trump flew around the U.S. with the message, “The Coronavirus is no big deal; see, I’ve recovered.”  (Trump’s implied message was that he was a real man, who confronted the Coronavirus without a mask; in contrast, Biden was a wimp.)

Trump’s closing theme held his base.  The most important issue for Trump voters was the economy (57 percent); in contrast, the most important issue for Biden voters was ‘Racial inequality” followed closely by “the coronavirus pandemic.”   Not surprisingly, Trump voters believed that Trump “would better handle the coronavirus pandemic” compared to Biden.

Most Trump voters believed the “U.S. efforts to contain the coronavirus pandemic” were going “very well” or “somewhat well.”  (Biden voters believed the opposite.)  Most Trump voters reported that the pandemic had caused them “a moderate financial hardship” or “no financial hardship at all.”  (Again, Biden voters reported the opposite.)  Most Trump voters consider wearing a mask “a personal choice” rather than a “public health responsibility.”

Regarding the coronavirus pandemic: there’s a chasm between Trump voters and Biden supporters.  This will likely have lasting consequences.

Trump’s closing message — “The Coronavirus pandemic is not serious enough to justify shutting down the economy” — was criminally irresponsible.  Trump flew around the country and hosted “super spreader” events.  He mobilized his base at the price of their health and safety.  Trump’s actions yielded short term results — his base turned out — but, in the long term, this will hurt the economy and the nation.  We are adding 135,000 new Coronavirus cases per day and are on track to add 5 million new cases by the end of 2020.

Trump waged a “scorched earth” campaign.  He placed his own interests above those of the American people, but his supporters did not see this.

Bottom line: Considering the circumstances, the Biden-Harris campaign did a remarkable job getting their voters to turn out.  Donald Trump plumbed new depths of immorality.  It’s very sobering to consider that more than 70 million Americans voted for Trump.

Joe Biden has pledged to be President for all Americans, regardless of who they voted for.  Godspeed, Joe.

The evening of November 3rd had a rocky start; it initially appeared that 2020 was to be a reprise of 2016 — that Donald Trump would, once again, defy the odds and steal the presidency.  Then the tide turned, Biden won Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan.  By Friday we learned that Biden had probably won Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and Pennsylvania.  On Saturday, the Biden-Harris ticket prevailed.  But not by the margins Dems had hoped for.

The good news is that Democrats secured the presidency.  The bad news is that the election was much closer than expected and has emphasized that we are a deeply divided nation.  Here are preliminary answers to key questions:

1.Why was the race so close?  On November 2nd, presidential election polls showed Biden with a 5 to 9 percentage point advantage.  At the moment it appears that Biden will win by 3 to 4 points.  Many folks will blame pollsters.  I think there’s a simpler explanation: Trump finished strong and mobilized his base.

There were two presidential debates: September 29 and October 22.  At the first debate, Trump engaged in his very worst behavior and was widely panned — Biden’s poll average crept up to 10 percent.  At the second debate, Trump was more conventional and Biden’s advantage diminished.

More important, at the second debate, Trump established his closing theme: “Biden wants to shut down the economy, I want to open it up.”  Trump’s core message was: “The Coronavirus pandemic is not serious enough to justify shutting down the economy.”  Of course, Trump had contracted COVID-19, been hospitalized, and recovered.  In the final two weeks of the campaign, he flew around the U.S. with the message, “The Coronavirus is no big deal; see, I’ve recovered.”  (Trump’s implied message was that he was a real man, who confronted the Coronavirus without a mask; in contrast, Biden was a wimp.)

Trump’s closing theme held his base.  (New York Times exit polls indicated that a significant percentage of Trump voters decided to vote for him in the last couple of weeks.)  The most important issue for Trump voters was the economy.  Exit polls indicated that Trump supporters strongly supported this position: “Rebuilding the economy now, even if it hurts efforts to contain the coronavirus.”  (Versus the position that Dems supported: “Containing the coronavirus now, even if it hurts the economy.’)

Iowa is a good example of Trump rallying his base at the last minute.  Dems had assumed that Iowa was a tossup state and on October 22, the poll average showed Biden with a slight lead.  The situation changed.  An October 31st, Des Moines Register Poll (https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/iowa-poll/2020/10/31/election-2020-iowa-poll-president-donald-trump-leads-joe-biden/6061937002/) showed that iowa had swung to Trump by 7 points  — Trump won Iowa by 8 points.  Iowa Trump voters were more concerned about the economy than they were the pandemic.

Trump’s closing message — “The Coronavirus pandemic is not serious enough to justify shutting down the economy” — was criminally irresponsible.  (No surprise.)  Trump flew around the country and hosted “super spreader” events.  He mobilized his base at the price of their health and safety.  Trump’s actions yielded short term results — his base turned out — but, in the long term, this will hurt Republicans.  And the nation: we are adding 101,000 new Coronavirus cases per day and are on track to add 5 million new cases by the end of 2020.

2. Collateral Damage: Because Biden did not trigger a wave election, the red-blue division remains. It appears that Dems did not retake the Senate.  The Senate seats Democrats won or retained were in the states that Biden won.  At this writing, Democrats have gained one seat, leaving the count at 48-48 — with two of the remaining seats leaning Republican and the other two (in Georgia) to be decided by Georgia special election on January 5th.

Democrats lost approximately 8 House seats but will still have the majority.  The Cook Report observed: “[House] Democrats suffered a catastrophic erosion in Hispanic support.  The races where Republicans most vastly outperformed everyone’s priors were heavily Hispanic districts that swung enormously to Trump. These include both GOP pickups in Miami (Carlos Gimenez in FL-26 and Maria Elvira Salazar in FL-27) as well as Republican Tony Gonzales’s hold of Rep. Will Hurd’s open TX-23. Amazingly, Republicans didn’t lose a single seat in Texas.”

However, a long Politico ( https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/06/why-biden-lost-the-latino-vote-florida-texas-434735) article indicates that the Latino story is more complicated.  Dems lost Hispanic votes in some states and gained them in others.  (Biden carried 66 percent of the Latino vote; the same percentage Clinton carried.)

In 2020, Trump carried 57 percent of White voters. (55 percent of White women.)  In 2016, Trump carried 57 percent of White voters.  (52 percent of White women.)  However, in 2020 White voters were only 65 percent of the vote; in 2016 they were 71 percent of the vote.

Trump held White voters.  Biden won because he turned out the “non White” vote.

3. Recriminations: Biden ran a more disciplined campaign than Clinton did and, as a result, reestablished the Democratic “blue wall” in the midwest.  As a consequence, Biden won the popular vote and the electoral vote.  Biden got 10 million more votes than Clinton; he increased her popular vote differential by 3 percent.  (Clinton carried 89 percent of Democrats and lost Independents to Trump 42 percent to 46 percent; Biden carried 94 percent of Democrats and won Independents 54 percent to 40 percent.)

Nonetheless, there are Democrats grousing about the Biden campaign — because it did not produce a Blue wave.  There were suggestions that a different candidate or a different strategy would have produced the desired repudiation of Trump/Trumpism.  I don’t agree with this perspective.  The Democratic presidential competition was very competitive and complicated; Biden emerged from the scrum as the elected candidate.  (The oldest candidate.)  In Biden’s long life, he has overcome many, many obstacles.  Now he is the presumptive 46th President.

Biden is a good man.  An honest man.  A candidate whose stated objective is to heal the nation.  We’re fortunate to have him be the 46th President.

4. Summary: On January 20, 2021, Donald Trump will leave the White House.  That’s a big deal.

Over the past four years, Trump and his Republican stooges have done a huge amount of damage.  Democrats want to enact major legislation that repairs this damage; for example, an expansion of healthcare.  As another example, Democrats want to pass a $15 minimum wage and an equitable tax system.  And voting rights. And on and on.

We have much more work to do.  One step at a time.