So, How Did The First Debate Go?

Unless you were on some other planet, you know there was a presidential debate Monday, September 26.  Some predicted one hundred million people would watch or listen.  We won’t know for a little while whether that happened or not, but we know the debate pushed everything else off the top of the news.

 So, what happened?  Who won and why?  Everyone in the political world asks such questions in the aftermath of a presidential debate, so we’ll weigh in.

We prefer to evaluate this debate in terms of what each candidate needed to accomplish in the larger context of the race, now hurtling toward its November 8 finish. A clear narrative emerged in the pre-debate build-up about what both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump needed to do in that 90 minutes before that expected huge audience.  A consensus developed that Trump had to show himself “presidential,” making him attractive to white college educated suburbanites, especially women, and that Clinton had a more complex task – first, to build enthusiasm among those inclined by party, demography, or history to vote for her and, second to convince a small, but influential, swath of Republican-leaning voters skeptical of Trump that supporting her was acceptable.

Clinton. HRC’s effort to reach her base centered on economic proposals related to jobs and infrastructure and her rejection of Trump’s tax policies. Clinton reminded Bernie Sanders supporting millennials that she wants to take on income inequality and get the wealthy to pay more in taxes, a goal Trump has never embraced. His tax proposals, in fact, point in the other direction.  She attacked Trump’s proposed tax cut as “trickle down” economics, and accused him of trying to make things better for rich people, like Donald Trump. On social issues, Clinton also was willing to suggest that police shootings of young black men resulted, in some instances, from structural or institutionalized racism, a position clearly designed to appeal to young and minority voters who have been lukewarm about her. Trump did little to counteract these statements except to launch a harsh, broad brush characterization of life in black America that, for many at least, bears little connection to reality. Clinton generally seemed to have free reign in her efforts to appeal to elements of the Obama coalition that have been skeptical about her.

Clinton tried to carry out her second objective, convincing college educated white voters that their reservations about Trump are legitimate and justify a vote for the Democratic nominee, by highlighting Trump’s business practices and failings and by challenging him on his refusal to release his tax returns. Clinton pointed to an architect in the audience Trump allegedly stiffed on a golf clubhouse project to highlight the dark side of Trump’s business success.  She also made much of his business bankruptcies. The tax return point, especially that the IRS itself says an audit does not prevent Trump from releasing his returns, has been made over and over, but Clinton’s willingness to confront him with it before 100 million people may have had a more devastating effect than her television ads ever could.                        

               

Trump.  The question of Trump’s ability to appear “presidential” has been foremost on the minds of voters and pundits since his emergence last spring as the likely Republican nominee. His long line of controversial and sometimes insulting statements and behaviors needs no restatement here.  Early on, observers spot lighted the general election debates as a key place to look for whether Trump could reign in his natural proclivities and project a presidential image.

The question has always had verbal and nonverbal dimensions.  The verbal part related to whether Trump could handle policy nuance and detail, showing a grasp of issues a president must face and address with the nation. The nonverbal part concerned Trump’s demeanor.  Could he demonstrate the requisite calm that gives the country and the world confidence he would not do something irrational?  Relatedly, how would he behave on stage juxtaposed against the first female nominee of a major political party, especially given some of his more uncharitable statements about women in other contexts?

Trump’s debate performance does not seem to have achieved the objective of making him look “presidential.”  On the verbal front, his failure to present cogent answers on foreign policy and national security questions undermined any suggestion that he grasps the details of policy in those areas. Only the most partisan Trump supporter could argue that the last forty minutes or so of the debate represented anything except a meltdown for the business magnate. One veteran Republican strategist labeled his performance in that part of the debate “incoherent.”                              

Evaluating Trump nonverbally, of course, represents a highly subjective exercise.  Beauty rests in the eye of the beholder.  Some of Trump’s supporters, no doubt, found attractive the constant interruptions of his opponent and his extensive facial and hand gestures. Other observers viewed those aspects of his presentation as offensive and inappropriate.  The fact that the distinction can even get drawn, however, suggests Trump’s failure.  Trump needed to make sure no doubt existed as to whether he had behaved “presidentially.”  The fact that no consensus emerged means that the issue remains alive. That is not good news for Trump.

A fair, honest appraisal of Trump’s performance requires an acknowledgement that he connected on one issue.  Early in the debate, he put Clinton on the defensive on trade issues. Leaving aside the policy question of whether trade deals cost American jobs or otherwise damage the economy, trade deals like NAFTA are politically unpopular with large segments of the electorate and Trump took advantage of that.  The fact that he apparently found no other verbal or nonverbal nuggets suggests he did not achieve his overall objective.

One debate, like one football game, does not a season make.  Trump has two more chances and his running mate has one to change this picture. Clinton didn’t win the White House Monday, but she appears to have done little that would lose it.

Are we right?  Wrong? Somewhere in between?  Weigh in below.

Donald Trump: How We Got Here

How did Donald Trump win the Republican presidential nomination?  A combination of personal and political factors permitted his ascension. The personal relates to Trump’s unique status in the public consciousness. He began with universal name recognition because of his real estate career, his bestselling book, The Art of the Deal, and his time as a reality television show host. Everyone knew Donald Trump.

Beginnings  Politically, Trump took advantage of a fertile field of resentment plowed by years of Republican-generated anger aimed at particular groups and at unnerving social and economic developments. Name recognition, and his unrepentant spouting of positions and ideas that appealed to voters frustrated with those trends, quickly put Trump at the top of the GOP primary polls.

Trump laid the groundwork for his rise well before he started running by becoming birther-in-chief. He led the chorus challenging President Obama’s legitimacy, intimating that the President had been born in Kenya and, therefore, wasn’t constitutionally eligible to hold the office he won in 2008 by nine and a half million votes (and an electoral-college majority of 365-173).  Trump’s pursuit of the baseless birther claim gave him instant credibility among nativist voters who disliked Obama, first and foremost, because of his color.  This represented race baiting without directly going after the black electorate.

Primaries  Trump otherwise premised his candidacy on attacks on disfavored groups and on individuals who, for one reason or another, didn’t appeal to him. When he announced for President, he proposed building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border to keep out “rapists,” “drug traffickers,” and “criminals.” The wall idea, astounding in scope, ambition, and outrageousness, became Trump’s calling card. He even claimed he would make Mexico pay for it.  Before long, he targeted Muslims, proposing a ban on their entry into the United States, regardless of national origin.

Trump offered disparaging remarks about women’s looks, including one of his primary rivals, and made tasteless comments about a female news anchor and where she might be dripping blood.  He attacked U.S. Senator and 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain for having been shot down and captured in Vietnam. Political analysts assumed at least one of these statements transgressed political possibility and that Trump would fade. It didn’t happen.

Now that Trump has the nomination, previously hostile Republicans have coalesced around him because he’s the GOP standard bearer.  Many traditional, establishment Republicans have little use for Trump, but can’t bring themselves to support Democrat Hillary Clinton.  Those people may make Trump President, but they didn’t get him nominated.  The people who thrust Trump into his current role occupy a unique position in American politics and bear study because of the power they’ve shown to influence one of the major parties.

Trump Voters  The people who nominated Trump are overwhelmingly white, predominately male, resent changing demographics (which the Obama presidency brought home to them as nothing else could), and believe themselves left out of an economic landscape shifting under their feet. They feel betrayed by politicians they have reflexively supported for years.  As Thomas Frank’s brilliant book What’s the Matter with Kansas?  made so clear, corporate Republicans have long used the social grievances of the white working class in enticing them to vote against their economic interests in service of their bias against minorities and cultural change (think, gay marriage).  Now, the global, service-based, technology- dominated economy doesn’t produce the manufacturing jobs on which the white working class has long relied. Trump rallied these disaffected souls to his cause in the primaries and the corporate GOP donor class paid the price. Trump won by promising to undo the trade deals many blame for their economic woes and by saying he wouldn’t succumb to “political correctness,” code for dispensing with the demands of women and minority groups for greater sensitivity in public discourse and for greater inclusiveness in the national political and social calculus.  Trump would make it okay for angry white men to be crude again.

Make no mistake, race-based nativism lay at the center of Trump’s appeal in the primaries. His campaign aimed straight at disaffected white people who see the country’s economic and social situation as a zero sum game. If minority group members advance, whites lose.

Trump also capitalized on the low information level many Americans have about politics. Relying on conservative talk radio, FOX news, and internet-inspired conspiracy theories, many Trump supporters knew almost nothing of his extensive business failures, his hiring of illegal immigrants in his enterprises, or the falsehood of his claim to self-funding his campaign.  They cared little about the emptiness of his policy proposals.  It was enough that he promised to make America great again, bludgeon China into submission in trade talks, and restore manufacturing jobs.  The details didn’t matter.

In the general election, Trump will get the votes of those who supported him in the primaries and those of other Republicans who don’t like him much, but still see Democrats as the party of the “others” from whom they believe they must protect themselves and the country. Little likelihood exists of persuading members of either group to change their minds. They will prevail only if the larger group of Americans who don’t share their fears stay home.       

Have a different take or why Trump is where he is?  Let us hear from you.                          

Blacks Have Plenty to Lose with Donald Trump

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has asked African-Americans what they have to lose by voting for him instead of giving Hillary Clinton the overwhelming support Democratic nominees typically receive from black voters. Many in the pundit class believe Trump isn’t serious about courting blacks, but that he really seeks to convince suburban whites, especially women, he’s not a racist, making them more comfortable with voting for him.  The fact that Trump has made this so-called outreach to minority voters before virtually all white audiences lends credence to that conclusion.  Whatever Trump’s objective, we’d like to respond to his question because we believe the answer is “A lot!”

In the broadest sense, the way in which Trump frames the question raises the most troublesome risk to the black community of a Trump presidency. Trump “otherizes” blacks by failing to question the failures of past government and private sector polices that created the problems that afflict some African-Americans.  Trump has nothing to say about the role of past discrimination in jobs, employment, housing, and education in causing the maladies he now so readily lays at the feet of black Americans.  By spewing his parade of horribles (shootings, failing schools, high youth unemployment), without acknowledging the historical, discriminatory underpinnings of the problems, Trump allows the listener to conclude that blacks caused these problems themselves. Trump does nothing to promote the idea of shared responsibility in and among an enlightened, compassionate society whose members commit to working together to solve problems that affect the entire American family.

Trump’s question also reveals a disturbing ignorance about the nature of black America.  He fails to recognize it as diverse and complex, instead thinking and speaking of it as a monolithic community in which everyone has the same problems, flowing from some common sore, and in need of a savior who can cure all its ills. Beyond Trump’s ignorance of the nuance in the black American experience also lies a crass inhumanity that should sicken all Americans.  He revealed this with his tweet after the shooting death of NyKea Aldridge, the cousin of basketball star Dwyane Wade, in which he sought to use that tragedy to troll for black votes. Only his most myopic supporters should now fail to see his debilitating flaws.         

At a policy level, we see at least three major detriments to black political, economic, legal, and social progress resulting from a Trump presidency (there are more, but limits on time and space counsel leaving it at that for the moment). These three specific policy areas go to the heart of the agenda that has fueled the gains blacks have made in America during the last 75 or so years – legal protections though the courts, better job opportunities, and a fairer shake in the criminal justice system.  Trump’s policy proposals, skimpy and ambiguous as they are, could turn back the clock on that progress.

Legal Protections.  Trump has offered a list of prospective United States Supreme Court nominees that reads like a who’s who of conservative legal thinkers.  While we can’t know the racial attitudes of these prospective nominees, we do know that Trump advertises them as worthy heirs of the late Antonin Scalia. Scalia’s hostility to civil rights does not require repeating here; his comment at an oral argument about blacks and “slower schools” suffices to demonstrate his views. Then, there were his written opinions and votes in employment discrimination litigation, affirmative action cases, and on voting rights.  If Scalia represents Trump’s model for judicial nominees, leave us out right now. A Trump dominated Supreme Court could threaten roll back of many precious legal rights won through court fights and legislative battles.

The judiciary hardly constitutes the only legal danger zone for blacks in a Trump administration. Does anyone believe a Trump Justice Department would aggressively support civil rights enforcement?  While the Obama Justice Department has frequently sided with civil rights plaintiffs in discrimination and voting rights cases, Trump’s business history, which includes suits against him for race discrimination in housing, suggests his Justice Department would much more readily side with corporate and business interests.

Tax Policy.  Given Trump’s frequent missteps on the campaign trail, his actual policy proposals have received scant attention. That’s unfortunate,   because his August 8 speech in Detroit laid out tax ideas blacks interested in a robust federal response to the nation’s inner city problems should find troubling. Trump proposed tax cuts, most of which would benefit business and the wealthy, that would dramatically decrease federal revenue.  Many experts aren’t willing yet to say exactly how much he’d cost the federal treasury because Trump has given so few specifics.  His first plan might have increased the deficit by 10 billion dollars over a decade; the current plan would do less damage, but we don’t know how much yet.   Whatever one might conclude about the ability of his proposal to promote long-term economic growth, the short term increase in the federal deficit would make unlikely new programs that create inner city jobs.  As important, Trump’s tax policies would make more difficult following through on his pledge to improve infrastructure, thereby creating hundreds of thousands of construction jobs, many of which presumably would go to black workers.  Trump can promise to repair bridges and roads and build airports all he wants, but doing so requires money. With his tax cuts, Trump can’t fund those infrastructure improvements. We aren’t going to have a massive increase in infrastructure spending without sufficient federal tax revenue or lots of deficit-increasing borrowing that ultimately produces inflation and starves capital markets, limiting economic growth.

Criminal Justice.  Trump has taken to attacking Hillary Clinton for her husband’s criminal justice program that everyone now admits resulted in over incarcerating black men. Both Clintons have acknowledged the unintended consequences of that legislation and Hillary Clinton herself began her campaign with a speech proposing changes. Trump’s current attacks on that issue make little sense in light of his acceptance speech casting himself as the “law and order” candidate. Again, Trump hasn’t been specific about what that means, but history indicates it’s unlikely to bode well for black relations with law enforcement. Trump’s rhetoric suggests he wants to give police more discretion in encounters with community members, not less, and that his “support” for law enforcement would likely translate into increased tension between police and the black community.  Blacks have every reason for wariness about Trump’s “law and order” plans, whatever they are.

We could go on, but we’ve made the point.  A Trump presidency will not benefit African-Americans. It’s likely, in fact, to do significant harm. Trump should stop asking the question about what blacks have to lose by voting for him. The answer does not help his cause. 

Do you agree with our answers?  Do you have different answers? Let us know!