New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait sent Democrats into a panic Monday by saying it’s time to panic. He yowled over tightening polls on the eve of the first presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
Yes, Democrats must not be complacent, but panic?
This was never going to be cakewalk. Only those who did not take seriously the power of polarization said it would be. Polarization means the Republicans could run a hamster against the Democrats and still post threatening polling numbers.
Polarization is the lens through which we should see the election. It is why #NeverTrump people — like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz — are rationalizing their way to supporting Trump. It is why the opinions of the Republican elites, many of whom have come out against Trump, are not having the same impact on the party’s base that they would have had 20 years ago. It is why split-ticket voting is a thing of the past. It is why evangelical Christians can support a serial philanderer who until recently supported a woman’s right to an abortion. It is why third parties, though popular with reporters writing stories about unpopular major party candidates, are mostly impotent.
Polarization is the reason the debates are going to be of little consequence. This is not to say they won’t have some impact on polling. They will. We can expect polls to fluctuate now, just as they did after the party conventions. But all things being equal, that impact should be short-lived — unless Trump’s performance reminded a very small slice of white suburban Republican women that he really, truly, really is repulsive.
But that too should be short-lived. Since the Republican National Convention, Trump has in the main acted “normal” or avoided aggressive press scrutiny. In laying low, he’s allowed the power of polarization to push his poll numbers up.
Compounding the effects of polarization is the media. It has been overly hard on Clinton, pushing her numbers down. It has been over-the-top permissive with Trump, the result of which is his poll numbers rising to a point where they would not be if any other GOP candidate lied as prodigiously as he does. The media’s double standard is why more people say they trust Trump over Clinton even though others in the media have empirically demonstrated that Trump lies every four minutes.
But polarization may help Clinton in this regard. Even as the press fetishizes her missteps while paying glancing attention to Trump’s, polarization may be the force that mitigates the electoral impact of Clinton’s “dishonesty” on her campaign.
Headlines regularly remind us Clinton is “vulnerable” in terms of honesty, but the same polls show her being given high marks on virtually every other criteria. From this we can deduce that the very word “honesty” has been polarized in the minds of voters, especially Republicans, to mean a specific thing applied to a specific person. The reasons for this are complex but are related to the lingering effects of sexism (she has to be twice as good while he merely needs to be good enough) and 30 years of right-wing attacks on hers and her husband’s credibility.
Polarization is why we shouldn’t be too concerned about Clinton’s so-called “enthusiasm gap” with young voters and with African-American voters. “Enthusiasm” was a problem briefly for Obama in 2012 (CNN in July: “Is Obama taking black vote for granted?”), as it is for Clinton this year. But Obama’s support among youth and black voters bested expectations, in part because Obama was a black incumbent and because of polarization. Those voters would not choose Mitt Romney.
If anything, we are likely to see youth and black voter turnout to be at least as robust as Obama’s in 2012 for two reasons: Clinton’s immense turn-out-the-vote organization in key states (Trump has no equal counterpart), and the deep antipathy toward Trump by women and minorities. Polarization has been the prevailing political force since 2000, and it will intensify owing to Trump’s unprecedented power to polarize even some Republicans.
Polarization is why the so-called Obama coalition is holding — minorities, women, youth and white liberals. Those people are not drifting over to Trump’s side the way dispossessed Republicans have drifted to Clinton’s. In this regard, Clinton is outperforming Obama by expanding her base of power.
Chait is right in one regard. Democrats should be worried. They should always have been. No matter who the candidates, no matter how disqualifying Trump’s antics have been, it was always going to be close.
Even so, Democrats have a knack for breaking late. As of this writing, Clinton is ahead of Trump in polling averages by four points (47.7 to 43.7 percent). This time last year, Obama was ahead of Romney by 3.2 points (48 to 44.8 percent). The president went on to win by about 5 million popular votes.
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