207. Wrong again. Despite the GOP’s fragmentation, Trump won—with James Comey’s considerable assistance. This likely saved Ryan’s job as Speaker. Left undetermined is how Trump’s populism melds with Ryan’s free-market ideology, and where the Tea Party fits in. The power struggle has just begun.
208. One of the curiosities of contemporary politics is the gap between progressive adoration of Warren and her private reputation as chilly and self-protective.
209. Aside from Tim Kaine, the finalist turned out to be Perez and another well-respected white guy who did not figure in the early speculation—Tom Vilsack.
210. A powerful senator close to Clinton told me that he had emphasized to her that controlling the Senate was the first priority, her preference in a running mate secondary. One suspects that this did Brown in.
211. Once chosen, he was steady and helpful. Singles count.
212. So far, so good.
213. For once, Trump followed advice—and appeared to hate it.
214. Mike Pence came from nowhere. Part of the reason no one thought of him was that he was running for reelection for governor of Indiana. What went unnoticed is that he was in danger of losing and looking for a way out.
215. Forget that. The trial emanating from the Bridgegate scandal killed off Christie’s chances. We can all look forward to Attorney General Rudy Giuliani.
216. Among journalists looking for entertainment, Gingrich was the sentimental favorite.
217. Corker, too, felt uneasy. After a brief audition, he removed himself from consideration.
218. The finalists turned out to be Pence, Christie, Gingrich, and Sessions.
219. One out of two ain’t bad, I’m tempted to insist—even though Clinton and Kaine lost. But as the number of pundits who picked Kaine could fill a stadium, I can’t take too much credit.
220. Until this point, some argued that Trump was an unorthodox but clever tactician who tailored his pitch to the primary electorate and who, nomination attained, would turn “presidential.” This imagined a level of self-control and self-discipline that is well beyond him.
221. This became an acute problem: by the measure of past presidential campaigns, Trump didn’t have an organization.
222. By August, the commentators who had raised this question in one way or another included David Brooks, Eugene Robinson, Robert Kagan, Joe Scarborough, and Peggy Noonan. In addition, a number of psychiatrists had defied professional norms by publicly discussing Trump’s mental state.
223. In due course, Trump shouldered Manafort aside in favor of advisers who tried to channel a more disciplined version of the original Trump. Another problem for Manafort was his profitable connection with a thuggish, pro-Russian former leader of the Ukraine.
224. In subsequent weeks, he raised a more respectable amount, primarily from his base voters. But he did virtually nothing to help the party—to the contrary, he wanted the party to carry his campaign.
225. After becoming one of CNN’s more controversial paid analysts, Lewandowski continued offering advice from the sidelines, knifing Manafort in the process.
226. In reality, none showed up.
227. Though he did not always speak, Trump appeared each night.
228. Despite this Cruz was allowed to speak—a mistake.
229. The party will still be sick—babbling with incoherence, perhaps—but not before it has passed contagion on to the rest of us. Because I thought that so obvious should Trump become president, I still underrated the degree of polarization and alienation that, for so many, made the normal standards for appraising a candidate irrelevant. I felt this particularly strongly when his sexual predation emerged. It was not until James Comey’s intrusion in late October that I thought Trump could win the electoral college even if he lost the popular vote. He did both.
230. It was a conceit among many Republicans of my acquaintance that Trump was a freakish “one-off”—a product of the celebrity culture with no antecedents who would leave no trace. Not only is this untrue, but it cloaks years of inattention and denial while absolving the party of its history—including with respect to race.
231. Trump’s amorality and manipulation, blatant in itself, was yet more evidence of something deeper.
232. In a curious sidelight one of those judges, who was previously unknown to me, officiated at my youngest daughter’s wedding in 2014. I subsequently learned that he had a long and distinguished record as a prosecutor and judge. Trump’s lawyer later apologized for filing these motions to disqualify.
233. Muslims were the targets for several of Trump’s most noxious lies.
234. The silence of most Republican officeholders as to these attacks speaks for itself—and to the pervasive sentiments within the party to which they were acquiescing.
235. Republican support was critical to the passage of the civil rights acts of the 1960s.
236. Over the last two decades, the GOP in California has grown increasingly moribund.
237. The GOP is not extinct yet. But they secured the White House by becoming the party of white people—a demographic divide exposed by the November election. This short-term victory is a shortcut to societal disaster.
238. Republican professionals were appalled by Trump’s failure to pursue the most obvious attack lines. But his obsession with petty personal grievances should have enlightened them long before.
239. By August, an impressive number of GOP foreign policy thinkers had turned against Trump, many endorsing Clinton.
240. In 2016, only in Nevada, which elected the first Latina senator.
241. Kirk lost. Even for an amateur, Trump’s ignorance of politicians and their world was always stunning—until one considered who he is.
242. By this time such delusions were wearing thin. Behind a teleprompter Trump was unhappy and unconvincing, often reverting to type.
243. In the end, enough college-educated Republicans came home for Trump to win.
244. This was the core article of faith he clung to after the supply-siders had largely rewritten his economic plan.
245. Trump’s victory now makes it likely the GOP will pass something like the Ryan budget—big on tax cuts for the wealthy, which, though the GOP won’t acknowledge this, will surely swell the deficit. But there are signs that Trump will sell out his blue-collar base. As one example, the right-wing House is not attached to infrastructure programs to create jobs. To secure one, Trump would have to make common cause with Democrats. We’ll see.
246. This was striking—as the country headed one way, the GOP headed another.
247. One of the campaign’s small dramas was Pence’s efforts to retain a scrap of dignity while serving as Trump’s apologist. Given Pence’s stature, this never rose to tragedy. He succeeded only in proving that he was small enough to be Trump’s vice president.
248. Mercifully, the convention passed without significant violence.
249. The amateur status of the campaign was evidenced by its belated explanation—Melania had junked a speech written by professionals in favor of one written by, well, an amateur.
250. Transparent as ever, Cruz was positioning himself for 2020, betting that Trump would lose decisively. He still may go after Trump on the grounds that he is a failed president. His pitch will be that, to win, the GOP must pick a true conservative. Guess who?
251. Pence operated as a standard-issue political hack, defending Trump while mouthing the usual right-wing attacks and platitudes. But his utter lack of distinction was obscured by Trump’s vulgarity.
252. In subsequent weeks, a montage of photos pairing Trump and Mussolini was widely circulated. Their similarity of expression and physiognomy was more than a little startling.
253. While some commentators underscored the darkness and dishonesty of the speech itself, many praised its political effectiveness without any real analysis of its contents. This was another example of the media’s indulgence of Trump, and the way in which he garnered benign coverage simply by read
ing from a teleprompter.
254. In the wake of the convention, these fears became more widespread among the electorate at large.
255. July marked Comey’s debut as a force in the 2016 election. Having absolved Clinton of criminal conduct, he made a remarkable—and highly unusual—public statement criticizing her handling of classified material. This allowed the GOP to complain that she should have been indicted while using Comey’s critique to keep the issue alive.
256. Among media observers, there was widespread bemusement about why Clinton did not simply take her lumps and move on, as best she could.
257. The convention was largely successful in advancing these goals, while reinforcing Clinton’s image as an experienced leader.
258. It turned out to be modest and transient, and was erased altogether by the Democratic convention.
259. The convention used this kind of humanizing detail to great effect.
260. One waited for an acknowledgment of these trials that never came—a grace note that, to many, seemed like the thing to do. But his speech was nonetheless effective.
261. One interesting aspect of the campaign was how Clinton and her advocates chose to frame the increasingly widespread perception that Trump was mentally unstable.
262. I was later told that Obama’s advisers excised several passages in which the president filleted Trump to withering effect. The reasoning was that Obama should save some of his best material for the fall. He did.
263. A terrible moment for Trump. But what stupefied is that he extended the damage for a week, belittling the Khans—Mrs. Khan in particular—while complaining that they had “viciously” attacked him.
264. One of the myths of the campaign was that Trump’s children proved what a great father he was. By most accounts, he was a distant and uninvolved parent who left child rearing to their mothers. And no one ever seemed to ask why these supposedly self-actualized adults worked for Trump instead of carving out separate careers.
265. This adeptly humanized one of Clinton’s acknowledged strengths—that she knows her brief.
266. This was one of her best lines, touching on questions of temperament which resonated throughout the campaign. Advertising along these lines soon followed—the Clinton brain trust was adept at pairing message with media.
267. One of the truly melancholy aspects of this election is that Barack Obama will be succeeded by Donald Trump. Knowing how that feels to so many of us we can sense, also, how it must feel to Obama. He and the First Lady brought eloquence, passion, and grace to supporting Hillary Clinton and, by extension, to their effort to engrave the accomplishments and spirit of his tenure on the years that followed. However one feels about their time in the White House, they are exceptional as people, and as models of behavior.
268. Sadly, Trump and the GOP have pledged to gut his legacy—including the Affordable Care Act, the Iran nuclear accord, the multinational agreement to combat climate change, and, effectively, the president’s efforts to promote tolerance and diversity. As a conspicuous example, Trump’s principal environmental advisor is a climate change contrarian.
269. Obama proved to be an aggressive and devastating surrogate, savoring each moment as he vouched for Clinton, rallied his coalition, and lanced Trump for every aspect of his disturbed and disturbing behavior. But the power of Michelle Obama on the stump was stunning—especially when speaking for women after Trump’s predation surfaced. Together they held back nothing.
270. According to polls, Trump’s negatives remained the highest recorded for any major party candidate in history—well over 60%. But in the campaign’s stunning final days, even that was not enough.
271. It was not until October, when Trump defended himself in a similar way against charges of sexual assault, that his defense of Ailes fully resonated. In the interim Fox had paid a handsome sum to settle a sexual harassment suit involving Ailes.
272. Or so I thought. Eleven days before the election, while investigating Weiner for sexting a fifteen-year-old girl, the FBI discovered that the disgraced Congressman’s computer contained emails between Clinton and Abedin. Though neither he nor anyone else in the FBI knew at the time what was in those emails, FBI Director James Comey wrote to Republican committee chairs in Congress that the FBI had new information potentially relevant to Clinton’s use of a private server. Comey was widely criticized for this introduction of a potentially game-changing discovery so close to the election, and his actions allowed Trump to crow about his prescience and display his grasp of modern history by claiming it to be the “biggest political scandal since Watergate.”
273. In October his lies about voter fraud reached a crescendo and then their unprecedented apotheosis—his refusal to commit to honoring the election results.
274. So, given all this, why didn’t Clinton win? Analysts will argue about this for years: It was a change election. It was the emails; the Clinton Foundation; unfair press coverage; twenty-five years of abuse from the right wing. She’s not a natural. She’s too cautious, or too moderate. James Comey cost her the election (which I tend to believe). But I also remember a preeminent Democrat strategist asking me last winter, “When will she get a message?” What he meant was a clear vision, clearly articulated, about how Clinton would improve our lives and our future. Many argue that one never really gelled—a serious failing in these restive times, when a majority of the electorate thought America was heading in the wrong direction.
275. It all seemed so logical—which, perhaps, was my analytic failure. I certainly persuaded myself.
276. It is still stunning to consider how completely Trump violated every paradigm for a successful candidate. Any one of his endless mistakes would, in any other candidate I can think of, be disastrous. One can imagine all the politicians whose careers were ruined by a single misstep watching him with envy and amazement. Everything bounced off him—including sex, lies, and videotape.
277. In the end, Trump survived because so many Americans in these polarized times disliked Clinton—fairly or not—and because, for an angry plurality, the importance of the message they were sending transcended the quality or qualifications of the messenger. Many of those people, of course, identified with him on a visceral level as a voice shouting down the elites they despised.
278. Trump proceeded to degrade the country. But some of his worst behaviors—his Twitter war with a beauty queen and, more damaging, gamy video tapes and charges of sexual assault failed to repel as many women as polls predicted.
279. On election day, the candidates’ relative turnout was exactly as Trump planned. Trump attracted more white voters than expected; Clinton did not turn out blacks, Latinos, and young people to the degree that her campaign hoped—and worked hard to get. In this sense, Trump defied demographic trends.
280. The black swan event—unanticipated and unprecedented—was James Comey’s letter of October 28.
281. In the event, Clinton took the popular vote, but Trump rearranged the electoral map in Rust Belt states. Again, turnout.
282. Despite this, Trump chronically complained about all the “dishonest” media outlets that were treating him unfairly. This reflected his psychologically skewed response to any critical reporting—including threats of lawsuits.
283. Beyond doubt, relentlessly negative press coverage was a factor in Clinton’s defeat. Coverage of her email problems was incessant; attention to her policy positions fairly scant.
284. This point is perfectly illustrated by the nine days between Comey’s first letter regarding the existence of the Abedin emails, and his second letter acknowledging that they contain nothing of import. In those nine days incessant media speculation dominated the campaign—and it was lethal to Clinton.
285. Abetted by a post-Comey change of momentum, Trump edged out Clinton in all four states—plus Michigan and Wisconsin.
286. Along with pressure from Republicans in Congress, this drumbeat in the media may have helped precipitate Comey’s fateful and ill-judg
ed letter of October 28.
287. When, in October, Russian hackers fed the speeches to WikiLeaks, they showed—unsurprisingly—that Clinton is favorably disposed to free trade and global investment and, subject to meaningful regulation, to Wall Street. While this was not catnip for the Sanders-Warren wing—as the Russians obviously grasped—no bombshells surfaced. Thus her secretiveness was more damaging than the speeches themselves.
288. With full-throated fury, Trump cited this as evidence of a media conspiracy against him—claims that the “conspirators” duly reported.
289. By October, our intelligence agencies publicly opined that the Russian government was directing the hacks. The overwhelming consensus was that Russia and Julian Assange were colluding in carefully timed leaks in order to assist Trump’s campaign.
290. At this point, roughly seven weeks before the election, I began to see a possible path to a Trump victory. But given his grave and self-inflicted problems in the interim, it was not until the Comey letter that I believed he had a real chance.
Fever Swamp: A Journey Through the Strange Neverland of the 2016 Presidential Race Page 43
