Five myths about the 2016 election

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I thought it was a weak article.

Let’s dig into the ‘weak campaign’ section.

The author focused on pointing out she had good ads, that tested well. There is far more to a campaign than creating good ads. It didn’t touch on where she ran the ads. Did she spend in the battle ground states?

The author focused on the size of her field teams yet didn’t touch on whether she actually visited the states she lost. How much money did she give them to work with?

The writer built a strawman then gleefully took it apart.
 
The divided on ideology section was also extremely lame

The myth should be whether voters were divided during the campaign, and a YES should be apparent to all who knew anything about support for Bernie. Instead of addressing this as a fact, the author argues about the level of current ideological division.
 
I suppose I was just mildly pleased that someone writing for the WP acknowledged that all Trump voters weren’t simply rubes.
 
I’m frustrated that the WP is still in denial about what happened during the election.
 
I agree with number Two.

My observation is that Obama and Trump have this one thing in common—they could both say and do outrageous things without consequences.

I don’t know why, I haven’t worked that part out.
 
WaPo paywall prevented me from seeing what the five myths are. But I’ll just add this. I am currently reading a book written by people who did in-person interviews as well as surveys in the counties that made the difference for Trump; that is, changed their otherwise applicable voting habits (Dem) to vote for him. There really weren’t that many counties (or people) who made the difference.

So far, it seems the reasons were fundamentally economic. Most of it was in counties that had declined economically and sometimes in population, due to loss of industries. The people continued to vote Dem for some time, but then just ran out of patience and voted for Trump this time.

They’ll be pretty unforgiving, I imagine, if he doesn’t deliver. But his message resonated with them almost in every way, from regulations to taxes to trade to open borders.

I guess one could sum it up by saying they were working class voters who were tired of being without work.
 
From my perspective Clinton’s campaign was totally inept, though not as much so as the fact that she was running in the first place. What arrogance for her to think she even had a chance after her husband’s disastrous (quote: Boris Yeltsin) presidency and all the controversies surrounding her tenure as Secretary of State highlighting her total lack of knowledge of things that should be rather obvious in this day-in-age, such as basic technological functions.

Seriously America: Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton? How could it have possibly come to this? The better of the two won but it isn’t saying a lot. Let’s hope this President can cut through the noise and actually accomplish something that will go down in history described as, at least the start of, the saving of America. It had to be now and Hillary Clinton certainly wasn’t going to do it.
 
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Among my real life people, I actually saw a significant shuffling of the deck.
Lifelong republicans who simply couldn’t bear Trump and voted for Clinton.
Lifelong democrats who simple couldn’t bear Clinton and voted for Trump.

I do know that the people who crossed party lines had a significant amount of angst while doing it.

And there are a out of people who are simply keeping their mouth shut about who they voted for because the thread of violence or vandalism is real (or just even harassment)

I also observed that there were only a few die-hard Trump or Clinton supporters.
Most voted out of fear of the other candidate more than a wholehearted love for the candidate they cast the ballot for.

This bears out in the fact that neither candidate even got 50% of the popular vote.

However, the down-ticket elections were more in favor of the republican side.
 
Some things depend on the location. Where I live, practically the whole populace was and is “die-hard” Trump supporters.

They differ significantly from the people in the handful of counties whose shift gave the election to Trump. It wasn’t an economic thing for anyone but business people, since there has been a labor shortage here for years. Abortion had a lot to do with it because this is “Bible Belt” country. But old-fashioned cultural conservatism did too. Culturally, the focus is on the individual rather than the society as a whole.
 
She wasn’t accessible. She kept to herself and didn’t show for long periods of time. I can see her advisors telling her the more she talks, the more trouble she will bring on herself… JMHO.
 
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