| | | | 2016 Hangover: What we learned about politics | | The election that saw Donald Trump defeat Hillary Clinton -- and the campaign cycle that featured the rise of the little-known Bernie Sanders, the fall of the House of Bush and so much more -- truly was unprecedented. Just check out this list from CNN's Gregory Krieg of 142 things that made 2016's presidential contest stranger than fiction.
Here are some of the things we learned:
-- Americans wanted a change -- and they wanted it badly enough that none of Trump's personal failings could overshadow the reality that he represented a complete break from politics as usual.
-- The party doesn't decide. The limits of Republican power-brokers were revealed by Trump's utter refusal to play by the GOP's rules and win anyway. As Slate's Andrew Gelman notes, the assertion central to "The Party Decides" -- that "unelected insiders in both major parties have effectively selected candidates long before citizens reached the ballot box" -- needs to be revised.
-- The old rules of political engagement are out the window. There are reasons to worry about this reality: Bragging about sexual assault (as Trump did), questioning another candidate's "hand" size (as Marco Rubio did), threatening to jail a political opponent as Trump did to Clinton and declining to accept an election's results are all damaging to the public discourse. But the ease with which Trump pierced other candidates' canned answers, and Bernie Sanders exposing the limits of narrow box-checking of candidates, showed that timidity is a political weakness -- and brutal honesty can pay off.
-- The "emerging demographic majority" isn't here yet for Democrats. Identity politics weren't enough for Hillary Clinton, who lost far too many white, working-class voters in the Midwest to come close to the presidency. Democrats can tout their popular vote victory, and it's true that flipping just 100,000 votes in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania combined would give us President-elect Clinton. But for now, Democrats can't win elections by racking up huge vote counts in coastal cities.
-- Anti-Muslim sentiment is real. The Guardian's Sabrina Siddiqui wrote about what it was like to cover Trump's campaign -- which included calls to ban Muslims from entering the United States -- as a Muslim.
-- Trump created an alternate universe where the achievements of President Barack Obama -- 20 million more Americans insured, sustained job growth, a rescued automotive industry and a stock market brought back from the abyss -- didn't exist, or certainly weren't attributable to Obama. But replicating Obama's successes will be a Herculean task: | | | What's next? CNN's Stephen Collinson breaks down 17 issues, questions and trends that will define the year ahead in politics. | | "You can put half of Trump supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? Racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it." -- Hillary Clinton, in what might have become the most important quote of the 2016 race -- giving Donald Trump supporters a rallying cry. | | | | Why is Donald Trump the President-elect? Check this map by NPR's Jessica Taylor of counties that went from President Barack Obama's column in 2012 to Trump's in 2016. Rural and exurban America tilted Republican, and the suburbs of Milwaukee and Detroit, as well as eastern Iowa and northern Ohio, were the shift's Ground Zero. | | As Clintons and Obamas fade, Democrats face the future | | Politically, President Barack Obama was good for Obama himself, but not for Democrats up and down the ballot. The party lost 30 state legislatures and more than 60 seats in Congress while he was in office. It went from a 60-seat Senate majority to being at serious risk of watching Republicans win 60 seats two years from now. Only 17 of the nation's 50 governors are Democrats. And Obama's coalition wasn't transferrable to Hillary Clinton. Democrats are going into 2020 with a strikingly empty bench.
The challenges facing Democrats start with rebuilding the party from the bottom up -- with a focus on state parties, local-level recruitment and the post-Census 2020 redistricting process. Candidates in the race for Democratic National Committee chair, including Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison and Labor Secretary Tom Perez, will also need to offer visions for how the party can win back working-class voters rather than relying on identity-driven geographic destiny.
The death of Clintonism: Make sure to read every word from Politico's Todd Purdum on the end of the political era of both Bill and Hillary Clinton, as Democrats now look for the next person to do for the party what Bill Clinton did in 1992.
Warren's way forward: In a closely watched speech to the AFL-CIO just after the election, Sen. Elizabeth Warren offered to work with Trump -- in ways that would likely drive wedges between the President-elect and the GOP Congress. Warren said she and Trump are on the same page about the need to invest in infrastructure, reform campaign finance laws and crack down on Wall Street and big banks. "He spoke to the very real sense that millions of Americans have that their government and their economy has abandoned them, and he promised to rebuild this economy for working people," Warren said of Trump. It is, she said, "not a liberal worry or a conservative worry. It is not a Democratic worry or a Republican worry."
The man Democrats might miss most: Retiring Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, perhaps the party's only leader ruthless enough to lead a bitter, hardened Senate minority in the age of Donald Trump. Don't miss the must-read Reid profile by Jason Zengerle in New York magazine -- especially the section on the differences between Reid and his replacement as the Senate's top Democrat, Chuck Schumer of New York. | | | The most memorable of 2016's glut of campaign TV ads was the minute-long Bernie Sanders spot "America" -- featuring the Simon & Garfunkel song -- per The Upshot's Lynn Vavreck, who assembled a representative panel of voters to watch and rate the ads. | | | There's no scientific method here, but what strikes us as the most memorable state-level ad of the 2016 cycle came from Jason Kander, a Democratic military veteran who assembled his AR-15 while blindfolded in a spot used in his narrow loss to Republican Sen. Roy Blunt. | | The story that will dominate early 2017: Russia | | President Barack Obama's decision to kick 35 Russian intelligence operatives out of the United States and sanction several Russian individuals and entities as retaliation for what the US intelligence community concluded was Russia's hacking of Democratic emails -- in a bid to hurt Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump -- added yet another wrinkle to an already-complicated story.
Russian President Vladimir Putin opted not to retaliate for now, which earned him Trump's praise: | | | The people to watch: Congressional Republicans. Intensifying calls for a crackdown on Russia could put the GOP at odds with the party's incoming President, making this the first of a long line of potential battles that could pit conservatives' long-held positions (remember Mitt Romney declaring Russia the United States' top geopolitical foe four years ago?) against Trump, who has shown little interest in sticking to conservative orthodoxy. Next up: The border wall, health care, infrastructure spending and more. | | | House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is accusing House Republicans of a "power grab" as the GOP moves to block Democrats from live-streaming from the House floor as they did during a sit-in over gun control in 2016. ... President Barack Obama will meet with Democrats to strategize ways to block an anticipated Republican repeal of his signature health care law. | | Thanks for reading the CNN Politics Nightcap. We'll be back Monday with regular editions. Your bartender is Eric Bradner. The tip jar: nightcap@cnn.com. | | | We'd love to share our other newsletters with you. Check out Five Things for Your New Day, CNN's morning newsletter. Give us five minutes, and we'll brief you on all the news and buzz people will be talking about. | | | Get the Nightcap, a comprehensive summary of the most important political news, delivered to your inbox daily. | | | | | |
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