(note: I began this before others made similar points, but decided to clear the cache. I like the two analogies.)
Ever hear of Paul Wylie?
Like most Americans, I only ever watch winter sports during the Winter Olympics, and only then when Americans have a shot at a medal. Which means watching figure skating, mostly. American men have only won 15 of 75 Olympic figure skating medals, and they were concentrated during two periods. 40% of that haul came from 1948-56 (the Buttons era). Since 1984, just five American men have won medals, 60% of them gold, and 60% from 1984-1992. One last 60% number–that’s how many of the five are straight. Yes, a majority of the US male figure skaters who won Olympic medals the past 40 years are straight. 100% of the British male figure skater medallists are gay (that’s a grand total of 2). But I digress. What was my point? Oh, yes, Wylie.
Paul Wylie’s Alberville medal is one of the greatest Olympic stories in any sport. Long considered a highly talented skater with a life outside skating, Wylie spent over a decade in the top tier of US skaters and five years in the top 3, but he was famous for folding under pressure and never placed higher than ninth in international competition. After graduating from Harvard, he decided to give the nationals one more try, narrowly qualifying for the Olympic team in 92 by a tenth of a point, despite skating quite poorly. The US team coaches regretted his placement, wishing they could give younger fourth place finisher Mark Mitchell some international experience. Wylie had already been dumped from the Worlds, a few weeks after the Olympics, in favor of Mitchell. Todd Eldredge and Christopher Bowman, the other two Americans, had both been US national champions, and the heavy gold medal favorites were Canadian and Russian.
But in Alberville, all the favorites fell. Kurt Browning, the greatest skater never to medal at the Olympics, Bowman the Showman, Todd Eldredge, Victor Petrenko, they all had catastrophic errors during their short programs. Everyone except Wylie. For the first time in his skating career, he nailed the short program during a competition. Then in the free skate, with a shot at bronze, his nerves didn’t fail him and he skated the only clean program of the final night. Most people who watched felt he should have gotten the gold, but Olympic judges, always iffy, were apparently determined to give Petrenko Russia’s first gold medal in figure skating. And so Wylie became the oldest figure skating medalist in 60 years by taking silver.
It didn’t matter. Not to Wylie, who would have been ecstatic with a bronze. Not to the people who watched his performance, who knew he’d won in any fair comparison. Not to Scott Hamilton, the 1984 gold medal winner who was mocked for plugging Wylie’s chances after the short. Certainly not to me; the Wylie medal is in my top five great Olympic moments (second only to the 1984 4×200 men’s relay when Bruce Hayes held off the Albatross.)
Donald Trump is not Paul Wylie. But I like this little history for more than its proof that I value second place finishes as extraordinary achievements, often superior to the winner’s. Paul Wylie reminds me that for better or worse, expert opinion has no impact on outcomes. All of us, given the right circumstances, can ignore the naysayers, execute, and achieve far beyond what anyone predicted. So trust me when I say that short of a Trump win, I’m not just pleased with his finish. I’m ecstatic.
At right is just a sample of the conventional wisdom served up by pundits who hadn’t learned a thing in 4 years.
He wasn’t expanding his base. His approval numbers were horrible (based on polls, of course). He wasn’t president to all the people. He was focusing on the hard right “extremist” wing of his voters.
And they were wrong.
Trump grew his voter support in absolute numbers by 16%. This increase registered in every demographic except white males, if we are to trust exit polls. Dramatically. He got the highest percentage of non-white voters of any Republican candidate since 1960.
Understand, of course, he did this with less money. With active media hostility and lies. With a conservative intellectual class at best halfheartedly behind him. With some conservative media outlets and of course, the Never Trump movement, actively agitating against him. With the polls showing him losing by historic margins in every battleground state.
Trump ignored that and played his game. He did it on his own, with only one real assist: the massive GOP registration effort.
It’s customary to call Trump vain and weak. A weaker guy would have folded. He would have given off flop sweat. Loser fumes. The media mocked him endlessly. Poll analyst Nate Silver, who angrily told people after the election to fuck off if they thought the polls were bad, called the Trafalgar results “crazy” beforehand. David Wasserman nattered about how the private district results showed a wipeout.
The media did everything it could to depress Trump turnout by telling the world it was all over. Biden by a wipeout.
Result: Trump got more votes than any Republican or Democratic candidate ever.
Except–alas–Joe Biden.
We can trust counted votes. Maybe. Here’s the growth in Trump vote, by state. Purple bars are battleground states.
I wrote once about the invisible Trump voters, the blue state voters The west coast ones came out in force. California is still counting votes and Trump is still up nearly 33%. Washington’s nearly at 30%. Oregon and New Mexico increased by over 20%. Fifty percent more Hawaiians voted for Trump. The east coast blue states are still counting absentee ballots, but all gave Trump between 10 and 20% more votes.
As I’ve tweeted hundreds of times, in 2016 California gave Trump more than any state but Florida and Texas. I’ll have to update that: in 2020, California gave Trump more votes than any other state, full stop. Sum up the votes in the 15 least populated states Trump won, and they’re just barely ahead of California. Who knows, the state might even catch up when they find that last vote coming in on the mail boat from Kathmandu.
In the battleground states, his vote count increased an average of 16%, with a high of 33% growth….in Arizona. With Nevada just behind at 30%.
As the jubilant press corps reminds us daily, Trump’s going to be one of just four single-term presidents since 1900. But take a look at his re-election numbers compared to other presidents since Eisenhower.
Nixon’s huge numbers were because of George Wallace’s relatively successful third party run in 1968. And hey, Clinton is the only Democrat president who got more votes in his second run.
I found only one president who improved on his re-election numbers yet lost the election: Grover Cleveland.
We’ll have to wait four years to see if Trump has has anything more in common with Cleveland than increased votes and a much younger wife.
Great stuff. But.
Biden improved on Hillary’s numbers by far more in the battleground states, with an average increase of 24% and a high of 44% growth….in Arizona. So he won.
“It was rather the moment that the American people surgically removed an unhinged leader and re-endorsed the gist of his politics. “–Andrew Sullivan…and a host of other anti-Trump, anti-woke folks saying the equivalent of “the voters removed Trump with admirable surgical precision”.
No. Not with these numbers. This was a blow out election on both sides. There’s nothing surgical or precise about 2020. Biden held on in the right states in much the way this Joplin hospital held on in the tornado:
A shift in 100K votes and Trump wins. Of course Biden got more votes. I wonder if that will be true from here on in, regardless of the winner. Something we once viewed as an anomaly will become the norm. But in the right places, Trump almost matched Biden’s growth.
Almost.
I wish just a few more Trump voters had gotten out there. Or I wish the absentee ballot fraud were less. Take your pick. I am neutral lean fraud on that issue.
I actually know relatives and friends who flatly disbelieve millions more voters came out for Biden. I was a bit shocked. I’m supposed to be the cynical one, but I totally expected a blue wave. I was just delighted there was a matching red one.
Still, do I think it’s possible there was a coordinated Dem effort to manufacture millions of absentee ballots? Sure. The most likely rationale they’d use for the fraud was conviction that Biden had this locked up, but a massive blowout that totally repudiated Trump would be so much better, right? Wipe out the GOP fear of Trump voters, make them see the light and bend over to more immigration, more transgender nonsense, more government health care, blah blah blah. So why not create more votes? It’s not like we’re changing the election, or anything. Biden’s going to win.
Those who follow me on Twitter know that I think voter registration fraud is a much bigger issue than voter fraud, and much easier to work out ahead of time. The Dems’ concerted push to increase mail-in voting, lower the standards for counting, and fight for extended delivery is all in keeping with this. But hey, it’s not like they were changing the results, or anything. Biden’s going to win, right? The polls all say so. This is just beating down Trump voters, making them look fringe.
And then the stunner: Trump voters come out en masse, and Biden might lose. Stop the counting! And then got to the cities, where Trump did pretty well, and ask them to manufacture just enough votes. City machines are totally up with that sort of thing.
Do I think this happened? Eh. I don’t know. I’m just as willing to believe it was authentically that close, with the usual marginal fraud in cities.
I do know that Megan McArdle and any other media figure who castigates reasonable skepticism “immoral” can whistle disapproval in swing time for all I care. Swim in outrage until they’re pruny. Dunk their faces in smarmy self-righteousness while eating shit. I don’t care.
Because here’s what I’m absolutely certain of: if any “journalist” learned of an effort to rig the election for Biden, he or she would not expose such efforts but instead ask, “How can I help?”
And that’s why so many Trump voters are convinced there’s fraud. Fuck you all, media folk. You are the ones who have discredited America. You aren’t speaking for America. You’re entertainers, shucking and jiving for the people who pay. Once again, you got your hats handed to you with the enormity of Trump’s vote count. Biden win or not.
I wish Trump had less slimy advocates, but then I always wish that. Because of Trump, other GOP pols will see the advantage in being and getting better advocates.
Back in the early days of Trump’s presidency, I wrote:
The first Star Trek “reboot” took the bold act of altering the past in a famous fictional timeline. The new movies have the freedom to reinvent, while we watch the movies, fully aware what “really” happened. This got taken to extremes for “Into the Darkness”, when the last half hour echoed word for word the greatest Star Trek movie ever made with a character swap, but it’s still pretty clever.
Ever since Trump won in November, I’ve felt like we’re all living through an alternate timeline. Like Tom Hanks’ “Doug” said in that sublime Black Jeopardy skit, “Come on, they already decided who wins even before it happens”. Everyone of any importance knew Hillary would win. Jobs were accepted. Plans were made.
But while I see it as a reboot, an opportunity to rewrite the future, all the people with any voice or influence think of the election as Yesterday’s Enterprise. Just as the Enterprise C slipped through the temporal rift and forestalled the truce between the Klingons and the Federation, so too did a whole bunch of voters escape the notice of the Deep State.
…….
The media wants to change the world back to way it was. What’s happening now is all wrong, they’re not supposed to be here, they have to fix it. If they can just keep the pressure on and play for time, someone who “wasn’t supposed to be here” will drag the wounded Enterprise C back a hundred years to be destroyed. The timeline can be restored.
Sure, I’d have rather Trump won. But Trump ended his presidency with numbers that force the GOP to accept the reboot. There’s no shoving the voters and Trump into the rift to fix the timeline. Republicans have been worried about their “demographic destiny” for years. Trump’s showed them a way forward. (Something I predicted more than once, incidentally.)
History will, I think, be kinder to Trump than the current moment, but I wonder if they will understand his greatest achievement.
Trump faced down media and elite howls of disapproval and outrage. He didn’t apologize. He ruthlessly attacked anyone who insulted him for his views. By refusing to back down, he showed all Americans how much the media, intellectual class, and even our political parties were throttling American policy by narrowly defining boundaries of acceptable opinions and proposals to their own political demands. He restored balance to American discourse almost singlehandedly. In doing so, Trump gave all Americans a real choice.
I was grateful back in 2016. I’m grateful now.
November 25th, 2020 at 10:53 pm
Trump is probably not the Man, but he probably is the man before the Man, the one who shows our Caesar what he must do and how far he must go.
November 26th, 2020 at 4:08 pm
Trump had the opportunity to be Great but he wasn’t up to it. Such a missed opportunity — given the unsilenceable platform of the US presidency, the right man really could have changed the world! I voted for him twice, but I’m not entirely sorry to see him go, because in some ways I think it may have reached the point where he was doing more harm than good.
Nevertheless I am entirely with you in that I was also fearing a Blue Wave, and was incredibly heartened by the actual result. I just want to make a minor point about vote fraud. One of the arguments that is used against it is that widespread vote fraud is inconsistent with the success of downballot Republicans because, as Laurence Tribe put it, “they were the same ballots”. But they weren’t the same ballots! Republicans outperformed all over the country, but there is no reason to think significant fraud would have occurred anywhere other than in a few swing state cities where the local political machine: 1) knew that they were in a position to make a difference; and 2) knew how to pull it off without getting caught. (Something that would probably have involved only tight circles of insiders, not shenanigans involving hundreds of volunteer poll workers, which seems to be the best the Republicans can come up with in their court filings). As I said, a minor point, but one I think worth making.
November 26th, 2020 at 4:20 pm
It’s not minor. In fact, downballot Republicans clearly won BECAUSE of Trump, even though it’s also true that (assuming no fraud) he lost in key states because the suburbs didn’t like him.
November 29th, 2020 at 3:50 am
Thanks for calling out Megan McArdle. She clearly decided that getting along with her colleagues at the WaPo was more important than sticking with the principles she had articulated for most of the decade or more before 2016. Her apostasy is clearly one of the biggest disappointments in the so-called libertarian-leaning press. Most of the wags at Reason were just as bad, but c’mon…it’s Reason. McMegan’s embrace of the swamp hurt a lot more.
November 29th, 2020 at 1:02 pm
[…] Cheer up about the election. Trump grew his voter support by 16%. […]
November 29th, 2020 at 6:48 pm
I fear you are wrong at the end of this essay if Trump does not prevail in contesting this election, and I am pretty sure he is going to fail at this point.
The problem is that without Trump to bring them to the polls, the Republicans are just back to where they were before 2016- mathematically eliminated at the national level before the game is even played. There is no Republican in sight that could come within 5% of winning the following states: WI, MI, PA, and NV. Without any of those states, no Republican can win the White House given that VA is now a blue state. Without Trump on the ticket, I don’t even think Ohio is winnable for a Republican, and Iowa surely isn’t.
The blue wave was only inhibited for two years. In 2022, the Democrats will take the Senate handily, and also retake all those California House seats they lost this go round along with all the the others across the country. Trump was a finger in a dike, and sui generis, I am sorry to say.
December 2nd, 2020 at 12:07 am
Yeah, that’s the extinction theory. People have been spouting it for years. It’s a risk. It’s not certain.
December 2nd, 2020 at 6:30 am
Oh, it is certain. People think this was the COVID election, and in the next one voting methods will return to normal. This is wrong- Democrats will use mail in voting from now on. The only thing Republicans can do that might be effective is to cheat on the same level as the Democrats do- then we can have competing 150% turnouts, then 175% turnouts, then 500% turnouts in a scorched earth battle to the death. The problem with this method of competing with the Democrats is that they have no fair play issues with prosecuting Republicans for election fraud- they are happy to do it.
December 2nd, 2020 at 6:33 am
Simply imagine the hypothetical election where Trump were a Democrat defeated by this kind of election fraud. The DoJ would have already rounded up the county and state election officials involved and metaphorically waterboarded all of them into public confessions. It would have happened by the weekend after the election.