I'm old enough to remember the first two years of Barack Obama's presidency.
Believe it or not, way back in '09 and '10, a lot of liberals and progressives were frustrated with Obama. Our shiny new president had Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress and a supermajority in the Senate. But he wasn't moving fast enough—he wasn't moving at all—on his promises to the LGBT community, his commitments to the always-taken-for-granted/always-screwed-over labor movement, or on immigration. Health care reform was his top priority, grumblers in the Dem base were told, and everything else would have to wait. Because, you see, Obama wanted bipartisan support for his health care plan and moving in his first term on promises to labor, queers, dreamers, etc., could endanger that. Obama, unlike most liberals and progressives, was in complete denial about the depths of GOP obstructionism. Health care reform passed without a single Republican vote despite throwing the public option overboard. And shortly thereafter Democrats lost control of Congress.
Some supporters of Hillary Clinton in '09 and '10, still frustrated that their candidate lost the 2008 Democratic primary to Obama (despite the whole "Secretary of State" thing), indulged in counterfactual fantasies. If we had only nominated and elected Hillary Clinton, they said, then we would've had a DADT repeal in the first month and new laws to strengthen the union movement and action on immigration and a public option. Because, you see, Hillary Clinton was made of stronger stuff than Barack Obama and she was a less polarizing figure. Look how she got along with her GOP colleagues when she was in the Senate! She knew how to reach across the aisle and get things done. Never mind the impeachment of Bill Clinton, never mind constant rightwing smears of liberals and progressives and queers and brown people and latte-sipping urban elites, never mind the vast rightwing conspiracy and its long history attacking Hillary Clinton. Things could've been different if we'd only elected Hillary—heck, we would've been living in a new era of bipartisan cooperation!
Counterfactual narratives are hard to disprove because we usually don't get to find out what would've happened if John F. Kennedy hadn't been assassinated or if Hitler had won the war. But in this case we now have a factual narrative to counter the counterfactual one: Hillary Clinton won the Democratic nomination and the attacks on Hillary Clinton have been relentless and unhinged and effective.
So now—with an invaluable assist from the national press—here we are:
There's still a lot of denial among Democrats about how tight the race has become, despite abundant evidence from high-quality polls.
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) September 15, 2016
Whether or not the race will continue to tighten is a guessing game, in other words. But my impression is that the commentariat has been slow to recognize how much the race has tightened already. It’s never a good idea to freak out over any one poll. But the trend toward Trump has been clear for a few weeks now, and it’s been just as clear in state polls as national polls. Yes, the data is noisy. Polls are all over the place in Ohio, for instance. But over the course of all of this, Trump has whittled down an 8-point lead for Clinton into about a 3-point lead instead — about a 5-point swing. With there having been several shifts of that magnitude since the primaries ended, with there being a large number of undecided voters, and with the debates still ahead, neither Clinton nor Trump should feel all that secure.
The first perspective to have on the polls is that the polls have been slowly trending in Trump's direction for a few weeks. That is happening. There are various sources of noisiness in the data. But when you step way back the trend in Trump's direction is real and indisputable. It's particularly disquieting from a Democratic perspective to see Trump now holding apparent leads, albeit small ones, in Florida and Ohio. As we know, from sad history, winning Florida and Ohio (by whatever means) made George W. Bush president twice.
But there are some significant differences between then and now. In the intervening years, there have been significant changes in the electoral map which gave Democrats very plausible paths to victory even if they did lose both Florida and Ohio. The key is their upper south beachhead in Virginia and North Carolina as well as a strong hold on Colorado. There are other states that are in the mix too. But those are the big three. The upshot is that Democrats can very plausibly lose those two states and still win the election. That said, it would create a dramatically closer race. And it's a very big deal if Trump opens up real leads there.
Scared yet?
Trump also seems to be benefitting from a growing disconnect between media and political elites in New York and Washington and most white voters over issues of race. I think this disconnect is arising mostly from a substantively laudable place: a greater focus on white privilege and an accurate sense that aggrieved whites are often upset about declining racial privilege, which is not good cause for sympathy.
But I worry this normative judgment is bleeding into a positive one, causing some Democrats and some media commentators to underestimate, for example, how much a claim that half of Trump voters are "deplorable" bigots is likely to upset white voters who are strongly resistant to the idea their friends and family—or themselves—are racist.
Trump's numbers with nonwhite voters are dismal and likely to remain so. But approximately 72% of the November electorate will consist of non-Hispanic whites, and his message is clearly at least acceptable to a majority of white voters — more voters than Republican insiders thought would warm to it in the primaries, more than Democrats thought would go for it in the general election, and more than most pundits thought it could attract in either.
If Trump gets enough votes from whites, he can win the election.
A new counterfactual will emerge shortly, if it hasn't already, and it's going to go like this: We wouldn't be in this position... this wouldn't be happening.. the race wouldn't be so close.. if Bernie Sanders had won the Democratic nomination. Bernie would be walking away with this thing... the same Bernie who couldn't walk away with the Democratic nomination... because the GOP wouldn't have found a way to attack a Jewish socialist whose spouse has some financial and professional skeletons in her own closet. The same GOP hitmen who've ripped into Clinton so effectively—with the help of their enablers in the news media—wouldn't have found anything (or been able to invent anything) to throw at Sanders.
This particular counterfactual narrative ("If only we'd nominated Bernie!") has an advantage over our earlier counterfactual narrative ("If only we'd nominated Hillary!"): We'll never have a factual narrative to test it against.
