In the hours and days after the election, a narrative began to emerge.

Gleeful Republicans, devastated Democrats and penitent prognosticators wrote think piece after think piece to explain WHAT Happened…

This is what the wise and worried came up with:

  1. Hillary Clinton lost because she and Democratic party lost touch with working class Americans who voted solidly for Donald Trump.
  2. Hillary Clinton lost because Democrats played identity politics, ignoring the real problems of America.
  3. Hillary Clinton lost because of low enthusiasm and low voter turnout.
  4. Hillary Clinton lost because she was overconfident, running a terrible campaign that took swing states for granted.

But the thing is, they were wrong.

In their attempts to justify and explain, they pontificated based off incomplete information and the narrative that emerged is not only wrong, it’s damaging.

There are certainly important lessons to be learned from this election and if Democrats want to win back the Senate (and House???) in 2018 and the White House in 2020, they are going to have to learn from their mistakes. But if Democrats learn the “lessons” that the media and pundits offered in the days after election, they will make important and costly mistakes going forward.

So let’s take those explanations one by one:

  1. Hillary Clinton lost because she and Democratic party lost touch with working class Americans who voted solidly for Donald Trump.

This is by far the most common. It’s also the one that is the most fundamentally flawed and damaging.

Hillary Clinton did not, by any stretch of the imagination, lose the votes of working class Americans.  She lost the votes of WHITE working class Americans in certain (pivotal) states.  She won the popular vote by almost 2.8 million. Exit polls showed that she won among blacks (88%) Latinos (65%) Asians (65%) women (54%) and those living in cities (59%). She won among people earning less than $50k (by 52-53%). And in fact, she won among people who cited the economy as their biggest concern (52%).

What this narrative is actually saying is that she lost among “real” working class Americans- you know, white working class Americans.  It is a profoundly racist argument and one that Democrats have been far too willing to accept.

It is also not true that Democrats abandoned the working class. The number one reason for personal bankruptcy is medical expenses. Obamacare, though imperfect, was an attempt to address the real financial difficulties of working class Americans.

But beyond that, so much of the Democratic platform is actually about helping the working class. Support for Unions, Medicare, Medicaid, public education, equal pay, family leave and social security are all programs that benefit the poor. Democrats have been fighting for the working class and the poor and they have been blocked at every turn by Republicans. That Democrats are being blamed and accepting blame for this is ridiculous.  Should Democrats have pushed for more? Sure. Would it have mattered given the Republican congress and Republican state houses? Absolutely not.

If white working class Americans do not feel that Democrats listen to them, it may be because those same Americans have not been listening to Democrats.  They have been watching Fox news that is reflexively opposed to all programs that support working class Americans and anything that Democrats support. If white working class Americans feel that no one is speaking to their needs, it may be because those same Americans have not been listening to the people who have been trying to address those needs. Democrats need not accept the blame for other people’s failure to listen. 

2. Hillary Clinton lost because Democrats played identity politics, ignoring the real problems of America.

This is part and parcel of the previous argument.  Real Americans in this narrative are White men.  They are not interested in “identity politics” because they benefit from a system in which their identity is honored.  Hillary didn’t lose because Democrats played identity politics.  She lost because Donald Trump played identity politics better than she did.  He played to white identity politics that see minorities, immigrants, and women as a threat.  He played “the race card,” but the race was white and the appeal was fundamentally racist.

3. Hillary Clinton lost because of low enthusiasm and low voter turnout.

Repeat after me: Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 2.8 million. She had the highest voter turnout of any candidate except for Obama in ’08.  People were enthusiastic.  People voted.  The quirk of the electoral college means that she didn’t win enough people in the right places, but that says more about our system than it does about her as a candidate (outside of strategy which I will address next).

If voter turnout was lower in some places, it may have something to do with voter suppression in key states-voter suppression supported and sponsored by Republican lawmakers who know that when more people vote, Republican candidates and policies lose.

It is also true that the combined work of Russia and the FBI helped build enthusiasm on the right and convince those on the fence to break for Trump.  Still, remember, Hillary won the popular vote.

4. Hillary Clinton lost because she was overconfident, running a terrible campaign that took swing states for granted.

Hillary Clinton ran a data driven campaign.  Her campaign relied on the polls- the same polls that told journalists, Republicans and millions of Americans that Donald Trump was losing and did not have enough support to win either the popular vote or the electoral college.  The state polls were wrong.  Clearly, we need to figure out what happened there.  But to fault the Clinton campaign for relying on the same data that everyone else did is a little rich.

Yes, Hillary thought she was going to win. But the media thought she was going to win (you could see their stunned expressions on every channel as the night progressed) and Donald Trump thought she was going to win.  He looked pretty shell shocked too. Something went wrong with the data. But Hillary should not be faulted for believing in the numbers that everyone else did.

So let’s put these false narratives to rest.  They are not true.  They never were. If we accept them as gospel, we will go down the wrong path.