Campaigning for President 2016

Strategy and Tactics

Dennis W. Johnson, Lara Brown, Dennis W. Johnson, Lara M. Brown, Lara Brown, Dennis W. Johnson, Lara M. Brown

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138058460
• eBook ISBN: 9781351673617
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Coming out of one of the most contentious elections in history, Dennis Johnson and Lara Brown have assembled an outstanding team of authors to examine one of the fiercest and most closely fought presidential elections of our time. Like the 2008 and 2012 editions of Campaigning for President, the 2016 edition combines the talents and insights of political scientists who specialize in campaigns and elections together with seasoned political professionals who have been involved in previous presidential campaigns. Campaigning for President is the only series on presidential campaigns that features both political scientists and professional consultants.

This book focuses on the most important questions of this most unusual presidential campaign. What was the appeal of Donald Trump? Has Twitter and social media become the dominant means of communicating? How did fake news, WikiLeaks, and the Russians factor in this election? What happened to the Obama coalition and why couldn't Hillary Clinton capitalize on it? Hundreds of millions of Super PAC dollars were raised and spent, and much of that was wasted. What happened? Is the wild west of online media the new norm for presidential contests? These and many other questions are answered in the provocative essays by scholars and practitioners.

The volume also is packed with valuable appendixes: a timeline of the presidential race, biographical sketches of each candidate, a roster of political consultants, the primary and general election results, exit polls, and campaign spending.

New to the 2016 Edition

• The 2016 presidential contest brings a completely new set of players, policies, and electoral challenges. Like the 2008 and 2012 editions, the authors probe the strategies and tactics of the candidate campaigns and the outside organizations.
• The chapters focus on Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, but also look at the Bernie Sanders insurgency, the collapse of the mainstream Republican candidates, and the dynamics of the general election.
• Chapters also analyze the changes in campaign finance, new technologies, the role of social media, and how fake news and subterfuge might become the new realities of presidential campaigning.

1
THE ELECTION OF 2016

Dennis W. Johnson

The election of Donald Trump sent shockwaves through the American political system, surprising nearly every political prognosticator (including just about every author in this book), causing jubilation among those 46 percent of voters who chose him, fear among many groups and individuals that Trump either insulted, threatened, or demeaned, and bewilderment among the political class in this country and throughout the world. Trump triumphed, it seems, almost in spite of himself. Most of his wounds were self-inflicted; at times, it looked like Trump would bring disaster to his party and wholesale defeat on an historic level, bringing disrepute to his party and disastrous results in the Senate and House elections. But the voices of millions of disgruntled voters who demanded change in Washington pulled him through.

In the end, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 2.9 million, but lost in the Electoral College. Trump won 304 electoral votes (34 more than needed), while Clinton won 227, and an unprecedented 7 electors defected and chose others. During this election, just 55.4 percent of eligible American adults voted, the lowest level since 1992. Clinton won 48.2 percent of those who voted, Trump won 46.1 percent.¹ A total of 138 million votes were cast, but in the end, fewer than 78,000 determined the difference, when Trump beat Clinton in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Jill Stein, running as the Green Party’s presidential candidate, who barely made a dent in the polls and coming in well behind Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, collected enough votes in each of these three states to cover the difference between Trump and Clinton.

Democrats and Republicans: Advantages and Challenges

The Democrats’ Advantage

Democrats came into this election with a built-in advantage: during the past six presidential elections, beginning in 1992, voters in eighteen states and the District of Columbia, with a combined 242 electoral votes, had chosen Democratic presidential candidates.² During the same time, voters in thirteen states, with a combined 102 electoral votes, consistently chose Republicans.³ In addition, from 1992 to 2012, Democrats had won the popular vote in every election except 2004. It would be up to the Republican candidate to chip away at Democratic strongholds, and do better than Romney did in 2012, when he won just 206 electoral votes and 47 percent of the popular vote. For Clinton, winning Florida (twenty-nine electoral votes) would be enough to assure victory; and Democrats had won Florida by small margins in the last two previous elections. All Clinton had to do was hold on to the Obama coalition, and if she couldn’t do that, there were still many paths to victory. On the other hand, Donald Trump had a narrow road, one that permitted few mistakes and miscues.

Demographic changes also appeared to be on the Democrats’ side. A Pew Research Center report in September 2016 concluded that the Democratic Party was becoming “less white, less religious and better-educated at a faster rate than the country as a whole, while aging at a slower rate.” This was just the reverse of the Republican Party. Republican voters were becoming “more diverse, better-educated and less religious at a slower rate than the country generally, while the age profile of the GOP is growing older more quickly than that of the country.”⁴ Decade after decade, the country was moving demographically in the direction that favored Democrats.

Democrats also seemed to have the issues on their side. More and more people were siding with Democrats on cultural issues, such as increased tolerance for same sex marriages, abortion rights, and emerging transgender issues. On policy matters, more and more voters saw climate change as a major threat, demanded some form of gun control, and wanted immigration reform; they turned to Democrats to fight for change.

Warning Signs for Democrats

But there were also troubling signs. First, during the Obama years Democrats had been losing elective office at an alarming rate, not just at the national level, but at state and local contests as well. In 2010, Democrats suffered a “shellacking” (in Obama’s words), when they lost control of the House and saw their majority in the Senate shrink. It only got worse for Democrats in 2012 and 2014 in those chambers. The Republican Party and its affiliated political action committees, 527 and 503(c)(4) groups, and individual donors (like the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson) poured money strategically into key Senate and House races, helping to turn the majority back to the Republicans. An Obama-friendly 2009 Congress (257 Democrats, 178 Republicans in the House; 57 Democrats, 41 Republicans in the Senate) had shrunk to a 2016 Congress (188 Democrats, 246 Republicans in the House; 44 Democrats, 54 Republicans in the Senate).

During the Obama years, Democrats lost over 800 seats in state legislatures. This all didn’t happen by chance: Republicans invested big money in attempts to rebuild their majority at the state legislative levels. In 2010, Republicans spent $30 million (three times the amount invested by Democrats) to gain in state legislatures, with the result of picking up 675 seats and taking control of twelve state legislatures. The big prize: to gain control of the once-a-decade congressional redistricting process, assuring Republicans of the best gerrymandered districts possible. By 2014, Republicans gained control of another ten more state legislatures, pouring $38 million into the election process. Democrats were caught flat-footed.⁵

It is not unusual for a president to leave a hollowed-out party in his wake after leaving office. Professor Larry J. Sabato noted that since Dwight Eisenhower, “every eight-year presidency has emptied the benches for the triumphant party, and recently it has gotten even worse.” On average, the eight-year presidents have lost an average of 10 governors, 8 senators, 36 House members, and 450 state legislative seats during their terms. But Obama, through 2014, was doing far worse: losing 11 governors, 13 senators, 69 House members, and 913 state legislative seats. “Barack Obama,” wrote Sabato in 2014, “is well on his way to becoming the most harmful to his sub-presidential party of all modern chief executives.”⁶

All this matters in presidential politics. Candidates need to rely on robust, healthy state parties and volunteer forces, to help local elected officials identify voters and get out the vote on Election Day.

Another worrisome matter was Hillary Clinton’s lack of popularity. In August 2016, despite a solid performance at the Democratic Nominating Convention, Clinton was seen as favorable by only 41 percent of the American public, with 56 percent holding an unfavorable view. Since pollsters began tracking this figure, no presidential candidate—except for Donald Trump—has had such abysmal numbers.⁷ Many Democrats had a difficult time warming to her, particularly progressives and millennials who were attracted to Bernie Sanders during the tough primary battles.

Barack Obama was enjoying increasingly favorable evaluations from voters, and by Election Day had reached 52 percent. But that would not guarantee success for his party’s successor. Could Obama’s appeal (along with his direct campaigning for her) help Clinton? The historical record was surely mixed. In 1960, Eisenhower was at 58 percent approval, yet his successor, Vice President Richard Nixon, could not win the presidency; in 2000, Bill Clinton was at 57 percent approval, but his successor, Vice President Al Gore, could not win office. Ronald Reagan was at 51 percent approval at the end of his term of office, but Vice President George H.W. Bush was able to succeed him (thanks in large part to a very poorly run campaign by his opponent, Michael Dukakis).⁸

Republican Advantages

Long before the first primary, it looked like a good year for Republicans. A number of prominent elected officials had decided to become candidates. Current and past governors, current and former U.S. senators, representing key Republican constituencies put forth their candidacy (see discussion below). This line-up was far more impressive than the weak list of Republican contenders in 2012, which gave Mitt Romney, the solid but distinctly non-Washington candidate, a leg up. But as it turned out, too many traditional Republican candidates vied for the voters’ attention, and in the end were each picked off by Trump.

In the zero-sum game of American politics, the Democrats’ problem—a hollowed-out party and a president, albeit popular, who could not transfer his popularity to his successor—became the Republicans’ opportunity. Moreover, Republicans sensed, particularly as Trump increasingly appeared as their nominee, that this was going to be an election dominated by the need to bring about change. And Trump, flawed and ill-suited as he might be, was definitely the agent of change. In fact, his impulsive, at times, reckless “tell it like it is, no holds barred” style became an asset for his fervent backers.

Republican Problems

For most of the primaries and general election, the biggest problem was Donald Trump. Was he even a Republican, many asked? As journalist Jonathan Rauch pondered, Trump was not,

in any meaningful sense, a Republican. According to registration records, since 1987 Donald Trump has been a Republican, then an independent, then a Democrat, then a Republican, then “I do not wish to enroll in a party,” then a Republican; he has donated to both parties; he has shown loyalty to and affinity for neither.⁹

He trashed and insulted his Republican primary opponents, he picked fights with party leaders, especially Paul Ryan, he balked at working with the party and coordinating campaign strategy, he embarrassed his party by his antics and words, he veered widely from assumed Republican conservative orthodoxy.

Conservative newspapers refused to endorse him, mega-donors backed away, Republican and conservative-leaning opinion writers flailed against him, and in the harshest of terms, the party’s 2012 standard bearer called him a fraud and a phony. Several groups of Republican consultants created Super PACs with the vain hope of stopping him. Trump, predictably, lashed out against his Republican critics, leaving no attack or insult unchallenged.

This certainly was not going to be a unified Republican Party, and it was not until the General Election period that the sometime warring, always fractious Trump campaign and Re...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Notes on Contributors
• Preface
• 1 The Election of 2016
• Part I The Primaries
• Part II Money and Communication
• Part III The General Election
• Appendix A: Timeline
• Appendix B: Presidential and Vice Presidential Candidates
• Appendix C: Campaign Operatives and Consultants
• Appendix D: Primary and Caucus Results
• Appendix E: General Election Results
• Appendix F: Exit Polls
• Appendix G: Campaign Spending by Candidates, Parties, and Major Super PACs
• Index