Anything Could Happen. Anything Has Happened. A Message from Casey Langan
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his is like the 2008 financial crisis. We are living through a sequence of events that has not happened before and nobody knows how it all turns out. Renowned political analyst Charlie Cook’s take on the 2016 election has stuck with me more than any of the verbal mud slung by the candidates. I hung on his every word at a conference last June as he threw out his script and dug deep into what the election of 2016 means. If it feels like politics have become polarized, Cook argues they have. He recalled the 1960s and 1970s when there were liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats and many moderates in both parties. He said Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush are examples of how both political parties have become more ideological during their careers. In the 1990s, Clinton was seen as the far left branch of her husband’s administration. By 2016, she scrambled further to the left to secure her party’s nomination. Bush, once considered one of the nation’s most conservative governors, found himself in a similar position during his doomed campaign. Cook says the ideologies of Clinton and Bush have not changed…their parities did. They also faced a different media environment. Gone are the days where three television networks, three news magazines and a couple of local newspapers set the public dialogue. Instead, Americans now seek news from outlets they are predisposed to agree with. “We don’t start with the same set of facts anymore,” lamented Cook, who said that this leads people to become more conservative or liberal than they really are. Cook said today’s electorate, whether it be the left’s occupy movement or Donald Trump supporters on the right, is mired
in a sense of instability and unhappiness. Real median income has been flat since 2000. The economy has been slowed by millennials who are delaying marriage and home ownership, and by displaced blue collar workers whose skills served them better in the last century. Throw in immigration and culture wars at a time when change is too fast and too drastic for some Americans, and Cook said it seems we are reaching a boiling point. He predicted that this year’s GOP nomination wouldn’t go to an establishment candidate, but he admitted to not seeing the ‘Trump Train’ coming. Cook said that the GOP over-promised what Obama policies they could unravel in 2010. Six years later, a sense of betrayal by some Republican voters came back to bite establishment candidates like Bush, who Cook jokingly said, “was like a teenager whose older brother totaled the car a week before homecoming.” Failed by experienced politicians, he likened Trump’s appeal to voters declaring bankruptcy on politics. Win or lose in November, Cook said the Republican Party’s internal fight could have been settled had a true conservative been nominated in 2016. Instead, the selection of Trump kicks that can down the road. Cook didn’t have much good to say about the elusive independent voter that other pundits discuss and some candidates chase. “Pure independents don’t read newspapers, don’t care and don’t vote,” said Cook, who thinks independents feel societal pressure to tell pollsters they are going to vote, but don’t show up. “Which means victory comes down to getting your base out,” Cook said, before noting that in June, Clinton had more staff in Ohio than Trump had staff.
Cook declined to tell us his voting preference, but offered, “I’m for two healthy parties. I’m not happy with where things are at.” He said the trend towards voting against someone rather than for someone is troubling. “It’s not bringing out our best as a nation,” Cook said. When pressed for what he thinks will happen on election night, Cook said our nation’s changing demographics explain a lot of what’s going on, and that Democrats have won five of the last six popular votes. “There simply are more Democrats than Republicans,” he said before predicting that Clinton would win. Yet, he quickly pointed out that historical trends have meant little in 2016, by saying, “Anything could happen. Anything has happened.” Langan is the WFBF’s Executive Director of Public Relations.
October | November 2016
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