In one of the rare occasions of telling the truth, Trump promised Brexit times 5 and that is exactly what he delivered.
Rationally, economically--the case for the UK to remain in the EU was incontrovertible. But proponents of leaving the EU fastened on fear, in this case, fear of the other, of losing one's country and culture, and that fear drove their supporters to the polls. It was the only way to save their way of life, they were told. Act now, or it will be too late.
Remainers stuck with rational appeals. They made reasoned arguments. They offered policy changes.
They lost.
Trump used exactly the same gambit, and we fell into exactly the same trap as the Remainers, even though technically, we won.
If the election had been a national referendum on Trump or Clinton, Clinton won it. But our system has twice in one generation betrayed Democrats who won the national popular vote but lost the electoral vote. Don't let the technical "win" divert us from how we lost.
Trump, like few others, appeals to and plays off human fears and tribal instincts. He cannot hold a candle to Clinton in a policy debate, but he sets a crowd on fire in ways her colder intellect simply does not.
We Democrats tend to prefer data and rational analysis and policy prescriptions tailored to address problems. Our party is rooted in the Jeffersonian tradition of scientific observation and in the Enlightenment rationality that is the foundation of our constitutional tradition and law. Hillary's website was full of rational, extremely well based policy prescriptions. Her campaign slogan of "Stronger Together" appeals to our rational understanding. It makes sense, if we think about it.
But Trump is a salesman who senses what the sucker wants to hear. He gravitates naturally to putting on the pressure at the precise time to close a deal that is good for him, but likely bad for the buyer.
Contrast the final appeals broadcast by Trump and Clinton the night before the election.
Trump: www.youtube.com/...
Clinton: www.youtube.com/...
They are starkly different. Trump never shows his face. It's images, words in RED. It is alarming, threatening, dark. It is emotive, with only one way out of the fear: vote for me. But he avoids his own image because he knows his face triggers aversion.
Hillary tried to be personable, to address her greatest weakness, but instead, it put her image front and center, appealing to our intellect.
"Make America Great Again" has no rational basis. It is a phrase that the buyer fills in with what they believe and what they want. It is an emotive appeal and triggers an emotional response, which is exactly what a con artist salesman wants.
Trump terrified his listeners about the outsiders threatening everything they hold dear, then told them if they voted for him they would be safe. That was the Brexit argument, and it worked, again.
So why did fear fail us?
When Democrats and this Daily Kos site focused on fear of Trump as the primary driver to push voters to the polls, they triggered fear, an emotion that hung out there searching for an emotive appeal to fasten to. But most of our ads were filled with policy prescriptions of sophistication which appealed to their affordability and efficacy. Surely we Democrats feared Trump and Republicans, but exactly why? What was it, exactly, that Trump would do to us that we should so fear it? Was it big infrastructure spending? Tax cuts? Corruption of the parties? Building the Wall? Trump's Twitter finger?
We ridiculed instead of focused on how to specify exactly what we feared, and then we did not link up specific fears of different groups to one specific action needed to make that fear go away in our ads.
The fear Democrats felt was a fear that made us want to run away from politics, from the polls, from even listening to political ads. Rational people should not be involved in such tawdry, raw, emotions.
We fear, fear itself.
If you were an undocumented immigrant, it made you fear, but what could you do? If you had family members who could vote, perhaps you could try to get them to vote, or to register, but you and your legal family members probably were afraid to even enter places associated with government, and that is precisely what Republicans forced you to do to get the documents you needed to vote in many of those key states that went for Trump. African Americans faced white men with guns patrolling the polls.
Our very aversion to confrontation, our fixation on civility and rationality crippled us.
We are willing to argue, but few of us are willing to fight. Trumps voters had no such inhibitions. Fear drove just enough of our voters away from the polls.
So what is to be done?
Several things.
In states where fear and voting are not associated (WA, OR, Colorado, which have mail in voting) Democrats did well. A mail in ballot structurally requires voters to act systematically and rationally, with planning. Will they put a stamp on it or take it to a drop box? They have time to fill things out and to look issues and persons up. They do it in their own homes, where they feel safe.
We could reduce the effect of fear by changing to a mail in ballot system.
We could move to a national popular vote determining which electors slate casts ballots for our state. Currently, many states have already done this, but we have to remember that if fear delivers more votes than rationality, we will be stuck with the result.
Or we Democrats could get a lot better in how we can use fear to motivate our voters to the polls.
For example, the closing ad for Hillary could have gone like this:
Open with the thunder of guns, a funeral with taps playing, grieving widow and children, the crashing towers of 9-11 and a voice over:
"The last time we had a Republican President he lied us into war. He lied about weapons of mass destruction. It cost us thousands of lives and trillions of dollars."
Scenes of panic on Wall Street and graphs of the crash, people and their belongings being forced out their homes by armed sheriffs, and pink slips raining across the screen:
"The last time we had a Republican President he crashed the economy. He crippled regulations and let bankers get away with wholesale fraud. Millions lost their homes, their jobs, their way of life."
Scenes of Bush "looking for weapons of mass destruction," flying over devastated New Orleans, scenes of the flooding, scenes of the towers crashing on 9-11.
"The last time we had a Republican President he put an inexperienced crony in charge of emergency services. He ignored specific warnings and let terrorists attack us in our homeland. He said he didn't even care about finding Bin Laden and making him pay for his crimes."
"Even George Bush won't vote for Trump. Trump's own staff doesn't trust him to use Twitter. You can't afford another Republican President. You can't risk your home, your family, everything you own to another Republican President."
Final written scene: "Vote Democrat. Vote Hillary. Vote for the safety of everything you hold dear. It depends on YOU. Vote tomorrow like your life depends on it. It does."
I am very confident we will be able to update this ad in 2020. But next time we win, we must make changes to how we vote. Otherwise, we will be forced to fight fear with fear.
Personally, I support making voting for Federal offices to be done by mail, exclusively. The US Post Office was established in the constitution. It is a Federal, national institution with national standards and practices. It needs to be fully renationalized, and made to be the only avenue for voting at the Federal level. States and localities may choose to hold polls for state and local offices, but it seems to me that a case can be made that a Federal, constitutional agency should be, indeed, must be, the means Federal, constitutional offices are filled.
This is the only means I can see to relegate fear and various polling place issues and burdensome identification requirements to the dustbin of history where they belong.