The 2016 Presidential Campaign and Election

Outcome of the 2016 Elections and the Evolution of the Campaign
The 2016 elections were a surprise to many—mainly because the establishment candidate, Hillary Clinton, lost to the upstart celebrity billionaire Donald Trump, who had never served a day of public office in his life. However, Trump had managed to do something that Clinton did not: he appealed to a marginalized people—the working class, angry, fed up with the Establishment types—the “forgotten men and women” (Sabato, 2017, p. 109) who had protested Wall Street, promoted the Tea Party, and who now wanted to see D.C. crash and burn; and in Trump they saw a candidate with the flair and desire to “drain the swamp” as he pledged to do (Schaffner & Clark, 2018). Trump made a habit of making bold claims and predictions—such as the idea that he would build a wall between Mexico and the U.S. and get Mexico to pay for it (Ginsberg, Lowi, Tolbert & Weir, 2016). Clinton on the other hand appeared confident from the beginning that she would be the Democratic nominee—even though the Democratic outsider Bernie Sanders had a Trump-like following of his own, mainly because he was seen as the anti-Establishment candidate of the left. When Clinton managed to take the nomination (thanks in no small part to her control of the DNC), the election became one in which the Establishment party was going to go toe-to-toe with a loud-mouthed anti-Establishment candidate with a strong following of diverse voters.
Sabato (2017) notes that the 2016 election was similar to the 1948 election in which Truman upset the favored Dewey: in each, the winner was considered the underdog, had a no-holds-barred approach to the campaign (their rhetoric being based on attitude), while their opponents—Dewey in 1948 and Clinton in 2016—were content to utter platitudes, say and do nothing overtly risky, and to be happy “sitting on their leads,” which of course evaporated on election night (p. 2). Trump gained notoriety early on in the Republican primaries by lampooning his opponents, nicknaming them, and identifying their weaknesses while self-promoting in a tongue-in-cheek manner that made many commentators question his sincerity as a candidate. Voters, however, loved it—just like they did when Truman earned his populist stripes in 1948. The two said what the “common man” wanted to hear. The “people” were tired of political correctness—and Trump was just the man to stomp political correctness into the ground during the campaign. Thus, the Republican campaign evolved from one in which Jeb Bush, the expected frontrunner, made a quick exit, smarting from the verbal barbs lobbed at him by Trump. Finally, it came down to Trump versus Rubio versus Cruz—the former the last Republican Establishment holdout, the latter the social conservative. Neither had the broad appeal that Trump had with his swagger and “don’t give a damn” attitude.
Trump’s attitude contrasted sharply with Clinton’s politically correct platitudes in the end. The election outcome was perhaps unexpected by the pundits but not surprising to those who sensed that Trump’s path to victory lay in states where his “common man,” “working class” message hit home—states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan. Clinton won the popular vote—again, not surprising thanks to her strong appeal on the West Coast where her politically correct message resonated strongly in contrast with the blue collar message that Trump was delivering in the heartland. Trump also stood out for many as a symbol of personal success—a man who had not been brought up in politics but had still managed to make a billion. His opponents had attempted to undercut his fortune, his success, and his ethics—but at every turn, Trump came right back swinging, re-asserting his anti-Establishment, nationalistic, protectionist, outsider rhetoric and dialing it up a notch from one debate to the next. At one point he even told his opponent that were he in charge she would be in jail. It was said with such nonchalance that his followers celebrated, chanting, “Lock her up!” at his next soundstage appearance. Part of the reason that this type of rhetoric found an audience was primarily because Trump’s opponent was so loathed by a large percentage of voters. Had Trump been facing off against Sanders—the anti-Establishment candidate of the left, it is very likely that Sanders would be in the White House today. Clinton faced an uphill battle among on-the-fence voters and the deluge of anti-Clinton news that hit the wire leading up to election night also helped to tip the scales in Trump’s favor. From the controversial Clinton Cash book that took aim at the Clinton Foundation’s finances to Comey’s re-opening (and then re-closing) of the investigation into Clinton’s email server a week before voters went to the polls was enough to help tilt the scales in Trump’s favor. He may have been the underdog—the outsider without a chance according to the pundits—but on election night he also appeared like the lesser of two evils among voters in states where the electoral college numbers mattered most.
In conclusion, the evolution of the campaign and the outcome of the election was one that went completely off script as soon as it became clear that the anti-Establishment candidates were gaining in popularity. Clinton had enough success in boxing out Sanders in the primaries; Trump’s opponents had less in the Republican primaries—though they certainly tried (even Mitt Romney attempted to lead a coup in the media). In the end, it was not Trump so much who won but rather the anti-Establishmentarians, who felt that Trump at least at the time resembled the wrecking ball they all yearned to see descend on Washington.
References
Ginsberg, B., Lowi, T., Tolbert, C. & Weir, M. (2016). We the people, 11th Edition.
New York, NY: W.W. Norton.
Sabato, L. (2017). Trumped: The 2016 election that broke all the rules. London, UK:
Rowman & Littlefield.
Schaffner, B. & Clark, J. (2018). Making sense of the 2016 elections: A CQ Press
guide. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.