Yes, you can—in the same sense that you can blame bad luck on black cats.
Before the election, corporate media nonsensically tried to blame the rise of Donald Trump on Millennials (FAIR.org, 10/10/16)—and now, after the election, the Washington Post is still at it.
“Yes, You Can Blame Millennials for Hillary Clinton’s Loss” was the headline over a piece by the Post‘s Aaron Blake (12/2/16). “Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said Thursday that one particular group is especially to blame: Millennials.” Blake quoted another Post story citing Mook’s claim that “younger voters, perhaps assuming that Clinton was going to win, migrated to third-party candidates in the final days of the race.” “That’s why we lost,” Mook said.
While “skeptical” at first, Blake said he found that “digging into the numbers, however, Mook has a point”:
The national exit poll shows Clinton underperformed Barack Obama’s 2012 share of the vote by one point with those between the ages of 30 and 44 and by three points with those ages 45 to 64. She actually overperformed him by one point with those over 65.
Among those between 18 and 29, though, she took five points less—55 percent versus Obama’s 60 percent.
What’s more, Blake wrote, “Clinton’s 55–36 margin among those ages 18 to 29 is also significantly worse than late polls suggested it would be.”
Whoa, wait—”Clinton’s 55–36 margin among those ages 18 to 29″? Yep, Clinton won among voters under 30—the Millennials, basically—by 19 percentage points. Blake doesn’t spell it out, but this is the age group that delivered by far the biggest margin for Clinton. The next-best cohort for Clinton was those aged 39–44, who picked her by a 10-point margin. This is in sharp contrast to the 45–64 and 65+ age groups, who voted for Trump by margins of 8 and 7 percentage points, respectively.
So who do we blame for Trump—the age group that voted for Clinton by the widest margin, or the ones that voted for Trump? If you’re the Washington Post, the biggest Clinton backers are responsible for Trump, naturally.
You can play the same statistical games with race, by the way. For example, exit polls suggest that Trump did only 1 percentage point better than Romney among white voters, who went for Trump 58–37 percent. Among African-Americans, he only got 8 percent, but his losing margin was “only” 80 percentage points, as opposed to 87 points for Romney; Trump “overperformed” with black voters by 7 points.
So who bears moral responsibility for Trump? To say that it’s African-Americans, not white Americans, would be absurd—not to mention racist. Yet that’s exactly the “logic” Blake applies to Millennials.
I have no idea how old Aaron Blake is. But he’s old enough to know better.
UPDATE: Clarified that Trump’s 7-point improvement with African-American voters was in his losing margin, not in the percentage of the vote he got.
Jim Naureckas is the editor of FAIR.org. You can follow him on Twitter: @JNaureckas.
Messages can be sent to the Washington Post at letters@washpost.com, or via Twitter @washingtonpost. Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.
What’s all this preoccupation with “blame?”
Analysis, sure, let’s do that.
“Blame” suggests someone is looking for a donkey on which to pin the tail of their disappointment or anger or some emotion. Being in the grip of such emotions means one isn’t in a mental state likely to reach useful answers, to gain richer understanding of how an event came about, and how (as is often the case) the actions of many parties contributed to the result.
The reason many of these people are looking for somebody to pin Clinton’s loss on is that if they don’t find someone convincing to pin Clinton’s loss on, then they (or their sources) are going to experience significant professional repercussions as political pundits/consultants. So they’re looking for somebody that won’t be listened to to pin the blame on, just like how in many businesses when something goes wrong there’s an immediate search for somebody at the bottom of the totem pole who can be safely scapegoated.
This same crowd successfully pulled the same maneuver after the 2000 election, convincing a very large percentage of people that the reason that Al Gore didn’t win was because of Ralph Nader when Nader was a marginal-at-most factor.
Upton Sinclair’s famous line seems relevant here: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
I’m not among the millennials, but I am among those who refused to vote for Hillary Clinton (I voted Stein). Furthermore, I’ll vote the same way again if the Democratic party nominates another Hillaryesque Wall Street puppet as their candidate. Yeah, saying that I’m to blame is saying that you needed my vote in order to win. Glad to hear it. Next time give me a more progressive nominee.
I’m a mirror image. Next time give us a more progressive nominee rather than a Wall Street puppet.
Add me to this list as well. Actual progressive candidate next time or GTFO. You are free to blame me for Clinton’s loss. I could care less. Republican-lite needs to move over to the G.O.P. and work to move it to the center and stop infesting the Democratic Party.
If Aaron Blake read the Washington Post regularly, he’d know that it was the Russians who done it.
Of course, this would have nothing to do with millenials being the least likely to cleave to the status quo of duopoly “democracy”, with the intent of scaring them shirtless into doing so.
Pish and posh, I say.
The November 28, 2016, Chicago Sun-Times, Fran Spielman article: “Black Politicians Unite After Murder of Congressman’s Grandson” outlined specifically the exact plan that Todd Elliott Koger has shared with the Congressional black leadership, the “Movement for Blacklivesmatter,” Rev. Jesse Jackson, private foundations, and the like. In fact, Mr. Koger had already complained that the Urban League also usurped this proposal.
None of the black leadership named in the Chicago Sun-Times article had previously demonstrated any interest for the suggestion until apparently “word got out that Mr. Koger also shared the Plan with Donald Trump.” That is, the black leadership named in the Chicago Sun-Times’ article has always taken direct issue with Mr. Trump arguing that “BLACKS ARE NOT LIVING IN THE PRECARIOUS SITUATION OUTLINED.” Donald Trump was the only one willing to listen to Mr. Koger (blacks have been voting almost 50 years “straight” Democrat and our situation remained the same or worst).
First Mr. Trump issued an online video that addressed our plight. Next he went to Michigan and then took the message to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Thereafter, Mr. Koger packaged the visual optics and shared Mr. Trump’s fight against the “status quo” with black America to grow an arsenal of black Trump supporters.
When “sh*t hit the fan” in October 2016 and everyone started to run from Mr. Trump . . . Mr. Koger suggested the need for a new “writing” for black America to put things back on track. Thereafter, Mr. Trump almost immediately issued a “New Deal For Black America.”
Donald Trump owes his victory to “predominately black Democratic strongholds of Pennsylvania” who were convinced to give Mr. Trump more votes than the previous Republican Party presidential candidate. African Americans like Todd Elliott Koger convinced hundreds of thousands blacks in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and various other states to boycott the vote and/or the traditional “straight” Democratic Party vote.
Mr. Trump’s “margin of victory” is realized when you combine this with an increase of “Obama white voters” in Wisconsin and Michigan voting Trump in 2016. Trump won Pennsylvania by 1.1 percentage points (68,236 votes), Wisconsin by 0.9 points (27,257 votes), and Michigan by 0.2 points (11,837 votes). If Hillary Clinton had won all three states, she would have won the Electoral College 278 to 260. She fell short in all three.
The extended logic of this article is that it would be OK to blame millennials for Trump’s win only if the statistics showed Trump got more millennial votes than Clinton because the millennials were so fed up with the Democratic Party that they voted for Jill Stein’s Greens instead. In other words, it’s only because the Greens didn’t win enough support among millennials that this writer can excuse millennials from the charge that Trump is all their fault.
This is just a rehash of the canard that a vote for third parties is a vote for Trump.
WHY would anyone care who chose arsenic over cyanide? Trump and Clinton were both toxic for America.
I blame Obama.
They blame it on everyone (Millenians, Russians, Steinians, Garyans, White supremians, Electorians, Wikileakians, etc, etc) — everyone except the ones who are primarily responsible: Hillary Clinton and the Democratic party.
Republicans certainly have no monopoly on denial.
Ooops, I left out the most important group: “Deplorians (from Planet Deplore)”
(Forgive any redundancy in my list)
Ah, love listening to the recriminations floating down from clouds these morally impeccable “individualists” reside. The vote isn’t a vehicle to express your authenticity and/or moral superiority, but folks like you are too sequestered im ivory towers to understand.
The vote is an instrument with which to exercise what little power is given in our deeply flawed government. Throwing it away to express your disgust, alienation, and political piety will cost lives. But you will likely point out that Clinton’s warmongering will cost lives as well…and promptly lose interest in figuring out just how the balance of power affects war refugees, global warming refugees (which will multiply said war refugees), and anything else of import.
I hate Clintons’ corruption, but it pales in comparison to the kleptocracy your (in)actions have now activated. Take your political nihilism back to your cloud kingdoms and shut the hell up with your pathetic moralizing. May your feet never touch the ground, squids.
Ah, yes, the “purity test”, “perfect is the enemy of the good”, “lesser of two evils” moral cowardice. 25 years of which is the whole reason we even found ourselves with a choice between a Republican-lite corporate shill and an Orange Hitler.
Maybe you, and the now center-right Democratic Party, should have made this kind of earnest appeal and adopted more egalitarian positions before Nov. 8th. You and your annointed, corporatist queen could have easily demonstrated this by choosing a real vice-presidential candidate, appealing directly to young progressives, and actually showing some effort and concern for their distrust, instead of sneering down your nose at them and effectively telling them to “shut up and fall in line”. Or, better yet, maybe you shouldn’t have abandon the poor and working class in 1992.
Your contempt for progressive ideals and smug condescension is literally the reason why we now all live under the Trumparchy. In short, take a long look in the mirror if you want to see why she lost. Oh, and thanks for the 8 years of Trump, Third Way, Blue Dog traitors since you are the reason we are now here and you will suffer much less under Trump’s boot heel.
Spare me the goading to dance around political labels. Progressive ideals need fighters, and lots of them, not bitter iconoclasts cursing every win corporate America has had with the political parties. Tear her down, dance on her grave, take it out on her daughter, I could care less.
When you look in the mirror do you see someone so consumed by rage that she will put egalitarianism above the coming terror in immigrant communities? I have seen MANY despairing voters leap to the Leninist hope that Trump will bring the revolution that will break the grip on power by the establishment. It won’t, because power concedes nothing unless it has been first burnt to ash.
But more importantly, your outrage and ideals won’t free nor resurrect our black and brown citizens who will be victimized because all authoritarians resort to violence against minorities and overzealous “law and order” spectacles to distract from their incompetent failures to deliver prosperity. Whatever blood is spilled, whatever communities are terrorized, it will not redeem any political revolution, if it were to magically appear.
You put your recriminations and outrage above the safety of our most vulnerable citizens and yet you call me a traitor. You would (delusionally, I might add) cast me as the cynical opportunist, when you know many in your tribe are just that, even if you are not.
The anger is good, even the rage. But there were two choices with very real consequences, and whether through action or inaction we all chose one. It’s time to own our decisions and stop attacking one another. It sounds like you helped Trump get elected. This was a stain on you. Welcome to the fight, we’ve all got stains and scars. You can either live with it or let the rage consume you, and fly to whatever height gives you the best, safest view of what is to come. And wait for your revolution. Get comfortable.