To call Tuesday night’s presidential election results an “upset” almost doesn’t capture the significance of what we just witnessed in the United States. The outcome suggests not simply that a party or candidate was successful but that the fundamental categories by which we make sense of American politics have changed — perhaps for good.
In the days, weeks and years ahead, both major political parties will have to establish not party unity but political coherence.
Trump pulled off a victory that many political commentators and analysts, including myself, never took seriously. Even election data guru Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight was criticized for giving Trump too high a likelihood of winning the presidential election. But Silver’s predictions came the closest out of the major models. There was no way that this brash, embattled figure with a rabid base but an equally fervent opposition was going to win — until he did.
In Maine, we split our electoral votes for the first time, suggesting a growing set of divisions in the state — not just geographic but economic, demographic and cultural. The “two Maines” hypothesis is too simplistic; we know there are many Maines. But what is clear is that the lived experiences and political values of the state have diverged in more significant ways than we previously thought.
Yet, to suggest — as many pundits did — that this was a “big win for the Republicans” and a “stinging defeat for the Democrats” is to apply conventional political language to an outcome much more significant and challenging.
Consider the Republican Party, for which Trump’s victory is a thinly veiled disaster. Trump’s campaign sought to be all things to all factions of the party. The result was a bewildering array of policy positions to cater to the party’s many constituencies: evangelical Christians, deficit hawks, foreign policy hawks, isolationists, interventionists, nationalists and so on.
Trump’s ability to play the political chameleon on the campaign trail is much harder to replicate in office. Adaptability on these issues was achieved at the expense of any substance, and Trump said his voters didn’t care.
Maybe so, but the American citizenry will. This populist lack of policy substance is not without consequences. The Republican Party emerges from its presidential and congressional victories with an open civil war within the ranks. The party is divided in terms of its policy platform, and it is mired in disputes over the leadership to carry out the rebuilding.
Trump’s victory actually complicates that rebuilding. Virtually every constituency he has sought out in his campaign has built expectations and a sense of validation based upon the promises made to them. But the umbrella is too broad, and the Republican Party is too diverse and fractured. This, coupled with Trump’s grievances with prominent members of Republican leadership, leaves a party in utter disarray and with no coherent policy platform despite — and perhaps because — of their recent electoral victories.
Yet, the Democrats clearly have their work cut out for them as well. The party’s policy accomplishments under the Obama administration are in peril, and Trump is poised to appoint a handful of Supreme Court appointees. This is coupled with the fact that the Democratic Party also faces an identity crisis not unlike that of the GOP.
Nowhere is this clearer in Maine. One wonders if the Democratic Party has become too Portland-centric. Could the voters Trump banked in the 2nd Congressional District have been reached through a more robust strategy to build a “bench” of local candidates and leaders here, to understand the concerns in these communities and to craft a policy strategy that was as broad and inclusive as its potential base of voters? This is a question that Democrats face at the national level, as well.
Perhaps Trump’s victory is the “hard reset” that political institutions and party elites on both sides needed to recognize that our political system is broken. Perhaps we will look at this as the “rock bottom” that set us on a constructive process of party rebuilding. But one would be hard-pressed to say this jolt has not come without monumental costs.
Robert Glover is an assistant professor of political science and honors at the University of Maine in Orono.