فصل 82

کتاب: چه شد / فصل 82

فصل 82

توضیح مختصر

  • زمان مطالعه 0 دقیقه
  • سطح خیلی سخت

دانلود اپلیکیشن «زیبوک»

این فصل را می‌توانید به بهترین شکل و با امکانات عالی در اپلیکیشن «زیبوک» بخوانید

دانلود اپلیکیشن «زیبوک»

فایل صوتی

برای دسترسی به این محتوا بایستی اپلیکیشن زبانشناس را نصب کنید.

متن انگلیسی فصل

82

Was I Doomed from the Start?

Some pundits have also said my campaign was doomed from the start, either because of my weaknesses as a candidate or because America was caught up in a historic wave of angry, tribal populism sweeping the world. Maybe. But don’t forget that I won the popular vote by nearly three million, roughly the same margin by which George W. Bush defeated John Kerry in 2004. It’s hard to see how that happens if I’m hopelessly out of step with the American people.

Still, as I’ve discussed throughout this book, I do think it’s fair to say there was a fundamental mismatch between how I approach politics and what a lot of the country wanted to hear in 2016. I’ve learned that even the best plans and proposals can land on deaf ears when people are disillusioned by a broken political system and disgusted with politicians. When people are angry and looking for someone to blame, they don’t want to hear your ten-point plan to create jobs and raise wages. They want you to be angry, too.

You can see the same dynamic in a lot of personal relationships. I have friends who often get frustrated with their spouses who, instead of listening to them vent about a problem and commiserating, jump straight into trying to solve it. That was my problem with many voters: I skipped the venting and went straight to the solving.

Moreover, I have come to terms with the fact that a lot of people—millions and millions of people—decided they just didn’t like me. Imagine what that feels like. It hurts. And it’s a hard thing to accept. But there’s no getting around it.

Whenever I do a job, such as Senator or Secretary of State, people give me high ratings. But when I compete for a job—by running for office—everything changes. People remember years of partisan attacks that have painted me as dishonest and untrustworthy. Even when they’re disproven, those attacks leave a residue. I’ve always tried to keep my head down and do good work and hope to be judged by the results. That’s usually worked, but not this time.

It seems as if many Trump voters were actually voting against me, more than they were voting for him (53 percent to 44 percent, in a September Pew Research Center poll). In exit polls, a significant number of people said they thought Trump was unqualified or lacked the temperament to be President . . . yet voted for him anyway. Of the 61 percent of all voters who said he was unqualified, 17 percent still voted for him. Of the 63 percent who said he didn’t have the right temperament, 19 percent voted for him. The exit polls found that 18 percent of all voters viewed both me and Trump negatively, but they went for him 47 percent to 30 percent. Their antipathy toward me must have been even stronger than their concerns about his qualifications and temperament.

I’m not surprised by these findings. Gallup compiled a word cloud depicting everything Americans read, saw, or heard about me during several months of the campaign. It was dominated by a single giant word: email. Much smaller, but also visible were the words lie and scandal. Interestingly, in Trump’s word cloud, immigration and Mexico stand out much more than jobs or trade. More on that shortly.

I don’t believe all the negative feelings about me were inevitable. After all, I had high approval ratings when I left the State Department. This was the result of a relentless barrage of political attacks and negative coverage. But I also know that it was my job to try to break through all that noise and convince the American people to vote for me. I wasn’t able to do it.

So yes, I had my shortcomings as a candidate. And yes, there was indeed a global populist wave and an anti–third term tradition in America. But—and this is important for determining what tilted the outcome of the election—those structural factors didn’t pop up as a big surprise at the end. They were in play throughout the campaign. They probably kept the race closer than was justified based on our contrasting policy proposals and conduct, my record in public office, and the achievements of the Obama administration. If these factors were decisive, however, I should have been behind the whole way. And yet, despite consistent headwinds, nearly every public and private poll over two years showed me ahead, often way ahead.

By the homestretch, after two conventions and three debates watched by record numbers of Americans, I had emerged with clear momentum and a solid lead. Vox’s Ezra Klein called it “the most effective series of debate performances in modern political history.” I was in a stronger position than President Obama had been four years before. So either all those surveys over all those months were wrong, or something changed in the final days of the race to shift enough voters in key states to make a difference.

Were all the polls wrong? We know now that some surveys were off, especially in Wisconsin, especially at the end. It’s likely that some Trump voters refused to participate in surveys and so their feedback was missed, and that some people weren’t truthful about their preferences. But overall, national polls in 2016 were slightly more accurate than they were in 2012. That year, the final polling average understated President Obama’s actual victory by 3.1 points. In 2016, according to the website RealClearPolitics, the final average was off by just 1.2 points. In a race this close, that’s not nothing. But it’s hardly a massive error.

So no, all the polls weren’t wrong. It’s possible that my lead throughout the race was slightly overstated—but not significantly. It’s reasonable to conclude, therefore, that something important and ultimately decisive happened at the very end.

مشارکت کنندگان در این صفحه

تا کنون فردی در بازسازی این صفحه مشارکت نداشته است.

🖊 شما نیز می‌توانید برای مشارکت در ترجمه‌ی این صفحه یا اصلاح متن انگلیسی، به این لینک مراجعه بفرمایید.