Well, Hillary Clinton knocked it right out of the park. It was her election to lose - and she did a very good job. She achieved this by losing more electoral votes than either Al Gore or John Kerry did to George Bush in 2000 and 2004 respectively. And in doing so, she completely destroyed the ragtag coalition of voters that her husband first cobbled together in 1992. President Obama solidified it. Today, it fell apart. And Donald Trump is President-Elect.
In simple terms, the Democratic alliance was based on working-class and professional whites, blacks and other minorities, young voters and women. But the core was the working class. Almost since the Great Depression, the unionised workers of the Northern industrial belt have been supporters of the Democratic machine. And it was this lot that was wooed by Trump and ignored by Clinton. Trump reached out to them with his catch phrase "Let's Make America Great Again". This resonated with people who had been deeply hurt by the economic collapse of 2007/8 and had seen well-paid union jobs disappear. They ended up with jobs at half the income, without tenure or pride. Again, Trump reached out to them by accusing the "establishment"of sending jobs to China and leaving behind an industrial wasteland, the Rust Belt. And it is this belt that turned against Hillary. The exit polls found that 52% people named the economy as the Number One issue and 62% felt that it was not good. And in many states like Wisconsin and Michigan, almost 50% said that trade had hurt them.
From Pennsylvania to Wisconsin and Iowa, this huge swathe of very largely white states have voted for Trump. Some by narrow margins as in Pennsylvania, and others like Ohio with upto 8%. Together they accounted for 70 electoral votes (includes Michigan which was still counting and had Trump leading at the time of writing this). This had been part of the blue wall of 242 Democratic-sure electoral votes. It turned into Clinton's nemesis. These were
states and people she ignored until the very last weeks of the campaign and by then it was too late. Neither she nor her surrogates had campaigned in Wisconsin, Michigan or even particularly strongly in Ohio until it was very late. And as the election exit poll showed, most voters (75%) had made up their minds long before that. So bad was the ignore by the Clinton campaign that they did not even spend any money on advertising in Michigan and Wisconsin. As they say, it is the economy, stupid.
Hillary Clinton spoke to supporters offering a message of thanks, apology and hope
The exit poll figures show that among this white working class without college degrees, Trump had a 37% lead. Add to this that he managed to hold almost an equal share of whites with college degrees, and the support of women (for Republican candidate) only dropped marginally compared to 2012, which probably means he accrued a large part of this vote. Given that whites account for 70% of the electorate, this was a big base.
And here is the other major problem that Clinton created for herself. She wasn't able to drive minorities to the same level of support as Obama did twice before. While she had overwhelming support from blacks, it was well down from Obama. And here there were two problems: how much support and how many came out to vote. In many early voting statistics, black turnout had dropped a lot from 2012: Florida down 20%, and North Carolina minus 18%. It is very likely that Pennsylvania which did not have early voting also saw black votes drop. What is the significance of that?
These are not huge numbers, but North Carolina was lost by 3%, almost exactly the drop in the black vote.
The other minority, the Hispanics, showed a higher voter turnout than the black community, but it was still lower than what Obama drew in 2012 by 6%. This, along with the lower black turnout, could have flipped Florida.
Eventually, all this added upto her being (on current counting) more that 6 million votes lower than Obama in 2012. Given that Trump still hasn't caught up with Romney, this was a big failure. Too many people stayed at home, for whatever reason.
Finally, the real issue with Hillary Clinton was that she was establishment and tarred with an image of being "crooked". The first hurt enormously at a time when people were looking for change. She was unable to check that pulse at all. If you watched her speeches, she wasn't able to rouse the crowd. They were speeches delivering and promising continuity, while her opponent said outrageous things which appealed to an audience that felt it had been neglected and ignored. He spoke of immigration, the rich getting richer, ending Obamacare and changing Washington. She seemed to promise more of the same. He called her crooked, and she refused to go low. By staying high, she wasn't able to rouse her supporters enough, especially the young, the blacks and Hispanics, to come out and fully support her. Trump fought a war of high-voltage attrition, she waited for him to implode. He didn't, or at least every problem seemed to bounce off his triple-teflon coating; with her, the crooked stuck and the FBI's late stiletto on her emails only reinforced it.
(Ishwari Bajpai is Senior Advisor at NDTV)Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author. The facts and opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of NDTV and NDTV does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.