The Atlantic: Clinton Couldn’t Win Over White Women

Preliminary exit poll results show that while she won women by 12 points overall (Trump won men by the same margin, a historic gender gap),1 Clinton lost the votes of white women overall and struggled to win women voters without a college education in states that could have propelled her to victory. I wrote Tuesday night about Clinton’s collapse in the Midwest — she saw Ohio, Wisconsin and probably Michigan slip away, all states President Obama won in 2008 and 2012 — and this appears to be in part because of her performance among voters who don’t have a college degree, including women. In Michigan, Trump won those women along with white men, their support for him drowning out white, college-educated women’s votes for Clinton. She won that demographic by 10 points, but these women account for only two in 10 Michigan voters. [...]

While Democrats were banking on the hope that Trump’s crass comments and myriad allegations of sexual harassment would turn off women, there were glimmers of the coalition of women supporters that we saw forming last month after the release of the “Access Hollywood tape” in which he made lewd comments about groping women. At the time, a Morning Consult poll found that Trump had nearly equal support among Republican men and women, and numbers showed that the Republican faithful — men and women — were supporting their nominee at rates similar to what we’ve seen in past presidential elections. In other words, they were treating Trump like a run-of-the-mill Republican nominee; Republicans, men and women, wanted to see their guy win.

The issues raised by Trump’s conduct toward women did not seem to drive women to the polls in unusual numbers. Overall turnout among women was only 1 percentage point higher than in 2012.

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CityLab: The View From Brexitland

The divide is still more complex than that in both the U.K. and the U.S. Many big-city residents in the U.K. are feeling the pinch as much as anyone else, while plenty of areas considered deep in the country in Britain are wealthy, well-connected, and close enough to London to be considered exurban by American standards.

The divide between metropolitan elites and regional discontents has nonetheless been successfully established as a fault line for debate—the public has largely bought it because, though flawed and polemic, it’s not completely divorced from reality. Pro-Brexit voices have succeeded in creating two monstrous scapegoats in the public mind that supposedly congregate around London: the rootless, wealthy cosmopolite and the shifty, job-stealing foreigner. If that funhouse mirror rhetoric doesn’t ring a bell to American readers, I suggest you try cleaning your ears. [...]

It’s not that racism suddenly appeared overnight. British minorities have frustratedly pointed out that the abuse many have received is just a more intense expression of an ongoing problem that’s been disregarded too long by the white and powerful. The problem is that, with a vote for Brexit being interpreted by many as a vote against immigration, racists felt emboldened that the majority was now on their side. Many non-white or non-British-born friends of mine reported being verbally insulted or even pushed out of subway trains. [...]

The Daily Mail branded the judges who ruled “enemies of the people” and in a comment since deleted, damned one for being an “openly gay ex-Olympic fencer,” as if that were a source of treachery. Meanwhile the Daily Express preposterously suggested the case was as serious a crisis for the country as the Second World War. This hyperbole has actually become pretty standard post-referendum fare. Brexit supporters have been screaming traitor at anyone who cast any doubt on the handling of the Brexit process or its likelihood of success, in part because they know their international hand is indeed very weak and loathe having it pointed out. With many Trump policies on key issues pretty hazy and/or tough to deliver, don’t be surprised if this pattern repeats itself across the Atlantic.

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Motherboard: Weed Won the Election

Weed won the election. There were nine states with marijuana legalization measures on the ballot, and eight of them have effectively passed.

California, Massachusetts, and Nevada have officially legalized the adult use of recreational marijuana. And Maine, where results are still rolling in, is on track to do the same. Arizona’s Prop 205, however, failed, even though the polls showed statewide support for the bill.

Meanwhile, medical marijuana passed in all four states where it was on the ballot: Florida, Arkansas, North Dakota, and Montana. That means that more states have now legalized medical marijuana than banned it—a sign of progress for marijuana advocates, and the science behind the benefits of medical cannabis.

With more than a quarter of the country's population now living in adult use cannabis states, the market size for weed is expected to multiply big time. Cannabis retail sales from the states that passed initiatives last night could add another $7 to $8 billion in additional revenue.

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The Atlantic: Why Christians Overwhelmingly Backed Trump

And despite the vulgar language Trump was heard using in the Access Hollywood tape, which many social conservatives found off-putting, 81 percent of white evangelical Christians still voted for Trump, as did the majority of people who attend religious services once a week or more. (Catholics were slightly more divided than born-again protestants, but 60 percent still went for Trump.)

Trump’s embrace by these groups might signal the importance of abortion—an issue on which at least a fifth of Americans say they will not compromise when voting. In 2015, 21 percent of Americans said they would only vote for a candidate who shared their abortion views, up from 13 percent in 2008. [...]

Richard Land, president of Southern Evangelical Seminary and part of Trump’s evangelical advisory committee, “believes evangelicals were motivated to vote in unprecedented numbers because of Hillary Clinton’s record on abortion,” according to the Huffington Post.

Though Trump hasn’t been their most steadfast ally, several pro-life activists celebrated his victory Tuesday.

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Salon: White rage against the machine: President Donald Trump is a historical shock — unless you study American history

Racism and sexism combined to defeat Hillary Clinton. This outcome is as much a backlash against Barack Obama as it is against a woman being elected President of the United States of America. America is a country divided against itself where political ideology and polarization are deeply intertwined with racial animus, sexism, and hostility to the Other. If politics is a story of action and reaction, the Age of Obama was punched in the face on Election Day by the Age of Trump.

Authoritarianism has been on the rise in American over the last ten years. This is especially true among Republicans and right-leaning independents.

Consumed by an obsession with “economic insecurity” among working-class white voters (a conclusion not born out by public opinion and other data), the mainstream corporate news media refused to seriously consider the well-documented role of white racism and white racial resentment in motivating Republicans and those others who flocked to his banner. [...]

Ultimately, the overwhelming power of white rage is the connective tissue tying together all of the various reasons that Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton to win the White House. This is an old story in America, a nation founded on white (male) supremacy. Trump’s victory is in many ways a return to form that shows the Age of Obama, the civil rights movement, and yes, the women’s rights movements, were aberrations in the country’s history.

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