For me, watching Hillary Clinton’s campaign was like gazing at a plane in a slow tailspin.

By Eric Fehrnstrom

Occasionally I get asked to speak on politics to different audiences. I still have with me the notes I relied on the final week of the US presidential campaign, when the prediction models were showing Hillary Clinton with a 99 percent chance of winning.

Here’s what I said on whether Donald Trump can win: “Of course he can win. His path is narrower, but the possibility exists. I think Hillary Clinton wanted to end this campaign trying to expand the Democratic map into places like Georgia, Utah or Arizona. Instead, she’s trying to lock down her base in places like Michigan and Pennsylvania. If one of those big blue states falls to Trump, he will probably become president.”


This is not by any stretch a particularly insightful piece of analysis, but saying such things in the liberal Boston-New York megalopolis on the eve of the election can make you feel out of place. Now people look at me like I’m Nostradamus.

No one wanted to believe in Trump. Who can blame them? The New York Times predicted that Clinton’s chance of losing was “about the same as the probability that an NFL kicker misses a 37-yard field goal.” The problem with that is kickers miss all the time.

There’s a presidential election in France next year featuring a conservative populist named Marine Le Pen, who is protectionist on trade and opposed to mass immigration. Bloomberg News the other day tweeted out this headline about the race: “French pollsters don’t think Marine Le Pen can win.”

I thought to myself, here we go again.

Every data point and expert analysis fed to the American public about Trump turned out to be wrong. Anyone who thinks the political-industrial complex has learned its lesson from the 2016 election is mistaken. Maybe you’ve heard Trump got fewer votes than Mitt Romney. Wrong, they’re still counting and Trump has surpassed Romney. Or that Clinton won a majority of the popular vote? Wrong, she’s at 48 percent, meaning the greater number voted against her.


Look at how the Trump transition is being covered through a distorted lens meant to gather evidence of a racist or anti-Semitic bent. The press is once again creating a false narrative. Instead of eroding confidence in Trump, it is destroying whatever objectivity it has left.

For me, watching Hillary Clinton’s campaign was like gazing at a plane in a slow tailspin. In 2013, soon after Clinton resigned as secretary of state, Gallup recorded her net favorability at +33 points. On Election Day, it had crashed to -17 points.

Democrats assumed they could just raise a ton of money and make Trump the issue. Clinton adopted every left wing grievance to attract Obama voters. But just like the “historic” 2004 coalition that reelected George W. Bush eventually fizzled, it turns out the Obama coalition wasn’t a permanent majority either.

These days I tell my Democrat friends not to worry, that their fears about Trump are overblown, and they look at me once more like I’m crazy. Some things never change.

Eric Fehrnstrom is a Republican political analyst and media strategist, and was a senior adviser to Governor Mitt Romney.