In politics, past is often prologue, but not always. 2016 was a unique situation. For Hillary Clinton there was a lot of talk about it being "her turn". To the early Boomer feminists, she was the epitome of their own struggles. To much of the rest of the electorate opinions were not that favorable.
There is a breed of feminist I call "kick 'em in the crotch" feminists who seem to want to hurt men rather than just be considered equal. Some conservative talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh have made straw man arguments about feminists holding up these relative few as an example of the whole. Most feminists just want an equal playing field and have no problem with men in general, just the cavemen who hold onto outdated ideas.
The trail blazers who worked hardest to change the culture were mostly early Boomers and a larger percentage of them became the "kick 'em in the crotch" variety. Many men who are otherwise big champions of equality for women are put off by the hostility of these women. (I'm among them, I strive not to judge people based on inborn characteristics and I expect the same in return.)
Hillary puts off that "kick 'em" vibe and it turns off a lot of people, including women born after the initial wave. My SO was kicked out of a feminist group in college for suggesting that not all men were bad people. She's a middle Boomer.
The start of the 2016 campaign was more of a coronation for Hillary than a real primary battle. The pundits were saying the White House was out of reach for the Republicans until they dealt with the demographic shifts in the electorate and quit appealing to only white voters. As Republicans jumped into the race, the pundits were expecting Jeb to win the nomination, though the two Cubans were given an outside shot.
Trump was the car wreck candidate. The media covered him obsessively because it got people watching. Most of the people watching couldn't believe anyone that crazy could seriously run for president. Because he had been a reality TV star and those in the know understand there is a certain degree of theater there, a lot of people thought the crazy was an act and he would drop it eventually.
The conservative news media had primed their electorate for a hostile take over by someone like Trump. Few Republicans in power believed any of the nutty stories like Hillary Clinton and some other Democrats were running a child sex ring out of a pizza parlor in the DC area, but more conservative media viewers did than they thought. It was also inconceivable that someone who actually believed that sort of BS could win anything important.
People think and act differently when their lymbic systems are amped up. Most people become less willing to explore new ideas and will want a strong man to lead them out of the trouble. That's why GW Bush's approval ratings soared after 9/11. His handlers knew exactly how to poise himself as the strongman to lead the US out of the disaster. By 2008 he had a sub-30 approval rating because people's lymbic systems had recovered and they saw him for the failure he was.
The conservative machine tries to keep as many people's lymbic systems perpetually primed. If 5% of what Fox News said was true, I'd be angry too, but the most accurate news they do is exaggerating the truth. Trump's one talent is knowing how to tell a certain type of person what they want to hear. He already believed a lot of the stuff on Fox, so selling himself to Republicans came easily.
One difference between the parties is the Democrats are constantly changing. The Republicans keep doubling down on the last strategy that seemed to work hoping to rekindle the Reagan magic. When McCain lost in 2008 and Romney lost in 2012 their post-mortem decided they weren't being conservative
enough. To the rest of the country, they lost because they were too conservative.
The Democrats look at what did and didn't work and try to come up with a system that works better. The 2020 nomination battle is the complete opposite of 2016. In 2016 all the talk was of a Hillary coronation, but this round it's wide open. Biden is way out ahead because now Democrats lymbic systems are amped and Biden represents old fashioned steady leadership as well as he's "Obama's guy". He's the closet thing we can get to Barack Obama again. But the Democratic Party is being very careful to stay out of the fight this time. They don't want to be accused to playing favorites again.
Trump is doubling down on speaking to his base at the cost of the periphery who got him elected. Trump's base was what got him to the general election, but the people who actually made the difference were people who were scared and angry at how life has been treating them the last 30 years, the Hillary haters who wanted to post a protest vote, and some people who just wanted the throw a wrench in the machine to see what would happen.
Hillary is not running in 2020, so the anti-Hillary voters are a lot less interested in voting for Trump. A lot of those who have seen their life go down hill since the 80s have seen the slide accelerate under Trump. And a lot of the wrench throwers are regretting what they did.
None of these people are automatic Democratic votes. Some may vote for Trump again, some may be open to voting Democratic, and probably quite a few will stay home. Trump got a lot of white voters who hadn't voted in years to vote again, but while some of those people are on the Trump bandwagon, a lot are probably going back to inactive voters.
The two parties are not the same. This false dichotomy has also been fostered by the svengalis behind conservative media. They knew they could only sell their brand of crazy to a certain segment of the population, but they worked to sell the rest of the public on the idea the Democrats are at least as bad. As a result, there are a lot of people who loath both parties.
I live in my hometown in the impoverished California central valley and lived in east LA and taught high school in Los Angeles for years. I'm not making anything up, and swearing at me won't change the facts. I use this specific language because when I asked the chief of a pacific island why they were so restrictive toward foreigners he said they were afraid of being overrun, even though no foreigners lived there. This chief was educated in San Diego so I asked him whether he'd observed being overrun there, to which he just smiled. I really got tired of unjust inequitable nonreciprocal treatment.
Our geographic paths have crossed to some extent. I grew up in Monterey Park, two blocks from East LA City College at the time we actually were getting overrun with immigrants from Taiwan. Having experienced it, the reality is a lot less bad than the concept a lot of people have in their minds. There is cultural friction as the foreign group settles in, but more often than not the foreign group goes more native than vice versa. Monterey Park already had a large native born Asian population before the influx and there was really not that much difference culturally between the native born Asians, Hispanics, and whites. There were some different traditions observed, but overall there was more similarity than differences.
My older sister moved to Bakersfield when I was starting high school and I spent a lot of time there when I was in high school and college. I got a good feel for the Valley culture. When I read
American Nations I could see the cultural differences between coastal California and inland California from first hand experience.
