Program - Election Analysis

Video link: https://vimeo.com/188293311

PDD Orrin Mahoney introduced Carla Marinucci, POLITICO’s California Playbook reporter. She is one of California’s leading political writers and top political bloggers who has covered presidential and California gubernatorial elections since 1996 and the administrations of four California governors.

Carla began stating that she would not be in her current job without the Rotary Club Scholarship she received and thanked Rotary.

Her talk proceeded to the elections and how the media and polls got it so wrong. She recounted meeting Trump first when he was running on the Reform Party ticket in 1999. At the time he did not seem wedded to any particular ideology but very much wanted to be liked by the media. He gave her access to him because her reporting in the SF Chronicle was fair and balanced.

She thought women and lawsuits would keep him from running, but run he did and he overcame every misstep including the Khan family and his positions on immigrants and Muslims. The media just didn’t know the extent of discontent in the electorate. The political class on both sides lost touch, but not Trump. She said the media was complicit in his rise providing him with lots of free air time. There was little scrutinizing of his businesses and Clinton didn’t think outside the box. She visited the wrong states and she erroneously counted rust belt states in her win column. Neither talked policy and debates were about why the other was not qualified. Voters rallied around him when she called them a basket of deplorables. So we end with him winning the Electoral College and her winning the popular vote, clearly a divided country.

Looking to the future we see Trump being true to his campaign rhetoric, but being tempered by reality. Repeal and replace has become keep coverage for pre-existing conditions and 26 year old offspring. This is not possible. Lock her up has become praise for her public service and “I don’t want to hurt her.” Lobbyists are filling the power vacuum and so there is no draining of the swamp in Washington. Deportation of 11M is down to 3M with no mass rollback of DACA. The big beautiful wall is now a fence in some places. Changing libel laws isn’t a federal law and press freedom restrictions are unconstitutional.

Major issues remain for Trump. Appointment of Steve Bannon could lead to a state run media like Pravda. There is a major conflict hiring family members and another major problem with self-dealing which is possible because there is no true blind trust for Trump’s assets. Melania was an illegal worker and so will she be deported as a law breaker? How will he pay for his infrastructure construction plans? What to do about Russian intervention in elections? And the list goes on. We’ll have to see how things change and be vigilant reporting the facts.