Glenn Greenwald talking:
It’s obviously a shocking outcome, in particular because the not just polling data, but all of the self-proclaimed experts in data journalism, this new field of journalism that has arisen that claims to only view politics through an empirical lens rather than through the dirty ideologies or partisan biases that everybody else is burdened with, assured everybody that it was overwhelmingly likely that Clinton would win. Every model had her at 85 to 90 percent, and yet she lost and lost pretty resoundingly, at least on the level of the Electoral College. She obviously won the popular vote, but that’s not what matters. So, there’s a shock about the fact that all of our empirical models, all of the ways that we try and predict the future, have failed.
But then there’s an even greater shock over the fact that somebody who stands so far outside of the norms of our political traditions and ideologies is now the president-elect of the United States and in two months will be sitting behind that large desk in the Oval Office commanding a massive military—in fact, the most powerful and destructive military ever created in human history—as well as a gigantic nuclear arsenal that can destroy the world many times over, a vast spying machine that exists both on foreign soil but also domestically. And this huge apparatus of power that has been built up by both parties over the last 15 years is now in the hands of somebody who, by pretty much all metrics, is clearly an authoritarian without much regard for the constraints of Constitution or law.
And I think what we’re seeing, in the aftermath of this, is an attempt by Democrats, who nominated a candidate, Hillary Clinton, despite knowing how weak and how vulnerable and how deeply unpopular she was across many sectors in the country, who nonetheless insisted on nominating her in the face of all sorts of empirical evidence that she would not only lose but could literally lose to anyone, that those very same people who insisted on marching behind her are now attempting to blame everyone they can find—except, of course, themselves—for this debacle. And I think that if we’re going to have any kind of constructive discussion in the aftermath of Trump’s victory, it has to include, first and foremost, a discussion about why the Democratic Party has become such a small minority party, a minority in the House, a minority in the Senate, lost control of the White House to someone like Donald Trump, is obliterated on the state and local levels. What is it about the Democratic Party that has caused huge portions of the American voting population to turn their back to it and to reject it? And I think we’re seeing Democrats scrambling around, trying to avoid that discussion by casting the blame on everybody else. And I think that will only ensure that this kind of event will continue to replicate itself in the future.
— source democracynow.org