This week has been surreal for me. I have seen, in my
opinion, the most unfit, unqualified politician become the most important
person in the free world. I went through a few stages of emotional reactions
and I am finally coming back to my senses.
I am now trying to understand what happened. You can listen
or read the media and have all these “pundits” explain it to you, but you will
have to remind yourself that the same pundits have spent the last 18 months
explaining to you that DJT had no chance of winning.
So I have looked at the data myself and this is my humble
analysis of the situation.
1.
Not All Trump
Supporters Are Racist- Asserting the contrary would be inflammatory and
simply inaccurate. Of course that all the white racist people in America who
voted on November 8 voted for Trump. He naturally attracted them with his
racist and divisive rhetoric; they even made him their hero. But an analysis of
the counties that Obama carried in 2012 reveals that a third of the same
counties voted for Trump last week. These guys voted in office, for a second
term, a black man whose name is “Hussein”. They are not racist.
2.
It’s Not
Only About Jobs In Rural America- Sure the DNC and Clinton’s campaign have not
spent a minute identifying with the ordeals of the globalization’s left-behinds,
who usually are white blue collar folks in rural America. But a closer look at
the exit polls show that 49% of white college graduates have voted for DJT
versus 44% for HRC. So something else is
at play here. CNN data shows that after the economy (52% of respondents), the most important issue facing the country is
terrorism (18% of respondents). Additionally,
of these 18% who considered ISIS to be the key issue, 57% voted for Trump
versus only 39% for Clinton.
3.
Trump Is A Good Product Marketer And His
Campaign Was An Acceptable “Minimally Viable Product” (MVP)- My geek friends will understand this
analogy, but for the other readers, what commentators and analysts call a good
politician is a man who knows how to read what electors (i.e. the market) want
and give them a campaign (i.e. a product) that would answer their expectations.
In the world of product development we call this PMF, a.k.a. Product Market
Fit. A MVP is a less sophisticated product that still fits the market. DJT, as it turns out, is an apt product
marketer and has put forward a MVP (i.e. campaign) whose 3 must-have features were:
a)
Emotional empathy for white blue collars. Since there’s no actual solution to these
lost manufacturing jobs, Trump identified with this group by defending their
values: guns and god.
b)
Acknowledgement that there is a problem
within Islam. Here Obama,
Clinton and the Democrats largely helped Trump by never naming the problem or
using the words ‘Islam fundamentalism’.
c)
No filter. Trump’s straight talk seems to have struck a chord, especially with
independents, which voted 48% for DJT vs. 42% for HRC.
All the other aspects of Trump’s campaign were overlooked by his voters.
Indeed, they didn’t care that he could be racist, sexist, a liar or a
conspiracy theorist. The MVP analogy explains this quite well. Imagine looking
for a product that addresses your needs. As long as the key identified features
are present in the product, the other features seem less important and are
overlooked, i.e. not used.
