Elites Shouldn’t Ignore the Lessons of 2016

This story was originally published on nationaljournal.com on October 7, 2016 The head­line of a column by The New York Times’ Jim Ruten­berg in Thursday’s pa­per asked the ques­tion, “Ed­it­or­i­al Writers Have Spoken, but Will the Voters Listen?” The piece noted that The At­lantic (Na­tion­al Journ­al’s older sis­ter pub­lic­a­tion)—which had only en­dorsed two pres­id­en­tial can­did­ates in its 159-year his­tory, Ab­ra­ham Lin­coln in 1860 and Lyn­don John­son in 1964—had just en­dorsed Hil­lary Clin­ton. The column poin­ted out that USA Today had just made a “dis­en­dorse­ment,” call­ing Don­ald Trump un­fit for the pres­id­ency, the first such de­clar­a­tion in its his­tory. Pub­lic stances in fa­vor of Clin­ton have been taken by The Dal­las Morn­ing News (its first en­dorse­ment of a Demo­crat­ic pres­id­en­tial can­did­ate since 1940) and The Ari­zona Re­pub­lic (the first time it had backed a Demo­crat in its 126-year his­tory). As many have ob­served, none of the 100 largest news­pa­pers in the coun­try by cir­cu­la­tion have en­dorsed Trump. Last month, The Wall Street Journ­al noted that no CEOs from the na­tion’s 100 largest com­pan­ies have donated to Don­ald Trump, a “sharp re­versal”