ABC revived “Roseanne” for the Trump-era, premiering Tuesday night to a monster audience of 18.2 million. Inherently topical, the television reboot is also ironic. If Hillary Clinton in 2016 had won over just a fraction more of Roseanne Barr’s audience, she’d be president.
While Clinton won the popular vote, she lost 63 million voters during the presidential election. The electorate that lived away from the coasts didn’t find her candidacy compelling. They tuned out and turned to Trump, a popular culture icon who identified with the everyman struggles that play out on each episode and every season of “Roseanne.”
But Clinton only needed to convince a relative handful of blue-collar voters that she cared more about their livelihood than pet liberal social issues like transgender bathrooms. If she had been capable of channeling the character Roseanne on the campaign trails — specifically in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — she would be the one watching television in the Oval Office right now.
Trump crushed it in those states by 0.2, 0.7, and 0.8 percent respectively, or more specifically by 10,704, 46,765, and 22,177 votes. That’s 79,646 votes all together, a veritable drop in the national bucket and a tiny fraction of the Midwestern audience watching “Roseanne” last night. What’s that mean in practice? Had Clinton won over just one more of every 225 of those voters than she did on Election Day, she would president.
The family on “Roseanne” is gritty, uncouth, and inherently American. Less than perfect, they are human more than anything. That seems to be the secret of its success — making an effort to struggle with real issues facing and empathizing with real working-class people. If Clinton had been able to do that, she’d be president.
