2016 Election Post Mortem
WARNING (No really. It’s a warning.): IF YOU ARE A LOYAL HILLARY SUPPORTER AND BELIEVED THAT SHE ONLY LOST THE ELECTION DUE TO NO FAULT OF HER CAMPAIGN OR HER OWN CONDUCT, AND WAS SOLEY A VICTIM OF MISOGYNY AND PREJUDICE AGAINST HER, PLEASE PASS OVER THIS POST. TRUST ME. DON’T READ IT. REALLY. YOU WON’T LIKE IT.
Since about 1 am on Wednesday morning I’ve been imbibing a remarkable volume of adult beverages and raging at anyone who’ll listen, including Juanita Jean, about the injustice of it all. She has told me to get it off my chest, so here we go, like it or not. I’m wandering into a political minefield here, because I have things to say about Hillary, her campaign, and why I believe she lost the 2016 electoral vote to the worst candidate for the presidency in US history. And if you believe I’m a misogynist, you can stick that right where the sun don’t shine. It ain’t so; I calls ’em as I sees ’em, and chromosome differences don’t count. All comments making that accusation will be deleted, no arguments. My advice in advance about this piece: Don’t like it? Don’t read it.
All that said, a few facts about me:
- I’m a progressive, but not a Democratic party loyalist.
- I support candidates I believe can win, and refuse to support those who I believe are losers.
- I believe the DNC and Texas Democratic Party is in rigor mortise with a fossilized leadership that has supported the same old, same old, for decades. A cynic would say they do that to line their own pockets, but I won’t make that accusation. I will say, however, that they do the same thing over and over, expecting a different result. A top to bottom house cleaning is due in DC, as well as in state and local parties. After the purge, a heavy application of disinfectant would be appropriate to avoid re-infestation.
- Lastly, to reiterate, I don’t care what people think, and will speak my mind, like it or not.
Now, to the campaign. I opposed Hillary Clinton’s run for president from the very first moment. In 2008, I supported Barack Obama, and thought Hillary was a terrible candidate for President then, and felt more strongly about that when she decided to run again for 2016 especially in light of the email nonsense. Notice I didn’t say unqualified; I said terrible candidate. While very experienced and a dedicated public servant, she carries tons of baggage. That baggage may or may not be fair, but it is baggage nonetheless. Going further, let’s be blunt – the Clintons have lived on the edge of ethical limits for decades. She also has a less than compelling campaign presence, a key to success for any office, much less President of the United States. You can dispute that and call me stupid, but the evidence is compelling.
The obvious issues with Hillary were these:
- Emails: The damage concerning her email was 100% self inflicted. Despite all the prevaricating, she set up the private server for one reason and one reason only…to avoid public scrutiny. C’mon, we all know that, so don’t even try. She arrogantly ignored the efforts of the Obama administration toward transparency, and, against contrary advice, put her email on the former president’s server. She didn’t want to be “inconvenienced” with multiple email accounts (like the rest of the developed world). It was stupid, and her staff enabled that stupidity. Were it not for the email controversy, Hillary would likely be President Elect tonight, despite all the other nonsense surrounding Clinton World.
- The Clinton Foundation Pay to Play: This one is more subtle, but no less compelling. It’s clear to everyone but the most loyal supporter that they used foundation fund raising as a tool for access to Hillary and Bill. Again, c’mon. Anyone who’s been around foundation work by public figures understands that this is just simple fact. To deny that fact is to ignore reality.
- Secretiveness: This one is especially prickly and a vicious circle. Bill and Hillary have been targets of wild conspiracy theories for decades, fueled by behavior like in the two points above. Because of the conspiracy theories, Hillary is very secretive and keeps a small, tight group around her. Because she’s secretive, she does stupid things like keeping a private email server that causes conspiracy theorists to…you get the point.
- Presence: Hillary has a weak public presence. I’ve been around her a couple of times (at high dollar donor events), and she’s personally charming while talking to party insiders and big donors. When it comes to connecting to the masses, however… er, uh, not so much. Don’t get pissed about this, especially since she admits this weakness. Connecting with voters is the lifeblood of a candidate, and she’s anemic in the inspiration department except to radical loyalists.
- Machine Politics: Hillary and Bill are traditional machine politicians whose positions evolve according to traditional polling. Because of this, she has a reputation for flip-flopping, switching her positions according to audience and politics. Yes, yes, a lot of politicians do the same, but Hillary has raised the skill to an art form.
- Zippergate: Directly unrelated to Hillary’s run; however, her vicious attacks on Bill’s accusers were used against her in this campaign. Fair or not, it opened her to broad criticism. Just sayin’.
- The FBI: Clearly, operatives within the FBI intentionally leaked information to the press about Hillary, and one could say, with strong evidence, that Comey intentionally issued his letter to Congress 11 days before the election to intentionally damage her. Termed Trumpland, the FBI seemed to clearly oppose a presidency by Hillary.
None of these weaknesses in isolation is a huge problem, but roll them all up? The bundle simply represents a fatal flaw in Hillary’s image obvious to everyone except loyalists. Period. Despite these obvious weaknesses, though, the big story in 2016 was massive disillusionment in the heartland that everyone, including pollsters, the media, and Clinton World missed. The white middle class, after post-war decades of rising prosperity, was abandoned in the ’70s and ’80s by conservative trickle-down economics and stagnating wages that has continued to today. The middle class dream of a home and an education became a cruel joke under increasingly conservative political leadership.
In the 1990s, the Democratic party was overtaken by neo-liberals (the Clintons), and the working class continued to become an increasingly disenfranchised segment of America. This disenfranchisement gradually lured the middle class into voting against their own interest by responding to demagogic rhetoric intended to divide the white working class from those considered as “other”; immigrants, Muslims, and African Americans. It worked, better than conservative operatives ever imagined. The tragedy, though, was that neo-liberals tried to hang onto influence by abandoning policies that supported the working class, advocating corporate friendly policy that benefited the elite class at the cost of everyday folks. It worked, and, combined with the after effects of the Civil Rights Act, the decline of the Democratic Party began, even as it tried to morph into GOP-Lite. Bill and Hillary were on the leading edge of this movement, followed by the Democratic establishment, abandoning the very constituents they claimed to champion. Let’s be blunt about this fact: Hillary’s positions, especially before Bernie Sanders pulled her to the left, are essentially those of an Eisenhower Republican.
The Shock that Few Saw: Conventional wisdom said that Trump (Cheeto Jesus) was a loser. Even Republicans abandoned him, fearing backlash from his outrageous rhetoric and tweet storms. What they didn’t calculate, though, were his celebrity, and that the middle of America had had enough. Cheeto Jesus, a career carnival barker, spoke to them on the level to which they responded and no one in the establishment, especially Hillary World, could counter. To make matters worse, his followers distrust the establishment and every part of the government even to the extent of refusing to talk to pollsters. They chose to follow a man who admitted to sexual harassment, shouted racial and religious slurs, and made a career of stiffing banks, investors, and contractors for his own personal gain. The more outrageous his behavior, the more he endeared himself to a broad base of disaffected Americans. Even though the GOP had essentially created and fed this problem for over 30 years, they have generally been the beneficiaries of this tactic except for the 2008 and 2012 Presidential cycle. Cheeto Jesus played supporters like one giant Stradivarius.
Cheeto Jesus blew the whole thing up, and Hillary fell to a populist uprising. Yeah, yeah, yeah, she got the popular vote (thanks to turnout in big cities) but she lost the electoral vote, which is the only vote that counts. Would Bernie have done better? Maybe, but we’ll never know, since he was crippled early on by Hillary operatives who had been embedded in the DNC for years (the subject of a future rant). I continue to believe, had not Biden been scared off by the big Hillary wall erected against him, could have beaten Cheeto Jesus, due to his own populist appeal that Hillary certainly lacked.
By now, if they got through this post, Hillary loyalists will be seething and shouting “Nuh Uh” into their computer screens and furiously typing rebuttals in the comments section. But, facts is facts. Hillary, despite her obvious technocrat qualifications for this job, was a terrible choice as the Democratic candidate. Terrible. No, it’s not fair, and yes, it’s a missed opportunity for us to have the first woman President. In the end, though, there are two irrefutable facts:
Politics ain’t beanbag, and life’s not fair.
This is America. Until January 20th, 2017 you are entitled to your own opinions. No, I didn’t reas it all. I have heard most of this before- numerous times.
1Sorry, but in my humble opinion, the biggest factor in the Democratic loss was HATE. Several studies found that Trump supporters for the most part did have decent jobs, home, trucks and racist beliefs. This is what has been brewing in the Republican Party for decades. They have been systematically against voting rights, immigration reform, equal pay and access to birth control and abortion for women and have stoked the flames of the ultra cons for white power. Trump was their logical choice. We underestimated the power of HATE. No Democratic candidate stood a chance, not Hillary, not Bernie, not Joe Biden.
2Hillary’s “baggage” couldn’t compare to Trump’s piles of it, but that didn’t matter because right away Trump honed in on the racist message of white supremacy and that was the key right there.
3Maryellen,what you sayeth! This is how Hitler came to power.
4I’m with el jefe, kind of.
What Richard Scaife started lived on well past his making peace with the Clintons. It is a damn shame, but it what it is.
Next add in Rush and Fox and she never had a chance.
Texas Democrats have been blind since they lost to Clements. His campaign refused to listen to talk radio and that Corpus preacher. Urban rumor is a powerful thing.
5John Hill campaign would not listen
6I’m afraid you’re exactly right, or left. I don’t even know anymore. I’m still shell-shocked. All I know, the Dem’s need to regroup and adopt a new message.
7And we thought it was the Repub’s that needed to reform.
I do not agree with most of your conclusions about Hillary’s baggage. I agree there was plenty of baggage. I worried about her as a candidate the minute she announced she would run. I knew the campaign would be like it turned out — with the media and everybody else focused on Hillary’s baggage and very little of the focus on Donald’s baggage or the awful stuff he kept saying. The media did an awful job during the campaign, brushing off so many of Donald’s lies and sticking to the Hillary baggage. I worried about what would happen if she did win. Congress would again get nothing done, but instead focus on Hillary’s baggage, spending more of our taxpayer money on more pointless investigations. There would be more ugliness a la campaign and Hillary would get nothing accomplished in 4 years except fighting with Congress. Of course I worried more about what would happen if Trump won and most of those worries seem to be playing out, particularly the KKK mouthpiece he has installed as his right-hand man and Trump’s renewed focus on eliminating women’s reproductive rights, which is Pence’s big concern as well. The 2016 election is a nightmare every way it comes out.
8The post-mortem on the DNC is far more important than the intellectual understanding of how or why Secy Clinton’s candidacy failed. The most important takeaway from November 8-9 is that the majority of voters WHO VOTED voted for Secy Clinton.
As Dems we must do something rinow about the DNC from the top down. I dislike Howard Dean personally, BUT he produced as DNC chair. He gets it. If he says DNC chair is a full-time job. It’s a full-time job. Hire accordingly. Retain only on successful performance.
As citizens living in the US in 2016 we should be concerned about the electoral college selecting a candidate which the popular vote did not numerically elect. Despite my usual arrogance I haven’t an answer for that one. Forcing EV split based on state vote might help, as opposed to supposed winner take all. Having nationwide popular vote mathematically involved might help as well. Other ideas welcome.
As citizens we must do a damn sight better at GOTV. This election was the most important in my lifetime, including the three that involved Tricky Dicky. And Dems stayed home this election in politically fatal numbers and in so doing gave the world President Drumpf. Seig Heil. Drumpf uber alles, etc.
As Dems, from the bottom up we have to recruit candidates for every elective office in the 50 states and DC. And we have to f’ing elect ’em.
And last, as a moment of personal privilege, we have to dial back the average age of these candidates to about 42 or 43 from 65 or 67. It isn’t helpful to “groom” a 55-year old first time candidate except under the most unique situation were a stop-gap is desirable.
9And Drumpf chose alt-right lover, race baiting provacateur-Steve Bannon as his cheap strategist. Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League have chastised that choice. Bannon was and maybe still is heading dead Breitbart news which Drumpf has picked, along with Alex Jones to be administrative news outlets.
10I mostly agree with you, El Jefe. I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that rural America doesn’t care about the quality of Drumpf’s character or how many horrible things he says, they wants him anyways.
In the summer of 1980, I left my safe bubble and drove cross country from AZ to MA. Out there in the hinterlands, I realized that there were way more conservatives than liberals. It scared me then and it scares me still.
11Hillary was a monotone candidate, but that aside, Trump was and is the complete list of objectionable adjectives applied to him, and even expanded upon, during the campaign.
12From the accountings I’ve seen, Trump got fewer votes than Romney, and Hillary got millions less than President Obama.
Even though her speeches were dull, without inflection or content devoid of all things not directed by pollsters, she lost because of the voter turnout.
The only way to defeat the right wingers is to out-vote them. Until citizens accept that responsibility, we are SOL. And how do we force people to complicate their lives by finding the motivation to vote in a time when the republicans are practicing the fine art of voter suppression? I contend that all elections should be based on federal law guidelines: all things the same in all jurisdictions, but with a right-wing congress that ain’t gonna happen. Whatever it takes to get citizens to the polls becomes relevant again in two short years.
conservative=bigot
13They hated seeing an African American family in the White House and this is their hateful revenge. Progressives don’t have a chance unless we can somehow change the hate factor.
Got to agree with most of you. It was hate that killed Hill’s election chances. There were other factors too but hate trumped them all. That and the fact that roughly 50% of the electorate didn’t bother to even vote. Actually, they never do. They sit on their collective asses every election because they’re too busy, both sides are the same, or it doesn’t matter who wins, and on and on. Combine that number with the 47% percent who are just a-holes driven by hate, the James Comey thing combined with the massive voter suppression efforts among the confederate and some northern states and I’m amazed that Hill got as many votes as she did. Which is to say, about 2 million more votes than Trump got. Which reminds me, is this still considered a democracy? Also, I read somewhere that 57% of women voters voted for Trump. Well there you go. Maybe I should just stop being so concerned about the womens from now on. And what happened to the Latino votes? We’re screwed. The one silver lining (such as it is) is that the lizard people who voted Trump into office will likely be his first casualties.
14About 2/3 of the issues on El Jefe’s list were completely and deliberately manufactured by propaganda. Other candidates who did the same things would have gotten a bye — HRC has been the victim of a concerted and well-funded 30 year campaign of negative propaganda that succeeded in elevating mole-hills of misconduct into mountains.
But because politics is show-business, not science, specious issues based on lies count the same as real issues.
The Democrats need to learn to tell stories that people want to hear. We should be hiring screen-writers as consultants.
15@maryelle
16To me, the conservative’s aversion to change from the traditional, especially in politics and religion, makes it difficult to impossible for them to accept change. Bigotry is the fester of that inability or unwillingness to change or compromise.
@joel hanes
My little bride called me moments ago to say exactly that. That campaigns are like films and need a hero, a villain, etc etc
17I believe most of Hillary’s baggage was created by the Republican machine to keep her out of the white house. They knew she would run again and set out to ruin her. It worked like a charm.
She cannot counteract the baggage with charm because that is her weakest point. She is a policy geek. She cannot excite people with a speech.
I am still in shock that Donald Trump will be our next president. The thought makes my skin crawl.
18I think you are absolutely right, El Jefe, as long as the discussion is on winning and losing an election. Ann Richards said that Republicans are good at winning elections, but they can’t govern. Nevertheless, their ability to win elections puts the government in their hands.
I’ve been reading a bit this morning about Republican plans that will affect millions who depend on Medicare and the insurance that they can afford because of the Affordable Care Act. My wife and I are alive because we have medical care paid for by a combination of Medicare and private insurance. If our only choice becomes unregulated private insurance, we cannot afford it, and we will die. I imagine being told, “You’re 80 years old. You’ve had a full life. It’s time you died so I don’t have to pay taxes.”
It’s time that we and the press became concerned with government as something other than the background for electoral horse races.
19Thank you, but now, done with the post mortems, and on with the pre-op.
20I agree with much of that, but all those things are like branches and leaves on a tree. There are many of them, but the root is that Hillary Does Not Have A Penis. I hope that language is OK. I do try to be careful here.
At any rate, if she had possessed the proper default genitalia, all those other things would be considerably less important, especially when the candidate was running against a lying, bullying, racist, misogynistic, thieving (when you don’t pay people what you owe them, you are a thief) reality TV star.
Now I’m going to go and stare at my refrigerator, where I have placed the John Oliver recommended signage: THIS IS NOT NORMAL.
21I agree with a lot of what El Jefe said. I was concerned about Clinton as a candidate because so many people hated her irrationally that she started behind the starting line. I was surprised that she was the nominee because the front-runner years ahead of time usually fades before the primaries get well under way. She would have been a good president, but was not a good candidate as such.
But the media should be excoriated for giving Trump $2bil of free publicity and shrugging off the fact that every word out of his mouth was a lie including “and” and “the.” SNL’s skit on the last debate was damn nearly true: “Did you see him just kiss that KKK guy?!” “Yeah, but we’re almost out of time, so let’s get back to your emails.”
We underestimated the resentment and yes, the hatred out there. A clip of people shouting ugly racist things at Trump rallies and feeling safe and justified in those crowds was a sickening contrast to all the people paying tribute, often with their kids, at Susan B. Anthony’s grave on election day. It feels as if the forces of light have fallen to the forces of darkness. And now all the racists and haters are feeling empowered and spraying their hatred on walls to make people afraid and angry.
The Dems do need to pay more attention to the working class that’s been left to stagnate, but we can’t give up our support of those the GOP would marginalize or reject or punish. (Trump wants SCOTUS to send abortion law back to the states– not to prevent any abortions, just to make them harder to get and more expensive and make the lives of poorer women more of a misery.)
Finally, let’s remind people at every semi-reasonable opportunity that Trump was not “chosen by the American people”– CLINTON GOT MORE VOTES. Probably two million more by the time the counting’s over. Trump does NOT have Ryan’s “mandate.” And the Electoral College must be changed or abolished now that it’s given us two presidents within 16 years who got fewer votes than their opponents. That’s happened five times, and with the country so partisan and so closely divided, odds are good it will happen again.
22A few days ago, I would have been one of the ones screaming “Nuh, uh!” into my computer screen. But with hours and hours of reflection since then, I have to agree with much of what you say. I’ve always felt the Democratic party is very adept at snatching Defeat from the jaws of Victory. And again, with this election, they’ve proved it.
23One of the best things I’ve read post-election. I agree 100% with your observations about HRC. I understand that people invested a lot in HRC and that to critique her now is hitting people when they are down, but we all have to come to grips that she was a poor candidate. She lost to a reality TV star who a majority of Americans disapproved of. The Clinton era is over, so we need to move on.
24Yes, Hillary had baggage but Trumps was far worse. Once again we see the double standard – he can grab pussy, go bankrupt, harass woman, marry several times (committing adultery all along the way) and the list goes on. It just doesn’t matter in this case because it was a man running against a woman. As far as Bernie being a serious contender, the far right would have made mincemeat out of that he was a Jewish Socialist – they were just biding their time.
25Sorry, I’m not buying into the “It’s All Hillary’s Fault” line of thinking. Whatever her baggage, faults and limitations, they pale to insignificance when compared to those of Trump.
You Hillary-trashers, you Bernie-whiners, better keep your distance from me for a while. I’ll leave the same message at the Democratic site I’ve frequented for years—if they ever manage to recover it from the massive election-day hack that rendered it inoperable. Whole new world, people.
26The Democratic Party chose its candidate based on seniority and loyalty. Clinton earned that nomination by playing by the rules and doing what needed to be done to get nominated.
Therein lies the rub. Loyalty and seniority are not as important as the ability to produce the desired outcome. Clinton lacked that ability. But she had a (patronage) network within the party that allowed her to claim the right to the nomination.
I see it as a structural problem within our party and I don’t know how to fix it.
27And there is always the Peter Principle to explain Clinton’s political demise.
28Nate Silver gives HRC the distinction of having the largest popular voter margin of candidates who didn’t win the electoral college, except for two earlier elections and they were way back when. I forgot which and am too depressed to look it back up. HRC had 2 million plus more votes than the snake oil salesman.
Some of the so called white working class have accused Dems of driving wages down and shipping good jobs overseas. Totally opposite of reality. Boggles the mind how people that claim they don’t like being called stoopid can be so stoopid. I make no apologies for calling stoopids stoopid.
29Drumpf reopened his Twitter fight with the NYT, claiming they are losing thousands of subscribers for lying about Drumpf. NYT says they are actually signing many thousands of new customers.
Drumpf claimed this was an apology to him. OMFG!
Drumpf[s minions said all kinds of nasties about NYT in a Twitter storm.
30I voted Obama in 2008 knowing HRC would provide us another round of Clinton fever, Bill brought on the impeachment, yes I know every man in the world (and many women) would not have admitted adultery but it handed over the sword to his many enemies. When HRC became SoS it was her opportunity to be transparent and open. Benghazi was nothing that would have held her back but the e-mails again handed the many haters a freaking sword AND gun. Yes the FBI letter made it worse but again she kept the wife of Weiner, that extra-ordinary out of control pervert, closer than ever. Finally there will be a divorce but too little, too late. I don’t think Bernie could have won against the hate-monger in chief. They were already labeling him a communist who spent his honeymoon in Russia (not mentioning as mayor of his town celebrating a Russian sister city he wasn’t in Russia FOR his honeymoon) which fact would have fanned the flames of hysteria no matter how much money tRump owes Russia AND China. My personal thinking is tRump is almost broke, knew he couldn’t repay his loans to Russia and China and this will bail him out again. We won’t know until it is too late but he will be directing policy to benefit himself.
RIGHT now we need to look for our 2020 candidate and work with President Obama and Eric Holder next year as they work to reverse voter suppression laws. Yes this is all about hate. My boss this morning said he (a Bush supporter and hates all things Democratic) is enjoying all the liberal head explosions. I said go ahead but when the bottom drops out of all your investments, Ryan eliminates Medicare as you know it (he is in mid 50’s) and begins to put people in camps you might realize sometimes having is not as satisfying as wanting. If watching children cry, fearing their parents will be deported is the Christian thing to do please continue to enjoy but perhaps when you see the haters pick on everyone NOT them you might see lessons from history…perhaps from the 1930-1940’s. I then did something I rarely do…I said “that being the case, take care” and hung up. I am a liberal and I will not enjoy saying “I told you so”, I don’t want to see the hate and the hurt and the deaths that will occur on any side. Our current President has started us on an upward path and not all can be erased in a day but it will not take long for it to start. If tRump doesn’t do everything he says his supporters now say “that’s OK”. When Democrats don’t follow through on their promises they lose their jobs. When Republicans don’t follow through they just blame Democrats and keep their jobs. The party of personal responsibility has NONE.
31http://www.rawstory.com/2016/11/an-ape-in-heels-wv-officials-slur-michelle-obama-and-say-melania-trump-will-be-refreshing/
Look what is crawling out of the swamps-emboldened by the mangled apricot hellbeast.
32I’ve gotta agree with El Jefe on this. As someone who has been belligerently apolitical since the 60’s I haven’t seen the Democratic party really work for the working class since Carter. And he had his problems.
33Here’s the sad part, and the comments here support my observation. All the hand wringing and soul searching of the Democratic party will miss the forest for the trees.
Party elite have tossed aside good progressive candidates for corporate stile good fundraisers or happened to be the son of a former Governor(I’m in Steeler country) or just don’t develop a team from the ground up.
I love dogs but my least favorite are blue dogs.
Don’t agree with your conclusions. Sounds like you took a position immediately and looked for “facts” to maintain it.
34@epo
That text is the end result of a process that can only begin with generations of line breeding.
35I am still struggling myself with all the whys and wherefores, and some of this is true, and some of it is bull. But it misses the point. There’s been a “good faith” element of running for office – especially President – that has been utterly and totally destroyed without electoral consequence. The system was vulnerable to a “bad actor,” in this case, a fetishistic, infantile, amoral dilettante.
I think the messaging parameters of her loss were very similar to Gore and Kerry: lying, flip-flopping, crooked; Internet, Swift Boat, e-mail. Individuals are smart; people are dumb and easily conned. And if you already believe the false things about someone, the job of a bad actor is immensely easier.
There’s ALWAYS been an element of sexism to the anti-Hillary milieu; whether a particular individual subscribes to that piece of it or not is immaterial. Not calling it out for what it is and just lumping it in amongst the “baggage” is disingenuous.
But, ya know, unable to cope with crippling reparations and the Depression, the Weimar Republic had left people genuinely angry and untrusting of government, and that Franz von Papen guy! Oooph, don’t get me started! So, yeah, they had baggage, too.
You won’t find Hillary’s hamartia on this page, but now she’s last week’s news, and not particularly illuminating as a cautionary tale qua Hillary Clinton. It’s what the avatars in this election represent that’s key, not their particular attributes.
Like I said, I’m not done processing this yet, and I won’t be for awhile. I’m not sure of the way forward yet, but I can tell you that curb-stomping the DLC and Third-Wayism is not it.
36I agree with maryelle. HATE won. Hate and Fear and Willful Ignorance. The MSM didn’t care about the truth about Mein Fubar only the $$$$$ they raked in giving him way far too much free press. Yes, Hillary had baggage, thanks to that same press.
My father, dead these 26 years, used to say Americans are becoming like the Romans, they only want bread and circuses. An oversimplification, maybe, but you only have to see what’s offered on the TeeVee machine to think possibly there’s something to that.
I also think Hillary suffered from “dynasty fatigue” after Gee Duhbya screwed over the country so badly. No one wanted another.
I will posit an idea I’ve not seen elsewhere. People may want a smart girl on their team but they don’t want her to win solo. Well, except maybe Hermione Granger, sort of. Hence, Hillary’s every very human misstep was amplified all out of proportion. Misogyny is live and well and there really was/is a vast right-wing conspiracy.
37http://www.politico.com/blogs/donald-trump-administration/2016/11/pence-email-privacy-indiana-231332
Someone is trying to keep an email secret from prying eyes and it isn’t HRC. Uh Oh. Where is the FBI when you need leaks?
38Amen. As I see it, HRC (and the DNC) did the same thing as all those who voted for the Cheeto Jesus – put their own needs/wants ahead of what was best for the nation as a whole.
39Much of what you said were liabilities for Clinton truely were, but many of those liablilties were things that the GOP has its own weight of in one form or another.
The GOP has a literal get-out-of -jail card in that it can enrage its supporters for conduct that its own candidates are guilty of. It’s used it for years because the Great Unbrained that votes Republican is blinded to the blatant faults of Republicans. Email “scandal”? Rice and Powell used them as Sec State; Clinton set up hers at the suggestion of Powell, testified to by Powell. Bush/Cheney used them through the RNC and deleted 22,000,000 emails. GOP outrage? None.
Pay-for-play: Donald Trump’s way of life for decades. Pfft. The rest of your list: directly linkable to equivalent problems or behavior in Trump’s life and previous GOP admininstrations. AND in people who Trump employed as mouthpieces.
No, the GOP has managed to convince its followers that Democrats are the Devil and Republicans are angels NO MATTER WHAT THE EVIDENCE.
Outside your list, there’s one thing that Clinton said that so offended millions of conservatives that I’m fully convinced that it lost her the election: “deplorables”. Millions took it personally, and those millions voted.
40I’m not ready to parse this debacle yet. Yes, Hilz is a better person than she is a candidate.
However, it is fairly clear how the Democratic Party lost Michigan. No one went to help Flint, MI. Missed opportunity. Had Hilz dispatched the Big Dawg and Chelsea with funds from the Clinton Foundation, Flint would be restored and not in limbo.
Democrats want to be the party of the people. That’s a good thing, but as they say “actions speak louder then words.” Another missed opportunity was not standing with the people of Standing Rock.
Going forward to 2018, with or without Howard Dean, it’s time to return to the basics of the 50 state strategy. It’s insulting to rely on the Electoral College and other means to win that ignore the people in the the blue zones and/or basically take them for granted.
41Breaking news-Gwen Ifill passed away at 61.
42Ellie, I agree with you (language or not). As a woman who worked in a “man’s world” for 40 years I can tell you most men (and many women) don’t want a woman in charge. Better to have a properly equipped jerk in a suit than a woman, no matter how talented.
43So nominating a highly intelligent, extremely competent woman who had spent her life working for the good of society was putting her own needs ahead of the nation’s?????????????????
44Ain’t I Just, I couldn’t disagree with you more.
Apply that logic to the Republicans and it fits like a glove.
I live in MA, which apparently means I live in the biggest liberal “bubble” in the country. I have, however, been long aware of it, and rely heavily on the experience and wisdom of those that don’t.
We liberals needed to listen to the people we ostensibly hoped to help, and according to Mr. Moore failed to do so. I think the blame game is pretty pointless, but that we need to carefully find out what went wrong, and if the chief flaw was favoring long term insiders, act upon it. The long term shade of the vast-right-wing-conspiracy was effective; to have to throw away the theoretical best candidate just because you couldn’t “sell” her was the practical thing to do in the face of incorporating the alt-right into our national policy. We screwed up.
45I agree with everything you said in your piece. And I firmly believe that the problem also rests with what the Democratic Party has become. It used to be the party that worked for ordinary people, not the elite and corporations. It was the party also most likely to deliver for the environment. That’s all been gone for a long time. I haven’t said much on this site during this election because I realize most people here are adamantly pro-Hillary. If the Democratic Party is to start winning elections again, it won’t be, as someone above in the comments said, that they need to change their messaging. Messaging is PR. What needs to change is what and whom the party stands for. Bottom line.
The DNC also needs to be scraped out and rebuilt so that it is no longer corrupt. Those of us who supported Bernie deeply resent the Bernie Bots meme, Purity Party and all the other pet names Hillary people have used to sneer at us. Do you really think that helped or is helping now? I have voted Democratic my whole life and at 73 I was planning to not vote for president and only vote down ballot races. Why? I hugely dislike Hillary’s policies for War, TPP, war on whistleblowers, surveillance of ordinary citizens, Big Pharma, Big Oil, fracking, etc. Of course, I would never vote for Trump as he represents total danger and Fascism to me. I also was enraged about the corruption in the DNC and Hillary at the very least not objecting to the DNC doing everything it could to derail Bernie’s candidacy. In the end, after watching the first debate, I decided to vote for Hillary and worked a bit in my neighborhood to get her elected. If Bernie had been the candidate, I would have had no qualms about who to vote for and would have worked for him night and day as I have for many other candidates. This has nothing to do for me with misogyny. I am a woman, but would never vote for or against any candidate for anything other than what I expect their policies would be. I have always and will always want a candidate who works their heart out for the ordinary person and for the environment. Period.
Because of Hillary’s policies, I fully expected Republicans to vote for her as a vote for a sane president. I was surprised by the outcome. However, I know voter id laws in key states also created a big problem. And, racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, anti-Muslim, anti-gay, etc thoughts and feelings did win at the polls this 2016 election.
Thank you for reading if you got this far. Hopefully, the Democratic Party can recognize it needs to speak for regular people and can reorganize itself to do that. I’m ready to help, but no long will feel committed to the Democratic Party if it doesn’t. Of course, I won’t be voting Republican, but I’m tired of being abused and neglected by the party I’ve affiliated with my entire life.
46I’m not sure how much more Obama could do for the environment. He got a global warming agreement and commitment, he stopped KXL, he set aside new national monuments and historic sites.
47Dems have raised the minimum wage several times, they got the stock market back on track, they saved two US auto companies, the caused nearly 80 months of economic growth, they lowered unemployment rates, and a whole host of other things. What more could they accomplish if traitorious wingnuts hadn’t obstructed everything Dems tried?
They elected the first Black Potus and the first woman who received more than 2 million more popular votes should also have been historically elected.
48Remember the words of that great American, Will Rogers: “I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat.” He had it right all along.
49I think perhaps one of the shrewdest moves of the election was Trump’s hiring of Steve Bannon to head his campaign. The people who elected Trump at the last minute are a demographic Bannon is familiar with and respected by: Breitbart readers.
The timing of the Comey announcement, and the fact that voters who decided in the last few days of the campaign who to support mostly voted Trump, makes me wonder if this strategy ran a lot deeper and more serpentine course than it appeared to at first. Too many happy little coincidences. Meanwhile, the voters who ultimately put Trump over the top flew completely under the radar until the very last day of the campaign.
Dunno what I’m sayin’. I’m just sayin.’
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