The Undoing of Hillary in the Midwest – “Arrogance”
Many of us have yet to recover from the shock that Cheeto Jesus, the singularly worst candidate to ever run for President, beat a clearly more qualified Hillary Clinton last week. (Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get she got more votes, but that fact, along with $3.65, will get you a pumpkin spice latte from Starbucks). I did my first post mortem using my own observations, but stories are now leaking out from the inside about clear failures on the part of Hillary World to recognized clear signs that her margin in the midwest was fading fast in the last weeks of the campaign. Sam Stein published a piece yesterday about that very thing, where state operatives used the term “arrogance” to describe Hillary’s senior staff for their belief that she had Wisconsin and Michigan in the bag. They refused to fund paid canvassers in those states, and indeed she had only 10% of the number of canvassers in Michigan that John Kerry had there in 2004. She lost Michigan by 12,000 votes and turnout in Flint alone was down 26,000 voters from Obama voters in 2012.
Wisconsin was similar. Hillary didn’t campaign there, nor did any of her big surrogates besides Chelsea. The campaign assumed they had the state in the bag, and didn’t take the threat of low voter turnout seriously. She lost Wisconsin by around 70,000 votes.
Stein put the miscalculation of the Clinton campaign this way:
The more universal explanation, however, was that the data that informed many of the strategic decisions was simply wrong. A campaign that is given a game plan that strongly points to success shouldn’t be expected to rip it up.
“We all were blinded, and even at the end, we were blinded by our own set of biases,” said Paul Maslin, a Madison-based Democratic operative and pollster.
Back in September, Glenn Thrush called it in a post for Politico about how Hillary was blowing it. His words were prescient. In that article he said,
“Which just goes to show: No one — not the bullpen of the New York Mets, not the French army, not Wile E. Coyote, not even Al Gore — is better at squandering a commanding lead than the Queen of Coasting, Hillary Rodham Clinton. [emphasis mine] And nobody is better at handing her adversaries talking points to undermine trust, on emails, on the Clinton Foundation, on her own refusal to do something as simple as talking to the reporters who cover her every day.”
The lesson here, I believe, is that a candidate should take nothing for granted. And, they need to fight every battle all the way to election day. Polls are never 100%, and should be viewed with skepticism, especially against a candidate that was so far out of the norm as Cheeto Jesus.
Was this a tough campaign where even the Russians tried to interfere with the election? Certainly. Did the FBI interfere? You bet. Does this and other attacks let her off the hook?
Most certainly not. She blew it.
NA!! She made a major mistake in thinking the people were as smart as herself!! Wrong! People hate others smarter than themselves…and they proved that by electing a glorified dumb butt!!!! We will be luck to find he can’t read, thus he can’t enter the nuke codes!!!
1L.Long–He’s already said he *doesn’t* read, but he won’t need the nuclear codes. He has THE BEST people for that, “people you have never heard of.” Weren’t you listening?
2Gotta say LLong has a point. The scholars in high school and all the way back to first grade were not the mots popular/trusted people in the student body. The less gifted figured that anyone that smart had to be capable of evil. Well, the dumb butts that beat the crap out of me in 9th grade because I played the violin were the very ones who begged me at the end of senior year to cover them with mental magic so they could at least get a D on the finals and get a diploma.Did I do it? Sure. I gave them just enough to make them sweat every question on the exams – AND I never saw them again. A few of them never even showed up for graduation.
3As far as I am concerned, the only mistake made by Secretary Clinton was underestimating the power of hate. Women haters, Obama haters, Clinton haters, minority haters, and then the FBI, WikiLeaks and Russia dumped on her. Oh and there’s an article in Rolling Stone about a Repug voter-registration-purging organization originating in Kansas which now is active in lots of states which did their best to purge millions of Latino and African American voters’ names from the rolls, especially in swing states.
4http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/the-gops-stealth-war-against-voters-w435890
No one had the stones to pull the fire alarm during the campaign. WI, remember Russ Feingold sure to defeat RoJo? Al Franken did send out a few distress calls in the final week or two. Congresswoman Debbie Dingell (D-MI) sent out warning flares that the DNC and other operatives ignored. Not only could Hilz have won MI, she could have owned it. If only someone had thought to return Chelsea and the Big Dog to Flint to actually fix things early on in the campaign.
Not only does the DNC need to do some serious introspection, so does each state Democratic organization that lost their electoral votes to the dumbest man ever to run for president and failed to field candidates capable of regaining the House and Senate.
What me worry? Damn Skippy! NV was deluged in Shelly and Koch money. We got out of our collective liberal limousines and hit the ground running. We were rewarded with maintaining Harry’s Senate seat, gaining 2 seats in the House and turning our state legislature a soothing shade of blue.
All is not lost. I look forward to Mrs. Susan DuQuesnay Bankston Herownself blasting all Democratic operatives wedded to the concept of “snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory.” Let’s all learn and take 2018.
5Maybe what we need is for President Obama and David Plouffe to manage all Democratic GOTV activities going forward. Howard Dean, too.
6http://field-negro.blogspot.com/
This gentleman did a comparable report on Cross Check and is worth reading.
7http://tinyurl.com/htlzu7y
HL Mencken nailed the mangled apricot hellbeast decades ago. This is funny.
8I see at least a moderate amount of resistance to El Jefe’s point of view, which I choose to join.
9I agree with L.Long. This is on the voting public; stop deflecting blame. Was Clinton supposed to lie to these people about whatever it was they wanted: high-paying jobs without working for it or getting the requisite education, being racists without repercussions, complete security from the scary minority, etc?
Not too many people bothered to research what Hillary was about and her record on public service is out there for everyone to see; they just heard the republican lies and only wanted the tl;drs from the reporters which usually only highlighted what she said about trump and his supporters.
People spend more time choosing their next cellphone than they do choosing the president. This is what happens when lazy, apathetic, entitled people presume that other people will save them from themselves; they want all the benefits without putting in a smidgen of work. This is what happens when stupid people vote against their best interests because someone lied and told them exactly what they wanted to hear. Unfortunately now we get exactly what they deserve.
10@epo . . . HL Mencken nailed a lot during his illustrious career. Sardonic is good I say.
11Bingo. Take 3 Rust Belt states whose 44 electoral votes had gone to Obama, and would have won 2016 for Clinton:
In WI, Trump got 2,000 more votes than Romney — and Clinton got 240,000 fewer than Obama 2012.
In Ohio Trump got 110K more — and Clinton got 510K fewer.
In Michigan Trump got 164K more — and Clinton got 297K fewer.
Total R increase: 276,000. Total D decline: 1,047,000. Even if every R vote gained was a switch by a previous Obama voter, 3x as many didn’t vote for Trump *or* Clinton in 2016.
Pundits love “The Trump Revolution Mobilized a Zombie Army of Haters and Stole the White Working Class” because it supports endless deep thought about Our Character as a Nation. But FFS, people: don’t you think the racist/nativist voters had already been in McCain’s, Romney’s, and Dubya’s columns?
Try instead the sad, prosaic “Trump got 320K more votes nationwide from Pretty Much the Same Old GOP; Clinton got 3.5M fewer.” Argue the reasons all you want, but that *is* what happened.
12Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance
In case anyone was wondering.
13Trump won because he spoke to the their fears. Did we do that? Or did we pepper them with high-minded platitudes which, quite frankly, Dems do all too often.
Instead of deplorables, Hillz should have called them “a bunch of assholes”. THAT speaks to them. THAT would have awakened them. Deplorables? Most had to look it up or ask someone what that meant. Day-plor-ah-blayz? Is she speakin’ Hispanic? Wut? THAT is America, folks. You may not like it, but it doesn’t change the reality.
All of this “analysis” is leading us nowhere. Blame Hillary. Now, blame her staff. Blame the DNC. You want blame? Here it is: It’s us, folks. It’s college-educated, thinking, rational people with the strange idea in their heads that the rest of the world is just like them. The same arrogance that the uneducated, non-rational, non-thinking alt-crowd has. We are NOT listening to people and we are NOT speaking to them in ways they need to be spoken to.
I said above that HIllz should have said “assholes”. Yes, she should have. Because the members of the cracker world would have stood up and taken notice. THEY understand “assholes”. That’s their word. That’s talking to them, not at them. And until we can go to where they live and talk to them like one of them, we will not be embraced. We’ve got to learn to “bring it home”. Trump did and you see the result.
That’s real world advice. Do with it as you please.
14Corey Lewandips##t told Oxford Debate club James Comey called him on a Friday and told him they were going to reopen the HRC case.
Sounds like collusion to me. If memory serves collusion is a crime.
15Have y’all considered the All of the Above option? Hillary has been skewered with accusations, investigations and lies since her Arkansas days. Republications just cannot stand a woman with brains and ambition. That FBI business at the end of the campaign was a disgrace.
The media has been deeply complicit in making mainstream Americans with little inclination to ferret out facts believe all the accusations and lies. Social media sites have been a dandy place to barrage the gullible with anything that supports their ill-conceived notions.
The Republican party has been more than happy to disparage science and intellectual thinking and discussion, and the climate change issue has been a dandy opportunity to ramp up the disparagement, since the pockets of most, if not all of them, are lined with fossil fuel money. So trying to defend Hillary with facts became a fruitless endeavor, since so many Americans have no trust left in facts, research or critical thinking.
The Democratic party leadership and those in charge of her campaign got lazy, in my opinion, and they failed to pay sufficient attention to the job-less and hurting Americans, who in anger, turned to a candidate, one that most of them didn’t like, promising change. The Dems need to do some serious self-examination.
16the job-less and hurting Americans… turned to a candidate, one that most of them didn’t like, promising change.
Per my post above: as of last night Trump got 318,000 more votes than Romney had; Clinton got 3,502,000 fewer than Obama had in 2012. The most straightforward reading — the null hypothesis — is that almost nine times as many Democrats stayed home / voted 3d party as switched to Trump.
I agree that “the Dems need to do some serious self-examination.” But shouldn’t “Why didn’t we reach more Democrats whom we’d reached before?” be a more pressing question than “Why did a relative handful of Democrats turn to Trump?”
17I have to disagree with LLong, the divide was not along the educated/ignorant as much as it was determined by rage level. If you look at the electoral map by county, you see that the strongest support for Cheeto Jebus came from the Rust Belt. This isn’t out of love for a NYC rich boy, it’s out of rage against all the “free trade” agreements that have killed off all the good jobs in that area, destroying whole cities in the process. The two main agreements, NAFTA and GATT, were signed by Bill Clinton and people have never forgotten that. Obama was pushing the TPP, something that promises to be even more ruinous to US labor, and they knew Hillary Clinton would fall right into line on that one.
Trump promised to be a wrecking ball.That was good enough for the people who have been harmed the most by “free trade” and business as usual. Clinton was supremely qualified and had a top notch organization. Unfortunately, none of them was listening to the people whose votes they wanted.
18The fundamental problem is the top-down structure, where the national election consultants call the shots. How many elections must we lose before people realize that grass roots, perpetual organizing is the answer? Remember how Wendy’s campaign went down to defeat because the big national consultants wouldn’t listen to the locals?
19sorry, but I’m going to have to disagree with all the presumed “experts”, who always seem to have 20-20 hindsight. at some point, you can’t overcome the constant tsunami of the media, constantly reporting on bogus “scandals”, ginned up by the FBI and the rightwingnut Wurlitzer. HRC has had that going on for 25 years, and people that want to believe it are going to believe it, in spite of their lyin’ eyes.
Trump supporters are impervious to facts, they just are, and they told you so during the campaign. it didn’t matter what Trump did or didn’t do, he was their man, because, “he says what we’re all thinking.” he gave (a literal) voice to their racism/misogyny/homophobia/xenophobia/anti-Semitism, the whole white supremacy gig. he made it ok to be a roaring scuzzbag in public. how, exactly, was HRC supposed to fight that, when the media couldn’t be bothered to point it out?
to argue that the lack of a few extra people on the ground, cost her a state, is bullshit. it’s the lazy analyst’s explanation, because it’s easy, and clearly, some people will buy into it. no, the real reason HRC lost the electoral vote, is because she was going against the “perfect” republican candidate: he lied constantly, to a group who wanted him to lie to them, the same people who bought into Trump U, stupid people. with the white supremacy as the icing on the whole fetid cake.
20Those jobs in the rust belt are not coming back. How many more would have been lost if Obama let wingnuts have their way and sink two American auto makers?
Obama has his faults but trying to help every citizen was not one of them. Wingnuts attempted to or succeeded in blocking Obama’s initiatives every step of the way for 8 straight years.
Drumpf cannot and will not bring jobs back. He is one of the job killers. His own product lines are made overseas for chrissake.
21epo @ 21–yep
22It’s not really the Democrats that voted for Trump; it’s the demographic of Republicans who for decades voted Democratic and left the party because they felt disenfranchised.
I agree. The rust belt jobs will not come back. Nor will the coal jobs, in spite of what Trump says. Fracking has made coal obsolete. What is sad to me is that the people who lost their jobs in those industries did not get the government help they needed to help them economically. And some assistance in paying for training to get other jobs would have helped as well. The Republicans in Congress would never have gone for it. It’s a shame the Democrats could not have made a bigger issue out of all that at the time.
This whole thing, campaign, election, aftermath of chaos and doom, have made me want to just get under the covers and stay there the next 4 years, but in 2 years we have more elections for Congresspeople and by GOD we need to make some strides there if we are to avoid 2 continuing years of horror, so there can be no hiding.
23e platypus – that article you linked to at field negro looks like it was written by greg palast who’s been researching this stuff for years and trying to warn people.
24Marion, you are right. I missed the connection reading the article the first time. I stand corrected.
25As a native Texan, who has been mortified by the stupidity and ignorance of Texas voters for decades, all I can say is the Michiganders have surpassed us in those areas.
26There is enough blame here for everybody but I hold the Republican voters primarily responsible. They are not bright enough to pour water out of a bucket when the instructions are written on the bottom and they are gullible enough to believe that the sun is going to fall out of the sky and set their trailer house on fire.
How could Hillary have fixed that?
27There is time to fix the problem but with an autocratic kleptocracy fixin’ to screw up everything we value, there’s no time to futz about trying to fix the blame. Check out @sarahkendzior on Twitter.
28“it’s out of rage against all the “free trade” agreements that have killed off all the good jobs in that area, destroying whole cities in the process.” Those jobs aren’t coming back, they’ve been automated away. Getting reeducated is hard work, and there should be more programs to support it, but it’s the only way. Someone has to build, install, maintain those robots and a lot of that work has to be done on site. But school is haarrrrdd and when you’ve been raised to be suspicious of education and the educated there’s nothing left but to whine.
29I think you’re all correct top various degrees.
Ignorant voters, the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, ignoring the locals, pulling out from the Midwest, Bill’s trade laws, etc.
30(This is probably a better fit here.)
This article is about the power and money behind Kellyanne Conway, Breitbart, Bannon and the rest of the scum taking over the White House. Ever heard of the Mercer family?
https://goo.gl/BbtSzD
31Here is a British comedian’s take on Trump’s election:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLG9g7BcjKs
32So this point and counterpoint has given me a tennis match syndrome.
I have heard that the refused to be educated rubes in the Rust Belt voted for Cheeto because he told them somehow that he could turn back the clock to about 1949: white men rule, GM assembly plants gonna build 10,000,000 Biscaynes, etc etc.
Then elsewhere I heard these rubes are not asking for 1949 to be re-run, the just want white men to be in charge of a majority white country and themselves to be given good paying 2016 jobs. Given jobs. Cause they deserve them.
So what do the rubes want? Bread and circuses?
“Good paying jobs?” Even though they don’t do a gd thing to prepare for them or earn these theoretical jobs. Given. Like a birthright. Cause struggling through 4 years of college without two nickels to rub together is so 1975. Lazy, ignorant, arrogant jacka$$e$. And elected themselves a President.
33Here is what an Australian observer thinks it will take to make the DNC successful in the future:
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/11/the-democrats-must-change-heres-how-they-can-do-it/
34Micr- These aren’t unemployed college students in the Rust Belt These are people who had been at their factory jobs for many years. They trained for the obs and they worked hard to obtain and maintain The problem is that trade agreements of the 1990’s (NAFTA and others) sent their jobs to Mexico, China and other countries. When the factories shut down in the Rust Belt all the restaurants, shops, etc also went belly up because there was no one with money to patronize these establishments.
This economic devastation is huge and the only way to fix a problem of this magnitude is government intervention. After 20+ years there has been no such intervention. NAFTA was Bill Clinton’s doing and Hillary Clinton didn’t really offer them much Hell, she was so sure of their vote since they had always been good Democrats that she didn’t even campaign in Wisconsin after the primaries and she didn’t send any big surrogates. Trump went to these states multiple times and he offered them big promises. I know, and you know, that the odds of Trump living up to these promises are slim to none but in their minds Trump cared more about them because he came to their state and he empathized with their plight. Hillary did neither and not only was her husband the originator of the trade agreements that killed their towns but Hillary actively supported the passage of NAFTA, too.
These people in the Rust Belt have been reliable loyal Democrats for years. Given a different Democrat, without the NAFTA baggage, who actively campaigned in Michigan and Wisconsin we might have had a different outcome. They came through for Obama in both of his elections.
I think it was here that I saw someone mention that it might have been a good idea for the Clinton Foundation to give Flint, Michigan some charity and install new water lines. Something like that sure would have encouraged votes Instead, the Clinton campaign took the voters of Michigan and Wisconsin for granted and ignored them. They were so sure Michigan and Wisconsin would go for Clinton that they invested little in terms of money or time in those states. Instead, according to the article El Jefe cited, they were spending vast sums of money in Omaha, Nebraska which was a complete longshot. And the Clinton campaign was warned by party operative in Michigan and Wisconsin that it wasn’t looking good. Instead of heeding that knowledgeable advice from people on the ground the campaign indicated that they knew better and were assured of winning Michigan and Wisconsin. And they were WRONG.
35Morris Udall once said “When the Democratic Party forms a firing squad, we form a circle.”
It’s just wonderful to see the old traditions being kept up.
Repubs win in large part because they stick together. They know that there is only one rule in politics: WIN! (There are actually other rules, but the losers don’t need to worry about those because the winners will be making them.)
Dems are pretty good at governing, but terrible at winning elections. Repubs are great at winning elections, but horrendous at governing. Maybe we should worry more about this than about sniping at Hillary Clinton.
36Unfortunately, most people didn’t want an insider. They were swayed by the argument that an outsider could come in and shake things up. They will find out all too shortly that competence and a proven track record is actually important. Trump will implode. Our collective job is to make sure as few people as possible are effected when he does. We can assign blame and there is certainly time for that, but there are more important things to do.
37@Mother Jones cat
Nothing so irritates me after a rant as a reasoned, logical, unemotional response. NOT FAIR! 🙂
My tiny little point was that while many of us born into less than pristine circumstances endured 4+years of low or no income in order to make a better life for ourselves and our partners in life and our children. The folk I read about and about whom I ranted not only eschew education for themselves, they raised a generation to disregard education and use the term “elites” as a pejorative to describe those of us who graduated from college and raised a generation for which education is the only choice. In that since “elite” is a personal attack. As I read this account of these Rust Belters, my view is that they are intentionally backward, intentionally provincial, even proudly provincial. Even in the remotest parts of the planet 2016 has arrived and if the inhabitants choose to use the available technology, they are citizens of a world-wide economy.
The Rust Belt economy has changed since ’49 and even the Great Cheeto Jesus ain’t agonna bring it back.
38glf: Please check out my response to your response. Thanks.
39Wasn’t Drumpf the one who bragged that when he calls a politician they kiss his ass because he owns them? Some outsider.
40Wasn’t Drumpf the one who bragged that when he calls a politician they kiss his ass because he owns them? Some outsider
Mother Jones Cat- you need to get caught up on your history. Your memory isn’t accurate, no offense.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/05/09/history-lesson-more-republicans-than-democrats-supported-nafta/
NAFTA was negotiated by Hitler Weasel Bush and more wingnuts supported it than Dems. Another thing, more manufacturing jobs left America under dumbass dubya than under Clinton.
41Mirc-I’m sorry I misunderstood your rant. I was too busy writing my own!As the great Gilda Radner/ Emily Litella frequently said:
42“Never mind”
epo- Thanks for the lesson . I did not realize/remember that Bush senior negotiated the bill. However, the point is that, as is mentioned by your link, Clinton teamed up with Newt Gingrich and other Republicans and got the treaty through Congress with very little help from Democrats since the party did not support this job killing treaty. That is why they call Clinton a New Democrat (a/k/a Clinton Democrat). New Democrats got their agendas pushed through Congress with the help of Repubs like Gingrich with little or no support from traditional Democrats.
43lazzgirl, you are right! This is a culture war. As I said in my post the honor roll students were the ones most likely not to be trusted or popular by all the rest of the student body,yet that part of the body turned to the honor roll student to save their butts. Yes a small percentage would sign up for retraining in another field as long as the guvmint covered the cost. Other would simply put in their retirement papers. The last cohort are those guys who think their jobs are the MACHO jobs and any and all other are sissy! I’ve met a lot of the last bunch and they are enough to bring on lethal depression in anyone near them.
44What epo said. NAFTA belongs to H. All Bill Clinton did was the final signature.
Someone please tell me why people who GOTV need to be on a payroll. Whatever happened to volunteers?
I’m beginning to think that most of what we have been told about any political campaign is from the people who stand to make the most money off it. Perhaps that class of political consultants needs their arses kicked. They were supposed to be the experts. All anyone asked of me was send money. Especially the DCCC. I got 4 Emails a day for months send money. I finally unsubscribed telling them their emails were demoralizing.
45Re: NAFTA exchanges above
Bush 41 certainly originated NAFTA. But Bill picked it up and ran with it. Now my hindsight vision of Bill is that he is rarely economically wrong, even when he might look wrong early on.
46In tiny words what’s the beef with NAFTA? Is this argument just about who made the money? Reason is ask this is I dont recall NAFTA being a US jobs bill. At the time there was I think that I recall discussion that NAFTA would take jobs from both Canada and US and plant them in Mexico. Someone with a better memory than mine might could crank up on this point.
@EPO
47That reminds me of the one-line (and accompany high hat rift) that America has the best politicians money can buy.
I made ONE small donation to HRC/Kaine and as a result my email inbox has been flooded with hundreds of ads for sex sites, etc. As I’m not in the habit of frequenting such sites, this really pisses me off.
To whomever sold my email address to these creeps, I hope you get a camel defecating on your bed and snails in your gardens forever.
Curse you money-grubbing assholes.
48Straight from Wiki- Clinton, while signing the NAFTA bill, stated that “NAFTA means jobs. American jobs, and good-paying American jobs. If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t support this agreement. OOPS.
For the record- it is snowing (at least an inch so far) in Obrien County, iowa. Far nw iowa- count 2 counties east and drop down 2 counties. Cheers.
49Obama’s favorable rating is higher than Raygun’s in his second term. What would have been so bad about a third Obama term?
Mother Jones Cat- my apologies for sounding harsh. Butch 41 tried to fast track NAFTA before his term ended and he failed. Clinton did back NAFTA and sheep herded it through congress. My apologies to all- I am extremely touchy about Clintons after 30 years of constant lies and made up stuff. I don’t really even care for either, but they did not deserve this public lynching that continues. Congress has not investigations into Russian sabotage of the election, but they have 5 investigations going or soon to be going against HRC.
50