Here’s a list of reasons from various pundits about why the Democrats got whipped. Agree / Disagree?

Politics & Elections
81

I don’t see “fake news”/vapid campaign on the list. How do you get people to vote against their interests? Have a campaign where the issues are all but not discussed and where everyone’s facebook newsfeed is filled with garbage conspiracy theories. Do you think Trump voters Really want to let go of Social Security and Medicare? I expect the howling over that to last until they run out of cat food, get evicted from their homes and die homeless and in rags. For now though they appear unaware that that is the agenda. But hey, Zuckerberg will get a big tax cut, and isn’t it time we addressed the needs of billionaires?

I’m not saying this is the only factor, but c’mon, look at Bannon’s role in the Trump team.

82

You jest. Savage? How would you describe the GOP primaries? Competitive cannibalism?

83

Yes, where have you been? I’m not saying those are the two things that lost her the election, but two things that likely helped.

84

Yep, even tho totally false.

85

Single issue Gun voters will vote GOP no matter who the Dems run.

They were screaming* Obama is gonna take out guns!!!* for 8 years- without a single gun being taken.

86

You do know Congress was controlled by the GOP? Thus we didnt have “eight years of democrats”.

87

She did get the Nomination this time, and “Not being electable” wasnt why she lost to Obama- Obama was just too charismatic.

88

These are the main reasons. Voters stayed home (or voted 3rd party). They stayed home as they thought Hillary was gonna win anyway, or they bought into Roves lies about both candidates being horrible, or they were Progressives disaffected by a year of negative campaigning by the Bernie Bros (who often parroted Rove’s lies).

89

Yes, and in fact I would not be shocked if it turns out the Russians fixed the election.

90

Could also be that they weren’t impressed by a hawk who promised to play chicken with Russia in Syria and who voted for the Iraq war, who is a big proponent of gun control, who led an openly racist campaign for a crime bill aimed at ‘super-predators’ in the 1990s, and who was opposed to gay marriage until 2013. There’s a lot of stuff that Clinton did to piss off people opposed to nuclear war, blue collar workers, blacks, and progressives, pretending that it was all Rove and ‘Bernie Bros’ doesn’t change that. I mean, she was the first major presidential candidate since 1972 to make zero stops in Wisconsin, which is also one of the states she expected to get but didn’t.

91

Gee, she voted for the Iraq war- a war started by Republicans to benefit Republican cronies, and one supported by most of Congress, not to mention Trump.

As opposed to being… just plain openly racist?

92

Right, she was a part of the congress that thought it was a good enough idea to vote ‘yes’ for it. It was a disaster that she supported in the most meaningful way possible, the whole point of requiring congressional approval is to serve as a check on the president making a bad decision.

And I’d like a cite for Trump supporting the Iraq war beyond muttering “Yeah, I guess so,” one time on the Howard Stern show, and especially supporting it in as meaningful a way as casting a vote that decided whether it would happen. I’ll cite this as showing that his ‘support’ was not actually support but rather initial indifference leading to disapproval: Donald Trump and the Iraq War - FactCheck.org

When a large part of your campaign is based on ‘look how bad the other guy is’, it’s kind of hard to sell ‘he’s like 100% bad, and I’m only 50% bad, get out and vote!’. And yes, getting minorities to show up and vote for someone who called black men ‘super-predators’ is harder than getting them to show up for someone who, well, didn’t.

And I notice that you didn’t even touch on gun control, which really alienates the blue-collar voters she sneered at but counted on, or her desire play nuclear chicken with the Russians by setting up no-fly zones in Syria. You guys can bury your heads in the sand about Hillary’s mistakes all you want, but she managed to lose the election to an orange reality TV star and bankruptcy specialist. I really hope the Democratic party pays attention to what actually happened and runs a decent candidate in 2020.

93

So the party who started the war, who benefited from the war by their cronies getting rich- the GOP- they get a pass as the Peace party while a Dem senator, whose vote didnt matter- she gets branded as a Hawk? Riiiiight.:rolleyes:

Gun Control? The NRA is 100% in the pocket of the GOP. About half of Americans support some form of Gun control, and the Dems should abandon them to chase the single issue gun voters who will never, ever vote for a Democrat? Riiight.:rolleyes:

94

I think the polls were significant. Granted, this was because the election was already close. But, because of that, and the fact that Clinton didn’t think she needed to push in those states, as other states were polling closer, is probably the one thing that actually caused her to lose. Well, that plus the voters there not knowing that a “protest vote” was not safe.

Now, that was built on top of a shaky foundation, where other things come into play. And I agree she was a bad candidate. Not because I personally have any problem with her–I actually grew to like her. But she still had such built-in dislike factor. At the very least, more people should have run against her, to gauge whether the populace was ready for her. That Sanders did as well as he did was not a good sign–we just all hoped that Trump was worse enough.

I don’t think the scandals were what sunk her, because they were able to pull that crap on Obama, too, despite him being rather clean. I think her lack of charisma and inability to inspire meant the mud stuck. Everyone was going on about how all her problems were built in, but Republicans were able to manufacture more. And, unlike with Obama, there were plenty on the left who bought it.

I don’t buy the liberal pretension is a big deal, because I don’t buy that this has changed much in decades. That doesn’t mean we couldn’t maybe attract more people by being nicer, but I find it really, really odd that this is the takeaway from this election.

I honestly think it’s Republicans setting the narrative again, but I’m not sure it isn’t better to go with it and then add on to it than to fight it. Sure, we can come together, but you have to listen to our concerns for the various minorities. We’ll give you your “safe space” at the theater if you respect ours. In short, you have to stop vilifying us at the same level.

I do also personally think there is internalize misogyny, but that has more to do with being able to support Trump, not in not supporting Clinton. The numbers should have gone down even more with him being so blatantly sexist.

Oh, and fake news? Seen it on Obama, too. But I’m all for trying to get rid of it, because it causes so many problems.

95

What it means is that a person who voted for the war, who’s vote very much did matter as without congressional approval the war wouldn’t happen, can’t actually brand herself as a peace candidate. Especially against a candidate who didn’t actually support the war. And I’m not labeling her as a hawk for her support of the Iraq war, have you paid attention to the other interventions she talked about supporting during the campaign, especially her plan to set up a no-fly zone that would threaten to shoot down Russian planes over Syria? And I will note that you didn’t address your fallse claim that Trump supported the war.

You can’t put forward the more hawkish candidate and then claim to be the peace party, and putting forward a candidate who wants to play chicken with nuclear weapons is off-putting to a significant number of people.

The NRA supports ‘some form of Gun Control’, so talking about ‘some form of gun control’ is a red herring. Hillary supports Austrialian-style gun control with a complete ban on use of firearms for self-defense, as shown by her opposition to the Heller decision. It’s also interesting that you’re completely ignoring the blue-collar democrats in states that traditionally went blue but Hillary lost, who are generally pro-gun.

So no, what I’m saying is that the Democrats should stop speaking in favor of broad and useless gun bans that won’t actually pass anyway, to treat the issue like Hillary’s VP choie treats abortion “I’m personally opposed to it but don’t support laws against it.”. Is talking about (but not passing) another ban on scary-looking black rifles really worth rolling back gay rights like we expect Trump to? Was a 3-day waiting period only for people who pass a background check (Gore’s pet project) worth all the fun of the Bush years?

96

The United States has a method specified by our Constitution that specifies how we declare war. The United States has not formally declared war since 1942, and as Hillary Clinton was not yet born at the time she has never voted for any war the United States has declared.

If you’re going to quibble that Trump’s “yeah, I guess so” in response to a question as to whether we should invade Iraq should not count as support of an invasion, I have to wonder why you think that a vote for the 2002 Iraq Resolution is somehow a more enthusiastic show of support for the invasion, given that it did not make any declaration of war or indeed make any direction or requirement for force to be used on Iraq. It had a bunch of verbiage about how diplomatic efforts etc. should be used to obtain compliance with Security Council resolutions and went on to authorize President Bush to use force “as he determines to be necessary and appropriate”. The decision to invade was made by the President months later, not by Congress.

It was a mistake to give that President that authorization to use military force. On the other hand, it was not the same thing as “voting for the war.” It was about as enthusiastically pro-war as “yeah, I guess so”.

97

The list of Secretary of State officials who set up their own server to hide information and then destroy 30,000 emails when caught is rather short.

But if you want to talk about people convicted of it then there is the sailor who took photos of a submarine who is in jail as well as the officer who released data to Wikileaks who liberals want released because… I don’t know.

Regardless of how little legal value you place on Hillary’s deliberate attempt to hide her emails and then lie profusely about it and then delete the evidence, it’s not the first time she’s played a shell game with evidence.

We’ll just forget her role in Whitewater and the 15 people who went to jail over it.

98

The US doesn’t use the phrase ‘declare war’, instead it uses beurocratese like ‘authorization for the use of force’. It has the exact same effect in practice of authorizing the use of military force, but some people try to hide behind it.

Are you serious? One is a single offhand statement with no legal force that doesn’t even indicate strong support, the other is a vote authorizing the president to use military force. Trump could have said ‘no, I guess not’ and it would have made no difference, but if the vote for the authorization was a no then Bush would not have been able to invade. I’m not really sure how you can ask the question with a straight face, one is an offhand comment in an interview and one is a legal grant of authority.

99

Actually, it was December 8, 1941.

100

No, but I do feel that way about anyone who voted for Trump. Not for Romney voters, or McCain voters (of which I count myself back when I was a dying neocon). I think most of the reasons for supporting Trump were effing retarded.