I am willing to bet HRC was crushed when she learned she lost by negative 3 million votes. 
True!
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My assumption is that you are an able bodied heterosexual white male. If this is your political mindset, please understand that this is why anyone who isn’t might greet you with less than open arms. And why Bernie and his supporters were looked on with suspicion by the democratic party. Yes, he resonated with middle and upper class white liberals, but the underatanding was that he was prepared to throw the rest of the coalition under the bus if he needed to, for the ‘greater good.’
In the universe where the Electoral College is how you win elections.
Now, we can argue whether or not Trump’s win constitutes “crushing” Hillary in the EC. That vote tally was 304 - 227, meaning Trump got 34% more EC votes than Hillary’s total. It’s subjective, but I can see how some might consider that a “crushing” defeat. OTOH, a very small percent of the vote going the other way in a few states would have flipped the election to Clinton. So maybe not so “crushing” after all. It all depends on which statistics are really more important. Winning a ton of votes in CA is not so impressive.
However, winning more of the popular vote, in and of itself as Hillary did, means nada. Nothing. Zilch. Neinschleppen. That and $5 will get you a cup of coffee at Philz, if you care to wait in line long enough. It’s long past time to get over that, and I can’t imagine why some folks keep bringing that up. It would be like harping that the Yankees didn’t really lose to Boston in The World Series because NY scored more total runs in the series, when Boston won 5 of the 7 games*. The goal is not to score more runs. The goal is to win more games.
*That scenario is made up for illustrative purposes only.
John Mace, you are wrong (and guilty of what poker experts call “results-based thinking”): it very much does matter. And it matters for the precise reason that “crushed” verbiage was used, as a cudgel to prod Democrats to throw out their old playbook and start anew, as though what they have been doing for the past few cycles is ineffectual and needs to be scrapped. When in fact, winning the popular vote by three million and still losing in the EC is a sign of bad lucks, not a bad campaign or an unpopular party brand.
When Bill Clinton ran in 1992, Democrats had lost five out of the previous six presidential races, which represented four blowout losses, one narrow win, and one narrow loss. But three of the blowouts had occurred in the three contests immediately preceding ‘92.
THAT is when you stop as a party and evaluate whether it’s time to take a new approach.
Whereas right now, the Democrats have won the popular vote in the presidential race three cycles in a row and six out of the last seven. Two of the past three elections, the Democratic candidate got over 51% of the vote, which a Democrat had not previously done since 1964.
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In case it wasn’t clear from my tone, I was offering ‘the southern states were red’ not as my understanding of the reason Sanders supporters had for wanting to discount them, but merely as the reason they gave. The fig leaf, if you will. As you point out, it’s not even a believable fig leaf. In addition to red states in the Sanders column being okay, it ignores that the same logic demands that we ignore solid blue states, too. Washington is going to go for whoever the Democrat is. Should our votes count?
Now, as for the real reason: I really don’t think it was because the majority of Democratic voters in the South are black. Sanders supporters can certainly be tone-deaf - I’m sure I can be too - but I don’t think they’re explicitly racist. No, the real reason that southern states shouldn’t count as much is because Clinton won them. The same reason closed primaries - or primaries where you have to register in advance - shouldn’t count as much. It was just that simple.
I do not know if you meant to or not (or even know of this) but there is an article published over 20 years ago that argues for the electoral college and uses that analogy.
Personally I am on the fence on this one. Food for thought though:
Only if Games 1, 4, and 6 are worth more wins. Using the World Series as an analogy for the Electoral College is as dumb now as it was 15 years ago.
No one is going to comment on the fact that it’s impossible to win five games in a World Series?
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Not in over a century, anyway. The early ones were best of nine.
Also, Boston and the Yankees are in the same league, as the peasantry may not know.
Would you prefer stoke play vs match play in golf?
There is nothing “dumb” about the analogy when explaining how the system works. It’s actually one of the best analogies out there. What would be “dumb” is making the argument that “if it’s good enough for The World Series, it’s good enough for a presidential election”. Which, you’ll note, I was not doing.
Heh. I started to write 4 to 3, but wanted to get the “crushed” part in there, too. But yeah, impossible to go 5 games to 2. Which is perhaps why the golf analogy is better!
Don’t hate the player, hate the game. It doesn’t change the fact that Hillary is far more liberal than her husband was.
Also, the Democrats allowed someone even more to the left who was never even a Democrat to run as one in the primary. He lost the primary by over three and a half million votes. His name was Bernie, something… Maybe you recall. Despite losing by more than three and a half million votes he still had unprecedented say in the platform. He even called it the most progressive platform in party history.
Complain all you want about how national politics are too far to the right and Democrats too far to the center, but the fact is that you are in the minority and that those who reject the most leftward candidates because they are not as far left as they would like cause things to go the other way. In other words: You’re not helping.
Eat shit, conspiracy theorist.
Marcus Johnson doesn’t think it’s bullshit:
Barney Frank frequently sparred with Bill Clinton over how he wasn’t liberal enough and even he admits that during the time, he was as liberal as we were going to do.
You do that a lot, decrying how things actually are. Sorry that reality bugs you but a person can only be so far out of step with the mainstream and succeed within it. The first person in the pool didn’t become President and change, say, marriage equality. But having more liberal people in politics allowed for it to happen gradually which is why under the Obama administration - which nobody will confuse with a Liberal paradise - incremental changes were made to push things in the right direction.
I realize incremental change isn’t as sexy as a revolution but small steps forward beats big steps back which is what we have with Trump in the White House, thanks in no small part to people with attitudes like yours.
Oh, I see. You know better than three quarters of the black population all of whom are so stupid they don’t even know who to vote for. Hopefully you leave here and become their leader soon. My understanding is that they love it when white people tell them all that they know better for them than they do. Maybe you’ll have better luck.
Personally, I think your opinion is trash but Donald Trump appreciates all you did for him and you’re the gift to him that keeps on giving.
Still no evidence you’re not a moron.
JSLE, I agree with most of your response to DoggyDunnit, but I think you may have missed that s/he is black.
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Well…
I hate that you and I share the same party affiliation. I do not want you in my party/I do not want to be in your party.
You have done nothing but deride anyone, even those largely on your side, if they did anything other but line up behind Clinton like good little soldiers and sing her praises. Anyone who doesn’t is clearly an idiot to be forever scorned. Never do you consider or allow that Clinton was a deeply flawed candidate and that maybe, just maybe, she had something to do with her own loss.
Such a stagnant, rigid, unbending, wrathful mindset is much more apropos of the republican party. I’m sure they’d love to have you. You’d fit right in.
Bernie supporters were way more like the Tea Party then they care to admit. Also fell for a lot of that Russian disinformation being pushed on Facebook and Twitter. I saw many of the same anti Hillary memes being shared by both Trump and Bernie supporters. It’s not as simple as you want to think. We have Trump in the White House for gods sake. Can we please focus on the actual enemy and stop falling for Putin’s desire to seed resentment and hatred between our political factions?
As I said, and a bit of a departure from the OP, that is a strategic vote. And you should always vote in the way that you feel your vote makes the most difference in the direction you want to go. If you feel that making a token effort to get third parties matching funds was the best, then that’s your opinion.
I disagree with it, both in that I don’t think that it would have accomplished what it is that you are trying to do, and that I also don’t think that your goal has much utility either. But, you are not the sort of person that I (I can’t speak for the OP) find to be shameful (at least about your vote) as you didn’t refuse to vote for clinton because you think that she stole the primary, or because she’s no better than trump, or whatever reason that your best russian friends can come up with for you. You acknowledge that if you have been in a battleground state, you would have done the responsible thing, and that if things had played out differently than expected in your state, then at least you would be acknowledging your error, rather than doubling down.
Two words: President Trump.
Yeah I don’t see how the “but Hillary was a flawed candidate” carries any weight when we actually have president dumpster fire in office right damn now. Was Hillary as flawed a candidate as Trump? Clearly not. Was Bernie without flaws? Clearly not. Can you name one candidate for any office ever in our history that had zero flaws? Somehow I doubt it.