# Just how bad a Politician is Hillary? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [November 9, 2016, 8:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-bad-a-politician-is-hillary/771169 "2016-11-09T08:43:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2016, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-bad-a-politician-is-hillary/771169/61 "2016-11-11T01:54:22Z")
> [@ISiddiqui](#): > > Yes, I know how Prime Ministers are selected. I was saying that that role would be great for her, in terms of leading a party. Maybe she should be the DNC Chair. It would actually be a great choice because most of her per-Senator days were in organizing. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2016, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-bad-a-politician-is-hillary/771169/62 "2016-11-11T02:28:04Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > That’s a truly amazing statement to make about Reagan, who was famed for his charisma. He wasn’t nicknamed “The Great Communicator” for nothing. The man was a professional Hollywood actor. > > W. Bush was charming, to be sure, as was Carter. I’d agree Bush 1.0 was not, but he rode on Reagan’s coattails and once those were gone so was he. Nixon’s a strange case. Both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were/are very charismatic. :smack: In my defence I wrote that at 11 pm my time so was a bit sleepy. Yes, I know, Reagan was charismatic. As for the rest, I don’t think charming is the same as charismatic. Clinton,Obama, Reagan (!), LBJ, JFK were. Don’t think anyone would call LBJ “charming”. [QUOTE=Bijou Drains] why would she have a southern accent when she grew up in Chicago area? I know she lived in Arkansas as an adult but that’s after most people get their accent. [/QUOTE] [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/UCyvyyo6dtQ/maxresdefault.jpg "Hillary Clinton's accent evolution (1983–2015)") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCyvyyo6dtQ) You can see her accents change. I don’t think it was done consciously. What I have read is that even now she retains a trace of the Southern accent in private, unlike her public persona. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2016, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-bad-a-politician-is-hillary/771169/63 "2016-11-11T02:32:33Z")
Clinton was in a unique position in the 2016 primaries in that she was already a failed frontrunner. I believe about half of primary winners lost their first primary, but I can’t think of any but Clinton who were frontrunners the first time. The 2nd time runners who were winners had exceeded expectations in their first run, not underperformed. I didn’t see it at the time, but perhaps Clinton’s underperforming expectations in 2008 should have been the end of her Presidential aspirations. And although it wasn’t noticed much at the time, and maybe it’s just internal backbiting after the fact, but articles I’m reading that quote campaign insiders say her campaign was beset by the same type of disorganization as her 2008 campaign. [http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/305339-clinton-world-dumbfounded-by-hillarys-election-defeat](http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/305339-clinton-world-dumbfounded-by-hillarys-election-defeat) > [@](#): > > “It was a mismanaged campaign from the start, 150 percent,” one aide said. “There was so much stuff that needed fixing. I thought we might have learned some lessons from the primary. But as you can tell from last night, probably not.” > > Less than 24 hours after the mood at the Clinton election night party at the Jacob Javits Convention Center turned from celebratory to funereal, aides wondered how they could have lost so badly, why they didn’t see it coming, and how the Democrat could have lost to Trump. > > One surrogate blamed the poor sampling models and analytics that the campaign was so reliant on. It hadn’t done traditional tracking polls for the last month. > > Other aides and surrogates pointed to an arrogance that came from the top. > > Some faulted the top brass for not properly allocating the resources they needed to win states. > > Given Clinton’s primary loss to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in Michigan, allies questioned why the Democratic nominee didn’t double down in the state much earlier. > > Allies on the ground complained for weeks that they weren’t getting the resources they needed. > > “The big question is ‘How much money did you spend? And what’s left in the bank?’ ” said one Clinton surrogate. “Because there were states like Michigan that kept sounding the alarm and no one was taking it seriously until the very end. They never really got everything they wanted.” > > “We underestimated the Midwest,” acknowledged one longtime Clinton friend. > > Clinton became the first Democratic presidential candidate since 1984 to lose Wisconsin, and the first since 1988 to lose Michigan and Pennsylvania. > > “I don’t think we ever understood the political climate there,” the Clinton friend said. “I know some are questioning why we never went there in the final days.” > > Democratic strategist Jim Manley, another surrogate, pointed to Wisconsin as proof of the broader point that there was a disregard for that part of the country — including in down-ballot races. > > “Russ Feingold sent a flare up and said ‘I need help,’ ” Manley said, but it went largely ignored. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2016, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-bad-a-politician-is-hillary/771169/64 "2016-11-11T02:34:45Z")
If all that is being said about her campaign was true, her competence may have been overrated. I don’t generally like to try to extrapolate from running a campaign to running an administration, since campaigns are generally more about the skill of the campaign manager than the candidate, but if both Clinton campaigns had the same types of problems then you can only conclude that she was the problem. ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2016, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-bad-a-politician-is-hillary/771169/65 "2016-11-11T02:51:11Z")
The fucking emails broke her back. The saying used to be to light a lantern on your problem and be the one who defines it first. If she had made an address about it and made a few campaign commercials giving her side of it, she might have pulled it out. Plus she tried to run up the score rather than bank what she had. Trips to AZ were a waste, she should have spent all her time in MI and PA. That being said, she lost because people just don’t like her. I don’t blame her for it, there are some people that other people just naturally dislike. She is one of them. In 2020 we can have a true contest, nobody is going to clear the field before it starts like Hillary did. A charismatic figure like Booker or Warren will deny the sexual predator a second term. ---
**Author:** ![Lantern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/d26b3c/32.png) [@Lantern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lantern)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2016, 7:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-bad-a-politician-is-hillary/771169/66 "2016-11-11T07:41:55Z")
[Clinton aides blame loss on everything but themselves](http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/hillary-clinton-aides-loss-blame-231215) The article is everything you would expect. This sentence particularly caught my attention for its mind-boggling idiocy: > [@](#): > > But in general, Bill Clinton’s viewpoint of fighting for the working class white voters was often dismissed with a hand wave by senior members of the team as a personal vendetta to win back the voters who elected him, from a talented but aging politician who simply refused to accept the new Democratic map. I wonder if marital competitiveness was part of the story. Hillary was determined to prove she could do it her way, not Bill’s way. But at the end of the day I think the problem is that Hillary is just not highly intelligent. She is hard-working and knowledgeable and many people confuse that with intelligence but it’s not the same thing. ---
**Author:** ![Thing\_Fish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecb155/32.png) [@Thing\_Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing_Fish)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2016, 8:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-bad-a-politician-is-hillary/771169/67 "2016-11-11T08:26:35Z")
She’s a terrible politician. I agree with those who said that every office she ever held was basically handed to her. Still, in both the 2008 primaries and the 2016 general, she lost despite getting the most votes. I don’t like her, but that’s gotta hurt. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2016, 8:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-bad-a-politician-is-hillary/771169/68 "2016-11-11T08:30:11Z")
That’s why we should have been skeptical of her ground game. Obama had the same lead in 2012, but his map looked a lot more secure because his team knew exactly where to spend resources. ---
**Author:** ![Ramira](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ramira/32/344_2.png) [@Ramira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramira)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2016, 8:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-bad-a-politician-is-hillary/771169/69 "2016-11-11T08:57:06Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > If all that is being said about her campaign was true, her competence may have been overrated. I don’t generally like to try to extrapolate from running a campaign to running an administration, since campaigns are generally more about the skill of the campaign manager than the candidate, but if both Clinton campaigns had the same types of problems then you can only conclude that she was the problem. this seems true to me. it is also a case of reflection about her emails - not the stupid things about the classified information, but the no deviation and little reflection way she handled and the kind of advices she gravitated towards in the selections I read. ---
**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2016, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-bad-a-politician-is-hillary/771169/70 "2016-11-11T12:52:40Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#): > > The fucking emails broke her back. The saying used to be to light a lantern on your problem and be the one who defines it first. If she had made an address about it and made a few campaign commercials giving her side of it, she might have pulled it out. Regarding the emails, I wonder how many people are like me in that I don’t think the server was necessarily illegal, but at least a terrible idea from the perspective of good government. Her desire to not let the personal become political became a self-fulfilling prophecy. No one would have cared if she’d run an email server for only personal email. No one would have cared if a few personal emails got mixed in with work or the other way around as long as it wasn’t classified information. Instead there was this vast co-mingling that just simply looked bad. Her tone-deaf responses never helped either. She may be a good politician. It’s hard to tell; clearly she failed miserably with Hillarycare and didn’t do anything else as First Lady, although I’ve never been sure why she should have ever expected to really do anything like that as First Lady. I never got a good answer on what she actually accomplished as a Senator and clearly being Secretary of State wound up being a liability. A lot of the list of her accomplishments could come across as the equivalent of the military brass with a lot of campaign medals and random crap picked up during a career but with no real combat medals. She is definitely a poor campaigner. Lawrence O’Donnell was right; her polling never goes up, only down. The whole country is now going to have to deal with that fact. ---
**Author:** ![Honey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/honey/32/5074_2.png) [@Honey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Honey)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2016, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-bad-a-politician-is-hillary/771169/71 "2016-11-11T15:18:47Z")
I have to disagree that she would not have been as successful without Bill. I think she would have been better off if she never left Washington as a young woman to move to Arkansas to be with Bill. I think it’s the opposite. I don’t think Bill would ever had been President without Hillary. She was a member of the impeachment inquiry staff during the Watergate scandal and she earned a lot of respect for her intelligence and hard work, and she was only 27 at the time. If she had never left Washington, there would have been no Whitewater scandal, no Gennifer Flowers, no Monica Lewinsky. She was intelligent, and driven enough to succeed in Washington without Bill Clinton. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2016, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-bad-a-politician-is-hillary/771169/72 "2016-11-11T16:41:03Z")
> [@Honey](#): > > I have to disagree that she would not have been as successful without Bill. I think she would have been better off if she never left Washington as a young woman to move to Arkansas to be with Bill. I think it’s the opposite. \*\*\*I don’t think Bill would ever had been President without Hillary. > > * * * Once again, the man who was State AG at 28, Governor at 30 would very likely have been President no matter whom he married. > [@](#): > > She was a member of the impeachment inquiry staff during the Watergate scandal and she earned a lot of respect for her intelligence and hard work, and she was only 27 at the time. If she had never left Washington, there would have been no Whitewater scandal, no Gennifer Flowers, no Monica Lewinsky. > She was intelligent, and driven enough to succeed in Washington without Bill Clinton. Succeed in Washington? Yes. In elective politics? Doubtful. If she had turned Bill down a third time, (say by passing the DC Bar in the first place) she probably would have ended up as a successful lawyer in private practice, serving in Presidential administration of Carter. Probably been elevated to the Federal Bench by the time of the Clinton Presidency. She might have ended up an Obama SCOTUS appointment. ---
**Author:** ![Honey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/honey/32/5074_2.png) [@Honey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Honey)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2016, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-bad-a-politician-is-hillary/771169/73 "2016-11-11T17:33:27Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > Once again, the man who was State AG at 28, Governor at 30 would very likely have been President no matter whom he married. > Succeed in Washington? Yes. In elective politics? Doubtful. If she had turned Bill down a third time, (say by passing the DC Bar in the first place) she probably would have ended up as a successful lawyer in private practice, serving in Presidential administration of Carter. Probably been elevated to the Federal Bench by the time of the Clinton Presidency. She might have ended up an Obama SCOTUS appointment. He ran with no opposition for AG, so that was a given. As the incumbent, he lost the election for Governor in 1980. I do not believe he would have run again, let alone won in 1982 had it not been for Hillary. We disagree and that’s okay. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2016, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-bad-a-politician-is-hillary/771169/74 "2016-11-12T04:17:40Z")
> [@Honey](#): > > I have to disagree that she would not have been as successful without Bill. I think she would have been better off if she never left Washington as a young woman to move to Arkansas to be with Bill. I think it’s the opposite. I don’t think Bill would ever had been President without Hillary. > > She was a member of the impeachment inquiry staff during the Watergate scandal and she earned a lot of respect for her intelligence and hard work, and she was only 27 at the time. If she had never left Washington, there would have been no Whitewater scandal, no Gennifer Flowers, no Monica Lewinsky. > > She was intelligent, and driven enough to succeed in Washington without Bill Clinton. There’s a lot of truth to this, but also some misconceptions about the relative strengths and weaknesses of the two. Bill has always been great at relating to people, that’s not something he got from Hillary, obviously. It’s quite possible that Bill just wouldn’t have gotten very far without his closest confidante, but the raw skills were definitely there. Bill also doesn’t have a secrecy instinct the way she does, which is what has led to 90% of her legitimate problems. Now it’s possible that if Bill isn’t such a dumbass about some things that Clinton never needed to evolve that instinct to protect herself and her family. So maybe Hillary Rodham without Bill is a very different person better able to cope with the microscope on your personal affairs that running for President causes. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2016, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-bad-a-politician-is-hillary/771169/75 "2016-11-12T04:19:51Z")
> [@Honey](#): > > He ran with no opposition for AG, so that was a given. As the incumbent, he lost the election for Governor in 1980. I do not believe he would have run again, let alone won in 1982 had it not been for Hillary. > > We disagree and that’s okay. Ah, forgot about that. Bill always had a way of getting down on himself and spending extended amounts of time in self-recrimination. Perhaps without Hillary he never gets off the floor to try again. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-how-bad-a-politician-is-hillary/771169.md?page=3)