Many people, myself included, assumed this would be a blowout for Clinton. Obviously that turned out not to be the case.
So, what were some of the Democrats’ biggest missteps here? Writing off the white working class? Not pushing the Obama administration’s successes hard enough? Just an overall failure of messaging?
A commentator on NPR tonight I thought made a good point about Clinton. He mentioned, for example, that when she tried to defend herself for taking Wall Street money, she mentioned that Obama did too, which was a pretty weak defense.
Trump, on the other hand, when confronted with his many weaknesses, simply didn’t give shit. He fully admitted to taking advantage of a corrupt system and wondering why anyone wouldn’t do so, all while claiming that he would fix said system. Such brazeness, I guess, must have struck a number of voters as refreshing.
Choosing the most disliked and unlikable candidate in history is where they went wrong. Duh?
Bernie would have won in a landslide. I have zero doubt about that.
they moved way too far to the left on social issues and Obama really hit the hornets nest of race talk too hard.
This is a joke, right? Some social issues, like marriage equality, have gone mainstream amazingly quickly. Meanwhile, Obama’s avoidance of race-based approaches and statements has been astounding, for all eight years of his presidency.
As for SJWs, sometimes their tactics are counterproductive. But I don’t see this as anything deeply tied to the Democratic Party.
The data might show that, had Obama/Hillary/the Dems acted “more black” (whatever that means), a better African-American turnout would have tipped the election to Clinton.
They decided on a coronation for a major power in the party, rather than letting the people choose the best candidate to represent them. They ran basically the only person who could’ve lost to Trump. Their corruption makes them complicit as to why we have an unstable reality star as the most powerful man in the world.
They also pushed the wrong narrative against Trump. They focused on how he’s personally an asshole, and what an asshole anyone who supported him was. That made his support dig in, and say fuck it - if you say I’m a racist/sexist/whatever for not liking Clinton, I’m just going to be against you, full bore.
What they should’ve focused on was how dangerous Trump was. How his position on NATO and Russia and generally cavalier attitude about military and nuclear usage would give us the most dangerous situation we have since the cold war.
They should’ve attacked his blue collar support base by talking more about how he used the cheap chinese products he claimed were devastating the country. How he ripped off people who worked for him and people who contracted for him as a routine practice all throughout his career. How he wasn’t some self-made succesful businessman, and how he’d be worth more if he just invested his father’s fortune in an index fund.
Instead of playing identity politics, and alienated the people they were trying to call over in the process, they should’ve focused on how Trump will be a disaster for his supporters, how the things they believe about him aren’t true, and what he really is.
The narrative for the last few weeks shouldn’t have been about pussy grabbing, they should’ve been about how he met with the President of Mexico and curled into a little ball and ran away instead of being the “I’m the dealmaker, I’ll walk into a room and get the best deal from every world leader”
Condescending identity politics caused people to dig in, to feel attacked, to feel like they were battling against the great big PC machine that was taking over the country. It invigorated his support. His support should’ve been swept out from under him by showing that he couldn’t do the things he said he’d do, and that he’s a fucking dangerous loon.
This idea might have some traction if it weren’t for the fact that Republicans also unexpectedly dominated the Senate races. And incumbents won more than they were expected to. So it wasn’t that there was some big outsider/populist wave this year. It’s just that the nation’s shittiest people all came out to vote.
IMHO
- Nepotistic promotion of a tainted candidate just because they had been groomed despite past failures.
- Misjudging the sexism and bigotry that polling missed which resulted them being overconfident.
- Ignoring rural needs for decades.
- Assuming that Americans were more evolved than they are in private.
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Marriage equality did go fast nationally, but given that some places resisted it more than others, he and Democrats should’ve cooled it on the transgenders. I support measures to protect them from violence, but you don’t need to start putting them on the national stage as Obama did, Vanity Fair did, or at the DNC for that matter.
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Obama didn’t avoid race based approaches; he butted into Zimmerman/Martin before the facts were known. He butted into the Redskins faux “controversy” and his party, Hillary included, followed him.
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Stop being blind! Whites are still the majority of this nation, and working class whites still can affect elections. Also, Trump lost the black vote by less than Romney and McCain, as well as the Hispanic vote.
Part of it is that the Democratic candidate has gathered animosity for a quarter century*. Also, she does not inspire trust among significant portions of the electorate. I can remember her being coy about her New York carpetbagging even though it was obvious what she intended to do. I also noticed that her efforts to get on the video game moral panic bandwagon were obviously fake. With the Dem candidate seeming so fake/cagey, it became easier for Trump to play the “Sure, I’m a scumbag but I’m honest about it” card.
The schtick of the fake sophisticate vs genuine rube is not new. Think of Hans Gruber vs John McClane, the New York urbanite vs salt of the earth farmer, British villain vs Magical Negro.
The Democrats should have gone with a personable white man who was on the right wing of the Democratic party. Kinda like Bill Clinton was in 1992.
- Whether that’s fair is beside the point. She put herself forward and was chosen with the full knowledge that she has.
Well said.
Trump supporters loved the pussy grabbing thing. They ate that shit up.
Now he’s going to be grabbing America by the pussy. Brace yourselves.
That’s pretty accurate.
It turns out Democrats don’t like fake primaries. Go figure.
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The Democrats/Hillary worshippers only listened to Democrats/Hillary worshippers. Surprise!
The polls were wrong.
The LSM was wrong.
The Democrat collective spent most of it’s time telling each other what they wanted to hear. People who disagreed with the Democrat collective’s groupthink were shouted down, harassed, insulted, ignored, and ridiculed. It’s hard to correctly handicap a race when you close your mind to what the other sides are actually saying.
I’ll suggest that Trump supporters, conservatives, independents, anti-Hillary voters lost interest in what the DNC, LSM, and the Democrat collective were saying and made up their own minds. As a result, Hillary lost. Again.
That’s a bullshit argument that people use to deflect blame. The blame, or credit, for a Trump Administration lies with Trump and those who chose to support and vote for him, not with those who didn’t do enough to stop him.
I think this deserves addressing when discussing this issue.
In general, I agree with your sentiment. I hate when people say “third party voters are responsible for ___ being president!” - the reality is that the people who voted for that candidate are most directly responsible for it, obviously.
However, the democratic party circumvented the democratic process in a corrupt, nepotistic way. They did a disservice to their voters in order to push an established party power. They directly increased the chances of a Trump presidency through corrupt means. As such, they are quite complicit in this result.
Beat me to starting the thread.
I’ve got some ideas, some more grounded than others, but here goes:
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First I’ll say what’s it’s not. Liberalism. Progressivism. Moving to the left, what have you. THere’s nothing inherently wrong with liberalism. There’s nothing inherently wrong with conservatism too. There are well functioning liberal states and well functioning conservative states. There have been good liberal Presidents and good conservative Presidents. The Democrats did not lose because they are too liberal.
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That being said, expressing positions that are quite liberal without an attempt at persuasion is a recipe for disaster. Clinton and many other Democrats seemed to assume that the progressive era had begun, that they could run as staunch progressives and would win by turning out that base. It might sound like I’m contradicting my point #1, so let me explain: there’s nothing wrong with being liberal, even as liberal as Sanders and Warren. There is something wrong with failing to make a case for liberalism. When Ronald Reagan ran as a conservative in 1980. a lot of effort in his campaign was selling conservatism as well as selling Ronald Reagan. Clinton neither sold liberalism nor sold Hillary Clinton.
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The Obama coalition is Obama’s and Obama’s alone. The Obama coalition is a recipe for a permanent Democratic majority. Except it came a decade or two early because of Obama. It is now clear that this coalition is not there for other Democrats.
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This is as much Obama’s fault as anyone’s. He promised change, but he represented politics as usual. If anything, Democrats doubled down on politics as usual. Any reform agenda they once had for cleaning up Washington went out the window in favor of “getting things done”.
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This last item was a big problem for both candidates, in a huge way, but it’s easy to see in hindsight why it hurt Clinton more: she’s dirty. The election is over, it’s just time to admit it. A good portion of the allegations against her were completely true. She’s dishonest, self-aggrandizing, and would take any political position she had to to win an election. Was Trump better? Hell no. But he had something she didn’t, or more accurately her supporters had something her supporters didn’t: self-awareness. Many Clinton supporters were aware that she was severely flawed, but a lot more Trump supporters knew exactly who he was and decided to support him anyway. This was a rare case where Republicans were more realistic than Democrats: they understood the real issues around Trump and were able to explain why they felt he should be supported anyway. Many Democrats also did, but many others insisted it was all a plot. Now imagine individuals on social media trying to persuade their friends and family. Who makes the better argument? “Yeah, I know Trump says really bad things and I know he treats women like dirt, but we need change in DC and we need to put America first.” as opposed to, “Clinton will be great, they just make up lies about her!”
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Plans. Clinton’s plan was better, objectively. Just one problem: which of the 479 detailed items was she going to try to do first? Almost all of Trump’s supporters can tell you what Trump plans to do first: build a wall. Or perhaps renegotiate trade deals. Trump’s plans may have been half-baked, but it was clear what his priorities were. I still have no idea what Clinton was going to do once she took office.
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Scandalmongering. We covered this, but I have to revisit this in one aspect and explain it in a way that everyone can understand: It is vitally important that a candidate start a campaign with a clean slate. Of COURSE mud will always be thrown, that’s how campaigns work. But it’s a lot easier to convict a candidate in the court of public opinion who already has a record of sleaziness that was well known long before they decided to run than a fresh face, or someone with a long record of public service that has been free of serious scandal. The second the email story came out, followed not long after by the Clinton Foundation sketchiness, Democrats should have said, “Oh hell no, not this shit again!” and considered other candidates. This one I place at the feet of the DNC more than individual followers though. The DNC made it clear they did not welcome any serious challengers to Clinton, even after the email and Clinton Foundation stories broke. The Republicans had a crowded field, there would have been little advantage lost in quietly letting it be known that other big name Democrats were welcome to enter the race. Joe Biden, who really seemed to want to do it, got no encouragement from the DNC, and active discouragement from the President’s inner circle.
Obviously, many of these lessons apply to Republicans too. And winning should not mean we can just ignore the very real mistakes that were made by nominating Trump. The GOP may have won the battle, but lost the war by winning this election. You can practically write the “Why Republicans lost thread” for 2020 right now. That doesn’t mean they WILL lose in 2020. The great thing about seeing a looming train wreck is that you can change course. Republicans need to change course in a big way, right now, whether Trump wants to go along with it or not.
I don’t see how it’s corrupt. It’s their party[sup]*[/sup] and they get to write the rules however they like. If they want to have superdelegates, they can have superdelegates.
Now, they may very well want to change the nominating process for the next cycle. Competition improves the breed, so they say. Abide by the will of the people in the primaries and you should get a candidate who can attract the will of the people in the general.
- And they’ll cry if they want to.
The process is fine. But this idea that you DON’T want a bruising campaign or a serious competition for the nomination is seriously flawed. You probably don’t want a 16 candidate clown car like the GOP had which allowed Trump to clearly differentiate himself from the field, but a 2008-type field, with 2 or 3 clear frontrunners and several quality dark horses isn’t a bad goal.
Hillary Clinton reminded everyone of the teacher who would assign extra homework on a three day weekend. Her speeches were cringeworthy. She was ethically compromised and a cartoon version of everything that’s wrong with the DC power elite. Why did she insist on running? Biden would have crushed Trump.