In hindsight, I’m not sure there was much the Democratic Party could have done differently to win. The mood from a lot of the electorate was for major change and the party in power for 2 terms gets hurt with that kind of mood. Plus, the desire for change seemed to be a rightward shift (though it’s hard to tell with Trump) given that it was the Republican voters who voted for an outsider, while the Democratic voters voted for an insider. If those Independents who wanted Bernie more but didn’t make the effort to vote in the Dem primaries because they didn’t want to change their registration or something else, they only have themselves to blame. If you want to change the system, you have to participate in the system, at least on the primary level
What Democrats, both party and voters, need to do going forward is make sure to get out the vote even during mid-terms. The Republicans do much better there and that’s one reason they have control of many governorships and other offices
About the primary, many people questioned the front-loading of the South. The general response was that it captured the desires of black voters. There was also often hints or outright statements that the questioner was a racist for asking why states that the Democrats would never carry had such an early position. Suggesting that open primaries gave a better idea of who would do well in the general was often met with “It’s the Democratic primary for Democrats.”
Just heard NPR’s Robert Siegel talk to Allan Lichtman, professor of history at American University, about his prediction model and the vagaries of polling. His model just asks 13 questions, like “has the party been in power for eight years,” “was there a major foreign policy triumph in the second four years,” etc. Together they account for all electoral wins and losses (not sure how far back in time) for the presidential party in power.
Asterion, good point. Shouldn’t we just nominate candidates who are well liked in swing states? If the only goal is to win (rather than, say, represent the electorate as a whole as much as that’s possible), makes sense to me.
Playing Chess with all our futures. A colossal blunder, and a strategy that snowballed far out of control of what they expected. If this doesn’t force the DNC to reevaluate their core values, nothing will.
No, again taken out of context as are most crappy wikileaks: The document stated, *“Clearly most of what is contained in this memo is work the DNC is already doing. This exercise is intended to put those ideas to paper.”
The memo articulated a three-point strategy. Point 1 called for forcing “all Republican candidates to lock themselves into extreme conservative positions that will hurt them in a general election.”*
The GOP does the same.
Bernie woulda lost also. The smear campaign would have been incredible. But the GOp didnt was to eliminate Bernie, they wanted him kept in for as long as possible, so as to lock themselves into extreme liberal positions that will hurt them in a general election.
After sleeping and looking at the updated results, I have to conclude that the Democrats made mistakes, but none of them really led directly to this defeat, although I’d caution that their downballot issues are another problem entirely, with many causes. But this Presidential election is not really their fault beyond “shoulda nominated a better candidate”.
The real issue is that the electorate Democrats saw under Obama isn’t the “real” electorate and I don’t think Democrats had really prepared themselves mentally for that fact. They ran as if the “ascendant majority” was an actual thing, when it was only there for Obama at this point. We still have a couple of decades to go before it becomes a real thing that all Democrats can rely on.
So for the next few elections Democrats have to appeal to working class white voters, just like they had to do from 1933 to 2008. It’s not even a matter of policies, it’s a matter of priorities. Jobs have to be ahead of climate change, workers have to be ahead of migrants. This is not actually an abandonment of Democratic principles, it just means going back to being the party as it was pre-2008. The working class comes first.
Also, superficially, the Democrats didn’t have a good motto. “Stronger Together” wasn’t very rousing, whereas “Make America Great Again” encapsulated several powerful emotions in just 4 words - it communicated that America is no longer great, evoked feelings of sorrow and rage over America losing its greatness, and hope and fervor for America to be great again.
(Whether America DID lose its greatness or not is another issue of course. But the Trump motto was one of the best in recent campaign history, in terms of effectiveness.)
Message was definitely clearer on the Trump side. I don’t know if this was part of the actual Trump campaign, but I started seeing signs that said, “Drain the swamp”, which even made me cheer. That message is deadly and Clinton just didn’t have anything. It had a motto but otherwise there was just no message, no real indication of what she’d do as President.
Jimminy. What an idiotic idea; right up there with voting in republican primaries to land Trump the nom so they would be easily defeated. Obviously, some weren’t as apt at reverse psychology as they thought.
I think it’s worth repeating that not everyone felt this way. I think it was a horrible idea to play with.
Yeah in the end Hillary lost an election which she should have won easily. Forget Obama, if she had gotten the same number of votes in PA, MI and WI as Kerry 12 years ago she would be President-elect. And I don’t really blame her; she did the best within her limitations. What I am still baffled by is why the Democratic establishment cleared the deck for her when her weaknesses were all too clear and why so many Dems, including many posters here, overestimated her political skills right till election day.
Which should have been bloody obvious from looking at the midterms and downballots from 2010-2014. Obama’s voters were HIS. The people actually showing up for other elections were voting R.
BTW speaking of “ascendant majority”, if the cohorts of young millennials, ethnic minorities, “creative class” etc. go on to concentrate themselves in a few friendly Metropolitan Areas, that Popular/Electoral vote mismatch is going to be a headache for a number of cycles yet.
The US electorate is extremely polarized now, and very closely split between the two parties. That is both why the Republicans succeed with gerrymandering, and why they need to do it. The keys to success in a presidential election are (1) motivate your base to get out and vote, and (2) don’t split your base.
Trump certainly motivated his portion of the Republican base to get out and vote. And the Republican base is extremely cohesive; even with all of Trump’s awful points and lack of bona fides, evangelicals and the like were still willing to vote for him. The Republicans are much better at party unity, despite NeverTrump making the news.
I think Hillary’s portion of the Democratic base was as motivated to get out and vote for her. She had a problem though - Bernie had fractured the Democratic base, and neither he nor Hillary could put it back together. The BernieBros had no enthusiasm to vote once Bernie lost the primary - they even rebelled against their candidate’s suggestion that they needed to support Hillary as the Democratic nominee. And yet, Hillary counted on their support. And lost.
Yes, I agree with all you wrote. The harping on the same old same old pc issues deeply alienated average voters, and I’m using the word average with all due respect. It’s like Hillary was speaking in some kind of code, one only fully understood by affluent voters in woodsy suburbs and the urban rich in high rises (whatever).
Also, Mrs. Clinton’s palpable discomfort in public, on television, vs. Trump’s comfortable and confident masculinity sent “messages”. Whether one cares for their meaning is another matter. Trump was bold and spoke his mind, while Clinton came across as somehow unreal, as if reading from a script, telling the voters what she thought they wanted to hear
This may all sound superficial and say that in theory it should all be irrelevant: the best candidate should win, the one whose views are closer to those of the American people (etc.). Yes, indeedy, but television is the medium used for communicating with the American people in large numbers, and screw up on the tube, as Hilllary did repeatedly, and you’re toast. In this, Marshall McLuhan was right as to how television works. The Dems got it right with Bill Clinton TV-wise, and again with Barack Obama, stumbled, and stumbled badly, with Hillary Clinton.
I don’t think it would have worked. I think Sanders would have won, and it wouldn’t have been close. You say that the hate machine smearing would have worked, but then go on to cite Obama and Bill Clinton as examples. The thing is it didn’t work on those two, because they have charisma that Hillary doesn’t. Sanders is definitely more charismatic than Hillary. His supporters were more enthusiastic. The socialist/communist/honeymoon in Russia would not have been a big issue given Trump’s Russian ties.
Maybe it really does just come down to which candidate is the most charismatic. Other than maybe Nixon, I can’t think of a single winner that was less charismatic than the loser, going at least as far back as FDR. If this is the case then the Democrats failed by not selecting a charismatic candidate.