You think Obama ran to “bail out his banking buddies”?
The Clinton campaign, like many things about HRC, was “by the book.” It avoided major errors, it did “all the right things” (i.e., 57 newspaper endorsements to Trump’s 2, out-raised and out-spent Trump,) it was methodical, Hillary did the debates well, etc. But it lacked simplicity and it lacked emotional appeal. It was a long policy lecture when voters wanted a shorter, “F-you, F-our nation’s woes” message.
Actually I’m not even it was “a long policy lecture”. Yes, she gave some speeches about helping people with job training and things like that, but she certainly didn’t communicate it very well.
It was more of a “trust me, I’m an expert, I know what I’m doing.”
The big picture has been completely overlooked by every commentator about the last election, that I have seen so far. And it is that big picture, that we need to be paying the most attention to.
All major political campaigns are good or bad relative to the framework of events in which they take place. Run a campaign based on simple honesty in a time when everyone is concerned primarily about corruption, and you are likely to win, and be declared brilliant. Run the same campaign at a time when the electorate is caught up in immediate concerns about the dangers facing them on many fronts, and you are likely to lose, and be called a simple minded fool.
The most recent Presidential campaign had a VERY large framework behind it, containing a number of very serious problems, none of which have so far been addressed by either major party.
One of those problems is in the Republican Party. They spent the last fifty years, consciously building a majority control, not by working to attend to more of the concerns of American voters, but rather by fooling them into THINKING that Republicans were on their side. This necessitated two destructive strategies: blind allegiance to party over the best interests of the country as a whole, and lying to their own constituents about what their real issues were.
The plan has been to fool as many people in to voting them into power as possible, and then ignore those same people, and do instead, what the party leadership has long been convinced was really best for everyone. The problem with a strategy of lies, is that if it takes more than a couple of election cycles to pull off victory, your core leaders are gradually replaced by people who actually believe and fanatically support the lies, and your original core values are lost. This is why we reached the point in the last primaries, where all of the dozen or so Republican candidates were obviously outright nuts, who drove as many people away from the GOP as they attracted. In the end, Trump triumphed, because he followed the simple strategy of blurting out every lie that the main party had been propagandizing their followers about for decades, and pretended that they weren’t in direct contradiction to each other.
The Democrats have by this point, undermined their own party in a similar, but uniquely Democratic way. They bought into their own self-adoration hype, more than anything else. They have been so convinced for a a long time now, that they are the Party of the Working Class, and the downtrodden, that they failed to notice that no ACTUAL working class or downtrodden Democrats have made it into leadership positions in their party for a half century or more. And they hadn’t updated their messages since about 1988. Among their biggest self-delusions, is that they to this day, don’t understand that most people actually DON’T like to be told that they are inherently defective, and need to be told how to live. The reason why people supported the various civil rights movements and changes was NEVER because they were being made to feel guilty by pompous self-righteous people, they supported them for other reasons entirely. But the Democrats continued to assume that if they simply caught an opponent saying something rude, that that alone would cause people to vote Democratic.
They also failed to learn from their own mistakes and Republican mistakes, when it came to how they ran the National Democratic Committee. Their primary problem wasn’t that the committee was biased in favor of Clinton, their problem was that it was possible for Clinton to have so much control over the committee, that it lost it’s REAL purpose, which (for any party) is to see to it that the candidates who get full support, are the ones with the best chance to win, AND the ones who best reflect the goals of the party itself. Because they structured it so that a single person could have as much influence as Hillary did, is what contributed the most to her and their defeat.
As for Clinton herself, she was NEVER a capable public speaker. Never. In addition, she NEVER answered the Republican propaganda campaign against her even REMOTELY competently. If anything, she played directly into their hands, doubling down when she made big mistakes, rather than correcting them.
If you thought that Clinton called your dad or kid sister are deplorable, then you also think that they are bigots or homophobes or islamophobes, and unless you yourself agree that those positions are acceptable to hold, then you would also not think to highly of them. My parents are racist, and while I love them as my parents, I think very poorly of them because of their views. Your older brother served his country, but if he is not exhibiting American values, then thankfully, he is not America.
So, you have one group of people who have done nothing to draw ire, other than having not been fortunate enough to have been born in this country, to which many on the left have great sympathy for them because of the desperate and often times violent conditions that they are trying to escape, and you have another group of people who revel in their hatred towards those groups, and you have great sympathy for them because Clinton called them “deplorable”.
I’m not actually seeing the equivalence there.
What are you talking about?
Do you think Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were the children of multi-millionaires?
Not seeing any value in continuing this discussion with you. White Obama doesn’t even run in the general, because he doesn’t beat Hillary in the primary. PRIMARY.
I guess that’s a reference to how Clinton said that half of Trump’s supporters are in the basket of deplorables, but the other half are just desperate for change – which is apparently supposed to get folks to scratch their heads and say okay, granted, she thinks that half of the Trump supporters are irredeemable; but for any given Trump supporter I can say, Well, I’m Sure She’d Say He’s One Of The Good Ones.
And, see, I just can’t imagine that working. Like, imagine a Trump type ranting about illegals – and, yeah, he’d say “illegals” – by yelling that (a) most are criminals, and they’re bringing drugs or they’re rapists; but adding that (b) some of them are good people. Would you give him a pass, for any given individual, by assuming that, oh, hey, this person right here, he presumably thinks is one of the good ones?
But, see, that’s just it: Clinton said that the irredeemable people in the basket of deplorables are the ones who are xenophobic. Who does she think that is? If a guy tells me he merely wants the existing laws enforced – is he xenophobic? Is that who she was talking about? I don’t know. Clinton said the irredeemables in the basket of deplorables are those who are racist; does that include, in her opinion, folks who want to scrap affirmative action? I don’t know.
I’ve heard such folks described as “xenophobic” and “racist” – and I’ve heard her say that folks who she thinks are xenophobic and racist are deplorable and irredeemable. And so I had to wonder: when she said that, who is she including?
And if she wanted to win votes, she maybe shouldn’t be putting people in a position where they have to wonder – because, seriously, what does that gain her? She gets undecided voters thinking, okay, she probably meant to insult my sister, but I’m not sure she meant to insult my dad? And I think she’s giving my drinking buddy a pass, but I’m 50/50 on whether she thinks my brother is irredeemable?
Is that a smart pitch? Is that what you want them pondering?
Or is there a reason that she expressed regret for that speech one day later?
Lack of policy focus. That was her problem.
Making ridiculous baseless assertions that are completely out of touch with reality is not a discussion to begin with.
I’m sure that’s as comforting to Hillary as it was to Thomas Dewey.
You guys are arguing a hypothetical. You’re both right based on your own interpretation of the circumstances and wrong based on the other’s.
This has wandered a bit far from my original appeal for “cites” from Clothahump but I think you are ignoring Obama’s tremendous personal appeal and charisma, among other factors. He did beat Hillary in the primary. He did it despite being black, not because of it (Birtherism, that minister attacking America, and so on).
He was not ever handed the nomination as some sort of affirmative action card, which takes us back to the cite I’d still love to see.
Obama’s father was a government economist who went to Harvard. His mother attended Hawaii University and was the daughter of a furniture executive and a bank vice-president.
Bill Clinton had a tougher row to hoe: the stepson of an automobile dealer, he went to Georgetown University, Oxford. and Yale Law.
None of these opportunities are available to the average cracker, nor to anyone on a packing line, nor to super-predators and neither has ever had to search the house for spare change for a bus fare.
Their children are the children of millionaires.
At least she has expertise. Trump’s version was “trust me, it’s going to be great, you won’t believe how great it’s going to be.”
The idea that Sanders “almost beat her” doesn’t strike me as being supported by the facts.
After Iowa and NH, she cleaned his clock in South Carolina and the Super Tuesday states, built up a huge delegate lead after which he never came close.
Now yes he stayed in the race, as Clinton did in 2008 in a similar situation but he never came close.
Remember how he depended largely on winning all the caucus states which is hardly an actual measure of support in that state since they cater to people who have huge amounts of time on their hand and can devote in some cases close to a full day.
Sanders never was close. Frankly, she was closer in 2008.
Obama’s dad abandoned the family when he was a baby, went back to Kenya and then showed little interest in him the rest of his life.
Obama grew up in a middle class household.
A lot of people are using the term “working class” like it means “poor”. It doesn’t. Most of the working class aren’t poor.
Actually, the polls were correct. Nate Silver pointed out that less than a week before the election, the average among polls gave Clinton the support of roughly 4% of the popular vote and she wound up winning roughly 2.1% of it. That’s well within the margin of error.
What you and presumably DigitalC meant or should have meant is “the predictions” were wrong.
Silver gave Trump a 35% of winning the election before the vote and took a lot of flack from people who said he was understating Clinton’s chances.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign was poorly run, strategically, in hindsight. When trying to answer what went wrong systemically, you can’t point to things like the “deplorables” comment; those are simply mistakes and all candidates make them. Some of them end up being more impactful than others (the 49% quote, for example). But those aren’t a systemic issue, unless the candidate and/or his/her surrogates keep making those sorts of mistakes, which might point to a systemic issue.
I believe she ran a poor campaign for two reasons:
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She was anointed to be the Democratic Party nominee, so even when Bernie Sanders started putting on a real challenge, she didn’t really have to do much to see that challenge off. It didn’t force her to sharpen her campaign. The Party collectively never forced her to prove why she should be their candidate. That of course meant that she didn’t really have a message to take to the general public in the fall. I spent much of the fall of last year trying to decipher exactly what she stood for, what her primary goals as President would be. Sadly, she appeared to be running on the age-old Democratic Party slogan of, “I’m not the Republican.”
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Like all the dead Republicans before her, Ms. Clinton (and her advisors) assumed that Donald Trump simply couldn’t win the Presidency. Given time, they felt he would eventually implode, the American public would “wake up” and realize that they were being “scammed.” So instead of running a hard-hitting campaign (which has the downside that it inevitably results in the opponent landing a blow or two on you in the process), she simply tried to stay above it all and act “Presidential.” But, as it turned out, everyone who kept writing Mr. Trump off was wrong. The people who were going to vote for him didn’t see him as the toxic substance that the Democratic Party (and so many posters here) saw him as. So he didn’t implode, and he wasn’t going to implode.
Now, in hindsight, that’s clear, but the question is, should the campaign have realized they were making a mistake earlier?
I believe they should have for two reasons:
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They were in essence making the same mistake the Republican establishment candidates made that got them tossed out of the primary race. So they had ample opportunity to dissect what was going on and plot a proper campaign against it.
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They could have realized something was wrong with their assumptions, and their campaign, when the polls never broke heavily in her favor as the fall wore on. In 2008, as the two candidates came to grips post-convention, the polls started trending definitely towards then-Sen. Obama. A similar trend started in 2012 at about the same time; Mr. Romney managed to correct the problem some during October, which shows you can make such corrections. But last year, Mr. Trump’s number persistently refused to take a significant turn for the worse. That was an indication that the assumption about what was going to happen wasn’t happening.
As for the first part of the equation, the fact that she never had a really good message to run on, I think that’s becoming way to endemic in the Democratic Party. The Republicans have a solid message that they are always starting from: lower taxes, conservative values, strong military, etc. Too often the Democrats seem to be incapable of articulating a strong vision of what they want to DO if they are in control. In 2008, it was more the message of “change” that Sen. Obama was pushing that gave them that office, rather than some articulation of exactly what the Democratic Party stands for in the way of action. They don’t seem to have really come to terms with the loss of the white Southern vote; they keep running as the party that isn’t “that other party over there that wants to do bad things to you.” And this problem is masked by the fact that the Party has managed to put together a strong coalition of core voters, filled with demographic groups that are growing in proportion to the overall population. Too often this last election cycle, I heard pundits pointing to that fact alone as indicating that the Democrats had to win. Maybe this last election will finally wake the Party up enough to realize that they have to actually FIGHT to win, FIGHT to figure out how to take back a large segment of the population that is rural, white, and relatively “conservative” in its thinking. I hope so, because I’m sick and tired of living in a state where the Democratic Party has almost abdicated its responsibility to the population to try and compete across the entirety of the state. 
Besides in '08 you would have had “but he’s Black” vs. “but she’s a Woman”. Either would have been The First to get the nomination.
And let’s not forget one big point at the time for liberals in 2008: Obama ran as having been against the Iraq war all along, while HClinton was for it before she was against it(). Also, 2008 was at the end of 8 years of NeoConFest a.k.a. the W administration and the people were getting tired of them (remember, the Rs lost Congress in 2006*). Obama accurately perceived that it would be a “change” election and that many Liberals would not be enthusiastic about the party once again running away from the very words liberal/progressive under the DLC stance that had pervaded since the late 80s. So he went for that and found a “market segment” eager to get what was not being offered. And yes he offered it with hopey-changey charisma and charm and next-generation attitude.
(*OK so a bunch of people were a bit nonplussed with how quickly he got the hang of eliminating troublesome individuals abroad.)
Obama was able to win caucus states, where being favored by the more ideological segment works in your favor; accumulate respectable showings in non-WTA primaries; and win states that would be considered lost in the general election and not worth spending much in by Establishment candidates but where the AA vote would dominate the Dem primary e.g. the South. In the end, Clinton even then claimed to have won the popular vote (depending on how you counted) but Obama just got more delegates from more states (sound familiar?).