So, sure, this has been beaten to death. and
Sure, I’m talking out of my ass…
But the real reason why Hillary lost was because there are no major news outlets in Joplin Missouri.
no really…well, not specifically Joplin, but any number of American towns outside of east and west coasts.
She lost, because not enough people voted for her in key states.
But I’m convinced more people wanted her to win, even in those states she lost…but they didn’t vote for her…they didn’t vote at all.
Why didn’t they vote? because, the news they kept hearing since 2012 was that she was going to be the ‘defacto’ winner, and certainly because of the ridiculousness of Trump portrayed on media, it was a foregone conclusion…SO, there is no need for the individual to vote for Hilary because everyone else will be anyway…so the individual stayed home. I personally, know of several people who didn’t vote because they didn’t need to.
But…if the media had set themselves up in Joplin Missouri, they would have seen and heard of the discontent and been less complacent. It would have been more obvious that there really was a close battle brewing and Hillary, really did have a chance of losing.
Erego: Dear mainstream media…set up shop in Joplin Missouri so you have a better understanding of your consumers.
Hey, don’t give me shit about this, I already said I was talking out of my ass.
Is that really true in this day and age though? I mean every town has a newspaper with AP/Reuters/UPI feeds, and many (most?) people have cable or satellite TV, and a large percentage of people have internet access, even in the boonies.
I have a hard time imagining that in 2016, there was a lack of information for people to consume, even out in the most distant rural areas. Now whether people consumed a balanced diet of information, or consumed enough, or at all, is a different story.
I think Sigene is saying the opposite (sort of). Not that the people in Joplin didn’t know Clinton, but that the people in the rest of the country don’t know anything about Joplin. If they had, they might have understood that Clinton wasn’t a shoo-in and that their vote was needed. Not sure I necessarily agree with that - I’m not familiar enough with the numbers of people who stayed home in the states that went red.
yes, that’s what I’m saying. Its not that Joplin didn’t understand Hillary, its that New York City, Washington D.C., Los Angeles CA don’t have a pulse on the rest of the country.
Its part of the same old saw you might have heard before…The media is biased…but not “liberal” biased. Its geographically biased. And it bit them in the butt in 2016.
But if someone stayed at home in California…the state still went for Clinton, so it didn’t really matter. Same for NY, DC, etc. And frankly, I felt like all we heard about during the election were the poor white working people and how they felt.
I agree that the coasts did not have the pulse of the middle parts of the country. In addition and in my judgment, the Democratic Party/Platform lacked a clear, concise, and simple message. There was nothing to rally around it seemed, other than the coronation of Mrs. Clinton.
I can completely believe this, because that’s what I thought at the time. I lived in California and my vote was therefore irrelevant, but if I had lived where I do now (Ohio), I may have not bothered simply because I thought it was a foregone conclusion that Clinton would win. So I can believe that it’s entirely possible enough other people thought the same thing that they didn’t feel the need to bother to go vote, because it’s a hassle unless it’s all done by mail (which is the main reason I always voted in California, because it didn’t require me to go out and take significant time out of my day to do so). If they didn’t have any other elections going on that were significant to me at the time and I didn’t just vote by mail, I may well have not voted. Heck, when I heard that Trump had won that evening, I didn’t believe it (I wasn’t exactly watching the news, someone commented on it as I went through a hallway) until the next day when I was surprised to hear that the nonsense was actually true.
This has been my speculation as well. Also factor in the voters who thought that they could “safely” make a protest vote for Trump or for a third party candidate or Bernie write-in because they knew Clinton would win. The real reason Clinton lost was left wing complacency, which has hopefully been banished by the reality of a Trump presidency. I think our main danger now is falling into a state of resigned despair.
You’re misunderstanding the OP. The idea is that voters in Michigan Wisconsin and Pennsylvania assumed that Clinton would win because most of the news that they heard came from DC, California etc. where no one could conceive of Trump actually winning. And so they decided their vote wasn’t needed.
I think the ‘coastal elites just don’t understand flyover country’ theme has been beaten to death and it is the soccer mom or NASCAR dad of 2016.
The reasons I think Clinton lost:
Bernie Sanders. He refused to drop out when he was all but mathematically eliminated. He wanted to take it to the convention, even after he had been mathematically eliminated. He refused to speak out and try to reign in his fervent supporters. Yes, he did finally endorse and campaign for Clinton, but he spent a month or so being wishy-washy and trying to demand concessions. Clinton let him appoint nutjobs like Cornel West to the platform committee. Bernie could have spoken out against the idiots at the Democratic Convention and against all the stupid conspiracy theories. But, nope. So, enough of them felt free to vote third party, write in Bernie, write in Harambe, or just leave the top of the ballot blank. You can get away with silly protest votes in San Francisco, but you can’t in Madison, State College, or Ann Arbor.
The Comey letter. I think this caused a lot of reluctant swing voters who were leaning Clinton after the Access Hollywood tape release to just throw up their hands in disgust and vote for 'None of the above."
The insane amount of dark money spent to help downballot candidates, particularly in the Senate. Both Pennsylvania and Wisconsin had tight Senate races as well as the Presidential Race. There was also a tight governor’s race in North Carolina as well as a Senate race in Florida, both states were still up for grabs at the Presidential level as well.
The reason that Clinton lost was Trump voters. There were many factors that went into her loss, of course, but Trump voters were by far the largest one.
Yes and no. I don’t think it was a misunderstanding of flyover country, but an overconfidence that there weren’t enough crazies and deplorables to swing the election to Trump. Thus, some number of Hillary voters didn’t bother. They didn’t think she could lose (I didn’t either, but I voted anyway).
That alone may not have cost Clinton the election, but I think it was a factor.
Correct. Hillary had the most money to spend,far more ground support for the campaign, and the most favorable coverage by the media and newspapers. She was also giving the debate questions in advance by CNN, yet she lost.
Trump won 30 of 50 states, and the electoral college by a pretty significant margin, 74 votes to be exact, meaning he could have lost Michigan and Wisconsin and still be elected President.
Clinton supporters might counter by saying she had more total votes, but that’s like saying my team lost the football game but passed for more yards.
The reason Hillary lost is Trump’s message meant more in the eyes of the voter.
I don’t know. I’m in NC, in one of the bluest parts of the state, but (and I know this is just anecdotal) the people I know who are liberals were terrified that Trump would win. We didn’t need CNN to tell us that our neighborhoods were filling up with Trump signs and that the people we work with were attending the rallies. So I think in the states where it mattered (swing states like mine), we could see what was happening on the ground. Most of the people I know were pretty dismissive of the idea that Clinton was a definite.
You’re obviously wrong. Clinton got more votes. That means her message meant more in the eyes of the voters than Trump’s message did. If Trump’s message had meant more in the eyes of the voters then Trump would have gotten more votes.
Trump won despite getting less votes because we have a screwed up system where some people’s votes count more than other people’s votes.
The irony of this thread is that a voter in Joplin, Missouri gets a bigger vote than a voter in New York City or Los Angeles. This system isn’t biased against Joplin; it’s biased against New York City and Los Angeles.
We have an electoral college system. Trump won 30 of 50 states and the electrical college. That is what matters most. If Clinton had 3 million more votes in California, a state that is very dysfunctional with talks of splinting up in three separate areas, so what.
Without this system, the smaller states would get little play in the campaign process or perhaps in Congress for needs. Clinton knew this going in. She lost.
As for New York or California, their electoral votes towers over Missouri’s so how can this system that rewards the more populous states with more votes be biased against them? Quite the opposite, the majority in these states counts far more in electing a President.
It wasn’t so long ago that I read democratic sources parsing this system.