[…] We can’t comprehend even 1 percent of what’s just happened. But one aspect of it, minor in the overall sweep, that I’m pretty sure we can comprehend well enough right now: The Democratic Party establishment has beclowned itself and is finished.I think of the lawmakers, the consultants, the operatives, and—yes—the center-left media, and how everything said over the past few years leading up to this night was bullshit.
The midterm losses? That was just a bad cycle, structurally speaking; presidential demographics would make up for it. The party establishment made a grievous mistake rallying around Hillary Clinton. It wasn’t just a lack of recent political seasoning. She was a bad candidate, with no message beyond heckling the opposite sideline. She was a total misfit for both the politics of 2016 and the energy of the Democratic Party as currently constituted. She could not escape her baggage, and she must own that failure herself.
Theoretically smart people in the Democratic Party should have known that. And yet they worked giddily to clear the field for her. Every power-hungry young Democrat fresh out of law school, every rising lawmaker, every old friend of the Clintons wanted a piece of the action. This was their ride up the power chain. The whole edifice was hollow, built atop the same unearned sense of inevitability that surrounded Clinton in 2008, and it collapsed, just as it collapsed in 2008, only a little later in the calendar. The voters of the party got taken for a ride by the people who controlled it, the ones who promised they had everything figured out and sneeringly dismissed anyone who suggested otherwise. They promised that Hillary Clinton had a lock on the Electoral College. These people didn’t know what they were talking about, and too many of us in the media thought they did.
And this:
What was the line? Hillary Clinton would do well in a general election, because she’d been “vetted” for 20-some years and there was nothing new Republicans could try? Just writing that, I recognize that it’s the funniest line I’ve ever seen, and yet it was the exact argument Clinton used in two separate campaigns for the Democratic nomination.
And I’ll add three words: Debbie. Wasserman. Schultz. (Who won tonight, by the way.)
The Democratic Party that will re-take the Senate, House and Presidency will not look like the party that DWS or the Clintons fostered and maintained. The house organ of that Party will not be the New York Times or any other part of the false equivalency establishment press, no matter how “liberal” their columnists are. The advisors and consultants who bring that Party to victory will not include John Podesta or anyone who ever worked for him in a senior capacity. The reason is simple: this combination killed us in 2016.
Obama was a breakout candidate in large part because he went around the Democratic establishment. The message, style and operations of a winning Democratic Party will be part Obama and, as much as many of you hate hearing this, part Bernie Sanders. The simple fact was that there was a hell of a lot more excitement about Bernie’s candidacy among the Democrats who need to be energized for us to win, than there was among Hillary supporters. Bernie wasn’t the guy, but we need to look hard at what he said, how he said it, and how his campaign operated. We need to find someone who isn’t Bernie to carry that message into 2018 and 2020.
Trentrunner
Hillary Clinton is on track to win the goddamn popular vote.
If you had a better candidate, you should have run her/him.
And who the fuck is Jim Newell?
RaflW
And we need them quick. We need a 2018 effort to at least curtail the House 3X-ASAP. I think a number of Trump’s efforts will start failing pretty spectacularly from day one. We can’t have hackitudinous late 20th century Dem answers for that.
No f*king idea how we get this sort of new leadership up and running. But I know I need to get off the couch and do a heluva lot less internet and a lot more organizing in my little corner of the world.
Sinnach
Did anyone, and I mean anyone, say that Hillary would do better because she has been under the all-scrutinizing eye of Republicans for 40 odd years? Look, this is an utter and hope-crushing loss but revising history to recast your erstwhile allies as the cause for said loss is not only counter productive but incredibly self-destructive.
Then again, if you’re interested in logic-free post election ranting please carry on.
Bailey
Newell writes for Slate. He’s largely pretty good, as far as I can tell.
With respect to other candidates, I think you are missing the point in that, from the very beginning, this was so tilted to HRC’s favor by the DNC and establishment figures, which is exactly what Newell is saying. Running another candidate wasn’t so easy. For a wide open year, having only three run at all was already a disadvantage.
Bernie was a fluke. He was necessary, but he was a fluke candidate that should have been a much larger wake up call then he was treated.
Ninerdave
In fairness to the democratic establishment, the polling supported their arguments and myself and Jim and everyone of you bought it.
mai naem mobile
I am not a Clinton fan. I wasn’t even a Bill Clinton fan. But, it’s hard to compete against somebody who sucks up all the oxygen in the room. Trump also pulled the race/xenophobia card. Obama is/was a unique candidate but I am not sure he would have won against a Trump candidacy in 08.
Peter
I firmly disagree with the assertion that Clinton was a bad candidate. She ran pretty much the correct campaign going off the data she was given. Problem: that data was bad, across the board, and nobody knew about it until today.
mistermix
@Ninerdave: And we won’t be fooled again.
@mai naem mobile: We’re deep in woulda-coulda-should land, but FWIW, my take is that Trump is the consequence of Obama’s Presidency and 8 years of lies and anger about it. Trump could not have existed in 2008 the way he does in 2016.
BlueDWarrior
@Peter: What this is going to show us is that you basically cannot predict the final outcome in terms of turnout. They missed the turnout in 08, 12, and now 16, and basically all the modeling depends on getting a good turnout model.
Irony Abounds
Perhaps part of the reason the Dems didn’t have any alternative is that it was assumed by the Dem establishment since 2009 that Clinton would get her shot after Obama. They did a shitty job of recruiting candidates for Senate and Governor (Florida is a prime example of that) so there was no nice shiny object. All they had left was Hillary. Well, they could have had Warren, but she would never challenge Hillary, so there you are.
cmorenc
@Trentrunner:
Which does us just as much fucking good as it did in 2000. Trump will still be President, and has promised to essentially do whatever the Hell he wants, eat shit democrats.
elm
Moving out of the country. Good luck to you folks who think there’s something worth a damn in the US.
ruemara
Hillary is at fault? Hillary? How about Trump winning all the white voters while 3rd party candidates did ratfucking. I blame those guys. Fuck Jim for making it anyone’s fault but the voters.
Dog Dawg Damn
I was defamed and hectored on THIS VERY BLOG for decrying how the DNC cleared the field for Hillary.
Now we are left web Trump but even worse — no challengers in 2020.
Omnes Omnibus et. al. can suck it but that was a strategic blunder and one that may cost us the Republic.
Mnemosyne
I will ask this question once again: how does Jewish Bernie Sanders win against anti-Semitic, white supremacist Trump?
Like it or not, Trump mobilized racist white voters. White Protestants voted in record-breaking numbers. Why would Breitbart fans NOT show up to vote against a New York Jew?
demz taters
Cut the high minded BS – simple fact is that if Democrats bothered to turn out with the same intensity as the spite vote, things would have ended differently.
Bailey
@Sinnach:
Um, yes. Many people. The majority of posters here, I’d say.
My thoughts are divided on this—for Hillary the woman, I feel so bad. This kind of anticipation and rejection is heartbreaking and soul-destroying. I wish the best for her in future.
For Hillary the politician–I don’t know if she would have made a good president or not. My hope was that she merely be competent and not break anything too terribly until a more vibrant president could take over. But I, to this day, do not know why she was running other than personal ambition. She never had an affirmative story to tell, coasting simply on the “I’m not Trump” messaging. Bizarrely, she couldn’t manage to even tell Obama’s story and how she might continue on that progress. Just….nothing. So for that, I welcome her dismissal from the party, and she can take all those feckless advisers with her.
But I do not wish for anything that Trump be the recipient of this dismissal. It is too damaging to us all—to people individually and to our national psyche and our soul and to our standing in the world.
Most of all, I do not think Obama deserves this send off. At all. It must be hideous for him to have to attend the next inauguration and watch the shitgibboon who ran as king of the birthers be sworn in after him. A tragic ending.
JPL
Tax cuts for the wealthy, more money for defense and back alley abortions. What a great country we live in.
Irony Abounds
@Bailey: It’s not just that Obama has to sit there and watch that motherflucker get inaugurated, it’s that virtually his entire legacy will be destroyed, with Obamacare gone, Dream Act executive order repealed, the economy will be in freefall, environmental regs ditched, etc. He’ll live on as the first Black President and an incredibly decent man, but his accomplishments will have been almost completely negated.
Mnemosyne
@Bailey:
You watched a very, very different campaign than I did. And that seems to be a big part of the disconnect here: for the most part, white men didn’t like Hillary, and unusually large numbers of them turned out to vote against her. And it was not just conservative white men. Purportedly liberal white men just couldn’t get over their visceral distaste for an ambitious woman.
old_owl
Let us start by cancelling all subscriptions to the false equivalency establishment press , and stop giving them eyeballs and money. Not only are they are not liberal, they are undermining liberals.
This is going to get much worse, before it gets better. 16 years at least. The next 8 years will be Kansas on a national scale. And Kansas does not get it even now, after 7 years. Why would the remaining red states be any different?
The way to change lies through statehouses & Congress. Congressional majority. Even with gerrymandering. Forget the POTUS election.
Arclite
@Dog Dawg Damn:
Tim Kaine?
Bailey
@demz taters:
I would say it’s a mistake to categorize all Trump voters as the “spite” vote. In fact, I’d say the opposite. He had actual issues that he ran on that people liked. They voted FOR him, not just against Hillary, although some certainly did. On the other hand, did Hillary have more people voting FOR her rather that just against Trump? That is a ponderable question.
mistermix
@Mnemosyne:
He doesn’t. His message can win. Bernie was almost the perfect example of a flawed messenger with a compelling message.
Keith P.
So who is on deck for 2020 now? The Castro’s are too inexperienced. They really need to come up with someone *new*. Not necessarily young…just new and genuine. So not Donald Trump after a party flip. I want to say the staleness is the party’s problem, but it’s my problem with the party; the GOP has done quite well with an archaic cast of characters (this cabinet will be a sight to see).
And they really need to look into finding a better working class hook than unions, as that isn’t doing the trick any more. But the good news is that it is quite easy to win that vote with empty promises.
Bailey
@Mnemosyne:
Then you watched a very different election than the majority of the country who elected Donald Fucking Trump did.
cmorenc
@ruemara:
But you can’t win elections without the voters. And frankly, you cannot win without people like Obama who can figure out how to appeal to the passions of people’s better natures and hopes more than the passions of their dark fears and resentments – at a gut level more than just an intellectual policy level.
Dog Dawg Damn
@Arclite: TIM FUCKING KAINE was exactly the worst pick for this environment.
Dems cannot win without PoC energized. Putting him on the ticket was a strategic error.
brendancalling
That’s funny, you think there will be elections in 2018 and 2020.
BlueDWarrior
@Keith P.: I honestly believe that it’s a lot like post-2004 when we really will not know who will step up until at least 2006.
Arclite
@Bailey:
Fuck you asshole. She had the knowledge and experience, she had the actual INTEREST in governing, none of which Trump has. Yes, she would have faced the same problems Obama did, basically a recalcitrant congress, but she would have done what good where she could have. She’s spent her entire life for this moment. She would have been a fine president. Trump is going to be a disaster.
Bailey
@Irony Abounds:
Yes, that too. I haven’t been able to face that reality yet, and as someone who benefits completely from Obamacare and being able to purchase on the individual market, I am frantic with worry.
Peale
Well, I guess we’ll never know. I’m still wondering who would have run if Clinton had bowed out. Maybe Martin O’Malley would have done better. But I don’t know exactly who would have stepped in. Kaine? Biden? Kerry? I know Cuomo would have, but please.
JPL
@Bailey: According to previous interviews, more than half of Trump voters were voting against Clinton, and more than half of Clinton voters were for her.
Thanks Comey!
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
it’s difficult to win 3 presidential elections in a row.
it’s only happened once since world war ii. (and that was a fluke – 1988)
but let’s not overrate Sanders. he through all his weight behind a ballot measure in deep blue, liberal california to reduce drug prices and google tells me it’s going down by 8 points.
Arclite
@JPL:
I’ll agree with the first two, but not that last one. Trump depends on reliable abortions for all the women he’s made pregnant over the years.
GrandJury
That Slate article is bullshit. Saying Hillary was not the right candidate with no alternative (no it wasn’t Bernie) is no argument at all.
Mnemosyne
@Bailey:
Again: white Protestants turned out in massive numbers to vote against Hillary. Mostly men. So, again, my point is that white men looked at Hillary and saw something different than the rest of us.
Bailey
@Arclite:
Trump will be a disaster, no disagreement. But knowledge and experience and interest alone does not make a good president. Again, I have no way of knowing how she’d do–I’d assume competent. But being a president also means really connecting with people and being able to sway people and move big initiatives and apparently that is a skill she lacks. I knew this from her first foray into healthcare in the 90s. It’s why I voted for Obama in 2008—I wanted someone who could get something big done and I was pretty sure she couldn’t do it.
Arclite
@Bailey:
You’re right. It’s the misogyny vote.
One thing I will say is that Americans hate a dynasty. Clinton definitely had that against her.
JPL
@Arclite: The next justice will definitely send Roe v Wade back to the states, so you might be correct. If you can afford to go to Massachusetts, you will be fine. Let’s not forget that Corporations are people too.
SenyorDave
@Bailey: Most of all, I do not think Obama deserves this send off. At all. It must be hideous for him to have to attend the next inauguration and watch the shitgibboon who ran as king of the birthers be sworn in after him. A tragic ending.
It is my fervent hope that when he has a semi-private meeting with Trump he clears the room and whispers in his ear “Donald, GFY for the misery you put me and my family through with your birther shit”.
Bailey
@Mnemosyne:
An unfathomable amount of women voted for Trump, too. What did they see?
mai naem mobile
You need a good back slapping smooth talker to run on a Democratic ticket. A really good people person. Also a compelling personal narrative. Competent but not a long legislative career. Does anybody know the story on Catherine Cortez Masto? All I know is that she was the Nevada AG. She seems like she would make a good candidate.
BlueDWarrior
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: It seems like we’re stuck on this damn see-saw then…
GrandJury
Kaine never lost an election….until now.
Mnemosyne
@Arclite:
Americans hate a dynasty? I guess I imagined that there were two presidents named Bush, then (and two named Roosevelt, and two named Adams …)
Roger Moore
@mai naem mobile:
This. This election was primarily about racist whites trying to repudiate the Obama years. Hillary was running to be Obama’s third term, and Trump was running to erase Obama completely, and I guess we can see who won the argument.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@mistermix: A large part of the problem is that significant chunks of Sanders’ message fall apart without his flaws. A lot of his actual policy proposals depended upon his inability to do math. One way in which Sanders was very much like Trump, though it turned out not to be as fatal for Trump as we’d thought, is that what played well during the primaries, and what Clinton couldn’t challenge without losing the base, would not have played well in the general election. There’s a reason why single payer health care has failed to win a majority of votes wherever it’s put on the ballot, and that’s because, while it sounds good as a platitude, the details are deeply unpopular. An awful lot of Sanders platform would have run into that problem.
Aside from which, I think it’s easy to miss a lot of the ways in which Hillary Clinton was a much better candidate than her critics understand. She was masterful in the debates. While she may not have played well with millenials, relative to other possible candidates, she connected with women and minorities in a way that I don’t think someone from the Sanders wing of the party, let alone Sanders himself, would have.
mai naem mobile
I am still in denial. Cannoy believe the T word is POTUS. I have no words.
Mnemosyne
@Bailey:
Two words? Mommy wars. Working mothers vs (conservative) stay at home moms.
Arclite
@Dog Dawg Damn:
LOL, dude. The VP pick has never, ever shown any statistical ability to sway the electorate, ever in any poll or measurement.
JPL
Krugman
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/cp/opinion/election-night-2016/paul-krugman-the-economic-fallout
Bailey
@Dog Dawg Damn:
Disagree.
Hell, Tim Kaine might have saved Virginia for all we know.
HelloRochester
I’m working out the wording for something I’m planning to say to my parents and in laws over the next month: you will never be welcome in my house or able to see your grandchildren again if you try for one second to persuade me Donald Trump is anything other than a giant blustering pile of pus. Needs some work but those are the bones.
Arclite
@Bailey:
Maybe half the female population has consistent rape fantasies?
cokane
@Mnemosyne: psst… she lost white women, per exit polls
maybe this identity politics obsession by some isn’t getting us anywhere
Askew
@mai naem mobile:
She was my first thought or maybe Kamala Harris in CA. I think it needs to be a West Coast or Midwest candidate. Enough with the East Coast wealthy, old candidates with no charisma. Kerry, Dukakis, Hillary. All were terrible for us.
Hillary was basically the Dem Romney. She ran against her actual record as more liberal than reality. Seemed out of touch, incredibly rich and had the charisma of a wet blanket.
And I am back not to gloat but to mourn. As much as I dislike Hillary I gladly voted for her over racist Trump. I can’t believe he might win Minnesota.
mistermix
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym:
Frankly, this argument is part of the problem with the Democratic establishment. Campaigns are aspirational. Poetry versus Prose. Clinton was not able to articulate the poetry that is required to get Democrats to the polls.
Judged by the same standard, a lot of Obama’s campaign rhetoric in 2008 would be rejected. Yet, Obama energized Democrats who came to the polls in ’08 (and to a lesser but still significant extent in ’12). As this guy pointed out a few minutes ago, Clinton’s turnout in key black counties in Wisconsin and Michigan was so far below Obama’s that it’s the margin in both of those states. Had she turned them out, she would have won.
Roger Moore
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
Three points:
1) The measure was deeply flawed, which is enough to get a lot of people who like its aims to vote against it.
2) Bernie didn’t throw anything like his full weight behind it; he was also working pretty hard to get Clinton elected which was, and should have been, his first priority.
3) He couldn’t, and shouldn’t have expected to, put the kind of money and effort into the proposition that the drug companies were able to. Getting a ballot measure opposed by a powerful special interest like the drug companies through is very, very hard.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Warren Harding redux
it’s a bit a trivia, but FDR was the vice presidential candidate in the 1920 election that lost to Harding in a landslide.
FDR wrote disappointingly that the country becomes reactionary after a period of progressiveness. We just went through the Progressive Era with establishment of the income tax, the federal reserve, with women getting the right to vote, with world war I, with the great flu pandemic and it was so much for people to digest at one time, causing them to turn to someone like
TrumpHarding.Under these headwinds, not even FDR could save the election.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mnemosyne:
… and two named Harrison.
Darkrose
Logged onto Final Fantasy XIV. I’m in an LGBT guild, and we’re all sitting around stunned. The kicker is that some asshole just posted in open chat in one of the main game areas “gas the libs / race war now”.
So yeah. Fuck all of y’all with the “it’s not about race” bullshit.
Mnemosyne
@Bailey:
Also, I think liberal women were on the receiving end of a classic line: “Face it, girls, I’m older and I have more insurance.”
JMS
This is all Wednesday morning quarterbacking. In a different election, Hillary would have won, warts and all. You just have to be the right person at the right time, and it isn’t always easy to predict or control that. I don’t really have anything else to say. Don’t fight the last war? Am I ever going to sleep again?
Askew
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym:
Hillary failed to connect with AA voters on the level we needed. When Obama is out having to do GOTV efforts and begging AA voters to turn out, it became obvious that Hillary was not the right candidate for today’s base.
I think Hillary was also hurt in the midwest and rust belt by Bill’s legacy. He enacted NAFTA which killed those states’ economies and Hillary said she was going to put Bill in charge of the economy. That was a mistake. That, plus the distrust from young AA voters due to Bill’s crime bill really hurt Hillary.
I’d like to think Biden would have been a better bet but I am not sure he wouldn’t have been hampered by the Clinton legacy as well. He championed the crime bill and backed NAFTA.
Elizabeth Warren may have been our best bet and no way she would run against the Hillary Clinton machine. The women’s groups all lined up behind Hillary early and discouraged any other woman from running.
Emma
Wow. So I wake up to find so-called Democrats already chewing at the corpse of their candidate. Mostly so they can stop looking at the massive racism, sexism, and xenophobia the majority of their white countrymen showed. Good show guys.
cokane
@mistermix: this is election fanfiction and it really serves no purpose. there’s no way to test these counterfactuals. There was plenty of ammunition to use against Sanders. There’s also weak evidence that he would have mobilized the black voters you’re talking about better than Clinton, since he didn’t fucking win them in the primary as well as she did.
Mnemosyne
@cokane:
Yes, because white women are never racist or misogynist. Have you ever even heard of Ann Coulter?
gene108
Hillary ran a solid campaign. She did the right things, if you consider Obama’s model right.
But she lost.
What needs to be understood is most of this country is white. Some places are still 80%+ white, like the upper Midwest.
Democrats need a populist message that would appeal to those voters.
Republicans had not won PA, MI, etc. since 1988. These were solid Democraic states that were slipping from Democatic control and this is the year those chickens came home to roost.
Republicans were in much worse shape, at this time, in 2008 and hey have rebounded nicely.
President Obama will stick around on voting rights issues, and I hope he gets active in Democatic politics, because Democrats need a strategy for weathering this storm.
Republicans whipped out the TEA Party, by spring of 2009.
Democrats need to get something together to take hold of the narrative.
Peter
@mistermix: Ah, yes, Bernie Sanders, so famously the preferred candidate of the black community.
Askew
@Mnemosyne:
I think that applies to the young women who didn’t back Hillary in the primaries and were browbeaten over it by Gloria Steinem, Madeline Albright and others.
As for the midwest, many of these voters voted for Obama twice and then voted for Trump. Hillary didn’t give them anything to vote for. There was no positive message. That isn’t the voters fault. Hillary also spent way too much time in private fundraisers and sleeping in her own bed instead of doing campaign events in WI, MI, and other places. Her public schedule was way too light. Trump simply outworked her. She didn’t need all those private fundraisers. She needed to spend time exciting people to vote for her.
I just hope that this time the DNC finally moves to put the Clintons and their sycophants out to pasture and let some new blood take over. No more Carville, Bagala, or others that crawled out of the woodwork once Hillary got the nomination.
Bailey
@JMS:
It is Wednesday morning quarterbacking, of course, but I still must disagree with your notion that Hillary would have won some other mythical election. Fact is, her negatives going into the campaign were so astronomical, that she luckily ran against the one person on the planet with worse negatives in Donald Trump. Truly, he was the only Republican she could possibly hope to beat and she did not. This race wouldn’t have been close at all if she were running against Kasich or Rubio.
Arclite
@Mnemosyne:
You’re talking three presidents out of 45. That’s 7%.
Bailey
@Mnemosyne:
I don’t know what you mean by this. Explain?
Mnemosyne
@mistermix:
Have you heard about Wisconsin’s on-again, off again voter ID law?
Voter suppression is a real thing.
mistermix
@cokane:
Again, I am not saying Sanders would have won. I’m saying his message was a winner – in the mouth of a stronger candidate. Obama’s winning combination was a naturally talented politician (which Clinton was not) combined with a compelling, timely message (HOPE). Clinton had neither. Bernie wouldn’t have won but his message was, in my opinion, more compelling.
My point here is to mourn a little constructively. We just witnessed another Gore election. Hillary will probably win the popular vote and has certainly lost the electoral vote. The only thing we’ve been spared, compared to Gore, is the painful recount. We should try to figure out what went wrong in 2000 and 2016, and try not to repeat it.
cmorenc
Query what approach the Trump administration is going to take regarding the steadily increasing number of states (especially western states) which are legalizing marijuana? Will the hard-ass hippie punchers in the GOP and the prison-industrial complex try to push Trump into using the DEA and the supremacy of Federal law to harshly crack down on (the mostly blue) states which have legalized it for recreational and not merely strictly confined medical purposes? Or will he be smart enough to resist them and push for de-Fanging the FDA’s prohibitionist absurdity and see to it that marijuana gets moved from a Schedule 1 drug to schedule 2 (enough to end the banking restrictions on pot businesses) or even schedule 3? There’s really little political upside for him siding with the hard-ass hippie punchers on this one, despite his not so far coming out in favor of (or speaking much about) marijuana legalization.
gene108
@Askew:
No white person is going to energize black voters like the chance to vote for the first black President did.
Obama got a lot of irregular voters to vote for him.
It seems Trump might have managed the same thing, this cycle.
Russ
The country just blamed all the wrong people for taking all the money.
Van Buren
Our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is over.
The best Onion headline ever can just be updated and recycled.
mistermix
@Mnemosyne:
Yes and it will get worse in 2018 and 2020. That means we need to turn out overwhelming numbers of voters who did not turn out in 2016. There will be no break from suppression, and the Electoral College will remain a problem for Democrats, as it was in this election. If you tally up the votes for Senate and for the House, as a whole, as in the past couple of elections, Democrats will probably have garnered more votes than Republicans.
This is the environment we live in. It will not be changed in the near future, so we need to structure a party that can overcome it.
Dog Mom
What happens with Trump’s upcoming trials?
Mnemosyne
@Emma:
And it all seems to be a bunch of guys complaining about how Hillary just didn’t speak to them. Hmmm ….
cokane
@Mnemosyne: This is rot of identity politics on display. It’s not a winning argument to just blame everything on racism or misogyny. I don’t doubt that those factors played a role, but other factors were equally decisive. Other factors that we can actually do something about.
Harping about bigotry isn’t a winning hand. We aren’t going to convince those people nor are we going to prevent them from voting. How about talking about shortcomings with voters who aren’t racist and who aren’t misogynists. Not every Trump voter this year was un-persuadable.
JPL
@Emma: This!
Peale
I agree that the establishment has to go. Also have said for awhile now that we need an intellectual center that isn’t s centered in the northeast. That said, I haven’t seen the turnout numbers. They appear to be way down, but the counts aren’t final. They appear to be down for republicans, too. Trump will get as many votes as Romney maybe. So I wouldn’t quite crow that there were missing voters for him. We’re down 5 million. Were they just millenials? Or were they spread out everywhere.
gene108
@mistermix:
I think, if the economy is strong, people may be more willing to vote for the goof they’d like to have a beer with.
Could be one similarity between 2000 and 2016.
Askew
@gene108:
I don’t know if that is true. I do think that Hillary had a real problem with young AA voters who didn’t trust her due to the crime bill. Another candidate without all the baggage from the Clinton years might have been able to get closer to those AA numbers and not bleed so many white voters. There is no reason that Hillary did that much worse with white voters than Obama did outside of the Clinton baggage and the lack of charisma.
Warren and Biden have to be kicking themselves right now and I am sure Obama is sick that he basically helped DWS clear the field for Hillary in the primary. That was a mistake as was the Dems letting her skate on the emails. That scandal just killed her trust numbers because it reaffirmed everything people thought about Hillary. She’s secretive and thinks she is above the rules. Dems should have gotten a new candidate then.
cokane
@mistermix: Okay, well said. I’m not sure though that 100% of Sanders’ message is tenable in the general. There’s a lot of vulnerabilities on policy proposals that can easily be made unpopular.
Mnemosyne
@Bailey:
Fried Green Tomatoes.
Every woman here knows exactly what I mean, and can probably name the actress, too.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Arclite: Given that the percentage of Americans who were the children of former presidents was somewhere under 0.00001%, it means that dynasties are vastly overrepresented in American politics. That’s even before we get to the dynasties in state level elections. I think that dynasties are a serious problem in American politics, but there is zero evidence that the American electorate agrees with me.
Arclite
@mistermix:
Good luck with that. Not until whites are a plurality will any movement be made on the voter suppression front. And that’s not scheduled to happen until 2043.
Nicole
Newell is doing what we liberals do after a loss- blaming ourselves. She lost because we are a deeply patriarchal and racist society. And it’s not enough to say, but but the majority of white women voted for Trump! Because A) see “racist” and B) women are shaped by patriarchy, too.
We start to criticize Clinton, who was a good candidate and would have made a very good President and we play right into how the Right wants this conversation to go. She lost because white America is racist and all of America is sexist. Period. Don’t let them hide their ugliness; make them own it. They did in the voting booth.
I know quite a few Trimp voters, and every single one of them, the women included, have issues with women. Every single one.
Mnemosyne
@Askew:
It’s the misogyny, stupid. I know we downplayed our complaints about it during the election, but clearly that was a mistake.
Hint: Black, Asian and Hispanic men are not magically immune to misogyny and/or an uneasy feeling that a woman shouldn’t be in charge.
Arclite
@Askew:
Well they just fucked themselves, didn’t they.
Dog Dawg Damn
I love how now everyone acknowledges field was cleared for HRC.
Caravelle
Anyone remember that post, years ago, on Digby’s blog about authoritarianism and fascism and how whatever event had prompted the post didn’t mean we were actually on the edge of a fascist government but we’d, like, taken a turn into the parking lot ?
When I talk about fascism I’m more worried about the possibility being way too high that things will develop as a very-bad-case scenario, not that I think there’s a greater than even chance they will. Still, that post bothered me at the time and every time events happen that bring us closer to an authoritarian government the more I worry.
Darkrose
@mistermix: Funny, the message I heard from Clinton was that America is already great, and we need to work together to make it even better. What’s wrong with that message, other than it’s coming from a Vagina-American?
gene108
@mistermix:
Long road to hoe, but positive change has happened in this country, despite crushing odds, like women’s suffrage and the labor movement.
The real issue is how do you sell Sanders message to a guy in West Virginia, who is not going to want to support the social aspect of the Democratic platform, like LGBT rights.
The Democrats have gone all in on LGBT rights, for example, but a lot of places still do not approve. I think it is less of a wedge issue right now, but the a more conservative Supreme Court, that is coming, may overturn gay marriage and turn it into a wedge issue again.
Askew
@Arclite:
Blaming the voters isn’t going to fix the Dems problems nor is pretending that the reason Hillary lost was due to sexism. It wasn’t. It played a small part but when turnout was down 6% in WI alone, there are other issues. For better or worse, Hillary couldn’t excite the base she needed to win. Lesser of two evils doesn’t work for Dems as we saw with Gore and Kerry. We should have known better. But, lots of Hillary supporters refused to see Hillary as the rest of the country did. They learned nothing from her loss against Obama and are still blaming sexism. That’s not why voters don’t like her.
Mnemosyne
@cokane:
I love when white dudes whine about “identity politics.” Whether or not I can get an abortion when I need one is a matter of fucking life and death for me, but for you, it’s just “identity politics.”
Bailey
@Mnemosyne:
Well hell, I was a film major in undergrad and worked for years in production and did, in fact, see this movie. 25 years ago when I was quite young. I do not remember its’ core message now and clearly we have a generation gap if you think this is a relevant discussion point on a message board that you expect anyone under the age of, say, 55 to pick up on.
So what do you mean, exactly?
cokane
If nothing else, I do think the first priority for Democrats is to understand that so much campaign money is being fucking wasted. Clinton had a huge advantage in this department. And she died in states that her team was 100% on election eve. There just needs to be a huge audit within the entire party on this front.
Askew
@gene108:
You can go populist without going socialist and gay rights didn’t make Hillary lose WI, MI or come to a tie in MN. It was people not believing her on trade and economic issues.
It’s too bad Dayton is such a terrible speaker. He’s done wonders as Governor of MN and would have real credibility to speak to populist economic policies.
Emma
@Mnemosyne: I think women like us should find ways to create a network to protect ourselves, since our so-called fellow Democrats have decided to throw us under the bus. Anyone wants to bet how long it takes before the conversation turns to finding a white, male savior?
gene108
@Arclite:
That is not going to happen uniformly either. CA is already there, and maybe Texas will get there, but I do not see Utah or Idaho turning into a multicultural majority-minority utopia ever. And they each get two Senators.
cokane
@Mnemosyne: Calling everyone misogynist and then racist, and really adding nothing else to the discussion, is -just- identity politics. And again you display the intellectual rot, offering nothing substantive except ad hominem
Mnemosyne
@Nicole:
Truth. If you’re a liberal-leaning dude and you just don’t like Hillary for some nebulous reason, like she’s too ambitious or she seems untrustworthy, guess what?
Askew
@cokane:
Why did Hillary need that much money anyway? She spent most of her time at home or at private fundraisers when she should have been doing public events. She hadn’t been to WI since the primary. I am guessing the money was wasted on consultants and advertising. Trump spent almost no money on either or GOTV operations and kicked our asses.
charluckles
I sincerely hope we don’t blame this all on the candidate.
Flawed, sure. But I still don’t understand how anyone makes it through the gauntlet Republicans and the press just put her through. If anything the mistake was in allowing her to be defined as the candidate too early, but then as cynical as I am, I would have never believed that Republicans would go that far. I mean they basically abdicated all their other responsibilities and used all means a their disposal, public and private, to throw as much mud at her as they could. Am I naive to think the game seems to have changed there? Is the answer that if Republicans are in power in congress we don’t allow a candidate to be defined until much closer to the election? And the media, well I am done with them. When they weren’t lecturing Clinton about the emails and the Clinton Foundation, they were going on about how horrible both sides were. If someone can come up with a plan to shift that balance of power I am all ears, but until that time I will be doing my absolute best to avoid any and all mainstream media. Seriously, fuck them.
Darkrose
@Askew: Wisconsin Is Systematically Failing to Provide the Photo IDs Required to Vote in November
It wasn’t an enthusiasm gap. It wasn’t even all sexism. It was fucking racism and voter suppression.
Mnemosyne
@Bailey:
Sorry, are you a woman? I sometimes have trouble keeping track of commenters with ambiguous names.
Askew
@gene108:
Idaho and Utah have growing Latino populations and are more diverse than Iowa now. I expect that those Dems future lays more in the West and South than in the Midwest.
Bailey
@Askew:
This is what kills me most of all. He had no field offices, apparently spent more money on hats than polling, little to no advertising and ran his entire campaign from rallies and his twitter feed.
Astonishing.
cokane
@Askew: advertising on tv and other media is the main expense of every campaign, funds for the actual candidate are a fractional portion
NotMax
@Arclite
Mathematically, more like 18%. 8 out of 44.
2 Adams, 2 Harrison, 2 Roosevelt, 2 Bush, 44 people total (45 presidencies including tonight’s debacle, but only 44 individuals – that pesky Cleveland with the non-consecutive terms).
Bailey
@Mnemosyne:
What does this have to do with explaining your point? Either you can do it or you can’t. Or if you don’t want to, that’s fine, too. I have a powerful feeling I’m quite younger than you are and am not living and breathing the dialogue of Fried Green Tomatoes.
Joel
@Emma: Exactly this.
Americans just voiced their full-throated affirmation of white supremacy and we are playing monday morning quarterback?! Fuck this shit.
Askew
@Darkrose:
6% fall off isn’t due to just voter suppression. It just isn’t. That’s part of it but Dems knew about those laws and still didn’t have Clinton spend any time in the state. They were completely surprised to be behind in MI and WI. Their polling was way off obviously so that is just one more way she was the Dem Romney.
I can’t tell if it was groupthink or what happened in that campaign. But, someone should have been asking about Hillary’s schedule. Why did she spend so much time in safe blue states raising money and almost no time campaigning in the midwest? Game Change 3 is going to be one hell of a book that is for sure.
Peale
@Askew: ok. The Democratic Party is a coalition, so until we get turnout numbers, I don’t want to talk about the base. The base actually are the people who show up and vote in every election. And right now that base are northeast and west coast voters. If it’s white millenials in Wisconsin or working class single mothers in Ohio or Puerto Ricans in the Panhandle…all those are somewhere in the base. It may be non-white millenials. It may be African Americans but only in the upper Midwest. she did excite the base. It’s the margins she didn’t find. Because from where it stands right now, she barely lost a lot of states.
Mnemosyne
@cokane:
White Protestant voters in rural and exurban areas showed up today in massive numbers. Numbers beyond both 2008 and 2012.
You really think they did that because bankers weren’t put in jail? Or because Hillary Clinton is just so darn unlikable as a person?
You may not like what you see in the mirror, but stop trying to pretend it isn’t there. Trump ran an openly white supremacist, misogynist campaign, and white voters turned out for him.
Mnemosyne
@Bailey:
Please answer the question.
Darkrose
@cokane: Fuck you. Your “identity politics” is my fucking identity. I’m a disabled Black lesbian and right now I feel like I just have a fucking target on my back because white people voted for a racist shitgibbon who promised them that he could make America great again at the expense of people like me.
charluckles
And fuck Comey too.
I hope that name becomes a neologism the way santorum did.
Mnemosyne
@Bailey:
Actually, he ran his entire campaign through Breitbart, Stormfront, and the rest of the alt-right media. Under the radar, because the MSM clutched their pearls when Hillary pointed out what he was doing.
NotMax
@Dog Mom
Dither and delay, then pardon himself.
gene108
@Askew:
Democrats wanted Hillary to win. There are a large chunk of voters disaffected by both Parties, who like the appeal of an outsider.
Part of Sanders appeal was the he was not a Democrat, because neither of the two Parites are for regular people anymore.
Anyway, I think we are seeing a real shift in the center of the Democatic Party. Even though we lost, there is a shift towards more populism.
The issue is going to be, if this sentiment can be organized into a movement.
That would take time, money, effort, work and some kind of top-down structure to get people elected.
And organizing liberals to a sustained effort is like herding cats. Liberals to do not like top-down organizations, but it is hard to organize any kind of scale without it.
Sunny Raines
There is plenty you can pick at when someone loses. But get real! trump was selling fascism, racism, bigotry, misogyny, illegality, lying, cheating, authoritarianism, and every single disgusting trait a human could be. IF it turns out there isn’t significant democratic voter intimidation and suppression, and IF electronic voting machines weren’t hacked, there are two and only two reasons trump could have won:
1) a massively failed media that coddled trump, set the table for him, and carried his lies and indecency as something OK; and gave $$billions in free coverage and denigrated Clinton and Demicrats at every opportunity
2) there are many, many Americans just as disgusting as people, as humans as trump
Askew
@Bailey:
His entire campaign was amateur hour and they kicked our ass. The only thing they did better than Hillary’s team was public events. Trump was doing event after event after event while Hillary disappeared from view for days. That was clearly a mistake.
Normally, the lack of advertising would matter but I wonder if we are at a point where advertising just doesn’t work very effectively with all the DVR usage and streaming?
Bailey
@Emma:
For what it’s worth, I think there are several great options for Dem female candidates that we should not shy to rally behind: Kristen Gillibrand, Elizabeth Warren, et al.
But can we just admit for a minute that a candidate like, HRC–who undoubtedly faced misogny and sexism throughout this race—also had some insurmountable flaws like, say, fall out from Benghazi and being under investigation from the FBI? The email server, as I’ve been routinely told here as a giant “nothingburger” did really extensive damage to her trustworthiness that her fans are still loathe to understand or accept. Even her advisors, per Wikileaks, knew she’d stepped into a stupid bear trap and was hopeless in getting herself extracted.
median
@Bailey: God, it’s been painful watching you try to get an answer.
My best guess is the reference is to the scene where an older woman just rams the car of a younger woman who had just stolen a parking spot. The older woman delivers the line, “I’m older and have more insurance.” I think the weak parallel is that Hillary just plain has more power than younger candidates, and so can shut them out. It doesn’t make a ton of sense to me, but I’m tired and still can’t get to sleep.
Bailey
@Mnemosyne:
Okay, I will mark this down as you not wanting to explain how Fried Green Tomatoes is pertinent to the conversation. Carry on.
Emma
@Bailey: no. I will not turn away from seeing the truth. The ONLY message Trump had was hatred, sexism, and white anger. And it won.
cokane
@Darkrose: this kind of silencing, argument free ad hominem has dominated liberal and progressive communities for the past several years.
it didn’t win.
we did win with a slightly more white electorate in 2012 and 2008. maybe we should think about this.
Askew
@gene108:
Sanders biggest problem was his inability to connect with minority voters. You can’t win the Dem nomination without that.
Had Elizabeth Warren run she could have beaten Hillary and beaten Trump. She ran successfully in diverse MA, was an actual Dem and understood how to throw an elbow. Sanders got killed with minorities and with old school Dems who liked his message but wouldn’t vote for someone who wasn’t a real Dem. And he let Hillary skate on the email issue. A smarter politician would have taken Hillary out right there and we would have been saved President Trump.
Mnemosyne
@Bailey:
Then I’m assuming that I guessed correctly, and you are a dude, because most women have seen Fried Green Tomatoes and watched a conservative older woman deliberately ram her car into the car of some younger girls who had cut her off.
That’s what white women in WI and MI just did to the rest of us.
NotMax
Trump’s enemies list makes Nixon look like a piker.
Emma
@cokane: Aaand we’re off.
Mnemosyne
@cokane:
Here’s a phrase for you to ponder: glass ceiling.
AFAIK, California has never had a woman governor.
Darkrose
@cokane: Once again, fuck you, you condescending asshat.
Jumbo with a 76
Fuck Bernie Sanders.
Bailey
@Askew:
All true things.
I’m pretty convinced that Michelle Obama could wipe the floor with just about anyone should she ever decide to run for something.
Eljai
@Emma: I know. I was hoping that I could at least just spend a few hours grieving and working through my anger before we got to the blame Hillary segment. Speaking of anger, I just can’t let go. I heard what the orange mouthpiece said. You cannot vote for that and pretend that you do not harbor hatred toward many of your fellow humans.
Peale
@Askew: had he taken her out, he still has that turnout issue. He may excite many of the people who didn’t vote, but may have turned off a lot of the African American base. He didn’t connect with them in the primaries? Why would he connect with them now?
Bailey
Can we take a moment to note how EERILY prescient Back to the Future was? Trump presidency AND Cubs win? (okay, just off by one year on these but still…)
Mnemosyne
@Darkrose:
@Emma:
Don’t you love it when white men complain about being “silenced” right after a massive surge of white Protestant voters showed up to make sure there wouldn’t be an Obama third term led by a woman?
But I’m sure that If they dig real deep, they’ll find an answer that won’t force them to face the fact that most white voters are assholes who loved Trump’s white supremacist message. Just like the Civil War was really about tariffs and states rights, don’t’cha know.
Askew
@Mnemosyne:
That’s what Hillary did to us. The voters aren’t to blame for Hillary not being able to appeal to them. People have listed scores of reasons why she lost and all you can see is sexism. It’s the same blame game Hillary and her supporters played after her loss to Obama. That isn’t helpful to fixing our party and country in the future.
The one bright spot is the Clintons will finally step aside and let new faces and minds take control of the DNC.
I do wonder if Hillary could have beaten W in 2004 though. The glow of the Clinton years was pretty bright still and she wouldn’t have had to face the problems from the crime bill or NAFTA yet.
cokane
@Darkrose: like i’ve been saying, this failure to even make the effort to construct an argument is telling.
it was a close election, so multiple factors were decisive. why focus on factors that we cannot change? Such as racist or misogynistic people? We’re not going to persuade those people. But the state results are showing that when compared with 08 and 12
1. a small but decisive portion of Obama dems voted Trump
2. a decent chunk of strong democratic demographics didnt turn out
focusing on rednecks is just worthless fatalism. if we lost because the USA showed itself to be so awfully bigoted, then why get involved in politics at all?
Emma
@Eljai: I, for one, will never forget how soon we turned on our own. How soon the “we used to with a whiter coalition, maybe we should think about that” comments seem to have started.
Askew
@Bailey:
Without a doubt. Michelle did everything but physically carry Hillary around the country to try to get her elected. Even with Michelle and Barack’s huge approvals, they couldn’t get Hillary over the finish line.
As for Sanders, I think he still would have struggled with AA voters somewhat but he wouldn’t have lost white voters this badly. That’s what killed Hillary in the end. And he would have actually worked his ass off for the win. No spending multiple nights a week at home and hiding away from the general public at private fundraisers. Sanders wasn’t my candidate in the primaries but I think he could have put up a decent fight against Trump and not had negative coattails like Hillary did.
Mnemosyne
@Askew:
Again: Donald Trump ran as an open and outspoken white supremacist, and white Protestant voters showed up who had not voted in 2012.
How, exactly, do you picture Hillary winning over those voters? They clearly had no interest in issues or programs. They were single-issue voters, and their single issue was white supremacy.
White dudes have listed scores of reasons why she didn’t appeal to them personally and are ignoring the women and people of color saying that she did appeal to them.
This is basically a CNN circle jerk, with the exact same inability to listen to the opinion of anyone who’s not a white dude.
cokane
@Mnemosyne: Your opinion is being listened to. It’s you who’s rejecting other input based on the identity of the speaker.
Mnemosyne
@Emma:
Yep. All of us “special interest” voters are always dispensable.
gene108
@Darkrose:
One thing the results from Florida, in 2000, showed me is a large chunk of this country supports voter suppression, if it helps their guy win.
I do not know, what will happen that can shock th national conscience anymore. Republicans care for nothing other than being in power, and change their views in a dime.
Very soon, Republicans will start up with deficits do not matter.
I think the backlash to the Iraq War, by 2006, was the last time people really felt outraged by something that cut across party lines.
opiejeanne
@Mnemosyne: I’d characterize it as Mommy Issues.
Caravelle
@Askew: It’s not groupthink when their internal polls reflected the general consensus of all the nonpartison poll aggregators, and even the GOP internal polling apparently. People laughed at Romney and the “unskewed polls” not because they thought they were going to win when they didn’t, but because they thought that mainstream polling was wrong because it showed them losing, tried to rationalize a way that was true and cooked their own books to give the results they wanted – which were different from what other, non-cooked or cooked differently books said.
In Romney’s case the failure was Romney’s, not that of polling. In Clinton’s case the failure was the polling’s.
enplaned
@Ninerdave: speak for yourself
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
Wrong question. The right question is how you imagine some other, better Democratic candidate winning over those voters. Because that’s the question you have to answer if you’re trying to claim that the problem was Hillary.
Mnemosyne
@cokane:
No, my opinion and the opinions of other women here is being dismissed in a desperate attempt to explain Trump’s victory in a way that doesn’t make the majority of white people look like racist assholes.
Yes, it’s so weird that I would reject the opinion of white men right after white men turned out in droves because they couldn’t stand the idea of a woman president succeeding a black president in the White House.
This election is weirdly similar to the 2010 midterms, actually. That election also saw an unexpected surge of white voters who had not voted in 2008 along with white voters who had been thoroughly propagandized under the radar (in that case, that Obama was going to kill off Medicare). And that was another election where everyone told us that race didn’t have anything to do with it, no sirree.
gene108
@Askew:
The e-mail issue is a “scandal” because of persistent Republican efforts to drag it into the headlines, like Whitewater was, and a media dutifully taking notes.
She did nothing her predecessors at State did not do.
enplaned
@mai naem mobile: Horseshit. Look, Karl Rove 101: attack your candidate’s perceived strengths. A lot of people view Trump as a business genius. Yeah, bizarre but true. There should have been an unrelenting parade of business ceos cutting ads trashing his reputation as a business leader.
Hillary concentrated on Trump’s character. That’s great, except that the average American thinks that Hillary’s character is pretty dubious (it ain’t fair, but that’s the truth). She should have concentrated a bit more on taking down his stuff on free trade and so forth.
Bailey
@Mnemosyne:
By looking at the returns, we are missing millions of voters from the Obama years, voters of all varieties presumably. The question isn’t how HRC was going to appeal to the white supremacist voter, but to the voter who chose not to turn out at all.
enplaned
@Dog Dawg Damn: Agree. It was classic Hillary triangulation bullshit. Needed to go big or go home. If it had to be a white dude, then how about even someone like Al Franken who would have been a hell of a lot better attack dog than Kaine. Kaine — nice guy, wasted opportunity.
Bailey
@enplaned:
Yes, she was pretty hands off when it came to dismantling his policy proposals, as though it never occurred to her team to go after them. Why not take the to discuss the lunacy of the wall? How her trade ideas were better than his fanciful ones? How his deporatation policy was operationally unworkable?
Just….temperament.
Mnemosyne
@Bailey:
Wisconsin and Michigan both enacted voter ID laws after 2012. Still want to take that bet that “voters of all varieties” are mysteriously missing this year?
Bailey
@Mnemosyne: @Mnemosyne:
Given the sheer amount of voters missing from previous elections, it is more than just minorities missing since their populations–particularly in WI–aren’t that high. We appear to be down 12-15 million just from 2012.
Emma
@Bailey: so what you’re saying is that a large contingent of Democrats decided to sit it out because they couldn’t bother to get over their dislike of Hillary. Jesus. We deserve what we get.
enplaned
@Peale: @Bailey: It seemed to me that they viewed the lunacy of Trump’s proposals as self-evident and therefore beneath their contempt. But that just left them unanswered which might leave someone who is low-information to believe that they have merit.
I think they ran a mediocre campaign for a poor candidate. But I think the 2008 election and 2016 primary also reveal Hillary to be a weak candidate. In 2008 she was the overwhelming favorite and lost to a black guy. A black guy who happens to be the best politician of his generation — but a black guy. Who came out of nowhere and knocked them out (by the skin of his teeth, but he did it).
There were so many reasons why Hillary should not have run, including the dynasty thing. Two Bush family members didn’t work out very well, why the fuck should someone get a crack at the presidency just because she’s the spouse of a president? She didn’t win NY Senate by dint of her political talent — she parachuted into a fairly safe state. That, by the way, is the only political office she ever won.
She’s a smart, hard-working policy wonk. That’s not the same thing as being a politician. She understands politics — not the same thing as being a politician. She has little political instinct relative to folks who typically get to that level. There are plenty of stone cold baseball experts. Doesn’t mean that any of them can play. Even the slightest political instinct would tell her that giving a private speech to Goldman was a bad idea.
sukabi
@Bailey: he had 2 – 3 BILLION dollars in free publicity for the last 15 months, CNN, FOX, MSNBC all covering his every fart, ignoring policy, covering Clinton only on the occasion when there was new email or benghazi bullshit.
Apparently you don’t need much of an organization when you have 3+ networks providing 24/7 propaganda for you.
Gvg
I disagree with this post. I don’t think Hillary was a bad candidate. I think the republicans have demonized and slimed the whole Democratic Party for 40 years so much that a significant percentage of the population is trained to turn around and demonize whom ever we run as soon as it’s announced. Obama was amazing but nobody has another and won’t for the foreseeable future. Kerry and Gore got slimed suddenly too.
If a white male leader appears to “save” us don’t dismiss him out of disappointment. He has just as much right to be one of us as a poc. I don’t expect nor not expect it. We will have to find some new leaders as always after an election. We have been losing state races so we haven’t got the bench I would like. My Florida’s Democratic Party hasn’t been good for about 15 years now which is a problem.
Solving the dumb entertainment instead of news near monopoly is a problem we have to solve. News has funding issues due to not having classified or add income anymore. Trump attacks the media constantly. They should have exposed him sooner and better.
Judges everywhere are going to have to stand up to trumps dumb spites. It might get pretty frightening for them.
enplaned
@Emma: Jesus. Charisma is an essential part of being a politician. Those that do not have it will not be as successful, all other things being equal. Fact.
Compare two policy wonks, Hillary and Obama. Both do endless work to understand the issues. But Obama has the common touch, what appears to be an effortless ability to connect, to engage, to bring a crowd to its feet to engender excitement, enthusiasm. Hillary does not. It’s not fair, but it’s an essential part of leadership that she lacks. And you can’t criticize an electorate for not getting as excited about her as about Obama because it is part of a politician’s job to get people motivated. And if Hillary can’t do that, that’s on her, as much as anyone else — and on the people who cleared the way for her.
Bailey
@Emma:
Looks that way.
I know I’ll get labeled a “concern troll” yet again for saying this, but the fact is this: no matter how awful the opposition is, a candidate simply has to give voters a reason to vote FOR THEM. Not against something worse but FOR THEM. HRC was just not running an affirmative campaign this year. (And, again, someone will tell me that I just need to go look at her website or something but that is not an adequate response.) So not only did she not have an open, easily communicated agenda, but she also failed to dismantle Trump’s agenda, for a variety of reasons. (Some, because she was a bad messenger, i.e NAFTA) and others because she just never took the time to. So she gave him plenty of play room while she contented herself to comment on his, obviously, terrible temperament.
Joel
@Askew: Two major equalizers at play.
1) The RW media. And not just Fox News, whose influence is diminishing. But the fringe elements that have thrived in the darkest corners of the internet. Brietbart and Infowars are just the tip of the iceberg.
2) Social media. For better or ill, which allows people to reinforce fringe beliefs without examining them.
I’m no fan of television news media — I haven’t watched in over a decade (sports excluded) — but they aren’t pushing narratives, they’re reflecting them. I would say that as we head into future elections, their influence will diminish even further.
Askew
@gene108:
That isn’t true and it is irrelevant because she was running for president while those others didn’t. The email scandal killed her because it confirmed everything people already thought about her – she’s secretive, she’s untrustworthy and she thinks she is above the rules. And she spent an entire year making the situation worse by lying about it over and over again and continuing to get caught. It was a nightmare.
As for political strategy, I think Hillary was so busy trying to build a coalition post-election by reaching out to GOP voters that she ended up alienating her base. I’d like to say that she would have done better to attack Trump on policy more but I am not sure that would have helped. She was just a bad pick for this environment. Maybe she would have done better against W instead of Kerry. But, this was not the cycle to run a dynasty candidate with the charisma of a wet noodle as Jeb Bush could tell you.
Emma
@Bailey: so it’s “the voters as the jury in a beauty pageant” theory of political science. God help this country.
Me, I keep thinking about something someone said in a previous thread. It’s time to hunker down and protect your own.
Bailey
@enplaned:
Exactly. Honestly, she never even offered a defense of the good work that the Clinton Foundation does. Why they take foreign donors, that they have transparent donors, what sort of programs their money funds. Nothing. It was baffling, this unwilingness to engage if only for a vigorous defense of yourself.
Strangely, I think the Kate McKinnon HRC impersonations are really instructive here. Kate gets at their dichotomy of HRC–her ambition, her weaknesses in relating to people, her wonkiness, her resentment at people like Obama who make it look so natural. It’s a master study.
Truly. A million times this on the Goldman speeches. I just can’t imagine how she thought was a good idea to feed at that trough, just after huge financial crisis, knowing full well she wanted to run for Prez. Not good instincts or judgment at all.
Jack the Second
Jesus fucking Christ people. There is no Clinton dynasty. Hillary Clinton is not Bill Clinton’s daughter.
They are a power couple.
Askew
@Joel:
Good point. It feels like Trump understood this better than everyone else and was running a current campaign while Hillary was running a traditional campaign that would have worked in the nineties.
Bailey
@Emma:
I don’t think that’s fair. Mind you, I hate and am sickened by the results, but I am not surprised by them. (My surprise only comes from the fact that ALL of the polling was so off.) But then again, the polling was expecting an electorate that came out for a candidate ala 2008, 2012. Wasn’t expecting circa 2000 numbers.
But it’s not fair to fault voters for not having been reached or properly communicated to. I followed the campaign fairly closely but would be hard pressed to tell you HRC’s agenda. Even her bullet points “I’m With Her” / “Stronger Together” sound self-indulgent and immaterial.
Emma
@Bailey: got it. It’s all her fault for not appealing either to the racist fanatics or the self-indulgent special snowflakes.
All I can say is that I am very glad I have no children. My father is in his eighties but once he is gone, I think so will I. There’s no way we can stop the incoming freight train.
ETA: somehow I had no difficulty following her agenda. But then again, I wasn’t dependent on the media.
low-tech cyclist
I think Hillary was a fine candidate. The one thing I wish she’d made a point of saying during the debates, though, that would have fed into her strengths and one of Trump’s fundamental flaws, was a point about policy.
It’s easy to have goals. To Make America Great Again. To have such great jobs you’ll be tired of having such wonderful jobs. Etc. But policies are how you get from where you are, to where you want to be. Once a politician proposes policies, you can argue about whether they’ll get you to your goal, whether they’ll have unintended consequences, whatever.
But without policies, you’re promising to accomplish your goals by waving a magic wand and miraculously making them happen. And that was Trump in a nutshell. Trump should have been the ‘magic wand’ candidate, and with a very short magic wand, too.
Brachiator
Jim Newell is full of shit. Nobody saw this coming. Instant revisionism is a waste of time, as is trying to pin the blame on someone or something.
Try to chill, because the next few years are going to be tough.
Brachiator
@Jack the Second:
Not much difference in the eyes of many voters. Trump swept both the Bush family and the Clintons from the political scene. They were considered to be part of the Establishment that had to be brought down.
Bobby Thomson
Fuck off, dick head. (That means you, mix.) Take your Bernie Bro bullshit and cram it up your ass. No one “cleared the field” for her. They didn’t run because they knew they’d wind up like Martin O’Malley. Jesus, if anyone deserves a heaping pile of blame for this mess, it’s that pope stalking piece of shit fraud.
stinger
Fuck you and fuck Jim Newell, whoever he is. We ran the MOST QUALIFIED PERSON IN HISTORY and she had the ENTHUSIASTIC backing of millions of people. But mostly women, so that doesn’t count. If she runs again, I’ll happily support her again. You are blaming the wrong people.
cleek
I followed the campaign fairly closely but would be hard pressed to tell you HRC’s agenda
pure bullshit.
the convention, the debates, her countless speeches – all full of policy.
Bailey
@cleek:
I’m sorry, you’re calling ME stupid? FFS I’ve been dead on right about the inadequacies of this candidate and this campaign and gotten nothing but labeled a “concern troll” for my efforts.
Did you miss the fact that Clinton just got her ass handed to her and completely upended the voting patterns of this state and that Obama’s entire legacy is about to be wiped out as though it didn’t happen? Did you miss the millions of voters that stayed home this year?
cleek
a-historic myth, peddled by sore losers and now repeated by twats who are gloating on the backs of the millions of people who will be directly fucked by Trump’s win. get the fuck out of the Democratic party if you don’t like it – nobody needs you or your petty spite-based purity preening.
cleek
@Bailey:
I’m sorry, you’re calling ME stupid?
excellent reading skillz. A+
Bailey
@cleek:
If it makes you feel better to take your anger out on me, knock yourself out.
Or you could take time to sort through exit polling.
Tom65
@Dog Dawg Damn:
Yup. I expressed the same issues with Clinton being a poor candidate being forced on us by the DNC and was roundly shouted down.
cleek
i see today’s the day that all the preening narcissists will spend jerking off in front of the mirror with one hand while patting themselves on the back with the other.
socraticsilence
@cokane:
You know pushing legalization and clemency for low level drug offenders might have solved both the African-American and youth voter issue. May have even gotten some of the stupid Johnson Bros
qwerty42
Going in on a dead thread to write that I found Newell’s article insufferably smug and offensive (and I have generally like Jim). I thought so when MM posted agreement with it and find my sentiments have not changed today. The desire seems to be for some combination of Parzival and heroic workers from Socialist Realism posters of the 20’s, because we would not want grubby politicians who have make trade offs. I have been on the Parzival train; it was f*ing a disaster. Maybe a joint ticket of Parzival and Heroic Workers! How could I have been so blind to go for the most qualified, competent candidate?