2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumSo tell me again where we went "wrong".
Hillary wanted the minimum wage increased. Trump said US wages are “too high”.
Hillary wanted US jobs to stay in the US. Trump outsources the manufacture of every product for his hotels, and his brand-name merchandise, to low-wage countries.
Hillary talked about inclusion of all people who contribute to our country. Trump talked about deporting people based on their country-of-origin and/or their religion.
Hillary emphasized the importance of education, especially for those who required new skills to get ahead in a changing world. Trump emphasized his ability to “bring back jobs” that are already lost forever due to a changing world.
Hillary championed the rights of women. Trump talked about grabbing women by their pussies, because men with money and power should be allowed to do that.
Hillary stood up for the rights of minorities. Trump called AAs “inherently lazy”, called Mexicans “rapists”, and called Muslims “terrorists”.
Hillary showed her personal strength in having withstood 30 years of attacks from the RW while still standing. Trump showed his personal weakness by tweeting incessantly about how he was depicted on a TV show.
Hillary demonstrated her knowledge about how government works. Trump demonstrated his complete ignorance of how government works.
Hillary talked about her experience as a senator and Secretary of State. Trump talked about his experience as a successful businessman - while failing to mention how many lawsuits he’s faced as a result of that “success”.
Hillary disclosed every detail of her tax returns and said, “This is out there for all to see.” Trump refused to disclose any of his tax returns, and bragged about how not paying taxes was “smart”.
Hillary provided details of her proposed policies, how they would work and how they’d be paid for. Trump simply said, “I’ll fix everything – bigly. It’ll be great, believe me!”
Hillary’s message was about government working for the 99%. Trump’s message was about lowering taxes for the 1%.
Hillary talked about how we are “stronger together”. Trump incited violence at his rallies against those who thought “being together” was a worthwhile endeavour.
So tell me again how the HRC/Democratic message was the “wrong message”. Tell me again how the candidate that promoted that message was the “wrong candidate”. Tell me again how that message was SO wrong, the majority of voters found it to be “right” – and cast their ballots accordingly.
This election wasn’t about what was wrong about our candidate – it’s about what is wrong with an antiquated electoral college system that hands the presidency to a man the voters have rejected. And in its aftermath, it’s about people who are more interested in saying “I told you so” than admitting we had the right candidate all along.
The people have spoken. They chose HRC as their next president. And THAT is something some people simply choose to ignore, because it renders the “we had the WRONG candidate” narrative to be totally without merit, and reeking of wanting to say “I told you so” being far more important than anything else – including the welfare of their fellow citizens.
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msongs
(67,395 posts)BobbyDrake
(2,542 posts)And see how that worked out...
shraby
(21,946 posts)Something is not right and my feeling is we just haven't found what it is yet.
Everything about trump was so wrong as fodder for the presidency that I don't believe he won.
boston bean
(36,221 posts)Something felt so wrong. So extremely wrong the reaction was amfeeling of being shell shocked.
murielm99
(30,736 posts)We know something is wrong, and we don't know how to explain it or fix it. It is the same as being in an abusive relationship. You don't know how to explain it or where to begin. How do you prove it, or even find the proof, if it is your word against someone else's? I think we will find it and fix it, if we live through this.
I know that plenty of their people don't like or trust trump. They fear his instability. Are they planning on ousting him before he wrecks the world? If that is their plan, will they know when act, when it will be soon enough?
I have never been big on conspiracy theories, until now.
INdemo
(6,994 posts)thefts, but they sat on their hands in 2000 failed to get involved after promising "nothing like this would ever happen again" and it did again in 2004.
Obama had a well organized campaign in 2008 with safeguards in place to insure all votes were counted.
The overwhelming win by Obama caused Democrats to take things for granted and pretended everything was ok. (Im convinced Karl Rove tried to steal it in 2012)
Even though 2014 was very questionable, Democrats failed to act against voter suppression leading up to this election and they won't question these results because we still have for the most part a bunch of damn spineless Democrats that are able to keep their jobs because they play by Republican rules.
yurbud
(39,405 posts)
Justice
(7,185 posts)
Mickey1Seven
(1 post)I agree that the spinelessness of the party is stunning and infuriating. My question is WHY aren't the Dems providing leadership to those of us who want to fight back? Perhaps it is as INdemo says and they are content with a sick alliance with Republicans, but that seems a bit too cynical for even a jaded liberal like me to believe.
Especially irritating is that there are no recent tweets on any of the Twitter accounts of Obama, Biden, either of the Clintons, or Chuck Schumer. What are they thinking to remain silent about the Russian interference? I can't imagine why they are just accepting this obvious election tampering.
Anyone have additional thoughts about this? The writer of the original post is correct. The Dems did not screw up. Our policies and our candidates were strong. So why not stand behind them now?
Bettie
(16,095 posts)Never.
I will also never, ever call Twittler my president.
INdemo
(6,994 posts)the last two weeks of the election as if he knew something was going down.
Kinda like in 2000 when Gore was declared the winner in Florida and then George Bush had that confidence tone when he stated that he was not going to concede ....and then he made that phone call to his brother and ask "have you completed your tasks of destroying those votes yet?"
And the only one/s in the Corporate media to declare that Trump could most definitely win and said that Trump would win Florida was
Joe and Mica
niyad
(113,275 posts)Coyotl
(15,262 posts)In other words, when we started trusting the other party to count our votes.
uponit7771
(90,335 posts)... of the doubt and have given everyone an objective reason not to trust them or their intentions.
The last 6 years = Don't Trust The GOP With America's Elections !!!
mopinko
(70,088 posts)we did not fight hard enough against the voter suppression. if we had half those votes, we wouldnt be crying now.
TheCowsCameHome
(40,168 posts)but she was disliked (to put it gently) by a lot of people, for a wide variety of reasons. I heard it everywhere I went, even among women.
It is sad, but that's what it boiled down to. Hopefully, we can learn something from this next time around.
uponit7771
(90,335 posts)... so that didn't help her
NanceGreggs
(27,813 posts)That we shouldn't nominate the most qualified person for the job of POTUS if he/she is unacceptable to Republicans?
Should we base our nominee on who is "likeable" as opposed to who is qualified?
Do we really want to go down that road?
Indydem
(2,642 posts)Clinton was the more qualified candidate in 2008.
Obama was more like able. He won in a landslide.
Even as a Clinton supporter, that was obvious.
NanceGreggs
(27,813 posts)... because he was "more likeable", you weren't paying attention.
Indydem
(2,642 posts)On paper, both Clinton and McSame were more qualified.
Obama was young, energetic, likeable, and had a campaign pointing towards a better future.
But he wasn't more qualified.
If the young and African Americans had turned out in 2016 like they did in 2008, we wouldn't be having this discussion. They didn't stay home because they couldn't figure out who was more qualified. They disliked both candidates, and opted out of the election.
NanceGreggs
(27,813 posts)... will be the first we'll hear from when their jobs, healthcare, and savings are wiped-out by Trump's policies.
I'm sure the "I didn't LIKE either candidate" will be of great comfort then.
NastyRiffraff
(12,448 posts)Some of them are already complaining, and there'll be plenty more where that came from.
Lucky Luciano
(11,253 posts)However, don't forget that voting is not being made any easier.
Beartracks
(12,809 posts)... were a significant problem, and the reason they opted out was because they did not perceive Hillary to be any more likable than Trump.
We can fret about how the hell could they NOT like her, but they didn't.
===================
brush
(53,771 posts)That percentage is about the same as other Dem candidates have gotten from the Black community.
Obama being the first African American to gain the Dem nomination, of course he got a higher percentage.
And with voter suppression by the repugs targeting Black voters, and 60% broken voting machines in Detroit and who knows where else, and the Supreme Court gutting the voting rights act is it any wonder that the Black vote count didn't quite match Obama's.
So come on, don't try to blame this on Black voters?
we black women did our part.
And , black men for the most part.
We can't save every election.
Indydem
(2,642 posts)100% of 1 is still less than 66% of 3.
African Americans did not turn out. Young people did not turn out.
She didn't even win Latinos (a group he perpetually threatened and demeaned) by as large a margin as Obama.
But keep telling yourself that it was whatever scapegoat you've picked.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2016/11/08/politics/first-exit-polls-2016/index.html?client=safari
brush
(53,771 posts)designed expressly by repugs to keep Black votes down, the gutting of the voting rights act designed expressly by repugs to keep Black votes down, and broken voting machines not fixed to keep Black votes down, and whatever else, that African Americans are the blame.
Talk about blaming the Black guy.
Is this DU?
uponit7771
(90,335 posts)... suppression and Russia as factors in how close the EC was.... yeap, the I'll stab myself so I'll do better next time crew
uponit7771
(90,335 posts)Indydem
(2,642 posts)Better yet, do you have an estimate from a legitimate news organization showing a NUMBER (not %) of African Americans are thought to have voted in 2016 vs 2008?
I'd love to see it.
Old Vet
(2,001 posts)My own children and there friends just didn't vote or voted third party.
StevieM
(10,500 posts)Latinos are the one group that HRC did better with than Obama did.
The precinct-by-precinct data makes it clear that the Latino vote went up, both in terms of voter turnout and in terms of the percentage won by Hillary Clinton.
uponit7771
(90,335 posts)
Exilednight
(9,359 posts)I'll also point out that Obama won a higher percentage.
brush
(53,771 posts)And did it ever occur to you that there was massive and determined voter suppression by the repugs all over to keep that vote down.
What is your post getting at? That AAs are to blame for Hillary losing because, my God, only 92% of them voted for her?
Get real and criticize those who stayed home or voted Green because they just couldn't make themselves vote for Clinton, or the massive amount of whites who voted for Trump.
African Americans did their job, knew much better than to vote for Trump.
Exilednight
(9,359 posts)I am just stating facts. This was the lowest voter turnout we've had in a very long time.
I am sure that among every racial group that there were people who stayed home for various reasons.
Yes, voter suppression played a role. How big a role? No one really knows.
I don't blame any one group except those that votes for Republicans.
brush
(53,771 posts)Exilednight
(9,359 posts)brush
(53,771 posts)"But overall, less of them actually voted than in 2008 and 2012."
And again, what about the millions of whites who voted for Trump?
Place blame where it should be placed.
Exilednight
(9,359 posts)brush
(53,771 posts)And again, what about the millions of whites who voted for Trump if you want to place blame?
Exilednight
(9,359 posts)What part of my posts are you confused about?
brush
(53,771 posts)Exilednight
(9,359 posts)No. It's a fact. The reason as to why that is is varied. Exit polling suggests that voter turnout was down evenly among all demographics, except one that actually went up.
Exilednight
(9,359 posts)the question"who would you rather have a beer with?"
Likeability, though not the only factor, is a major one. To think that some people didn't vote for Obama just because they "liked him" is ignorant at best and intellectually dishonest at worst.
It's also true that much of that likeability was probably based on his good judgement and proposed policies. But it's also true that some of it was just because he is a likeable guy.
TwilightZone
(25,467 posts)Yes, let's let the GOP decide who we should run.
And I saw it over and over and over during the primaries. It's...bizarre.
Hekate
(90,656 posts)More people voted for her than for him, but the broken antiquated EC wants us to all know that California's 39 million people count for nothing against however many reside in Idaho.
But this is Hillary's fault. And the Democratic Party's fault. Riiiiiiight.
dragonfly301
(399 posts)and did not campaign enough in Michigan or campaign at all in Wisconsin. Her campaign didn't even poll in Michigan. She had way too many days in the summer where she had no public appearances. She had way too many days where her only appearances were private fund raisers in California or NY. She was way too focused on money and not focused enough on getting out and touching the lives of the voters - how would she improve their lives. Running for POTUS is not a part time job - she is not a great speech giver but is supposed to be great one on one - her campaign should have had her doing small gatherings in Michigan and Pennsylvania all summer long. The old fashioned way - kissing babies, shaking hands at the county fair. I wonder what the campaign thought their path to victory would be - she did repeated visits to Arizona in the fall and lost the state by 4%, in retrospect she should have spent the time in one of the states she lost by 1%.
I know we're all hurting and I'd love to get rid of the EC, but this loss is on the Clinton campaign. Time to move on and plan for the midterms that are less than two years away.
ismnotwasm
(41,976 posts)You need to talk to the right people
mcar
(42,307 posts)and got swarmed. Some people will only believe the media and RW memes of "she's not likable" and "she's not trustworthy."
TheCowsCameHome
(40,168 posts)Yes indeed, she is loved by many. You seem to think because she was adored here, she was adored everywhere. That was not the case.
There were loads of voters who despised her, for a host of reasons, some real, some perceived. It was not wise to dismiss them as irrelevant, as we found out Nov. 8th. Those are the ones that needed talking to, not me.
Dems would be wise not to go down this road again.
certainot
(9,090 posts)and if they didn't like that hillary wasn't progressive enough they only have themselves to blame for letting 1200 think tank scripted radio stations blast the country 20 points to the right the last 30 years
if dems continue to ignore rw radio and think hillary 'lost' because she was too corrupt or not progressive enough so america went with the global warming denying orange asshole, we'll still have trump in 8 years.
and to those who ignore talk radio while it kicks internet ass - wake up. limbaugh just signaled trump will end net neutrality because "IT GIVES GOVT TOO MUCH CONTROL OF THE INTERNET"!!!!!! and it will get cheaper.
so liberals and dems let a few hundred think tank-scripted blowhards on a 1000 coordinated radio stations call their sisters whores their brothers thieves and their reps traitors all day while hammering away on their tenth made-by-slave-labor computing device in 2 years about how their reps lost track of some of their unicorns.
we have this orange asshole in the white house because hillary and bill wanted more than civil servant money hanging out with SS the rest of their lives because a pack of dittoheads think they're running child sex slaves and tried to make some money talking to billionaires?
the left's ignorance of rw radio is the only reason the orange asshole was even close. all the other reasons pale.
if people didn't vote because of hillary's private email server and now feel guilty about it at least do something useful to keep this guy out of the white house, and if that doesn't work out at least do something useful about getting the house and senate in 2 years. like maybe complain about how your university is renting its football mascot to the local limbaugh station so it can attract advertisers to pay for them to defund public education so they can privatize it and raise tuition?
send this to you rw radio supporting university:
xxxxxx
Your school is on a list of 88 universities at republiconradio.org that broadcast sports on 257 of Rush Limbaugh’s 600 radio stations. They could also be called Trump radio stations.
Your university is not only mocking it’s own mission statement, it is undermining the interests of most of its students, faculty, employees, and surrounding communities.
That makes your own school a legitimate place to protest any issue related to the Trump agenda.
Many of those relationships began prior to the 90’s, before they all began broadcasting propaganda for one party. There is no reason for those schools not to start looking for apolitical alternatives immediately.
The school administration will claim that it does not make business decisions based on politics.This is a question all those schools need to ask: If a radio station went to KKK programming would the university still let its mascot be used to sell a KKK agenda?
Those stations weigh in on elections for university regents and selection of administration including presidents and chancellors - is there a conflict of interest?
All of those stations will continue to deny global warming, deny reproductive rights to women, excuse racism and homophobia, and promote and excuse the Trump agenda. Republicans want to privatize public education, social security, and the post office. Their policies will raise college tuition. They want to reverse gains in health care reform. They want to end net neutrality. Those stations will be cheerleaders for the next war, as they were for the last one.
The station pays a licensing company a fee and the school gets a part of that. The station then gets to use the school logos, mascot, and community standing to attract advertising revenue. It gets to declare things like “850 KOA, home of the Buffs,and Rush Limbaugh!” Compared with TV licensing revenue talk radio stations pay very little.
Advertising revenue is used to fund station operating costs and pay for the national and local talk show hosts that broadcast from them most of the day.
Except for occasional innocuous programming all of those stations operate exclusively for the benefit of the Republican Party. They are coordinated with national and state GOP and their allied think tanks
If Trump would pay $1000/hr for a radio ad, 1200 nationwide stations x 15hrs/day x 5 days/week are worth about $5BIL/yr FREE for Trump. 255 x $75,000 = $19,125,000/WEEK FREE for Trump, or about $1BIL/yr endorsed by institutions of higher learning.
Those stations, licensed to operate in the public interest, are heavily dependent on the schools they parasitize and they all:
- deny global warming and science
- use public airwaves to sell voter suppression legislation
- use and excuse racism, misogyny, homophobia, and hate to divide communities
- work to deny reproductive rights for women and access to contraception
- fight environmental regulation, push fracking, and always support fossil fuel solutions over renewables
- fight to defund and privatize public education, attack teachers and work to lower their salaries, attack their unions, push voucher solutions and standardized testing, and obstruct efforts to lower student debt
- fight efforts to increase minimum wage
- undermine the economic and environmental interests of their communities
- use public airways to repeat propaganda that is demonstrably false and continue to lie after being corrected
- use public airwaves but use call screeners to exclude dissenting callers
How much revenue does the licensing company pay for radio broadcasting portion compared to the TV portion? Could donors make up the difference if there is a monetary loss? If there is a loss, how does it compare with the harm it is doing to its own principles, funding, students, and surrounding communities?
Are they violating their 501c3 tax exempt status? Here’s the IRS rule for political activity:
“Political activity. - If any of the activities (whether or not substantial) of your organization consist of participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office, your organization will not qualify for tax-exempt status under section 501(c)(3). Such participation or intervention includes the publishing or distributing of statements.”
No university has a good excuse not to reexamine it’s relationship with partisan radio stations and look for apolitical alternatives. If an existing contract cannot be voided without penalty, can donors be found to cover it?
Any university, state or private, supporting Republican talk radio is shooting itself in the foot, demeaning its mission statement and professed goals and values, and harming its students’ futures.
Here is that list of universities ($1000 x 15hrs/day x 5days = $75,000/week):
ALABAMA 8 $600,000 Auburn 3, Alabama 2, Southern Alabama 2, Troy 1
ARIZONA 1 $75,000 Arizona St. 1
ARKANSAS 3 $225,000 Arkansas 3
CALIFORNIA 5 $375,000 San Jose State 2, USC 2, Fresno St. 1
COLORADO 4 $300,000 Air Force 2, Colorado 1, Colorado State 1
CONNECTICUT 1 $75,000 Connecticut 1
FLORIDA 20 $1,500,000 Florida 10, Florida St. 4 Miami 2, South Florida 2, Central Florida 2
GEORGIA 14 $1,050,000 Georgia 7, Georgia Tech 5, Georgia Southern 2
IDAHO 7 $525,000 Boise St. 4, Idaho 3
ILLINOIS 7 $525,000 Illinois 7
INDIANA 11 $825,000 Notre Dame 6, Purdue 4, Indiana 1
IOWA 5 $375,000 Iowa 4, Iowa St. 1
KANSAS 4 $300,000 Kansas St. 2, Kansas 1, Wichita St. 1
KENTUCKY 3 $225,000 Louisville 2, Kentucky 1
LOUSIANA 3 $225,000 LSU 2, La.-Monroe 1
MARYLAND 2 $150,000 Maryland 2
MASSACHUSETTS 1 $75,000 Boston College 1
MICHIGAN 19 $1,425,000 Michigan St. 11, Michigan 7, Western Michigan 1
MINNESOTA 4 $300,000 Minnesota 4
MISSISSIPPI 6 Mississippi St. 3, Mississippi 2, Southern Miss 1
MISSOURI 6 $450,000 Missouri 6
NEBRASKA 6 $450,000 Nebraska 6
NEVADA 1 $75,000 Nevada 1
NEW JERSEY 2 $150,000 Rutgers 1, Seton Hall 1
NEW MEXICO 3 $225,000 New Mexico 2, New Mexico St. 1
NEW YORK 7 $525,000 Syracuse 6, Army 1
NORTH CAROLINA 16 $1,200,000 North Carolina 8, North Carolina State 3, Duke 3, East Carolina 2
OHIO 10 $750,000 Ohio St. 6, Toledo 1, Dayton 1, Bowling Green 1, Xavier 1
OKLAHOMA 5 $375,000 Oklahoma St. 3, Oklahoma 1, Oral Roberts 1
OREGON 12 $900,000 Oregon St. 7, Oregon 5
PENNSYLVANIA 14 $1,050,000 Penn St. 11, Pittsburgh 2, Temple 1
SOUTH CAROLINA 4 $300,000 South Carolina 2, Clemson 2
TENNESSEE 7 $525,000 Tennessee 4, Memphis 3
TEXAS 16 $1,200,000 Texas A&M 9, Texas Tech 4, Texas 1, Texas Christian 1, Baylor 1
UTAH 1 $75,000 Utah St. 1
VIRGINIA 6 $450,000 Virginia Tech 5, Virginia 1
WASHINGTON 6 $450,000 Washington 5, Washington St. 1
WEST VIRGINIA 2 $150,000 West Virginia 1, Marshall 1
WISCONSIN 5 $225,000 Wisconsin 5
There is no excuse for any school to support Trump radio.
pnwmom
(108,977 posts)because so many men -- and "even" some women -- won't like her?
That's what it comes to. The same qualities that make a high achiever successful are valued in a man, but make a woman less "likable."
If you think there's some perfect woman out there who wouldn't have been hated by many men, you're fooling yourself.
And if you think that a female version of Bernie -- complete with messy hair, finger wagging, and scowling -- would have succeeded like Bernie did, then you're also fooling yourself. The same qualities that many people thought were endearing in Bernie would have been hated in a "Bernice."
TwilightZone
(25,467 posts)We didn't say we'd build a wall and then throw people over it.
That's apparently where we went wrong. *sigh*
Our message is sound, as was our candidate. It just wasn't received well enough by enough people in a few states that made the difference in the end. The "both sides are bad" and the "lesser of two evils" nonsense kept enough people home (it seems) to sway it to Trump. The numbers in WI, PA, and MI are really quite depressing.
Every campaign makes tactical errors, and there's no doubt that there were a few, but our message getting buried in an avalanche of bullshit didn't help. I have no idea how we could have changed that, won the messaging war. And hindsight is 20/20.
As someone noted earlier, Hillary is the most admired person in the world -- until she runs for something. It's really quite remarkable.
uponit7771
(90,335 posts)
flamingdem
(39,313 posts)uponit7771
(90,335 posts)... and make that their priority going forward
brer cat
(24,560 posts)baldguy
(36,649 posts)And they weren't all on the Right.
DemonGoddess
(4,640 posts)
THANK YOU!!!mcar
(42,307 posts)said they were both horrible, equally bad and she was "flawed." 
milestogo
(16,829 posts)and we haven't paid attention to ensuring the integrity of our elections.
groundloop
(11,518 posts)It's just that we have a relic of a system that was implemented to appease slave states for selecting the President. Thanks to that the vote of those in small, rural states carries more weight towards selecting the president than people in states with large populations. This is going to put Democratic presidential candidates at a disadvantage until we can get rid of the horrible electoral college.
pnwmom
(108,977 posts)to the half a million votes Gore had over Bush -- which was shocking enough.
Indydem
(2,642 posts)The electoral college is all that matters.
Those people in California and New York aren't moving to Wisconsin and Michigan.
So next time we will lose the EC again, and win the popular vote - unless we start to take the fears and concerns of millions of underrepresented Americans seriously.
NanceGreggs
(27,813 posts)... with the minority who live in the "states that matter" in the EC, and ignore the majority who live elsewhere?
Why not kow-tow to the anti-choicers - they're a big voting block. What about reaching out to the homophobes, the xenophobes, the faux Christians - lots of votes there.
So let's just ignore the majority of voters who stood with HRC and the Dems - and instead cultivate the votes of those who oppose us, simply because they live in the right postal zones.
It's amusing to watch those who railed against "the oligarchs" advocating that we hand the governance of the nation over to those whose only obvious worth is having the "right" area code.
Indydem
(2,642 posts)We stand for working class Americans, oppose globalization, promote the health and welfare of American workers, and grow good paying jobs in this country?
You know, like the Democratic Party used to stand for?
Maybe that would go a long way to getting back the working class vote.
InAbLuEsTaTe
(24,122 posts)Kentonio
(4,377 posts)It's clearly much more logical to keep handing the GOP the White House, senate and house because we don't like the rules of the game..
NanceGreggs
(27,813 posts)... "the rules of the game". It has to do with catering to the needs/wants of people in certain states to the detriment of those in other states.
Kentonio
(4,377 posts)Except it's not a game of course, its a system intentionally designed to ensure that people from all over the country get a say in how the government is run, and the needs/wants of one area cannot completely dominate those of other areas with smaller populations. I'd change to majority vote in a heartbeat, but that doesn't mean the current system isn't one that has a very real and justifiable grounding.
Yo_Mama
(8,303 posts)You're not really engaging with our electoral reality.
This was an uncommon election, in that the split between old rust belt states, the new south and the coastal behemoths was uncommonly strong, which produced the divergent popular/electoral vote results.
If you don't like this potential outcome (split popular vote versus EC vote) then go ahead and work to get it changed. But I would suggest to you that it is very unlikely that it will be changed, because that would give a few states too much power.
The way electoral votes are allocated by states is by the total Congressional representation. You could also work to get the rules for the Senate changed, so that it works like the House (allocated by population), instead of just having 2 senators for each state. But these have been the ground rules from the beginning, and I don't think states having voted this way are going to want to give up power. The US is a huge country with a very varied geography and economic circumstances, and it is hard to hold such a country together. Look at the problems the EU is having!! Some sort of arrangement that allows RI the ability to reject being the country's garbage dump is probably wise.
Or we could all sit down, talk among ourselves, and get these once Democratic strongholds back in the fold.
You have a choice just as each one of us does. But some choices are more likely to work than others.
ismnotwasm
(41,976 posts)Will that alieve their "fears"?
Indydem
(2,642 posts)Most of these people aren't bigots.
They are working class Americans; many without college educations. Americans who see their jobs being sent overseas or downsized, and who have experienced NONE of the recovery since 2008.
The Democratic Party used to be the party that represented these people. They stood for higher wages, union membership, and keeping American jobs here.
We used to fight for these people, and now our president supports TPP. We used to want a better tomorrow for these people, now our party platform seems to be "your primitive manufacturing job isn't coming back, go back to school you dunderhead." That isn't true to the value of My party, and they shouldn't be what any Democrat supports.
They are scared about their futures, and a snake oil salesman promised he would "MAGA!"
The fact that you can't see any of that, that you are blind to their real and genuine plight, and instead choose to lump their entire group together and call them bigots shows that you are the real Bigot.
big·ot
ˈbiɡət/
noun
a person who is intolerant toward those holding different opinions.
Kang Colby
(1,941 posts)TwilightZone
(25,467 posts)"Ignoring All Evidence, NRA Decides Gun Policy Determined The 2016 Presidential Election"
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2016/11/17/ignoring-all-evidence-nra-decides-gun-policy-determined-2016-presidential-election/214517
Kang Colby
(1,941 posts)I've voted for and supported the Clintons for nearly thirty years. She won the pop vote by over 2.6 million votes. She won California by four million votes alone. But guess what? Presidential winners and losers aren't determined by national popular vote and if you think guns played zero factor in Ohio or PA, then well, I have nothing else to say. Winning by millions of votes in CA, IL, and NY doesn't mean anything if you can't get to 270.
Eric J in MN
(35,619 posts)...in the general election season to play that around the clock.
Instead the HRC campaign made TV ads with audio of Trump calling Rosie O'Donnell a "fat pig" and Trump saying it's difficult "for a flat-chested woman to be a 10."
Hillary Clinton's speeches had enough economics. Her TV ads didn't.
Indydem
(2,642 posts)Many people don't like Rosie O'Donell and likely feel an equal level of dismissal about her.
She was never talented, and was only successful when she was "the queen of nice." Once she stopped using that persona and people started seeing who she really was, her popularity and reputation plunged.
I wouldn't call her a fat pig, but I don't like her one bit.
TLDR: pointing out Trump called R O'D a fat pig probably helped him with some people.
TwilightZone
(25,467 posts)People kind of assume that he does this stuff without any foresight or planning. I think it's the opposite. I think they're meticulously planned. Every insult has a purpose.
NanceGreggs
(27,813 posts)What does that say about the voting populace? And what does it say about the fact that Hillary won MORE votes, despite the TV ads?
TwilightZone
(25,467 posts)Trump spent massive amounts of money in the last couple weeks of the election. I'm in Texas and we got absolutely bombarded with ads, which hardly ever happens here. I have to assume it was even worse in MI, WI, PA, etc.
I don't think we lost because of the ads, but I think a chunk of the populace is pretty malleable, so they could have had something to do with the last-minute swing. Not as much as, say, Comey, but it could be a factor. According to the NYT exit poll data, people who decided in the last week went 50/38 Trump.
DesertFlower
(11,649 posts)are more impressed by celebrity. a good example is the "Kardashians". who the hell are they? my late husband always talked about "the dumbing down of america". well folks, it's happened.
TwilightZone
(25,467 posts)Celebrity was certainly a factor. I tend to forget that one, oddly enough, whenever I contemplate what got us here.
Eric J in MN
(35,619 posts)HRC campaign officials John Podesta and Jennifer Palmieiri concluded from focus groups that TV ads about Trump's temperament are more effective.
I think the respondents were just trying to be socially correct by saying something like, "Yeah, those Trump remarks are terrible, I'd never vote for him."
I think that if there had been more HRC ads about economics then she would have won.
Jennifer Palmieiri defends the TV ad choices by saying HRC won among people who said economics was their #1 issue. I think we needed a bigger majority in that category.
dionysus
(26,467 posts)In the old days, people wanted the smartest people running things. Flash forward to bush, and it was "who would you rather have a beer with".
Apparently now it's sunk to "vote for the biggest asshole and bully".
George II
(67,782 posts)...to me her ads were very effective.
whopis01
(3,510 posts)At least in the central Florida market.
Eric J in MN
(35,619 posts)Trump say about Rosie O'Donnell in this ad, " I'd look her right in that fat, ugly face of hers" and "she ate like a pig."
NoMoreRepugs
(9,417 posts)
Nwgirl503
(406 posts)We assumed things like the environment, climate change, diversity, equal rights, job creation, job training, economics, income, education and a whole host of other actual issues were important.
They're not. Sound bites from a barely functioning idiot with no plans or policies and misinformation that is repeated ad nauseam were the winners of the day.
Let's not make that mistake again.
Grey Lemercier
(1,429 posts)
Nwgirl503
(406 posts)I mean...I do. But my answer is to fight fire with fire. I barely play nice when almost nothing is on the line. Now? No holds barred. Whatever it takes to get ahead should be done and then deal with the casualties afterwards. You're either on board or you're an obstacle. But I know that answer won't work for a lot of people.
George II
(67,782 posts)Hekate
(90,656 posts)
ananda
(28,858 posts)fear .. and hate that they were looking for any
excuses that would make it appear that
Clinton was just as bad or worse.
There was never any logic or reason to votes
of people acting from their reptile brains.
KittyWampus
(55,894 posts)and didn't get her message and/or stayed home, voted 3rd party or Trump.
She didn't show up in the Rust Belt.
She spent millions on ads demonizing Trump.
Keep telling yourself her team did everything right.
But she lost because that isn't true.
Who was the fool who came up with "I'm with her"?
It should have been "She's with us".
NanceGreggs
(27,813 posts)... more people voted for her than voted for Trump.
But let's just ignore that - because it doesn't fit the narrative of those who insist the voters were against her and her message, when they apparently weren't.
leftofcool
(19,460 posts)Although I am sure there are people over at Freeperville and JPR who don't like her. Didn't they vote for the gorilla?
KittyWampus
(55,894 posts)from the trolls defending Clinton even though I disliked her and doubted her ability to pull it off.
And America doesn't have the popular votes. It was Clinton and her team's job to know where the electoral votes were and secure them.
She failed miserably.
TwilightZone
(25,467 posts)I completely misinterpreted the post I was responding to. My apologies.
KittyWampus
(55,894 posts)TwilightZone
(25,467 posts)Entirely my fault. Sorry about that. Shouldn't DU when I'm tired. You were talking about the primaries and I misinterpreted it.
uponit7771
(90,335 posts)KittyWampus
(55,894 posts)"Most Americans did".
That isn't how elections are held in the USA. And Clinton was supposedly supposed to be able to do basic electoral math.
And most Americans voted for her because the alternative was infinitely worse.
hellofromreddit
(1,182 posts)For a lot of voters the minimum wage is an important issue. For the party elites it's merely a talking point. And despite how much time people around here spend calling voters stupid, they're not. They know the party is disconnected. I remember how many mocked Sanders for getting platform concessions, screaming at us that the platform is meaningless. Well, turns out people believe that when it comes to Hillary too.
Probably the most shocking example of campaign disconnectedness was the colored people time joke. Nobody who actually lives in our world would make that mistake. But the arguably more important error was ignoring the base. How long after the convention was she simply absent from the stage? Again, nobody who lives in our world would make that mistake. No campaign in the rust belt. The dumb comment about Nancy Reagan and AIDS. Over and over, she and the other party elites remind all of us that they're out of our loop. And over and over we're reminded that we have to stay out of theirs because we can't afford the entry fee.
So while she might say all the right things, most voters know no connection to her, and therefore no basis to trust her. When you're already suffering from a "trustworthiness" problem (doesn't matter if it's not fair), and a bunch of people already doubt your word, what you say becomes irrelevant. As for what she did? Silent on DAPL (would have been an awesome chance to stand up for the rights of minorities). Profoundly negative campaign (including accidental release of one last attack ad against Bernie). Swooped in and put her stamp of approval on DWS while voters were furious at her. Exploited the very campaign finance loopholes she was railing against. And there's this latest dumb stunt.
I'd say things went pretty wrong when she shot at her own feet every single day.
I'm with you on the EC comment. But our candidate was bad too. After all, there's no EC in the Senate, but the Senate got clobbered. Obviously the problem is beyond just the EC.
We need a primary structure that can filter out these sorts of problems.
NanceGreggs
(27,813 posts)... voted for HRC.
So tell us all again how she "didn't connect" with that MAJORITY. It's a story I so love hearing - told by those who keep ignoring that fact.
hellofromreddit
(1,182 posts)I'm taking into consideration more than just Hillary. There's a whole party's worth of races that just got thoroughly lost, and coddling egos won't change that fact.
A bad campaign at the top of the ticket costs straight-ticket voters every time. It shows up clearly in the down ticket races.
Kentonio
(4,377 posts)With liking her and thinking she did everything right. She was running against Donald Trump. We could have run a can of ham and still picked up tens of millions of votes. The proof of her failure is that we lost, I don't know how much more simple this can be.
JHan
(10,173 posts)HRC's setbacks (or flaws depending on your view of her) and the Clinton camp's hubris, the lack of preparation for voter suppression, lack of a unified strategy to retake the house ( At least from my vantage point) , the nonsense the clinton campaign was hit with from foreign actors with insidious aims ( yes Russia is all over this election), slander, and the failure of the fourth estate...
And Bernie coming in like a wrecking ball. It's not only up to HRC supporters to be introspective and objective, Sanders' supporters could do with a bit of that themselves... the inability to admit to his divisiveness is why we can't move on.
hellofromreddit
(1,182 posts)Bernie came in like a (polite and gentle) competitor. If he looked like a wrecking ball to the Clinton camp, that's their flaw, not his.
I agree that lots of bad things happened that hurt Clinton and were beyond her control. But you can't fix any of that by sheer force of complaining, and focusing on it quickly turns into scapegoating. How do you think 16 years of crying about little old Nader made the party look? How do you think the hostility towards rinky-dink bit players fares in the face of being utterly feckless against a party that produced monstrous debt, mass incarceration, Bush, the Iraq debacle, a policy of torture, mass financial industry corruption, legendary congressional inaction, government shutdowns, and now TV's Trump? I know it's hard work, and people just love to distract themselves by blaming the hostile universe around us, but the democrats desperately have to focus on fixing the internal failures consuming them since those are something they do actually have control over.
JHan
(10,173 posts)really? By..
- not registering as a democrat? not paying his dues to the party like every other politician has had to do?
- demanding that all his solutions to pressing issues be adopted by the party? And any deviation from *His solutions* meant the party wasn't serious?
- coming in the year of a general election to criticize the establishment of a party that already finds it difficult to get re-elected during incumbent years?
- staying in the running even after it was clear there was no way he could win the nomination?
- framing Clinton and by extension the democratic establishment - and by extension the President - as corrupt and "The problem" thus giving Trump ammo to lump the Democrats as "the problem"?
-- then acting surprised and frustrated when people aren't motivated to vote dem?
He did all this this year - it was a massive political fail - it is why there are still arguments. Denying this is to be disingenuous.
hellofromreddit
(1,182 posts)Bernie came in like a competitor. If he looked like a wrecking ball to the Clinton camp, that's their flaw, not his.
I agree that lots of bad things happened that hurt Clinton and were beyond her control. But you can't fix any of that by sheer force of complaining, and focusing on it quickly turns into scapegoating. How do you think 16 years of crying about little old Nader made the party look? How do you think the hostility towards rinky-dink bit players fares in the face of being utterly feckless against a party that produced monstrous debt, mass incarceration, Bush, the Iraq debacle, a policy of torture, mass financial industry corruption, legendary congressional inaction, government shutdowns, and now TV's Trump? I know it's hard work, and people just love to distract themselves by blaming the hostile universe around us, but the democrats desperately have to focus on fixing the internal failures consuming them since those are something they do actually have control over.
shit.
JHan
(10,173 posts)What he did hurt the Democratic Party itself:
what he did was a failure of strategy on his part and it threatened the advancement of the progressive agenda. I've already said we can critique Clinton but you're skirting around dealing with Bernie :
As I've said elsewhere:
If Bernie really wanted to sway Democrats he needed to pay his dues and show loyalty to the party - any organization would demand this including the libertarians and green party.
He needed to join the Dems in 2012, work on making his case among the rank and file Dems. You don't shove your ideas on a party the year before a general election. He needed to ally himself with other democratic coalitions. Put a laser focus on recapturing the house, and hone a group of 30 progressives to capture districts held by moderate Republicans or even take the risk and aim for more right leaning districts ( The Dems needed to do this anyway). He also needed to out-manoeuvre his critics by showing he's serious through sound policy proposals - which would require he make more refined and detailed arguments instead of going on and on about "The billionaire class" The best way to shut down your critics is show you understand their views and predicaments better than they even do, and counter their claims.
But Bernie did none of this. He decided he and his cause were more important than the party - this is just a failure of politics on his part. His establishment arguments were slogans, his economic arguments and analogies made no sense and didn't add up for democrats like myself - and I'm a millennial - I want detail from politicians. And after the dust was settled, Trump had a smorgasbord of criticisms to aim at HRC and the Dems, courtesy Sanders himself.
Basically the left cannibalized itself this year: Moral of the story: Do not tear down your allies.
hellofromreddit
(1,182 posts)Bernie ran a very clean campaign. What you listed in your other post is simply untrue and has been debunked repeatedly. Now, I'm not real interested in a slugging match over what facts you accept as real, so whatever you write based on that sort of nonsense I'll just ignore. I'm not disregarding reality; I'm ignoring frivolous noise no matter how much you want to inject it into the discussion.
As for Clinton, I'm focusing on her because she was the nominee. Nobody gets to run a campaign and then disclaim all responsibility for losing it. She was in the middle of it all, she ran a bad campaign, she damaged the party down ticket, and the reasons for that tremendous failure are worth discussing so we don't hand the keys to another bunch of damned fools next time.
JHan
(10,173 posts)Nope.
You're free to pretend he never said what he said, or he didn't behave the way he did , particularly as we neared Super Tuesday... And he continues to damage the party by claiming the Democrats have lost touch with the working class when the platform this year disproves him wrong.
Facts are not "frivolous noise", when many wondered why he stayed in the race when the writing was on the wall wasn't all "frivolous noise" , it actually happened. The conflict between HRC and Bernie supporters proves that it happened.
And on a personal note: When I switched my support to HRC in April, I got enough abuse from Berniacs , in some instances Bernie's most ardent supporters would share Right Wing talking points about the Democratic Party and HRC.
This was amazing to me, and spoke volumes - it meant the party was divided and there is enough blame to go around for that- you just happen to believe your man is blameless in all this.
DemonGoddess
(4,640 posts)The Wizard
(12,542 posts)an electoral system put in place to satisfy Slave States or they wouldn't ratify the Constitution. We have a perverted, convoluted form of Democracy designed to be gamed by the minority. We have hackable voting machines and tabulating machines that operate under proprietary code, meaning the code that counts the votes is a secret. We're not talking defense secrets or national security, we're talking about counting the votes in public. Hell they're elections for public office, not private office.
Trump kept saying the election was rigged. Now even more restrictions will be put in place to prevent minorities from exercising their franchise.
Through gerrymandering and election fraud (far different than voter fraud) and voter suppression the majority's voice has been silenced.
So it appears as though the Slave States prevailed, even after losing a bloody war. What's most unfortunate is the states that provide the most income to the Treasury are Democratic leaning states. The taxes we pay subsidize the Republican leaning states that take far more from the system than they contribute. So we have a minority that contributes less while taking more than the states that fought them to abolish the immoral concept of slavery.
We do indeed live in a altered Universe.
Dems to Win
(2,161 posts)vs. Trump. And he's a TV Star! A celebrity!
It wasn't Hillary's fault. We all had no idea what game we were playing, apparently.
Martin Eden
(12,864 posts)Do you want an honest opinion?
Hillary Clinton (along with John Kerry, Joe Biden, and many others) forever lost my vote in Democratic primaries in October 2002 when they voted to give GW Bush authority to invade Iraq, and Secretary Clinton apparently hadn't learned the unintended consequences of regime change when she promoted the overthrow of Gadhafi in Libya. Although Hillary is not responsible for the actions of her husband, she is nevertheless linked to Bill's signing of NAFTA and financial deregulation that repealed Glass Steagall. It didn't help that she was paid large fees to deliver private speeches to Wall Street execs, or that she called TPP the "gold standard" of trade agreements before it became apparent that was a political liability.
In an election which had a significant backlash against the Washington establishment, we nominated a Washington establishment politician.
I don't know if Bernie Sanders or Martin O'Malley would have won this election, but everything I cited above were inherent disadvantages for Hillary Clinton.
I am in no way discounting everything else from decades of smears with fake scandals to Russian hacking to Comey's meddling to GOP voter suppression to the corporate media that put TV ratings ahead of journalistic responsibility to the fact she won the popular vote by millions. Hillary Clinton is many orders of magnitude more fit to be president than the vile demagogue who tapped into a perverse populism with racist dog whistles and pathological lies.
I put the primary behind me when it was over and voted for Hillary Clinton in the general election.
I posted this reply because you asked questions to which I assumed you invited answers, but mostly because I think it would be a grave mistake to insist we had the perfect candidate with the perfect message and therefore shouldn't do an objective postmortem. I understand the emotions (every day I experience a mixture of rage/grief/dread) but we should always do our best to honestly evaluate our candidates and work to improve our Democratic Party -- especially in the wake of a catastrophic defeat.
The question is how best to move forward, but the past is prologue and there are always lessons to be learned.
Just to be clear:
I do NOT advocate in any way shape or form pandering to deplorables.
NanceGreggs
(27,813 posts)... did I (or anyone else on this site) insist that HRC was the "perfect candidate with the perfect message"?
When postmortem analyses are based on how the candidate who WON the majority of votes was "all wrong", one has to wonder what "wrong" garnered all of those votes.
The average voter does not read DU, or participate on political websites. Ergo, the average voter is no more aware of anyone's vote on the Iraq War than they are Glass-Steagle. They have no idea what TPP is, no less what provisions it contains. They don't know any more about what happened in Libya than than they know what happens in their own country.
Those who heard Trump say he was a champion of keeping jobs in the US didn't even know that he has outsourced US jobs to have his brand-name products manufactured in low-wage countries, despite the fact that the information was readily available. And you still think that voters were thinking about the TPP when they cast their ballots?
Martin Eden
(12,864 posts)Objecting to my use of the word "perfect" is a quibble; if I had used a different word, the gist of my argument would have changed imperceptibly. It is entirely reasonable to conclude you are insisting there was nothing wrong with our candidate or message to the voters.
Your argument that voters outside DU are unaware of TPP or Bill's signing of NAFTA or Hillary's vote for the Iraq war or her big speaking fees from Wall Street simply does not hold water. Some voters may be entirely ignorant of all these things, but many others are not.
Trump's main attack strategy was to blame the loss of jobs on foreign trade deals supported by the Clintons and to blame the horrific fiasco in Iraq & Syria (the rise of ISIS) on Obama and Hillary Clinton. This was very evident in the televised debates viewed by millions of voters. If Hillary, during the rush to war in 2002, had stood up and spoke truth to power and provided strong Democratic leadership against the lies and the Bush neocon agenda, she would have been in a much stronger position in the debates and in this election. As it was, one of her biggest qualifications -- foreign policy credentials -- became less of an asset and an actual liability in the minds of many voters.
The answer to your last question is a qualified yes. Hillary Clinton was associated with trade deals blamed for the loss of manufacturing jobs as well as the Washington establishment which has not done a good job of representing the interests of people whose standard of living has declined. That was the perception, not entirely unfounded. Had she taken strong positions against the trade deals since she first came to Washington and been a leader against the Iraq war, I believe she probably would have won back in 2008 or would now be the president elect.
Flatpicker
(894 posts)We lost the EC. Which is the rule set that both candidates agreed upon prior to the election. THAT'S the bottom line.
If we had changed the rules after the Gore/Bush election then you would have a leg to stand on. But WE DIDN'T.
So here we are. Now you are grousing about losing using the rules that they both agreed on.
Nance, once again you are moving the goalposts of your arguments. You have excellent writing, beautiful prose, but you don't support any of it with actual facts. Then when facts are presented, you dance around them with another article that is beautifully written, but empty.
You are becoming part of the problem that Democrats are having. We're not listening to what's being told and not accepting it unless it fits our world view. I've heard every excuse from sexism, to the media, to Bernie, to Comey, to whatever becomes the BS topic of next weeks party line. End of the day, she still didn't win using the rules they agreed on.
YES. she won the popular vote. NO. it doesn't matter, because she didn't win the areas that she needed to to take the EC.
YES, she was the wrong candidate because she lost the states she needed to win.
Could someone else have done it? I don't know. It's not a bad narrative though, because she lost where she should not have done so.
Everybody thought, You included, that this election was a done deal. So much so that you were thanking the GOP before the election for running this idiot.
Nobody wanted to hear the warnings that her poll numbers were dropping in the days prior to the election.
No one in the "know" wanted to listen to the news unless it told them just what they wanted to hear.
She could have had the right message, she may have even been the right person (although I don't think she was), but she lost, so that tells us that something was wrong.
Seeing as how we are also losing much of the down ballot races, it should tell us something more.
Nance, Take your awesome writing and do something better than make excuses for the loss.
You have skills that could help change minds. You are worlds better a wordsmith than I could ever be. But your dogged refusal to deal with the situation as is, doesn't create any want to read your work.
I find that I'm tired, not of trying to make change, but of the terrible mindset that has infected the Democratic Party.
We don't deserve to win if we don't put in an effort to communicate our message better than we did in 2016. We didn't resonate to the folks that we agreed that mattered.
NanceGreggs
(27,813 posts)... due to the EC.
I am also aware that the voters chose HRC, by a wide margin, to be the next POTUS.
Therefore, the only legitimate argument for why we lost would be our inability to win the EC, rather than our "wrong candidate" and "her wrong message" - who obviously wasn't "wrong" as far as the majority of voters were concerned.
Kentonio
(4,377 posts)Which is what actually matters.
world wide wally
(21,740 posts)Since an individual in Wyoming's vote is worth 3 times an individual in California's vote, then residents of Wyoming should pay 3 times the rate of Income Tax.
Grey Lemercier
(1,429 posts)
Only fix that can be done without a Constitutional Amendment is to increase the size of the US House of Representatives (and thus the EC number of electors) and make it a more fair distribution to the larger states. It's been stuck at 435 since 1913. It would only take overturning a 1929 Act.
kentuck
(111,080 posts)The lies and propaganda were very effective.
Hillary was like a criminal. They screamed, "Lock her up!" Her negatives went beyond even those of Donald Trump.
Of course, Hillary is no criminal. But they were able to demonize her, to the point of hatred, in their destructive and hateful attacks. It was negative and harmful. But, effective.
By means of a new technology, this time Facebook and Twitter, they were able to overwhelm the Internet with their fake stories, and many millions of innocent people were tricked and deceived into believing they were factual. They were fake but they were unable to distinguish the difference?
In the end, the God of Fate let Trump win in PA, MI, WI, and IA and the "blue wall" was broken. It didn't matter how many votes Hillary got after that.
Some might believe it was stolen.
Perhaps?
Flatpicker
(894 posts)to the idea that we ran a candidate who they could run that type of campaign against.
Just makes her even more the wrong person to run. Could they have demonized an O'Malley in the same way?
TwilightZone
(25,467 posts)And people lapped it up.
They'll run "that type of campaign" against anyone we run. If we think we can find the perfect, unassailable candidate, we're kidding ourselves.
We have no idea on O'Malley because he was never enough of a threat to the GOP for them to try.
Finding the right candidate isn't really the problem - figuring out how to counter the bullshit is the problem.
Flatpicker
(894 posts)Fox news there were legal ways to counter the BS.
They could not run that type of campaign against Obama, though they tried. You can counter the BS by not having enough skeletons in the closet to make the average american think it may be plausible.
I do think Kerry was an aberration though. He was too thoughtful for his own good. He thinks while he speaks, and does nuance. American's don't like that. you can't soundbyte it.
TwilightZone
(25,467 posts)Kenya, Indonesia, Muslim, birthers, Rev. Wright, Muslim Brotherhood, Sharia law, Agenda 21, FEMA camps, secret Muslim training camps, pot, cocaine, etc.
It was pretty much a never-ending stream of bullshit. He just figured out how to counter it, for the most part.
They will find anything on anyone and use it. It doesn't matter if it's real or not. If they don't have anything, they'll make it up. Obama is a perfect example.
The most innocuous things end up being fodder for the morons. This is the same group of people who said John McCain fathered a black child.
I get what you're saying, but I think you're underestimating the depths to which the GOP will sink in regard to *any* candidate we run. In addition, I don't think we should base our decisions on who we think the GOP will make a target. They'll make everyone a target.
kentuck
(111,080 posts)They would have ripped Bernie to shreds. Look at how they handled the 16 Republican candidates. They were knocked over like bowling pins, all with branding or character assassination. In head to head debates, Hillary kicked his ass every time. But there was just way to escape the attacks in this age of Facebook and Twitter.
Kentonio
(4,377 posts)Because unlike Hillary with her extremely limited experience of running for elected office, Bernie has spent decades fighting those battles and is a very tenacious trench fighter. Just because he went extremely gently against Hillary (which is why it's so ironic when people pretend he attacked her mercilessly) against the GOP he would have taken the gloves off and gone in fighting. Not in a dirty vile way, but using the same straight talking, tough but fair tactics he used to win against outrageous odds in his elections of the past.
samplegirl
(11,476 posts)How do you counteract all the brainwashing???
lancelyons
(988 posts)There where multiple reasons that this happened.
-- Democrats focused too much on minorities and not on other Americans with needs as well.
-- Comey's major screw up, twice. The second time also bringing it back into the media and firing up Trump supporters.
-- Somebody (Russians) hacking the DNC and the slow leak from wiki leaks. Wikileaks is now a full fledged arm of the GOP.
Ultimately Comey's name will be tarnished in history and that will be his legacy. Would have been nice if he was punished a bit more by Democrats for what he did.
what do we need to do...
- continue to be the voice for the people of United States. the GOP is the voice of the companies and corporations.
- focus on all people and not just certain classes of people
- like the right wing media outlets did with Obama, other media outlets need to constantly highlight Trump and GOP screw ups. Constantly. However they have to do this with integrity. Not by making stuff up.
What scares me the most is that the GOP can mislead and tell lies left and right but they dont seem to be corrected or challenged on this. The media seems to do a bad job of not correcting the record and many voters only know the lies.
Everybody knows some republicans ought their and they all say the same thing. This is because they all watch fox news or other right wing outlets that push the same misleading information. Much of this made Hillary seem like a corrupt bad politician when in fact she is nothing even close. Nobody in the media bothered to correct the record.
DemonGoddess
(4,640 posts)Democrats focused too much on minorities and not on other Americans with needs as well.
You do realize it is MINORITIES and marginalized groups in general who power Democrats to begin with, yes? Without them, we HAVE no party.
lancelyons
(988 posts)I understand that but it's also the reason the election was lost. We have to be about all people and not just minorities.
deurbano
(2,894 posts)Last edited Thu Dec 8, 2016, 11:34 AM - Edit history (1)
The deplorables will believe ANYthing. (And that includes the self-described leftists who couldn't even both to check Snopes before repeating yet another fake story that "proved" Clinton's corruption, criminality... and all around wickedness.)
So, we had the master ratfucking....a media that did everything in its power to undermine the Democratic candidate, even as editorial pages (EVERYwhere) proclaimed that candidate the only possible choice for voters with a shred of sanity... the F- fucking- BI coup... misogyny (patriarchy)... racism... amazing amounts of stupidity... and the devastating effects of too much TV (especially reality TV!), with the attendant celebrity culture-- and "celebrity" just means famous for being famous, now (low bar!)-- so, welcome to Honey Boo Boo Nation!
JHan
(10,173 posts)She didn't make false promises, didn't lie or offer false hope, and respected voters enough to give them details.
She was competent, won all three debates, did not lie about her opponent, had a good platform ........unfortunately she faced almost insurmountable challenges from all directions this year. That she still pulled off a popular vote lead is impressive.
quakerboy
(13,920 posts)a few places.
Being disunited as a party
Trade deals.
Not standing front and center to prevent election tampering during those few moments when we in theory had power
Letting states that never vote for us in the GE select our nominee
Bringing a candidate who's starting position was having been smeared in the media for over 20 years, and who was strongly identified with the establishment
Failing to reach out to natural allies in meaningful ways and relying on hate and fear to motivate their votes instead
And Instead of fixing these problems, apparently in the future we will choose to take more losses by by relying on a popular vote to carry us in a situation where the win goes to the EC winner instead.
If it is close, republicans will steal it. But it appears the favored solution is to let it be close, and count on complaining that republicans stole it to somehow make it all better.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)brer cat
(24,560 posts)who thinks that is a brilliant OP.
Zen Democrat
(5,901 posts)But we have to suck it up and FIGHT TRUMP.
Gore was robbed. Kerry was robbed. Hillary was robbed.
What are we going to do about it?
Fight like Harry Truman would. Fight like Hell!
prairierose
(2,145 posts)Dem leadership has not talked enough or worked to fix the broken voting system. When Kris Kobach's Crosscheck program is used so successfully in so many states to disenfranchise dem voters, this is a problem. Did we hear any dem leaders talking about this? The corporate media gave trumpery inordinate face time and ignored Bernie and Hillary and every other dem candidate. Have we heard dem leaders talking about the inherent bias of the corporate media? Have we heard any dem leaders telling their constituents and all the rest of us that we need to fight for net neutrality? Have we heard any leaders suggest that we need to build a media operation on the progressive side? One that might actually cover real news and issues instead of the celebrity du jour? This could really only happen through the internet and f net neutrality goes away, kiss streaming goodbye. I am sure I won't be able to afford it when comcast and AT&T get done jacking up service rates.
The problems that are wrong, that give us such disadvantages are all constructs of a billionaire network that began building these infrastructures in the 1970s. Have we hear any dem leaders (other than Hillary who took so much shit for calling it the vast right wing conspiracy that it was/is) talk about this at all? Make suggestions for for building our own progressive infrastructure to counter what is there?
These are the things we should be talking about not beating people up over the "wrong" candidate or the "wrong' message. We need to start working together build a solid base that can not be corrupted by ..............................oh, I can't stop myself....the forces of evil. 
JCanete
(5,272 posts)terms of skill-set and knowledge, she is uniquely qualified. But we ran somebody who dared to be the President's Wife and try to make a difference in that role. For that, the GOP media machinery sunk its teeth into her and never let go. They smelled blood and they did such a number on her by making her THE boogie man of the democratic party, to the point where people who know nearly nothing about her know that she is the anti-christ.
I understand the impetus for party insiders and backers of Clinton to want to doggedly fight through that smear job and emerge victorious, and really, if there was a year it could happen, this was that year. But it was hubristic and it was in my opinion, outside of the standard operating procedure. Generally when someone is damaged, fairly or not, they are not encouraged to take that damage to the national level of politics.
To be fair, I'm saying it was a mistake now, but I never thought Trump had a chance. I never thought anybody in the GOP lineup had a chance. Sadly, its likely none of them did have a chance against a candidate who didn't bring into this campaign as much baggage as Clinton. I don't mean Bernie, because that's entirely different baggage. He would be persona non-grata by the media, and my guess is he wouldn't have been full-throatedly supported by the Dem establishment either. Who knows, maybe...but lets just say it would have been a different ball-game entirely with outcomes no more certain than Clinton's.
A lot of people held their nose and voted for Trump, certainly because they didn't and don't understand just how incompetent he is, or how truly sociopathic, anymore than they understand that the reasons they despise Hillary are almost whole-cloth fabrications. Chock that all up to the state of our media, which we refuse to go at as a party. I give credit to Obama for actually calling out Fox and Limbaugh during his term, but that gives an air of respectability and honest reporting to the others, which they just have not earned. What we should be calling out is their financial incentives...who owns them and just why that might make them less inclined to do honest, informative reporting. Instead, we thought it would be good to have our own corporate mouthpiece in MSNBC, but that hasn't worked out for us, and it's never been nearly enough or as uniform.
So we can at least, as a party, take responsibility for allowing a corporate media to run amok in this country. The political risks of taking it on have always been calculated as too high I guess but it doesn't help that its all as incestuous as it is, and that our politicians try to play that game of granting access too.
And yes, still she should have won, and if we're looking at every way in which voters rights have been eroded and election results have been made unverifiable, in an honest world, maybe she did, but the media let that happen too. Our party let the media happen, that in turn let that happen. You can't blame the GOP because they actively sought this stuff. We know they have no respect or love for democracy. As a party, we just stopped challenging these things. We let them happen. One caveat to this criticism is that had democrats put the media in their crosshairs, would they have been themselves destroyed by it? Would we be even worse off now? That's a a possibility I have to at least consider.
Anyway, we have somewhat decentralized media now. We have alternative sources. Its a double-edged sword, but there's still hope.
NanceGreggs
(27,813 posts)... defending the media.
Being a woman of a certain age, I grew up with Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow. I grew up in a world where if a "journalist" said something on TV, it was a fact - because TV journalists in those days checked, double-checked, and re-checked the facts before smiling into the camera and saying anything that couldn't be backed-up a thousand fold.
Today's media is comprised of well-groomed, well-coiffed, well-dressed idiots who are believed simply because they are well-groomed, well-coiffed, and well-dressed.
The people voted for Trump are the same people who think Wolf Blitzer is a "journalist" - because if he wasn't, he wouldn't be on TV.
Dems to Win
(2,161 posts)My stomach was full of doom and gloom when she secured the nomination, has been for months. I haven't been posting here during the GE season, because I had nothing to say.
NAFTA.
Dragging Bill Clinton's sorry bum back into the White House as First Gentleman. As a feminist, that's a painful prospect.
Clinton Drama, Clinton fatigue. Hillary created more drama by failing to even use email in the normal way, with personal and professional mailboxes, and then leaving her professional box behind when she left, in accordance with the open records acts championed by Democrats. She kicked the can of disclosing her records, and her unprofessional system, straight into her presidential campaign. It reminded people of what a return to a Clinton White House would be.
So many headwinds before we even started, because Democrats tried to return the same married couple to the White House that had been there in the 90s. I still believe that was a bad idea from day one. (I fully support Michelle Obama saying no to a run for herself.)
And Trump's celebrity was a big factor not sufficiently recognized by many. I did NOT want him to be the nominee for the Republicans, from day one, because I had seen California elect The Terminator as governor. Any machinations by the media or Clinton campaign or the DNC to highlight Trump and his ridiculousness, as a way to ridicule the Republican party, were incredibly misguided.
TeeYiYi
(8,028 posts)...the part they played in her loss and consider what might have been done differently to change the outcome.
Overly confident after winning the Primary, Hillary's campaign lost sight of the goal. Her supporters became openly hostile toward Bernie's supporters and condescendingly dismissed the need for their votes; creating an irreparable chasm in the party.
Where they should've been embracing and converting displaced Bernie democrats, they chose, instead, to vilify and alienate them. That failure to heal the deeply fractured Democratic base, led to apathy and low voter turnout. Too many democrats decided to stay home or vote third party.
'A house divided against itself, cannot stand.'
That's the difference between previous elections and this one. Obama's supporters didn't torch the losing team and burn the house down. They quickly mended fences, merged teams and worked together to put a Democrat back into the White House.
Complacency cost Hillary the election.
TYY
JHan
(10,173 posts)Yes a house divided against itself cannot stand, and as someone who switched to HRC around April I got abused for it from Berniacs..
So really, some introspection from everyone would be great ..
radical noodle
(8,000 posts)after he had clearly won the nomination.and she gave her supporters no false hopes about overcoming his winning campaign for the nomination. She was a team player who knew when to quit for the good of the party. She didn't go to his convention with a sour grapes attitude while encouraging her supporters to misbehave like unhappy children.
aikoaiko
(34,169 posts)Even for me -- someone who voted for her.
I know that may seem strange to someone like you, but I think it was a factor for enough people to be significant.
LexVegas
(6,059 posts)Gothmog
(145,147 posts)Perseus
(4,341 posts)1. Not calling, forcefully, republican lies.
The democrats want to be civil and politically correct, and I am not saying they should become as rude and low class as the others, but call out their lies, with a very decent attitude make a big deal out of their lies, create memes that neutralizes their lies. Stop calling a lie an "untruth", or a "false statement", or whatever politically correct adjective you can come up with, "a lie is a lie, as a duck is a duck". And don't stop there, show proof that the person lied, it is so easy, but do not let the lie become a meme that their non-thinking supporters will run with, we have plenty of examples of that.
2. If you know they are going to cheat during elections, why not use part of the budget to have spies and people to discover and unmask their cheating? Why wait until the last minute when you are going to have to fight with corrupt judges for a recount? This passive attitude is what screws democrats. The worst part is that even if the recount proves there was cheating, no one expects the outcome to be changed, which doesn't make sense, if someone cheats during a match on any sport, that person is immediately disqualified, the same should be in politics.
3. If the "Electoral College" does not do the right thing then that should be the nail in the coffin, there should be a fight to eliminate it and do as other democracies do, which is "popular vote winner" wins the presidency.
4. Start talking to the country in plain language, address the masses, make a big deal of the obstruction by the republicans, boast of your accomplishments.
5. Become more united. If there is anything the republicans do very well is that they are very united (some would say they are Lemmings), it is time that democrats start supporting each other more. I understand that being a liberal means that you are going to look at issues objectively and decide, based on your principles, what the best route is, but before a democrat goes out and disagrees with another democrat, talk in private and try to come out with a compromise that will allow that unity to exist.
6. Empower Trump supporters with positive actions, and proof of republican vile policies that affect us all, including them, let them understand why their allegiance should be with their country and not a political party...I know this may be the most difficult task, but we need to bring those supporters to our camp.
7. Improve education, don't allow the republicans to continue the dumbing down of the country. Refuse to support Charter Schools, they are a big scam, work to keep libraries updated with all kinds of literature, for them to provide learning centers for kids, etc.
8. Create incentives for people to start "Bookstores". I am of the belief that bookstores have not disappeared because of "electronic" books and yes, Amazon has something to do with it too, but it is mostly because people stop reading. I remember riding on the subway, and 30-40% of the people were reading a book, now 80% of the people are texting. I am convinced that it has been a concerted effort to eliminate culture because when the masses are dumb, it is very easy to control them, as we have seen from this election.
Anyway, that is it for now.
robbedvoter
(28,290 posts)
Madam45for2923
(7,178 posts) 
Bettie
(16,095 posts)Small population states have both disproportionate power and numbers of people with these views.
Even coupled with the propaganda/marketing campaign against Clinton, she still could have won.
But then, we have to add in voter suppression.
And she still could have won.
So, they had Comey drop his little bomb.
She still could have won, so they made sure that the count would not be accurate in critical states and there would be no chance of finding the real totals.
It has nothing to do with the message or really with Clinton. The "isms" and "phobias" won.
Hate won because white people in small population states apparently are also small and mean people. I say this as a resident of Iowa.
I can not look at my neighbors the same way, ever again. They are not decent people. They are bigots who chose destruction over inclusion.
gator108
(6 posts)we could have put forth a candidate that didn't have the kind of baggage Hillary had
right or wrong, Republicans have been aiming their sights at Hillary for 30 years now for this very moment
a candidate that wasn't so entrenched in the political establishment during a time of anti-establishment
a candidate who didn't stupidly go on a corporate speaking tour before she ran for president again, that included some of the biggest names who were responsible for bringing down the economy
not throwing a bone to the left with her VP pick
rtracey
(2,062 posts)I'll tell you where we went wrong. Heres where WE... went wrong
Not enough people/media came out against the allegations of Hillary being involved in Benghazi
Not enough people/media came out against the allegations of Hillary being involved in a cover up with the Email Server
Not enough people/media came out against the allegations of Hillary being involved in corruption involving the Clinton Global Init.
Not enough people/media came out against the allegations of Hillary being involved in Libya
Not enough people/media came out against the allegations of Hillary being involved in cheating the Haitians out of earthquake funds
Too many people/media came out to the Fuckump rallies
Too many people/media didn't give a shit about making fun of disabled people
Too many people/media didn't give a shit about making fun of Foreign workers and immigrants
Too many people/media didn't give a shit about making fun of the elderly
Too many people/media didn't give a shit about making fun of black people being killed by cops
Too many people/media didn't give a shit about making fun of the horrendous acts Fuckump did against women
Too many Bernie or bust/Stein supporters, white women, white men, just didnt give a shit about Clinton because she was a woman
Too many people didn't give a shit about voting at all...... you know who you are, well fuck you for that.
and THE MEDIA GAVE FUCKUMP FREE 100 MILLION DOLLAR MEDIA BLITZ....
So to these specific groups/people I say I hope the shit hits the fan on you big, big, big.... they are:
The Media, including MSNBC, FOX, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN all the rest, Scarborough, Miki, all the asshole on MSNBC, including Rachel Maddow, Tweety...Chris Matthews, et. al
everyone who voted for Fuckump, Stein, the other idiots, everyone who decided to sit this out, the asses who felt it was not important enough to vote for president, but choose down ballot candidates, the fucking Russians who hacked us, Comey for being somewhat traitorous, every politician who doesn't have balls enough to stand up to Fuckump, Dick McConnell (yes I know his name is Mitch), Dick Ryan (yes, I know his name is Paul....see where Im going with this?)..... et, al....
PassingFair
(22,434 posts)Deserved or not, too many unfavorable opinions about her from the get-go,
which she was unable to belie.
Sad.
PeaceNikki
(27,985 posts)PassingFair
(22,434 posts)The people who I know that either voted for Trump or didn't vote at all
tell me they did so because they hated Hillary.
A dem candidate with higher positives would have wiped the floor with him.
I voted for Hillary, by the way.
mcar
(42,307 posts)Who do we end up with then?
PassingFair
(22,434 posts)Instead of power-brokering from inside the beltway.
shawn703
(2,702 posts)I knew it going into the primary. The Presidential election has never been about who is most qualified to lead this country, just ask Gore and Kerry. Sadly, I think the way to go is to run a celebrity figurehead from now on and just surround them with highly qualified people. Jon Stewart anyone?
Gothmog
(145,147 posts)Hillary had the right message but was killed by the electoral college and a dishonest FBI chief who was successful in giving the election to trump
ihaveaquestion
(2,534 posts)I say this only from my own (limited) query of Trump voters in my office. Most are very nice people and they said they just couldn't vote for her. They found her unlikable and possibly corrupt. I don't think they especially liked Trump, but thought that he might be ok and at least he wasn't her. I obviously tried to change their minds, but they weren't really open to any argument.
I haven't read this entire thread, but I would guess that every reason given is likely to be MOL correct and if some or all of them had gone the other way, it could have made enough of a difference to change the outcome. Who knows at this point.
Just my 2 cents, for what it's worth.
- Keep Calm and Soldier On!
mcar
(42,307 posts)But we are supposed to kowtow to them?
Iggo
(47,551 posts)
0rganism
(23,944 posts)notwithstanding the other comments in OP and thread, i think this commentator makes some solid points:
her campaign messed up in some very important ways, had quite a few unforced errors
1. highlighted the very things people liked about Trump in attacks and neg. ads (he's rude and insensitive) instead of focusing on things like outsourcing which would have hurt him
2. underestimated malice towards "free trade" deals, foreign wars and the "political establishment"
3. underemphasizing infrastructure (yes, it's true), telling WV coal workers she was going to end their jobs
4. "I'm with her" was a weak campaign slogan
5. she carried, deservedly or not, the taint of corruption which made her an easy target for Trump's campaign, and came off as an "establishment insider"
and (as has become all-too-apparent by now)
6. the Trump campaign was not nearly as incompetent as we assumed they were
and/or maybe
7. she ran a textbook campaign in an era where that's no longer appropriate
i could go on but the guy in the video says it more eloquently than i could
StevieM
(10,500 posts)He even attacked the Clinton Foundation, a remarkable institution for good around the world.
0rganism
(23,944 posts)on the other, it reads like you might be missing some forest through the trees
i would agree that the corruption section of the video is both weak and weakly supported, but this is, in a sense, why it becomes a real problem: it is the "common" view of HRC. this commentator is no Trump fan, and takes a progressive viewpoint on the vast majority of issues. he even notes in the video itself that some of the "common" perception of HRC is rooted in falsehoods, and then, as you observed, goes on to push those additional falsehoods.
part of running a successful political campaign is "managing perceptions", especially of the candidate. the Clinton campaign by-and-large failed to manage perceptions. one could argue that with 30 years of Republican smears on her, managing perceptions is a very difficult job, and, sadly, that is a big part of why we're in this situation, having this discussion in this thread. for whatever reasons, a lot of those GOP lies stuck, and are now what is often referred to as "baggage".
you can explain to people until you run out of air that HRC is clean on all counts and the things said about her and various associated organizations are complete and utter bullshit. however, as noted in the video, people tend to assume that where there's smoke there's fire, which complicates the process of getting someone to reflect upon and change their commonly held opinion about HRC's actual degree of corruption (especially relative to her opponent). having Trump daily referring to her in stump speeches as "crooked Hillary" with no coherent and consistently-repeated rebuttal from the Clinton campaign actually reinforced that idea. her campaign allowed her to be branded as corrupt without tagging Trump as such, when he is actually the source of the very kind of corruption the people who voted for him would claim to deplore.
a lot of the negative campaigning i saw from the Trump campaign was closely tied to acceptance of the premise that HRC is a corrupt establishment insider (aka branding). that such a concept could be applied as a premise rather than a conclusion is indicative of her weakness as a candidate. there were many other factors, but like it or not, that narrative played a role.
StevieM
(10,500 posts)I was wrong to have done so and I am glad that the alert did not result in a hide.
I felt that HRC ran a good campaign, one that would have produced victory by a decent margin, and carried in a Democratic Senate, had it not been for the Comey letter.
She was up against a lot in this campaign, not the least of which was the drip-drip-drip from the Russian hackers.
At the end of the day, the fake email scandal was the most successful fake scandal in American history. It metastasized and completely redefined her. She was extremely popular a few years ago.
I think you may be overestimating how easily she could fight it off. It is hard to convince people that every Republican in the country is lying about everything they have said for two years. I also think that she didn't want to respond in too partisan of a manner because part of her strategy was to win a decent share of the Republican vote. I think that the internal polling indicated that it was working until the final week of the campaign when the Comey letter hit her like a hammer.
The lesson to be learned here is to recognize the limits of our efforts to be non-partisan. That goes double for Barack Obama's decision to appoint Comey to begin with.
0rganism
(23,944 posts)i'm also glad that there wasn't a hide, as i do think the video illustrates important points, some of them above & beyond what the commentator is saying, plus we get to continue the conversation in-context.
i think -- and this suffers from all the usual shortcomings of "counterfactual hypotheses" -- the Comey letter's effects would have been much less significant had there not already been a dominant notion in the zeitgeist that HRC was corrupt. whatever her campaign's reasons for not intercepting this concept head-on, in the long run it did hurt her with middle-America. maybe there was even a sub-text of "if she won't fight to defend her own honor, how can i trust her to fight for mine?" i don't know anything about that, but it seems plausible.
now i don't know if she or her campaign could have done anything to challenge completely this common idea, but by doing nothing about it they accepted a hostile branding that led to further damage. at the very least, it does seem she could have been more aggressive in pointing out just how corrupt Trump is. instead, by letting this slide, her campaign allowed Trump to burnish his false image as a force of integrity -- she and her surrogates said he was going low, when in fact he was grabbing the high ground every time he called her "crooked" and hollered about corruption in government.
there are dozens of lessons to be learned here, and i can only hope we have a free and fair elections in 2018 and 2020 in which such learning can be successfully applied. the idea that false bi-partisan comity will lead to future victories is, as you observe, a pitfall we can ill afford.
BlancheSplanchnik
(20,219 posts)Again.
I want something to happen that we can all be happy about!
Except repukes---I want whatever upsets them.
Ghost OF Trotsky
(61 posts)Terrible campaign.
Yes, the EC sucks. *BUT* Trump's people focused their efforts on winning the EC. It would be like if you and I played chess. You whup me, checkmate in 10 moves. And then I complain that I still had more pieces on the board. Well, if (assuming you are smarter and a better player than I, entirely plausible) you and I had decided that number of pieces left at some point was the criteria for victory you would have played differently, right?
I strongly supported her, indeed I got called a 'racist' because I supported her in 2008 in the primaries. BUT she didn't get out and do enough speech were the people were, she didn't focus on the places that Trump did.
Her staff let her down.
Just my .02
quaker bill
(8,224 posts)After the primaries, I supported Hillary with contributions and my vote. You mention a lot of good and normally useful things.
Here is where we went "wrong".
Donald obviously did not run on policy, so policy was pretty close to useless. In fact it was barely used by either side, she was all about disqualifying him. Fair enough as he is clearly, and more clearly every day, not qualified.
He on the other hand ran on "crooked Hillary" and the "rigged system". If you listened to his rallies, nearly all of his time on stage was spent on this message, every time. "Crooked Hillary", "rigged system" and "Bernie never had a chance".
During the Dem convention, the DWS emails came out, and regardless of who hacked them and for what purpose, they showed a "rigged system" and it was "rigged" to favor Hillary. Game, set, match.
It fed his favored narrative in a "Huuuge" way. The rest of the cr*p is just a distraction, this evidence of a rigged system set up to favor Hillary won him the election.
Yes, Hillary won California by 4 million votes, but this also means that she lost the entire rest of the country by about 2 million votes net. Doesn't sound quite so good looked at that way, but it is accurate math.
Response to NanceGreggs (Original post)
Name removed Message auto-removed
Ghost OF Trotsky
(61 posts)I have seen analyses that the appearance of chaos and tanking in his campaign were either crafted, or at least encouraged, including his acting like he had given up for a brief time. In actuality his son in law ran a brilliant operation using not just state of the art but genuinely innovative research methods to target dollars and ads exactly where the electoral votes could be snagged.
If you can stomach the link, a good analysis from a strictly operational viewpoint is here:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenbertoni/2016/11/22/exclusive-interview-how-jared-kushner-won-trump-the-white-house/#69c51e602f50 Say what one will about the men or the political platform, Trump achieved exactly one of the things Sun-Tzu encouraged (if one could not win without fighting at al)- to be so woefully underestimated that your enemy stops worrying about you....
as always, appreciate your posts and thought provoking writing.
Dems to Win
(2,161 posts)Trumps non-PC comments helped him because they diverted Hillary from talking about jobs
(cut and paste the link)
https://medium.com/@jesseleburke/how-trump-won-or-how-hillary-lost-aa6dfbcd4b8b#.23sl1oh2k
snip...
Consider — if you believe the preceding arguments about the vast majority of his voters (enough of the general pop to win) prioritizing economic security and justice over social issues, it stands to reason that the best strategy to ensure/expand the size and loyalty of that group would be to ensure that Hillary never gets their ear. So, if I (Trump) want her to stay off the topic of economic security and justice, my strategy is:
1. First position social issues as the misguided (in that they’re not thinking about us and our survival) obsession of the out-of-touch elite who care about me not at all
2. Second, ensure then that she only talks about those very elitist social issues (thereby, creating the cognitive association of her as elite and not for them).
more at link
Ghost OF Trotsky
(61 posts)And for the next four years, I fear, people will still be underestimating him.
Same principle as Mussolini, just because he *PLAYS* an ignorant buffoon on TV, and the fact that many of his followers are unintelligent, racist and misogynist, doesn't mean HE is.
He is perfectly willing to hire, to use (an all senses of the word) a woman and/or a person of color, if they are the right person for the job.
And dispose of them like so much trash afterwords.
This is not an intelligent person. He is quite willing for the opposition to think that he doesn't know what he is doing, but he IS savvy at using people and appearing to be doing one thing while actually doing another.
jalan48
(13,860 posts)
Yurovsky
(2,064 posts)meanwhile, HRC went to Arizona (a state they were unlikely to win, and didn't) 10 days before the election. She didn't have to camp out in the Midwest, but she took it for granted and lost 3 close states (WI, MI, & PA) that would have made her POTUS. Even Bill Clinton tried to convince her braintrust (specifically Robby Mook) to sew up her support in the Midwest, but there was no telling these self-absorbed know-it-alls on her staff a goddamn thing...
Hubris begets nemesis...
NanceGreggs
(27,813 posts)The "she didn't campaign enough in my state" is a bullshit excuse.
Hillary's positions and policies were readily available to those who were interested. The debates were broadcast in all states, not just the states where she campaigned.
The differences between Hillary and Trump were clear-cut.
I live in Toronto, Canada. Hillary obviously didn't campaign here. And yet I was fully able to access her website, the transcripts of her speeches, and compare her policies to Trump's. As a result, I voted for Hillary.
If people decided to vote Trump as opposed to HRC based on who showed up in their state and who didn't, it's obvious that they were more interested in "appearances" than what the candidates stood for.
I have zero sympathy for those who voted based on who campaigned in their state as opposed to who campaigned with THEIR best interests in mind.
I'm sure the people of WI, MI and PA have internet access, along with TV stations that carried the debates. If they were too stupid to access that information, that's too bad. I'm sure they'll they'll have plenty of time over the next four years to whine that they had absolutely NO WAY of knowing what HRC stands for, because she didn't personally show up on their doorstep to explain it to them.
Yurovsky
(2,064 posts)whether or not you access the information is irrelevant. And whether Midwest voters did or didn't doesn't alter the fact that her campaign didn't bother to make campaign stops in states where it would have made a difference. And if campaign stops didn't make a difference, candidates wouldn't do them at all. But they do. And when they don't, it can hurt their chances.
Hindsight is 20/20, but the need to get HRC in front of Midwest voters was discussed and rejected. Perhaps you're so adamant that I'm wrong because you know, much like Bill Clinton, that she could've won by simply tending her political garden. But instead, Robby Mook thought they'd run up the score, try and take the battle into solid Red States. Epic failure.
NanceGreggs
(27,813 posts).. about the positions and policies of any candidate is not irrelevant. In this day and age, failing to do so is willful ignorance.
The epic fail here is voters who looked at Trump, the "King of all outsources", and believed that he was interested in keeping their jobs states-side. The epic fail here is voters who heard Trump talk about grabbing pussies, and still considered him a "moral Christian chosen by God to lead the nation". The epic fail here is voters who heard Trump say he'd deport illegals, and thought that meant that six-figure job would now be theirs, now that a rapist Mexican would no longer "steal" that job out from under them.
The epic fail here is voters too dumb to realize that a billionaire living in a gilt-laden palace was NOT the champion of the out-of-work coal miner, nor the minimum wage worker, nor the dupe who invested their savings in being educated at "Trump University".
They chose to ignore the obvious. That's not HRC's fault, or the fault of the Democratic party. That's the fault of people too fuckin' stupid to avail themselves of information that is literally at their fingertips.
I have ZERO sympathy for people who ignored what HRC and the Dems stand for, and voted against their policies because "she didn't show up in my state".
Vote in haste - repent in leisure. And a LOT of voters will now have four years - as they lose their healthcare, their jobs, their homes and their savings - to repent having voted against their own interests because Hillary campaigning in their neighbourhood was more important than what she stood for.
Jamaal510
(10,893 posts)
Orsino
(37,428 posts)They hid it in a black box, and paid people to lie to us 24/7 about who we should "vote" for, about who "won," and why.
I'm pretty sure it's still possible to win elections, but it looks like it won't be for much longer.
DemonGoddess
(4,640 posts)Particularly like your close, Nance!
The people have spoken. They chose HRC as their next president. And THAT is something some people simply choose to ignore, because it renders the “we had the WRONG candidate” narrative to be totally without merit, and reeking of wanting to say “I told you so” being far more important than anything else – including the welfare of their fellow citizens.
mtnsnake
(22,236 posts)I know, I know, we won the popular vote. You've set it umpteen times. Trouble is, popular vote doesn't mean diddly when it comes to the general election. We knew that going into it, and until they scrap the antiquated electoral college system, we will just have to play the electoral college game, and play it better than we did in 2016,or lose again if we don't. There isn't a person here who wouldn't love to see the electoral college go by the way of the junk pile, but until it does, we better learn to game it better or we could end up with two terms of Trump instead of one.
NanceGreggs
(27,813 posts)The purpose of the OP is to point out that by every measure, HRC's policies were superior to Trump's - and I'm tired of hearing how "wrong" the Democratic message is or was.
The reason I bring up the EC is an obvious one: By winning the popular vote - and by a huge margin - the argument of the "wrong candidate, wrong message" doesn't hold water. If everything was so "wrong", why did the majority of voters respond to it?
Despite literally dozens of other factors having played a part in this election - from fake news, to Comey, to Russian interference - the thing that directly resulted in our loss was the EC.
I realize that some people really didn't want HRC to win, and they've been trying desperately to place blame on Hillary, the Democratic Party, and our terrible "message" (or lack thereof). But it's rather ridiculous to keep claiming that our message didn't resonate with the populace when it's obvious that it did.
mtnsnake
(22,236 posts)Right?
NanceGreggs
(27,813 posts)... says exactly what I just reiterated.
The majority of voters responded positively to what is now being called the "wrong message" delivered by the "wrong candidate". The only thing that kept HRC from being the next POTUS is the EC.
mtnsnake
(22,236 posts)in your previous post, you are blaming the electoral college.
Like I said earlier, we are stuck with the EC. We knew it going in. It would be a heck of a lot more constructive to approach the next election by reflecting on what we did wrong in terms of winning at the electoral college system, rather than blaming the EC for our loss while saying we did everything right.
If we did everything right, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
NanceGreggs
(27,813 posts)... that were it not for the EC, Hillary would be POTUS!!!!! I think I made that abundantly clear.
What I reacted to was your statement that I had "conveniently blamed" the EC. It has nothing to do with "convenience" - it's a fact that the ONLY thing between an HRC win and a loss WAS the electoral college system.
Are you suggesting there is something else that caused the candidate with the majority of votes to lose this election?
mtnsnake
(22,236 posts)You blamed our loss on the electoral college. Fine, I'm glad we have that out of our way, because there's nothing unusual about being upset about the electoral college. I think it sucks, too. However, you also seem to suggest that we did everything right and we have nothing to blame but the EC itself. If we did everything right, we wouldn't have lost because of the electoral college.
NanceGreggs
(27,813 posts)... to have won the majority of votes. Some people just persist in ignoring that fact.
"Everything" right? No politician in history has ever done "everything" right. This board has been full of posts claiming that the Dems have "abandoned" the middle-class worker, are "too establishment", "too close" to Wall Street, "too friendly" with corporations and the monied class.
And yet HRC's campaign, and the Dem Party at large, have always fought for the working man, for unions, for small businesses - as well as fighting for the rights of minorities, GLBTers, and fighting to keep safety nets in place for those who need them to survive.
The GOP message, on the other hand, has always been the dimunition of rights, serving the wants of corporations and the wealthy over the needs of the middle-class, dismantling safety nets, etc.
That's why I take issue with the "wrong message" meme.
Who we "lost" as potential voters were people who insist that unemployment soared under Obama, that 9/11 and Katrina happened while Obama was president, who think illegals are stealing six-figure-a-year jobs out from under them, who think GBLTers should be imprisoned for causing moral decay, who think education is for "elitists", who think science is the work of the devil.
We "lost" people who think being white makes them superior, that Mexicans are rapists and Muslims are terrorists; people who believe that women need to be subjugated and have no say where their own bodies are concerned, who believe that the Bible should take precedence over proven science, who believe that those pesky blacks and conniving Jews are ruining their chances of ever getting ahead.
There was nothing "wrong" with HRC's message, or the message of the Democratic Party. What's "wrong" here is that a large swath of the nation is too stupid to listen to ANY message that doesn't confirm their belief that by keeping "certain people" down, they will prosper. You can confront these people with facts, stats, pie-charts, graphs - whatever. They just shake their heads and say, "No, you've got it wrong. If Obama hadn't been away on one of his endless vacations, we wouldn't have been attacked on 9/11."
What's the answer? Damned if I know. How do you get your message through to people who have their fingers in their ears, or simply turn-up the TV volume so FOX-News drowns out what you're saying? How do you sell the message "we're on YOUR side" to people who think a billionaire who outsources US jobs to low-wage countries is somehow the champion of those unemployed because their jobs were outsourced?
We don't have the "wrong message". We didn't run the "wrong candidate". What we're up against is stupid, oh-so-proudly ill-informed people who get their "facts" from Rush Limbaugh et al, and are willing to vote against their own self interests if the Republican lies are big enough, and the GOP's "message" coddles their utter stupidity.
So what do we do from here? Dumb down the Democratic Party? Appeal to the bigots, the racists, the woefully ignorant, and tell them how right they are? Play to the dumber-than-dumb who, according to the EC rules, live in the "right states" where their votes have more weight than the millions who live in the "wrong" states?
You tell me.
mtnsnake
(22,236 posts)Sure we won the popular vote, but come on, for so many of the independents, moderate republicans, and even some Democrats who voted for Hillary, they said they did so because to them she was the lesser of two evils. Not evil to us, but to THEM. Did I vote for Hillary because I thought she was the lesser of two evils? Absolutely not. I voted for her because I thought she would make a good president, but I also thought she was too flawed in other peoples' minds to win in 2016, until Trump came along, and then I thought she would have a chance. Unfortunately the damage that was done to Hillary over the course of the last few decades, courtesy of the right wing think tanks, had taken so much of a toll on her that it was pretty much irreversible in the minds of a few too many voters.
Do I think Hillary sent the right message? Of course I do, but unfortunately there were too many people who had already made their minds up about her long before the election even began, and nothing was going to change that.
Do I think we should dumb down Democratic Party? Appeal to the types of people you stated in your last paragraph of your last post? Why would you even ask me that? I don't think the Democratic Party should be dumbed down. On the contrary, I think it needs some smartening up, smartening up as in a common sense manner. Like a common sense approach to reaching out to those people on the other side of the fence instead of painting them as if all of them are as evil as Trump himself. If we don't figure out how to reach those people, then we aren't going to win. We need go go after a significant number of the ones on the other side, otherwise the electoral college will continue to get the best of us.
NanceGreggs
(27,813 posts)What do YOU think the options here are?
Do we alter our "message" to lure those who refuse to hear it? And just how far do we go in order to get their votes?
Do we refuse to run candidates, despite their know-how and experience, because "the other side" doesn't like them? Do we choose candidates who will appeal to the stupid, instead of those who appeal to the well-informed?
There is no "common sense manner" of doing things when it has no allure among people who don't possess common sense. Straight talk and honesty have no sway among people who honestly believe that Obama was in office on 9/11. Facts can gain no purchase among people who think FOX-News IS giving them the facts, and everything else is "liberal lies".
I am not painting such people as "evil" - I am simply stating the fact that you can't fight the Stupid, a demographic that Republicans have nurtured, catered-to, and relied on for decades.
If you have the answer, I'd love to hear it.
mtnsnake
(22,236 posts)Okay, we've gotten off on a little tangent here, but for the last time, I think we need to reach out to them with a more common sense approach, meaning getting to know them better so we can understand them better. Once we get to know them better, we'll find out that they're not all that different from us, despite the way you have them pegged. I've lived among and worked with the people you are describing, and most of them are nothing like the way you describe. The last thing I would do is ignore them or write them off as a lost cause.
NanceGreggs
(27,813 posts)... or no answer that is workable.
"Reaching out" to people who have access to the truth, but still refuse to believe anything that doesn't come from the mouths of Limbaugh and Alex Jones IS a lost cause.
If you can't "prove" to such people that Obama wasn't in office on 9/11, you're not going to convince them of anything.
mtnsnake
(22,236 posts)Nice try at changing the subject from the fact that you will never admit that we did anything wrong in this campaign. Have a good night, though!
NanceGreggs
(27,813 posts)... "let's reach out to the other side" - with absolutely NO ideas as to how that is to be accomplished.
dubyadiprecession
(5,707 posts)vi5
(13,305 posts)1) Not raising hell every time Obama tried to please Republicans and beltway insiders, in particular when he appointed that asshole Comey (obviously).
2) Making assumptions that HRC would win former "swing states" that Obama had won, and instead putting resources in either solidly blue states (like NJ where I live which saw countless ads on tv as well as shit tons of canvassing, calls, etc.) or unwinnable red states like Iowa and Utah.
Obviously based on the popular vote our message was just fine. We were just spreading it in the wrong places.
jzodda
(2,124 posts)Last edited Tue Dec 13, 2016, 09:50 PM - Edit history (1)
But with Russia interfering in the process
With the proliferation of fake news
With trump lying every day and never backing down
With winning the popular vote by millions of votes
By losing Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan by 70000 total votes.
I honestly don't believe there is much we could have done.
How do you reach people who listen, watch and read fake news and listen to a lier who lies to them every day.? I'm at a loss and am scared that Republicans have fond a winning strategy. Just lie and win with that.
derby378
(30,252 posts)We lost.
And you have no idea how much that galls me.
We got the popular vote, but Agent Orange got the Electoral College. What is this nation coming to?
Act_of_Reparation
(9,116 posts)But, right or wrong, it doesn't. We can talk about changing the rules of the game, but in the meantime our candidates have to win within the parameters as they exist.
NanceGreggs
(27,813 posts)... what the narrative would be had Bernie been the candidate, and he'd won the popular vote but not the EC.
I've no doubt it would be a very different discussion.
Act_of_Reparation
(9,116 posts)Last edited Thu Dec 15, 2016, 12:31 PM - Edit history (1)
The sides would change, but the arguments would remain the same. Which is why I'm not especially interested in arguments made by people who treat politicians like Tiger Beat cover boys.
We don't know if Bernie would have been successful at the national level and because there's no way to find out, there's little point speculating on the matter. What we do know is this: in order to win the White House you need to win the Electoral College, and to win the Electoral College you need to win simple majorities in several key states. I know this, you know this, and there's no doubt Hillary Clinton knew this. And if winning the Electoral College was her campaign's goal -- which it goddamned well should have been -- then it is clear that her campaign's strategy did not work. And that is where things went wrong.
ZoomBubba
(289 posts)... if she was the right one, she would have been able to win Pennsylvania, Florida and Wisconsin like Obama did in 2012. Also keep in mind that she won the most votes, but did not win a majority. If we had a runoff vote between her and Trump, I'm still not sure she would have won.
Don't get me wrong, I voted for her in the primary and in general election. But even then, I figured Trump was the only Republican candidate she would be able to beat in a general election. Guess I was wrong.
I think it's time for her to go away. That era is over for us now and we don't need to be bogged down with coming to the defense of the Clintons for another four years. We have a clean slate and we should take advantage of that before 2020.
NanceGreggs
(27,813 posts)... some people are concerned, if she'd won 98% of the popular vote, they'd claim that the 2% she lost is proof that she was "the wrong candidate".
ZoomBubba
(289 posts)... but I would've rather had Biden or someone younger with less baggage. I had a feeling Hillary was going to lose, and that isn't good going in. Sanders would've lost worse, so wasn't a real alternative ... plus he was a socialist crank and not a Democrat.
