November 17, 2016

The institutions carried her water hard and now look silly.

I do NOT see media bias everywhere. But when WaPO went nuts with the anti-Sanders smears, and then MSNBC started pretending there was only one "serious" candidate, it was impossible not to see things that way. Joy Reid actually got on Twitter and started calling everyone a communist -- like SOVIET communist -- because apparently she thinks that's still a thing. Like a crazy person with no connection to actual facts or history. Sanders, the Green Party, Edward Snowden, Putin and Trump. All the same somehow, and all Commieeees aaaaaghh!!

They lost their collective minds for a while there. I remember Rachel Maddow, one of the smartest people I have seen doing political commentary on television, making a childish frowny face when Sanders won some surprise state -- one of the ones Clinton later lost.

"Doesn't matter ... she'll still split the state and blah and blah and blah." This while even other members of the MSNBC panel were remarking on how interesting Sanders' success in the lately-Democratic rust-belt states was ...

When they weren't slagging down or ignoring Sanders, they were running Trump's full speeches, commercial free, in a freaking WINDOW while the rest of the shows went on.

Then they talked themselves into the election being a foregone conclusion. They suffered from the same disease Clinton and her people did -- the idea that important people in New York and on television decide way ahead of time how things are going to be, then let us all in on it eventually.

They fooled themselves. Fooled us. Fooled the country. Now they're trying to explain why that happened, without admitting they just hopped in the tank and faked it.

The Masters of the Universe are full of shit.

November 16, 2016

We lost because our candidate didn't command enough votes.

It wasn't Comey. It wasn't sexism, or racism, or Jill Stein. Trump got fewer votes than McCain or Romney. We would have lost in 2008 and 2012 with this candidate, who carried baggage from a 30-year political career, who avoided reaching out to the people most in need in this country, who answered "Hope and Change" and "Yes we can" with "Eh, Wall Street's cool" and "No we can't."

Clinton might have worked in a world not this divided. In an economy that had fully recovered. In some imaginary America where a business-friendly technocrat who eventually came around on social issues like marriage equality was marginally more likable than an anthropomorphized middle finger to everything.

It's not everyone's else's fault. It's not anyone else's fault. A strong candidate would have won, and we picked a weak one. "It's her turn, and "I'm not as bad as that guy" turned out not to be a compelling platform.

Next time let's stand for something. That might help.

November 16, 2016

Blue Dogs / Neolibs / "center left" Dems / DON'T KNOW HOW TO WIN ELECTIONS.

I think that's a, if not THE, big takeaway here.

- Conservative Dems are not "more pragmatic."

- Neoliberals don't know "how things work." Unless you mean how certain people get PAID, which is not the point of elections, or shouldn't be.

- Social Democratic ideas, like nationwide healthcare or education, aren't unworkable "pie in the sky." They're things people need, and that other people in the world have, not drug-induced fairy tales.

- Telegraphing that big business and Wall Street are really okay, and can keep doing what they're doing, does not help.

- In short, the things the self-styled masters of the universe -- the donors and big business interests -- DO NOT KNOW WHAT THE HELL THEY ARE DOING.

So let's not have so much of that going forward. It's nonsense. We won with a guy the country thought was a wild-eyed liberal, even though he wasn't. We lost with "center left" (read: center-right, except for social issues, kind of) candidate, against the worst competition in history.

Enough. We need to stand for something the other side doesn't. Not the same thing with less racism and sexism.

November 16, 2016

Not enough in the states Sanders won.

Clinton ignored or presumed she would win the rust belt states. She got hammered in all of them.

You can't win the Presidency appealing to just the people predisposed to support you. The Clinton campaign didn't bother to speak to the people hurting the most. She thought -- along with most of us -- that Trump was simply too terrible to win.

She did a bad job. She was a bad candidate. The fault is not with the "basket of deplorables" or with sexism or racism or Jill Stein.

She wasn't good enough.

November 16, 2016

No one ever had Clinton beating Trump like Sanders.

Sanders had a 10-point cushion to her max of what, four?

If you don't understand the ham sandwich reference, it comes from the joke that a prosecutor can indict anyone with a grand jury, or even "a ham sandwich." It was turned into a joke that anyone could beat Trump.

Anyone, it appears, besides Hillary Clinton.

November 16, 2016

Disapproval was one index of Clinton's unelectability.

The premise that her unpopularity didn't matter kind of falls apart given her crushing defeat. Obviously hers mattered more than Trump's.

I get that people would like for her ignominious failure to be for some other reason than her unsuitability as a candidate.

But the fact that she lost to another bad candidate only proves she was even less electable than Donald J. Trump.

There's no weaseling around that fact.

November 16, 2016

"Ultra progressives" didn't nominate Hillary Clinton.

The candidate who couldn't beat a guy that didn't get as many votes as McCain or Romney.

http://www.inquisitr.com/3704461/hillary-voters-owe-it-to-america-to-stop-calling-everyone-a-nazi-and-start-reading-wikileaks/

That would be the feckless "Democrats for corporations" "center left." They got their candidate, and she couldn't beat a racist conman with a dead ferret on his head.

Time for progressive-hating Dems to own this one. Jill Stein didn't beat Hillary. She just wasn't good enough.

November 16, 2016

Myth #1: It was everybody's fault but Hillary's.

http://www.inquisitr.com/3704461/hillary-voters-owe-it-to-america-to-stop-calling-everyone-a-nazi-and-start-reading-wikileaks/

November 16, 2016

Polls, not predictions.

Sanders was the stronger candidate vs. Trump, by a wide margin, in every poll.

Time to admit what a lot of people said all along: Clinton was unelectable. Trump got fewer votes than anyone who ran against Obama, and she still couldn't generate enough enthusiam.

All the institutional support and money was worth exactly nothing.

All the carping about "pie in the sky" "pipe dream" goals of progressives was baloney. Lofty goals are exactly what people vote for in presidential elections. "No we can't" was a cynical approach.

The fake, slightly obscene suggestion that black people would never vote for Sanders for some murky reason was a lie.

It wasn't Jill Stein's fault.

It wasn't because there are a zillion "racists" dying to vote for Trump.

Hillary Clinton was UNELECTABLE.