"They fucking ignored us on all these battleground states... we were sounding the alarm for months,... We kept saying to each other like, 'What the fuck, why are they just blowing us off? They need these voters more than anybody.'"
Said Nomiki Konst, interviewed by The Daily Beast, which describes her as "a progressive activist and former Sanders surrogate who served on the 2016 Democratic National Committee platform committee."
“Once we were at the convention, Bernie people were on the ground—we could feel it, people were pissed off, there with their pitchforks ready to fight,” Konst recalled. “But before the convention, after the platform committee meeting that I was on, Bernie surrogates were talking constantly, saying, ‘Oh my god, Hillary is going to lose if she doesn’t address TPP and [free] trade and [all these] other issues. We were looking at the polling and thought that if these people stay home, she’ll lose.”...
“We were painting them a dire picture, and I couldn’t help but think they literally looked like they had no idea what was going on here,” she continued. “I remember their faces, it was like they had never fucking heard this stuff before. It’s what we had been screaming for the past 9 months… It’s like [they] forgot the basics of Politics 101.”
There's also this from Jane Kleeb, Nebraska Democratic Party chair:
“We not only screamed about this, we wrote memos, we begged,” Jane Kleeb, Nebraska Democratic Party chair and another Sanders booster who was at the DNC meeting, said. “I spent a good chunk of time writing memos about how [Bernie’s surrogates] could be utilized on the campaign trail, about ‘issue voters,’ about the environment, Black Lives Matter, Dakota Access Pipeline, rogue cops, you name it… I was [also] talking specifically about rural communities, and how [Hillary] completely ignored and abandoned anything that we cared about.”...
“The Clinton campaign believed they had the strongest and brightest people in the room… and they had no concept of why people would choose Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton,” Kleeb continued. “They mocked us, they made fun of us. They always had a… model that was supposed to save the day. We were street activists and they don’t get that. And that’s a fundamental divide. They ran a check-the-box, sanitized campaign. And voters don’t think like that. You don’t win elections that way.”
It's hard to picture a forthrightly left-wing campaign winning, so I'm not surprised these people were blown off. But it's also hard to picture Trump winning, even after he's won. How did that happen? It happened! Adjust to reality from there. It's hard to build on a foundation that feels like nonsense, but clinging to the old illusion of reality has got to be a mistake. Or maybe it will work to stand back and wait for the inherent limitations of Trumpism to reveal themselves.
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I think Bernie could have beaten Trump. For all his nutty ideas, Sanders would have split the "hate the system" vote while taking the reliable Democrat vote. The Clinton nomination took that scenario out of the mix. The never Trump protest vote didn't matter because Trump had the system protest vote all to himself.
It’s what we had been screaming for the past 9 months… We not only screamed about this, we wrote memos, we begged...
Screaming.
That's why even Bernie would have bought it against Trump. Too many screamers on the Left. Not enough Spartans.
So 'ground game' really was important. Who knew? Only the people on the ground. But the definition in the dem playbook is wrong. It isn't a bus service that takes people to vote. It's an ear to the ground listening ...
Living in Nebraska I am familiar with Jane Kleeb. I am of the opinion that she is delusional. Her big issue is pipelines. Keystone XL was blocked in NE because the Governor passed a bill in a special session and it was found to be unconstitutional by the NE Supreme Court. And correctly so. Trump won 65% of the vote in NE.
Pipelines, global warming, BLM were not going to win for Hillary.
You never got to see Bernie attacked. Hillary held back and chose to defeat him by waiting for a seemingly natural process to play out and by cheatingly colluding with the DNC.
You never saw Trump go after Bernie. Trump defeated 17 opponents with his wacky new approach. What would he have done to Bernie? You can't predict! It's no use imagining. We don't know what he would have done. We don't understand Trump. It's too hard! Which is one reason I don't believe the Russians or any other antagonist of the US wanted Trump to win.
Utterly delusional, to believe that even more activism on behalf of Black Lives Matter, against pipelines, etc., would have procured Hillary some rural white working-class votes. It probably would have produced a net loss of moderate suburban voters.
Ann Althouse wrote, "You can't predict! It's no use imagining. We don't know what he would have done. We don't understand Trump. It's too hard!"
I recall that Kissinger had Nixon adopt a "crazy Nixon" strategy in foreign relations.
Something about defeat always being an orphan--sure, the Bernies think an unabashedly left wing version of Hillary would have pulled it off, or doing more campaigning--but she did try to drift to the left, abandoning her support for TPP and coming out for higher minimum wages. The problem is she had no authenticity for those policies, she was part of the "in" group for a long time and could not pull off being an outsider, and ultimately was just a weak and hobbled politician. The Dems took a big risk nominating her this year, and very nearly pulled it off (a hundred thousand votes over three states going the other way and we'd be reading stories of how big a risk the GOP took, and how the Clintons pulled it off), but we shouldn't ignore just how unpalatable Clinton was. Going more to the left would not have saved the day. Picking someone who wasn't Hillary might have done it.
And while it's possible Bernie would have won, that's not a sure thing--he was an unabashed socialist and surely a lot of Hillary's ultimate voters in the middle would have been repelled by that. The bigger mistake for the Dems is not having a more broad spectrum of candidates to choose from to see how they might react to attacks and hone their appeal. Instead, they went with a botched coronation.
"I recall that Kissinger had Nixon adopt a "crazy Nixon" strategy in foreign relations."
Oh! Thanks for reminding me. My comment was influenced by something I heard Kissinger say on one of the Sunday shows. I'm going to do a separate post about that.
I'm not so certain that Trump's approach was "new". Wacky maybe, but not new. Think Huey P. Long and other populists.
Two close friends are thoroughly conventional urban California lawyers. One was a Bernie guy--understandable since he is from New York, and his Dad was a long time NPR show producer. The other is a devout Catholic, product of a Catholic university and Catholic law school. Trump is, or at least on the campaign trail was, vulgar--and offensive to him (and of course the offensive part at least was true as to all of liberal Los Angeles).
Neither one sensed, or understood, the popular anger out there amongst the deplorables out there in flyover country, or in inland California. In Robert Heinlein's Stranger In A Strange Land terms, they simply could not grok it.
So, along with Team Hillary, they were surprised on November 8. I will give the two of them this--they did not go out and riot in the streets afterwards. But they are deeply wounded. This--in their worldview--was simply not supposed to happen.
Clinton and her team were unbelievably arrogant. The epitome of the haughty spirit
Hillary didn't have to "defeat" Bernie. The superdelegates were going to defeat Bernie, and there wasn't anything that he could have done about it.
The Democratic Party learned nothing from the fall of Marie Antoinette......
Anybody remember Hillary was obviously an old burned out and over the hill crone. It was past too late to give her her turn.
Bernie was older and slower, although he had one big idea which was income disparity between Wall Street and the hurting voters who responded to it.
Meanwhile the Trump energy level using a P T Barnum campaign strategy on free TV was unstoppable no matter what Bernie,the national Media, and the GOP tried to do to derail him with orchestrated slander.
Maybe the screaming puts people off--even Progressives.
"The other is a devout Catholic, product of a Catholic university and Catholic law school."
It's startling to me how easily "devoutly Catholic" Democrats can overlook the Dems' absolutist position on abortion and the Obama administration's persecution of the Little Sisters of the Poor. A nebulous concept of "social justice" and amnesty are apparently more important. It's a view I find extremely short-sighted.
Have you noticed the progressives love to use the word fu*k. Now that is a sign of progress. Onward and upward.
Oh I see it now, the problem with Hillary was her message. Uh...no. She ran as the inevitable winner, who would sanely predict otherwise? until she became the obvious loser. We knew it would happen! Oh, yes, of course we did.
All this reporting about how the flaws in her campaign were seen by some and warned about by others (including Bill Clinton himself apparently), it's hindsight bias and not any more helpful to the Democrats now than believing before the election that if Hillary ran against Trump she would win because he would beat himself. Yeah...not so much.
"It's startling to me how easily "devoutly Catholic" Democrats can overlook the Dems' absolutist position on abortion and the Obama administration's persecution of the Little Sisters of the Poor."
Mystifies me also. I always thought devoutCatholic was one word.
They ran a check-the-box, sanitized campaign.
Plus-delta point for Democrat post-mortem: people are more than their Identities.
But, please, by all means, come up with another lunatic strategy (popular vote! recount! Russian hacking! Hamilton electors!) that will backfire and further humiliate your defeated candidate.
@Althouse, you used the word "Trumpism." Would you mind defining what you mean by it? I have a feeling that this is one of those words where everyone thinks they know what it means but no two people actually have the same thing in mind when they use it.
You used that undefined word in conjunction with the phrase "inherent limitations." But one way in which Trump is a new phenomenon is that he has demonstrated a capacity to learn and adapt as neither Obama nor Clinton were able to learn and adapt. An individual who can learn and adapt can have remarkably few inherent limitations.
It’s like [they] forgot the basics of Politics 101
They ran Martha Coakley's campaign. Start with a sour cold fish candidate with no charisma. Isolate yourself from voters and the media. Carry yourself with entitlement and inevitability.
As opposed to standing outside Fenway Park? In the cold? Shaking hands?
Or maybe it will work to stand back and wait for the inherent limitations of Trumpism to reveal themselves.
Women's soap opera gets back in the news editorial chair.
Friends bought the polls, I bought the crowd enthusiasm and Trump's energy even to the end.
"I have a feeling that this is one of those words where everyone thinks they know what it means but no two people actually have the same thing in mind when they use it."
Sort of like "alt right" or "fascist" or "feminist".
"I spent a good chunk of time writing memos about how [Bernie’s surrogates] could be utilized on the campaign trail, about ‘issue voters,’ about the environment, Black Lives Matter, Dakota Access Pipeline, rogue cops, you name it… "
Yeah, that's a winning strategy :rolleyes:
Take the Dakota Access Pipeline. Does she honestly think not finishing a 99% completed pipeline.is a majority position?
So this week's explanation is that they didn't win over the Bernie supporters. I guess Putin's off the hook.
Somebody should start a weekly Hillary fail fantasy game. This could go on for a while.
Somebody should start a weekly Hillary fail fantasy game. This could go on for a while.
They're all still confused and frustrated so few of us are blindly accepting their crafted narratives the way we used to. They're going to be wandering the weeds until they settle on a safe space...
The only way Bernie supporters could have helped Hillary was if they had been able to convince her and the female DNC cabal of Pelosi and Wasserman-Schultz that she was not the popular candidate she thought she was. The maps of Democrat primary results looked pretty much like the map of Trump votes. Bernie won fly-over country and rural areas of eastern states.These are not traditionally socialist-friendly places. That should have told the Democrats that the average Joe in their party did not want Clinton. Clinton won big urban centers where the party machine held influence. Trump had the same pattern as Bernie, but it won him the national election because we don't rely on the popular vote. Thank God.
Its hard to imagine Trump winning?
Why?
I wasn't a Trump supporter. Not because I didn't think he could win, I just did not like this Johnny Come Lately to the Republican party.
It is precisely because I saw he could, and I blindly thought someone else better could too (now I see the error in my ways).
"But it's also hard to picture Trump winning, even after he's won."
Nope.
Ironic, because the Bernie style of socialism would give more power to the same kind of people who ran Hillary's campaign: smart, well-meaning, educated people who think they know better than anyone else and deserve to rule because of it.
Reaction to the establishment and progress of the Pro-Choice Church.
Deep Plunger who overflowed WaterCloset was likely a member of the disaffected Bernie faction.
The various demonstrations, recounts, and attacks on the Electoral College since the election have mostly served to reassure reluctant Trump voters like myself that we did the right thing.
Hillary was a terrible candidate. Any of Rubio, Bush, Kasich, Paul, Christie, Fiorina, Walker or Perry would have beaten Hillary by more than Trump did. But her party was even worse than she was. Hillary at least won the popular vote, but the Republicans got more votes in the House and Senate races, and they won even bigger in the various state legislatures.
After 8 years of being called racist, homophobic and misogynist, many of us have had enough. The idea that insulting the majority even more would have somehow turned the tide is just nuts.
"The only way Bernie supporters could have helped Hillary was if they had been able to convince her and the female DNC cabal of Pelosi and Wasserman-Schultz that she was not the popular candidate she thought she was."
By supporting Bernie they did try and tell the party that--Hillary losing a number of primaries to a 74 year old admitted socialist with a thick Brooklyn accent despite the party apparatus going towards Hillary (and if the black vote didn't go so heavily for her in the primaries, she may have even lost the nomination).
Ultimately it's about the candidate--she just couldn't get people to vote for her, only to scare them about Trump. It did a lot--it kept the election very close and even got her a popular vote majority--but that's obviously not enough. They never should have convinced themselves that she "deserved" the job.
Before the election I compared it to a wild horse (Trump) competing against a limping, hobbled horse (Clinton). While there was danger the wild horse would go off the track, he did manage to find the finish line or at least end ahead of the hobbled horse, which the Dems tried desperately to carry down the track.
The Clintons have not been good for the Democrats, and they should have learned their lesson from the 2008 primaries and put that family to pasture a while ago. Have they finally learned their lesson?
Face it: Sanders supporters were in the 'basket of deplorables' just like Trump supporters.
Original Mike.
Yes. Check out Jane Kleeb's Twitter feed. Her group is Bold Nebraska. It has a Twitter feed and weband web site. Delusional single issue people.
Bold Nebraska says it is a "Conservative group dedicated to restore political balance in the state."
Riiiiight
"What would he have done to Bernie?"
-- Brought statements like "breadlines are good" to light. But, Trump would have been more vulnerable on his "hates women" attacks, since he couldn't point to Bill Clinton. No idea if Sanders would have won; the race would be too different to really tell.
"It's hard to build on a foundation that feels like nonsense, but clinging to the old illusion of reality has got to be a mistake. Or maybe it will work to stand back and wait for the inherent limitations of Trumpism to reveal themselves."
Actually, the plan on the Left is a combination of "stand back and wait for the white people to die" and "keep importing dependency voters to alter the electorate". With maybe a judicious helping of "we own the schools and universities, eventually we must triumph". They are aware that the American electorate as currently constituted rejects their plans and policies. They see that as a problem to be solved by altering the electorate. What has them upset is that they thought the program was further along than is actually the case.
It's rather obvious now this election was destined to be lost by the Democrats. Eight years of Obama-Democrat governance wasn't lost on voters who would normally have voted for a Democrat and instead voted for Trump. Had Sanders been the nominee, he would have lost forty states. Crooked Hillary is all the Democrats had and that just wasn't enough. If Trump gets the economy moving in two years the Democrats are going to take yet another beating both in Congress and at the State's level. They really need to remove their heads out of their rectums and breath fresh air. Once they do that then they will realize the country isn't willing to suffer great economic harm just to indulge in fantasies.
"But, please, by all means, come up with another lunatic strategy (popular vote! recount! Russian hacking! Hamilton electors!) that will backfire and further humiliate your defeated candidate."
-- My favorite part of faithless electors was Trump winning by a bigger than predicted margin in the EC.
So, in the "history books", will the nominal electoral vote be the official count, or will it be the actual votes by electors?
Damn clever, those Rooskies, to make sure Clinton's campaign ignored the Bernie supporters.
"But it's also hard to picture Trump winning." Sure, he's unorthodox, and sure, the polls didn't favor him. But the basic prediction models did, the time-for-a-change dynamic was in play, GOPers were likely to come home, and the O turnout effect was likely to disappear. The latter two factors were stronger than I expected, but they weren't "hard to picture." Normal GOP support + reduced O turnout + some Rust Belt working-class switching = Trump victory.
Clinton's strategy was okay. She knew Trump was going for the blue collar vote so she figured she'd offset the loss of that voting bloc with moderate white women in the suburbs. And she also assumed she'd get Obama level turnout of blacks and Latinos. Her campaign should have anticipated that the Clinton fatigue and Clinton hatred built up over the last 25 years was going to undercut her appeal to white suburban women. She effectively painted Trump as an unholy misogynist but forgot that her husband is the same character in the soccer mom eyes.
As for blacks turning out in Obama numbers, that also was a poor assumption.
Trump's plan was better and he executed it better. He demolished her in the Big Ten states 86-54
Once again I recommend Thomas Frank's book "Listen, Liberal" to those who are trying to figure out what happened to Clinton. What these Dems have to say about the campaign is a big part of the problem with today's D party. It has been taken over by an over-intellectualized bunch of wimps who have been taught that they are better than the rest of the great unwashed. I'm no D, and I hope, in many ways, that the D's continue this suicidal pattern. On the other hand our system seems to work best when both of the parties represent the interests of the people, not just the overeducated and overcompensated.
Catholic in their own minds....
Roger Sweeny: "Ironic, because the Bernie style of socialism would give more power to the same kind of people who ran Hillary's campaign: smart, well-meaning, educated people who think they know better than anyone else and deserve to rule because of it."
Roger Sweeny: "Ironic, because the Bernie style of socialism would give more power to the same kind of people who ran Hillary's campaign: smart, well-meaning, educated people who think they know better than anyone else and deserve to rule because of it."
Hmmm.
This election was "destined" to be "The Battle of the Populists!!", on both sides.
Until, that is, the dems "hacked" their own primary and force-fed an entire dem primary electorate followed by general election electorate the utterly unsatisfying mess that is Hillary Clinton (the worst candidate in the history of the US).
With complete support of the establishment, media, academia, high-rolling contributors, etc she still could not get there.
Twice.
Bernie should have been nominated and he and Trump would have been scuffling over the same mid-west battle ground states. Could Bernie have held all the Hillary states? Probably. Could Bernie have flipped back WI/MI/PA? Hmmm. Tough to say. Could Bernie have flipped a traditionally red state (FL/NC/OH/IA)? Probably not.
But the point would have been that both parties base voters had risen up to tell the "elites" here that their failure had reached critical mass and that something was going to change.
But the dem elites knew better and the dem sheep fell into line, as they always do. Including Bernie who announced far too prematurely that the emails didn't matter. He knew they did, but he succumbed to the pressure to say otherwise and thereby undermined his position.
The most interesting thing is that these 2 "characters" would have been vying for the same voters from diametrically opposite political positions!
Such is the way of Populism.
Jeff: "...After 8 years of being called racist, homophobic and misogynist, many of us have had enough."
This. Well, this and much more. Much, much more.
But absolutely this. The contempt coming off the Democrats' message was visible like heat waves over a Texas highway in July.
Hillary quite clearly relied much too heavily on the gender-identity vote. She apparently forgot that women are not gender-identified but are concerned with the future of our country.
The bigger mistake for the Dems is not having a more broad spectrum of candidates to choose from to see how they might react to attacks and hone their appeal.
They don't have a "broad spectrum" because they have been losing elections for 6 years and the moderate Democrats got wiped out by being forced to vote for Obama and Pelosi's agenda,
Bill Clinton got elected in 1992 by Perot, Bush I's mistakes and the DLC. Clinton was far enough left to repudiate a lot of what got him elected and that gave him the 1994 wipeout. He learned from that to pull in his leftist horns, exile Hillary to the "Childrens Defense Fund" circuit where she could not do any more harm.
Then he got caught with Monica. I remember Sam Donaldson talking about Clinton having to resign.
The left wing of the Democrats saved Bill when impeachment became the threat.
I;m not sure that impeachment was the best strategy for the GOP but it put the left wing in control of the Democrats.
That led us here. Al Gore was actually kind of a moderate in the Clinton White House. He was a bit of a nut on environmentalism but moderate on mist of the rest,
I think losing in 2000 drove him crazy. Anyway, the left wing of the Democrats ran the party and lefties like Pelosi and Reid set the agenda. The result was the destruction of the moderate wing of the party.
Democrat discipline made all those moderates cast votes that defeated them at the polls. There is no "farm team" left.
Owen: "Jeff: "...After 8 years of being called racist, homophobic and misogynist, many of us have had enough."
This. Well, this and much more. Much, much more"
Sanders mentioned this very thing as a key factor just a couple days ago.
Hillary is a loser. It's that simple. She's screwed up just about everything she's touched. And since she won't accept responsibility for her losses, she will never learn from her mistakes and just keep on losing. That's the way it goes with losers.
What Dan Hossley wrote.
But it's also hard to picture Trump winning, even after he's won. How did that happen? It happened!
I call bs on that. It was only hard for the losers to see. Trump supporters knew he was going to win it all a year ago, and, when you looked at Trump, the things he was saying, things that everybody else was afraid to say bu needed to ber said, and how it resonated with his wildly enthusiastic and growing crowds everywhere he went, it was NEVER hard to see. If you were looking. But if you decided from the beginning that Trump was a buffoon and then him out, yes, you missed it all. But that's on you, not him.
“They mocked us, they made fun of us. ... You don’t win elections that way.”
This could have been a moment of insight.
But I rather suspect she is saying they mocked and made fun of the wrong "us".
Ann Althouse said...Or maybe it will work to stand back and wait for the inherent limitations of Trumpism to reveal themselves.
Yeah; how'd that work out for Jeb & Rubio & Cruz & company, again?
Trumpism is a terrible mess of urges and pseudo-ideas, sure...but so was HopeNChange, and that was good enough for 2 full terms.
"Hillary is a loser. It's that simple."
-- To be fair, you don't get to being where she is by being a complete loser. She's just not a very good retail politician or very good at working with people who don't already agree with her. Any time she's been tasked with working or reaching out to people who don't already agree with her, like with healthcare or running for an office that isn't a Democrat sinecure like Senator from New York, she's failed. But, she's not a total loser.
Trumpism is a terrible mess of urges and pseudo-ideas, sure...
Hoodlum, how can an idea be 'pseudo'?
To be fair, you don't get to being where she is by being a complete loser.
She got Bill to marry her. Other than that.....???
"Clinton's strategy was okay."
-- Her strategy was abysmal, her tactics worse. "Let's not compete in states we may lose because Trump may think we may lose there and campaign there," was the thrust of her tactics -- and she stuck to it even AFTER Trump held rallies in places she was weak in.
From the leaked emails, her strategy was to have Trump win the nomination for Republicans, and then mobilize the media against him. She *wanted* to go against Trump. She got what her strategy called for, and she STILL lost. Her strategy involved having her staff get drunk before noon on election day because it was in the bag. Until Democrats sit down and accept that their hubris is going to keep hurting them, and that not every candidate will get Obama levels of media adulation and protection, they are going to learn nothing.
Actually, what might happen is that Trump continues to keep the Democrats and the Media off balance with his rallies, Tweets, and outrageous statements - thus preventing any effective opposition - while Mike Pence, Paul Ryan, and the highly competent Cabinet run a successful, conservative Federal government below the fold. Best case scenario, perhaps, but looking good so far. Trump is playing these people like a fiddle, but they never seem to catch on.
"Other than that.....???"
-- She became a lawyer; she got to be Secretary of State and a major power broker in the Democratic party. Yes, I know. She was a failure at State, and she's clearly not as effective at brokering power in her party as she thinks she is. Still; those are things she did.
It is important to recognize what Democrats do instead of just saying they're losers.
To be fair, we don't know at this point what Trumpism is, or will turn out to be. Let's just call it a work in progress. For now, we're just projecting our needs on him.
"To be fair, we don't know at this point what Trumpism is, or will turn out to be."
-- Personally, it is just as comforting when we heard this after Obama was elected as it is now. Which is to say: Not very.
Many of us offered similar advice to the incompetents running McCain's 2008 campaign. So what? Campaign consultants and staffers are always sure they know everything they need to know.
How about these two:
Season Palin with friendly interviews before throwing her to the MSM.
Don't suspend the campaign for the economic crisis. Instead, respectfully oppose any bail out (voters will hate bail out).
Obvious to anyone without benefit of hindsight except for McC's multimillion dollar campaign team.
Kellyanne appears to be an unusual gem. Trump needs to keep her around.
"Don't suspend the campaign for the economic crisis. Instead, respectfully oppose any bail out (voters will hate bail out)."
-- To be fair, if the Democrats had asked McCain to come back and help them in good faith, it would have been a good move to go back and help. The problem was McCain thought that:
A. The Media would remember reporting that Harry Reid asked him to come back and help out.
B. That Harry Reid would not stab his friend in the back.
McCain, much like Romney getting blindsided in the debate with the moderator lying to his face, was just unwilling to accept someone could be that... base? Base is a good word.
“We not only screamed about this, we wrote memos, we begged,”
Oddly enough, feeeeeeeelings and words aren't nearly as important as actions in accomplishing actual results in the objectively real world.
"-- She became a lawyer; she got to be Secretary of State and a major power broker in the Democratic party."
Becoming a lawyer is not that big a deal. Thousands of people do it every year. Everything else she has she got only because her marriage to Bill let her pretend to be a victim, and that appeals to people who think being a victim somehow makes you virtuous.
"Clinton's strategy was okay. She knew Trump was going for the blue collar vote so she figured she'd offset the loss of that voting bloc with moderate white women in the suburbs."
I think it could be summed up as "Clinton's execution was terrible, strategy not so bad" and "Trump's strategy risky, but execution was excellent". Remember, this one came close, and had she been able to get minorities and young people not just to favor her but to turn out at Obama levels, she'd have won (and she came quite close to doing it, even with her own high negatives). But imagine being the strategist trying to get people excited enough to vote for Clinton--how could you do that? I don't want to be too hard on her campaign because they really had a lousy candidate to work with.
"They don't have a "broad spectrum" because they have been losing elections for 6 years and the moderate Democrats got wiped out by being forced to vote for Obama and Pelosi's agenda,"
Sure they do--racialists, feminists, populists, liberal interventionists, swampies and what passes for moderates. It's not a pretty sight, but there's a lot of competing factions in their party.
Trump would have defeated Bernie with one line: "What Bernie wants to do is what they did in Venezuela."
“We not only screamed about this, we wrote memos, we begged,”
Oddly enough, feeeeeeeelings and words aren't nearly as important as actions in accomplishing actual results in the objectively real world.
The big elephant in the room that the Dems and their enablers in the media don't want to address is this:
What are the Democrats for?
Liberalism back in the '60s were advocates of change and equality (at least that's the impression they want to give). They pushed for equality for women and blacks in the public sphere.
Mission accomplished. Now what?
Gays.
OK, done. Now what?
It's the March of Dimes problem. Once you've cured polio, the MD didn't disband. They found other diseases to raise money for.
The solution kills the group. If the problem is never solved, the group never goes away.
So what are the Dems for now? Equality for transsexuals. Attacking churches for putting into practice their beliefs about homosexuals.
Raising the minimum wage, which they're seeing in Seattle leads to closing small businesses and a decline in jobs.
Health care? They gave us Obamacare and "you can keep your doctor."
Jobs? They helped (with the Republicans) give us free trade and the hollowing out of the manufacturing sector.
Any new ideas? Anyone? Bueller?
At this stage, in both parties, I'd rather see a focus on competence in running the government. I know that's a unicorn idea, but it's what the country needs most: systems that work.
"-- Personally, it is just as comforting when we heard this after Obama was elected as it is now. Which is to say: Not very."
It's not comforting, but the hope now is that the GOP holds enough power to provide a check if he banks left, and if they learn how to influence him they can prevent anything truly awful from happening. Not that I have much faith in the GOP, but it could be worse.
That, and just hoping we face no serious crises for a while.
That's the main reason I'm Trump agnostic at the moment. He might be terrible, but even if he is, there's an entire institution on the left and a smaller one on the right, that will check him hard. So, I'm hoping for a nice pause.
But, given an ambassador was just assassinated, I'm guessing we're not going to have the luxury of no serious crises for awhile.
"Al Gore was actually kind of a moderate in the Clinton White House. He was a bit of a nut on environmentalism but moderate on mist of the rest, I think losing in 2000 drove him crazy."
He was crazy long before losing. I was looking for a reason to vote for him. He made a hard left turn in the summer. Don't you remember? That hard left turn totally turned me off and I couldn't vote for him. He might have won for realz if he stayed in the center through Election Day.
That's a classic party problem: you have to throw the red meat to the extremes in your party, then pivot to appeal to the center where most Americans reside after the nomination, but you still have to throw red meat to keep your base energized. How is that even possible with total saturation of media and cell phones with video? Your red meat bits are going to be broadcast to the world to turn off the center. What's a candidate to do?
The DNC should not run Proven Losers. Why did they run a Proven Loser?
Bill Peschel: "At this stage, in both parties, I'd rather see a focus on competence in running the government. I know that's a unicorn idea, but it's what the country needs most: systems that work"
That was certainly the focus of the Dukakis strategy.
And how did HWBush respond?
""Competence is a narrow ideal. Competence makes the trains run on time but doesn’t know where they are going."
"But, given an ambassador was just assassinated, I'm guessing we're not going to have the luxury of no serious crises for awhile."
Yep--my nightmare scenario is a series of coordinated, continual attacks at "soft spots" (shopping malls, sports arenas, subway stops, anywhere with crowds or lines) as well as tunnels and bridges, and maybe chemical or germ attacks all over the free world to sow continual terror and bloodshed. In such a case it's natural for us to want to lash out, even without considering what's the most effective and least counterproductive way to do so--a time where cool heads are needed to figure out just how to track and kill and stop these people, rather than some showy drone strikes across the world or phony layers of bureaucracy at home to make us feel safe (shoe checks at airports, anyone?). In crisis situations the public may feel irrational but our leaders must be cool and calculating.
"That's a classic party problem: you have to throw the red meat to the extremes in your party, then pivot to appeal to the center where most Americans reside after the nomination, but you still have to throw red meat to keep your base energized. How is that even possible with total saturation of media and cell phones with video? Your red meat bits are going to be broadcast to the world to turn off the center. What's a candidate to do?"
That's a hard needle to thread, unless your base becomes pragmatic enough from losing to accept less red meat, or the opposing nominee's own red meat is noxious enough to your base and the swingers to turn them towards you. Only the best politicians, and/or the most favorable circumstances, can make this happen.
McCain and Romney both had "moderate cred" going in, but veered hard to the right to secure and later fire up the base. It ended up looking fake, not doing too much for the base and turning off enough moderates to help Obama.
Do we know how Sen. Sanders would have done against Trump? Not for certain. However:
1. Sec. Hillary Clinton had WAY too many scandals that Bernie didn't have.
2. Hillary lost the election in the rust belt, where people were angry over trade deals and globalism. She embraced those ideas, while Bernie and Trump opposed them. Bernie could have taken Trump's economic message away.
3. Hillary lost against all those who wanted change because she represents the status quo, while Bernie and Trump both would be something different.
Yes, I think that a ham sandwich could have beaten Trump, but only Hillary could be so dishonest, corrupt, and incompetent as to fail.
RE: "'For me this is not about Hillary Clinton, this is about Hillary Clinton’s staff becoming too insular, too professional where regular working-class folks did not matter to them,' Kleeb said. 'She had too many people [on her campaign] wearing Prada going into pollster meetings, not enough of us.'"
Sorry to tell you this, dear, but Hillary hired those people and managed them. She doesn't hire people for their abilities; she hires them mostly for their loyalty. She doesn't manage teams well. And, probably most importantly, Hillary is an aristocrat: she likes Prada, expensive hair cuts, and high living. And she hates retail politics.
The key phrase: “They mocked us, they made fun of us."
The question is why? I prefer "Hillary is a phony." She really did have contempt for the deplorables and anyone like them, liberal or conservative (Arkansas was hell on earth for her.) One reason is that this crowd saw through her phoniness. Quite honestly, so did most of the urban liberals (note how they attack Trump but rarely actually defend Clinton.)
Hillary's handlers KNEW this. They knew that to know Hillary Clinton is to hate her. They knew those living in deplorable country aren't satisfied with "the handshake and run" approach to meeting people. We expect you to actually join our picnic and engage in conversation, even if we don't agree with you (it's called hospitality and is what decent people of all political stripes do.) And Hillary hates it for, I suspect, the very simple reason of projection--she is phony, knows she phony and assumes everyone else is just as phony.
(One of Bill Clinton's biggest strengths is that he genuinely loves all that hospitality stuff. If asked to chose between sitting around drinking the best wine with a bunch of liberal New Yorkers or swigging shitty beer with a bunch of genuine right wing rednecks, you know damn well that Bill would choose the latter. So Would Trump, though he'd insist on bringing his own beer. Hillary wouldn't. [And neither would Ted Cruz.])
Michael K,
"Al Gore was actually kind of a moderate in the Clinton White House."
Indeed he was; remember Al "Go Grab His Ass" Gore regarding rendition of suspected terrorists?
Brando @ 12:13pm,
You aren't going to like the answer at all.
Owen said...
Jeff: "...After 8 years of being called racist, homophobic and misogynist, many of us have had enough."
This. Well, this and much more. Much, much more.
But absolutely this. The contempt coming off the Democrats' message was visible like heat waves over a Texas highway in July.
12/20/16, 9:58 AM
One thing that I'm surprised the news media isn't pointing out is the "basket of deplorables" remark Hillary gave. If there was one thing that oozed contempt in her campaign, that was it (although 'why aren't I 50 points ahead?' runs a close second). I can't imagine a competent politician like Bill Clinton saying that in prepared remarks even behind closed doors to donors.
A little Sun Tzu would have helped: "Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories." The Dems aren't interested in knowing their enemy. They just want to call them deplorable and racist. To a large extent the media hurt them in this regard, because the media share the Dems' biases so they are not confronted with differing opinions about their enemies.
@Scott,
One thing that I'm surprised the news media isn't pointing out is the "basket of deplorables" remark Hillary gave.
It wasn't just that HRC said the "basket" phrase, which her opposition gleefully adopted as their own self-deprecating term of affection. She also said it at a fundraiser by the LGBT community in NYC.
So, imagine the optics out there in the heartland. Clinton. Insulting & Condescending. LGBT. Taking Money. New York City. Add it all together & how could it not stick permanently in the craw of her opposition?
You never saw Trump go after Bernie. Trump defeated 17 opponents with his wacky new approach. What would he have done to Bernie? You can't predict!
What you (or at least some of us) can do, however, is to use something called logic. Bernie and Trump were vying over the same protest vote and the same issues. The major difference was that Bernie did it without hate, and Trump ran on the same issues but just with a whole lot of hatred against other Americans thrown in. And I don't think so lowly of the American people as to presume that between two similar messages, they would prefer the one packaged up and marketed with extra hate.
It's no use imagining. We don't know what he would have done. We don't understand Trump. It's too hard! Which is one reason I don't believe the Russians or any other antagonist of the US wanted Trump to win.
The guy isn't a fucking superman.
What happened is what was polled and predicted to happen. Hillary was always much closer to Trump in the polls. Bernie blasted him out of the water. This was a reckoning campaign, the issues mattered, it's about the economy, stupid. The voters that pushed Trump over the edge were as likely if not moreso to go for Bernie. This was about working class and the working poor protesting elite derision and neglect of them for decades in favor of Wall Street and corporate America. It's what won Trump an election over Hillary, and what would have won Bernie an election over Trump. These people hated the corporatists, not their fellow Americans, and someone empathetic enough to understand that was the main point would have been more effective. Trump has too many personal grudges to fixate on to put their interests front-and-center - even if he spoke to them much more persuasively than Hillary did.
Don't worry, Ann. You don't have to hate the poor to simply understand why they voted, or would have voted, the way they had. It's not going to make you less rich and whatever else to acknowledge them and what's important to this growing segment of the electorate.
Rhythm and Balls you miss a fundamental message of Catholics. I sum it up with the Beatitudes and the slogan 'Let Ceasar be Ceasar'. Of course with so much disinformation, leaving things out, how can one speak of social justice while leaving out Pope Leo XIII's 'Rerum Novarum'? The Beatitudes and the message of Christ, the Holy Family, is a message of the dignity of poverty. It is such a powerful social message. One can live poor, uneducated, and live a life of great dignity. It is the love of Mary and Joseph, for the child they witnessed enter the world. Life does not have to be a state of being constantly jealous, coveting what thy neighbor possesses. 'Let Ceasar be Ceasar'. Let the Roman authority do as they see just. Trust in a greater plan, the mystery of being.
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