"Expectations certainly missed their target: the race between the first plausible female presidential candidate and a man who bragged about grabbing women 'by the pussy' did not boil down to gender. In interviews across the country in the year leading up to the election, many voters suggested that shattering the glass ceiling wasn’t an urgent priority for them. Some took it as a given that a woman will be President one day, and it wasn’t worth electing someone they believed was the wrong woman just to show it could be done."
From Time's Person-of-the-Year "Short List" article about Hillary Clinton.
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Trump just fired General Flynn's son for screwing up. He fired Corey Lewandowski in mid-campaign. Did Hillary Clinton fire anyone who screwed up? That's a YUGE difference between the candidates.
“Hillary did everything right, she checked all the boxes, and clearly that doesn’t really win,” says Ramsini, an attorney in Columbus, Ohio.
Wow, just... wow. How can a thinking person honestly believe she did "everything right"? I honestly want to know why certain people seem to refuse to see the obvious.
Oh, yeah -- Hillary checked all the boxes! Fortunately the included boxes didn't include "Campaign in Wisconsin".
Last night, Tucker Carlson interviewed a guy (I did not catch his name), who described how the the Hillary camp blamed the Russkies, Wikileaks, Comey, etc for their loss. He went to say the advisers (Mook, Palmieri, Podesta) never blamed themselves for their performance. Astute observation.
BTW, Carlson's show is terrific. The lefties will start avoiding it.
Big Mike makes a fantastic point.
That article isn't totally idiotic, but there are some face-palm passages:
Clinton’s status as a former First Lady alienated voters wary of dynasty, though family ties are a common precursor of female ascendance: the first women to run India, Pakistan, Argentina and Indonesia were daughters or wives of former leaders.
Why use the word "though" when "because" works so much better.
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is an especially perfect parallel:
Cristina Kirchner is considered to be a populist leader[95] and, like other contemporary populists in Latin America, built a system of propaganda to legitimize her actions: the Relato K. This propaganda works around a number of usual themes: the glorification of the state to the detriment of the individual rights; use of conspiracy theories to explain mistakes as attacks from others; blaming neoliberalism for the poverty; and glorification of democracy while keeping it just in its procedural form.
Hillary Clinton...
Putting the hag in hagiography, thus proving to Americans that they don't have to travel to Bosnia in order to dodge a bullet.
It's not nice to talk about fatal stopping about a Parkinson's sufferer during her last days.
The article perfectly exemplifies what was fundamentally wrong with HRC, her campaign, & the the press' relation to her: absolutely no mention of Clintonista corruption. None.
The home email server is all about "privacy". HRC working her way up the ladder is about contacts.
Oh, what booyah! Who at State signed off on that email server & why? How about explaining how the Clintons went from "flat broke" to having over $120 million in 13 years? How about explaining why the Clintons had a nutjob like David Brock as a campaign manager? How about explaining the lobbying business of the Podesta brothers? Or, why one of her closest advisors has a mother who's a Salafist activist in Saudi Arabia? Where is the Clinton foundation getting all that money & exactly what poor people is it helping? How the hell did she raise $1.2 billion in campaign funds? From who, & where did it go?
But, no, we get a sob story. And the press wonders why nobody gives a shit about what they say.
Time writers failing the Turing Test. I am not convinced that they are human beings, much less sapient. Hillary lost because she was a piece of shit. Maybe she didn't enough "blackface" speeches like she did in 2008--I'se cum 2 far to giv up naw, no way no how.
It comes down to trying to sell a bad product. Sure, we can blame her media strategy, lack of engagement with voters, picking the wrong states to campaign in, themes, and even minor episodes like the Comey statement, but ultimately there's only so much you can do with a person plagued by scandal for decades, lacking any compelling policy agenda that isn't "more of the same", and lacking any retail political skills. For example, had she campaigned more in the swing states, would she have won? I don't think so--seeing more of her wasn't helping.
And the Democrats knew this about her and greased the skids for her nomination anyway.
"Some took it as a given that a woman will be President one day, and it wasn’t worth electing someone they believed was the wrong woman just to show it could be done."
It's a real shame the first black President was so incompetent. Glad we didn't repeat that error.
The chasm between the progs and the right is no better illustrated than by the progs' poignant search for answers as to why Hillary lost.
It will be a mystery for years to Democrats why an aging woman with hidden health issues and a sorry record of violation of basic security law and no record of individual achievement could not get elected president.
When Bill Clinton took office in 1993, the White House staff said that the Clintons were "the most paranoid first gamily to ever occupy the White House."
Hillary fired the White House Travel Office staff, who were 20 year non-partisan staff with lots of friends among the news media, to install a distant cousin and crony in the office. To justify her firing, she had the head of the Travel Office accused of embezzlement and charged with a crime. He went to trial eventually and was acquitted by a jury in 2 hours. The story of her actions is long and disgusting.
Not viable.
Figuring out you and me
Is like doing a love autopsy
They could operate all day long
And never figure out what went wrong
Love autopsy
Love autopsy
What went wrong?
- Music and Lyrics
Some took it as a given that a woman will be President one day, and it wasn’t worth electing someone they believed was the wrong woman just to show it could be done.
It actually stuns me to see such a plainly written truthful sentence in a Time article. She's the wrong person for a LOT reasons.
re: a man who bragged about grabbing women 'by the pussy'
In fairness, Trump said "you," meaning one who is a star, could do anything, including grabbing them by the pussy, and "they would let you do it." To me that sounds more like a comment on the realities of celebrity groupie culture than an admission of guilt. What does Ann think?
Hillary didn't do bad for a women that was named after a beekeeper in New Zealand, one who hadn't done anything of major note up to that point.
"When Bill Clinton took office in 1993, the White House staff said that the Clintons were "the most paranoid first gamily to ever occupy the White House.""
I usually compare Hillary to Nixon, but that's not really fair to Nixon because he did have enough political skill to read the zeitgeist and fit into it. He also was more competent and for his faults he did have a vision for his country.
"She walked away with more than 2.5 million votes but not the White House."
Doesn't Time have editors? I mean, the statement is technically true, but I don't think it's what they meant.
Shucks! I bet the Hillary person of the year Time cover would have been a cracker!
"To me that sounds more like a comment on the realities of celebrity groupie culture than an admission of guilt. What does Ann think?"
Please, not again.
There was also massive trust in the polls and "big data" from their ivory-coated brownstones in Brooklyn headquarters. It never occurred to them that most Trump voters simply didn't want to talk with pollsters. They were debating ad spending in Texas when they should have been barnstorming the firewall states.
Hillary had a very expensive multi-media CGI presentation of breaking a glass ceiling made for her victory party. Is she going to send it to Ivanka?
Actually considering how unsuited Hillary is for politics, it's actually impressive that she did as well as she did. It's a testament to what the entire Democratic machine and its allies can do to pull a limping horse over the finish line.
I never got the idea Hillary wanted to go into politics, though she likes the idea of running things. But it was expected of her, both as the "first woman president" and "carrier of Clinton legacy" and so she went on and tried it.
If Democrats want to rebuild from here, there's a lot they're going to have to change (starting with moving towards the center and away from the shreikier caverns of their party) but staying away from the (previously more GOP-style) idea of "it's this candidate's turn" in nominating people.
The DNC sacrificed the future of party to Hillary's personal sense of entitlement. If there's any tragedy, it's the classic kind, where Hubris is brought low by Nemesis. Evidently nobody has learned anything from this debacle, so I expect her to try again in 2020 ( if she's still alive ).
Hillary dreamed of becoming Commissar, according to her college acquaintances. I hear there are positions open in Cuba and Venezuela.
Big Mike @ 9:20
Yes. Her management style is non-existent. Her contempt for authority is apparently so yuuuuge that she even rejects her own position over the rats working for her.
Hillary did everything right, she checked all the boxes
So true. Especially the box titled "Committed federal crimes".
Reframed:
The race between the first presidential candidate ever nominated while under an active FBI investigation and a successful businessman whose name has circulated in the public consciousness for the past three decades did not boil down to gender.
Alan Dershowitz was on FOX News this morning discussing the many ways the DNC continues to shoot itself in the foot. But he extrapolated the disconnect [if that is possible, technically] to the entire globalist worldview which has shifted hard to the far left.
Luke that's a good example of the kind of subtle adjustments the "Press" has made to many of Trump's statements. Kind of like how they keep saying he insulted all Muslims because he didn't like what AQ Khan said at the DNC convention.
Darrell said...
Hillary had a very expensive multi-media CGI presentation of breaking a glass ceiling made for her victory party. Is she going to send it to Ivanka?
To Kellyanne would be more fitting.
It's good that pussy has been normalized, whatever else comes out of it.
Another positive story about Mr. T. The party of stupid bullies doesn't realize the voters only want fathers to sit down at a traditional meal served by a traditional mother working on a traditional dirty job with a stay at home mom, and being able to hold his head up when little Johnny asks "how did it go today Daddy?" No policy or transfer payment or propaganda can solve this hole in their heart. Neither PC or SJW lecturing. Dob't you know you're better off today from spending all the stimulus money on women's causes, women's teacher's unions, sbortion, and being talked down to, you deplorable, on how much more perfect a human you'd be if your genuflected at the altar of dirt, PC and SJW. Own it you Party of Stupid Bullies. Payback is a B!tch.
Metaphor Alert!
Lena Dunham Hits Rock Bottom With Vile Toilet Selfie
The socially aware star and ardent Hillary Clinton supporter never shies away from flashing her bits upon us at every opportunity.
But now Lena has shocked even the most jaded observers, after she shared a snap of herself Monday night slouched on the toilet, underwear pulled down, pouting loutishly at the camera as she presumably performs a bodily function.
The 30 year-old took to Instagram to share this intimate moment with her 2.8 million followers.
In it, she is seen posing with her thighs slightly ajar and her hands between her legs in a suggestive gesture, as she (presumably) relieves herself and flushes away her sorrows about Donald Trump.
Admitting that her boyfriend, musician Jack Antonoff, took the picture, she said in the caption: ‘ model citizen — photo by @jackantonoff who may regret having essentially married me (it would be very hard to detangle our assets).’
As some Twitter users noted, Lena seemed to have spiraled downwards since the general election, sharing increasingly unsavory details of her life with members of the general public, even as she also lectures them on politics and social justice.
Recently, Dunham posted a series of drunken video rants on Instagram, in which the raging feminist called herself as “a human wastebasket” and “wastoid” after drinking one and a half glasses of wine. She has attributed her begotten state to Hillary Clinton’s defeat in the general election.
We needed a word for the general area that didn't produce objections from anatomical purists.
Women on the john turn up in romcoms, to indicate a relaxed non-sexual moment between a guy and a girl. As far as I know, nobody's shocked.
the first plausible female presidential candidate
HAHAHAHAHAHaaaahahahahahahaahaaaa...
deep breath
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAaaahahahaaaaaaahahahahaaaa...
That is so funny, it hurts (and I might have wet myself a little)!
Luke Lea said...
re: a man who bragged about grabbing women 'by the pussy'
In fairness, Trump said "you," meaning one who is a star, could do anything, including grabbing them by the pussy, and "they would let you do it."
Now *you're* bragging!
To me that sounds more like a comment on the realities of celebrity groupie culture than an admission of guilt.
"Groupies" and their ilk is what I thought ... it's not PC to mention them because they have 'agency' and they're not passive victims.
HIllary was not a good woman to promote as the first woman President. Her achievements were built on her husband's and his reputation. She achieved her positions only by agreeing to put up with a boatload of mistreatment by her husband. Think of the message this sends to our daughters. Feminism dodged a bullet when Hillary lost. The first woman President is much more likely to be a woman who built her own resume. Whether you like Sarah Palin or Elizabeth Warren (or most likely someone else I've never heard of), those women's accomplishments are their own.
If the left want to stay deluded about Hillary Clinton and ignore the giant pink corrupt money-grubbing donkey in the room - fine with me.
Admitting that her boyfriend, musician Jack Antonoff, took the picture, she said in the caption: ‘ model citizen — photo by @jackantonoff who may regret having essentially married me (it would be very hard to detangle our assets).’
WHAT?!?!?! Wait, when did Lena get a boyfriend? Does he know?
Equal parts oblivion, job interview faults and dog ate my homework excuses.
"it wasn’t worth electing someone they believed was the wrong woman just to show it could be done."
Well after electing the same black, TWICE, who turned out to be the 'wrong one' the populace finally woke up!
And if was not for someone important to me grabbing someone I love by the pu$$y, I and my sister wouldn't be here. Imagine Ivanka being asked by Barron, what's this girl on girl stuff I read in the press about? And she flips open a coffee table book."You see grandma, grabbing another woman by the Pu$$y? When you get a little older, you will see why folks without a full chromosome set find this stimulating. More so than what you keep under your mattress. By the way I've been meaning to ask you to pull your bed away from the wall. Besides it brought out the millennial vote Both sexes. What's not to like? Own it you party of stupid bullies.
Effect (unexpected campaign loss) attributed to a cause (Comey, wiki leaks, sexism, Wisconsin, etc) can be a difficult connection to make. (see e.g. Global warming and man-made activity).
In my mind, Hillary was a total phony. A rich powerful multi millionaire fighting for me? No thanks. She was fighting to accumulate more and more power, and in her zeal, made some nefarious deal with her husband to permit his skirt-chasing, and, to slander the skirts caught.
G'Bye Hillary. Have fun in retirement.
Is Lena Dunham's popularity on the left (and I confess to knowing next to nothing about Lena Dunham; I don't think I have ever seen anything featuring her) a product of the same general culture that produced a Donald Trump on the right?
Mockturtle @ 10:01: "Alan Dershowitz was on FOX News this morning discussing the many ways the DNC continues to shoot itself in the foot. But he extrapolated the disconnect [if that is possible, technically] to the entire globalist worldview which has shifted hard to the far left." I saw that, was intrigued as you seem to be about the "entire globalist worldview." (See also comment by Richard Fernandez at his "Belmont Club" blog.)
It's an interesting and important phenomenon IMHO. I speculate that it is happening because the Progressive mindset is inherently unstable. It is based on feelings and visions, and on the suppression of inconvenient critics and those facty-fact things they keep throwing into the debate. Shut up, they explain.
When you are driving a giant vehicle at high speed you need really good information on what is happening outside. Where the road is going, who is passing or stopping in your lane, etc. You cannot afford to fill the windscreen with images from your idealized world.
Progressives are always trying to do that. Why are we surprised when it fails? Most of us saw Mrs. Clinton's career as a series of self-indulgent appropriations and failures and denials, that is, a Progressive approach to life. Many voters went into the booth and, as much as they might dislike or even fear her rival, could not pull the handle for her. It was the moment where her magic bus went off the highway.
We will see more of this in other areas, as the bill for denying reality --in Europe, in the Mideast, in Venezuela, Cuba, elsewhere-- continues to come due. The Progressives will be confronted with an ever-rising invoice, and they will respond in the only way they know. Denial, smears, and anger.
Clinton’s status as a former First Lady alienated voters wary of dynasty, though family ties are a common precursor of female ascendance: the first women to run India, Pakistan, Argentina and Indonesia were daughters or wives of former leaders.
I’d say that’s a significant part of her problem. Most Americans still on some level believe in a meritocracy – that people should succeed or fail because of their own merit and hard work. Hillary Clinton is someone who owes everything she “achieved” in her public life – being First Lady, being elected to the United States Senate in a state that she never lived in, being considered a “serious” presidential candidate (twice) and getting the Secretary of State’s office as a consolation prize – not because of her own merit, but because she met and married the right guy in college.
If I had a daughter, I’d want her to grow up to be a strong, successful and independent woman of good character. Which means that Hillary Clinton is the about the last person that I would want her to see as a role model.
Hmmm. If you invent an imaginary boyfriend and name him "Jack (Anton)Off", you're really not trying hard enough to make him look like a real human being, are you? Is there independent confirmation that this "musician" actually exists?
If he does, his name may have given him the kind of low-self-esteem issues that would be a necessary prerequisite for dating Lena Dunham. Can you imagine the abuse he must have gotten in middle school?
As a Republican, what amazed me was how close she was, despite being so bad, and running such a bad campaign. We are talking roughly 100k votes in three battleground (formerly Crooked Hillary firewall) states. She essentially took a critical month off from campaigning, campaigned the wrong places, spent a lot of money on ads in the wrong states that quickly became repetitive. I think that a better Dem candidate could have walked away with the election, and, esp. one with ties to the Rust Belt. Maybe one who only kept from being indicted for a record number of federal felonies by insider power plays and deals, corrupting (even more) the DoJ. Maybe one who hadn't spent their four years in the Executive branch selling American foreign policy for personal and family gain. Maybe one who had won more than two her elections in a deeply Blue state. And, someone who was healthy. Maybe one who was healthy, and had the energy to campaign.
What I think that I am saying here is that there are a lot of reasons that she lost, because, realistically, the Dem candidate, with so much of the money and media behind them, should have won, walking away. The Dems in general screwed up nominating her, and she and her campaign, in particular, screwed up royally. It was the Dem's election to lose, esp. after Trump sewed up the Republican nomination, and they managed to do it by nominating one of the most flawed candidates they could.
Mike said...
Some took it as a given that a woman will be President one day, and it wasn’t worth electing someone they believed was the wrong woman just to show it could be done.
I'm 59 years old. Perhaps in my lifetime, I'll have the opportunity to vote for a female candidate for the presidency who is ethical and honest (at least by political standards), who has a track record of accomplishments that were on her own merits, and who has a political platform that I can support. Hillary had none of those thongs. She is unethical and dishonest. Her accomplishments, such as they are, are largely due to her riding Bill's coattails, and I disliked virtually everything in her political agenda.
I look for those things (honest, ethical, etc.) every presidential election cycle. Usually, I end up having to vote for the lessor of the two evils. That certainly was the case this year. While I still have reservations about Trump, there was nothing on this Earth that could've persuaded me to vote for Hillary.
Should a female candidate that I can support for emerge, I'll not be voting for her just because she's a woman. That would be just as sexist as refusing to vote for her just because she's a woman. I'll vote for her because of who she is, what she has done, and what she aims to do as president. I have no idea who she might be. Condi Rice, perhaps.
I am getting sick and tired about the "winning the popular vote" argument for President and seeing this on the lead-in to the TIME article. There is no popular vote for President, it is completely meaningless, it has no bearing on anything. In the years prior to the Civil War many of the states did not have a popular vote, the electors were selected by the legislature. As late as the election of 1876 - the infamous Hayes-Tilden election - Colorado selected electors via the legislature. The Framers of our Constitution allowed for only one popular vote, that for the House of Representatives. And if you want to look at that on a national basis the Republicans not only control the House by number of Representatives but out-polled the Democrats by about 3.2 million votes.
Again, I am glad you read this so I don't have to. I grew up reading TIME and LIFE, my parents had subscriptions for years, but I quit reading TIME about 20 years ago, it is just a shadow of the publication it used to be. The link for the article below, which is currently on-line, is a perfect example of why it is not worth reading. That such a stupid article could be published in a major national publication is just unbelievable, I can't image any editor decades ago approving this for publication:
http://time.com/4590994/popular-vote-tax-pledge/
The funny part of this post-mortem: many of us had both known and stated the causes well ahead of the actual event.
Clinton Campaign epitaph:
The one thing she couldn't hide
was the ugliness inside.
Although it is surely true that all politics is ephemeral. And therefore those finding enduring political principles in the 2016 presidential election are likely to be disappointed if/when they attempt to apply these principles to future elections.
And, lets not forget that it wasn't just Clinton who lost here, as the mainstream press appears to have taken a big hit to whatever remained of its claims of impartiality.
Warren didn't get there on her own.
I never got the idea Hillary wanted to go into politics, though she likes the idea of running things.
I think she is the opposite of Nixon in that he was not good as a retail politician and was uncomfortable in public situations but he was very competent.
She had the health care task force in secret in 1993 and she created a disaster that has still got the Democrats by the scruff of the neck.
The 2006 Democrats were able to briefly take Congress again but that lasted only until Ted Kennedy died and then Scott Brown took his seat. Reid was able to delay Brown's swearing in long enough to ram Obamacare through and create another disaster.
Now they have a leadership with an average age of 76 and nowhere to go. I think that all goes back to 1994 and Hillary.
She set off the left turn that may succeed in killing the Democrat Party with Ellison as the present pyromaniac in field of straw men.
She is a better comparison to Robespierre.
Interesting that women family members of revered leaders have because leaders - but of primarily developing countries.
Thatcher and Merkel became leaders of developed countries, but on their own terms and not as an 'inherited' positions
"If I had a daughter, I’d want her to grow up to be a strong, successful and independent woman of good character. Which means that Hillary Clinton is the about the last person that I would want her to see as a role model."
I'd like to see the first female president someone who got their on their own, not because they married a guy who enthralls their party.
"What I think that I am saying here is that there are a lot of reasons that she lost, because, realistically, the Dem candidate, with so much of the money and media behind them, should have won, walking away. The Dems in general screwed up nominating her, and she and her campaign, in particular, screwed up royally. It was the Dem's election to lose, esp. after Trump sewed up the Republican nomination, and they managed to do it by nominating one of the most flawed candidates they could."
I think you're right--though there were some factors baked in on both sides (the three term itch and need for a change to help the GOP, the Dem Blue Wall (which crumbled just enough this time, but is normally an advantage in the electoral college) and demographics to help the Dems) the Dems did no favors in clearing the board for her. At least Trump won his nomination after a hard fight--the Dems though seemed to all defer to her, as though she was owed (again, something the GOP used to do by nominating whoever came in second in the previous election as though it was their entitlement).
Well put, Bruce. 2016 wasn't the year the GOP nominated the only person capable of losing to Hillary Clinton, it was the year he Democrats nominated the only person capable of losing to Donald Trump.
Your idealized candidate probably would have won but no Democrat like that exists any more, given the shrinkage of the Democrat base to four states and a scattering of blue counties across the rest of the country.
I would have chosen FBI director James Comey for Time Magazine's Person Of The Year. With narrow margins in 3 key states, it is likely that his 12th hour decision to look at more emails, and make a press spectacle of it, did Secretary of Clinton in. So, Mr. Comey single-handedly made Trump president, I do believe.
"I think she is the opposite of Nixon in that he was not good as a retail politician and was uncomfortable in public situations but he was very competent."
I agree about competence but never saw her as a good retail politician. In some ways worse than Nixon at that (probably because Nixon had the drive to do it, awkwardness be damned, but Hillary seems almost pressured into it by outside forces).
Dems are at a low point with their aged leadership, but the bigger problem for them is the far left, represented by the Sanders populists and the BLM identitarians, who prevent them from appealing to moderates and close them out of a lot of states and districts. Whatever direction they'll take now will be interesting to watch.
anita: And if was not for someone important to me grabbing someone I love by the pussy
To be fair, Trump was only talking about women who "throw themselves" at him. I'm not sure exactly what that entails - is it sexual assault when a women "throws herself" at a man? Because I suspect it certainly is when a man "throws himself" at a woman.
Maybe advise your daughter that if she rubs her tits in a man's face, he's likely to grab her pussy.
And please, the fake outrage from your side on this one is ridiculous. Because of Clinton, we had to explain to our kids what a blowjob was. And why the President was sticking a cigar up inside his girlfriend's pussy, and why he shouldn't do that. So the pearl clutching from people who supported a Serial Rapist and his Slut Shaming wife was pathetic.
Own it you party of stupid bullies.
*snort* This, from the tribe that's slimed me as a racist sexist homophobe for the last 20 years simply because I had an opinion that conflicted with their false narrative.
But I love that you guys still have this huge blind spot, I love that these alternate realities you've created are still preventing you from understanding why you failed, I love that this article still gets it wrong.
You guys are in a state of denial, trying on excuses like overcoats until you find one that's a comfortable fit. It ensures that you will make the same mistakes all over again, and makes my job much easier.
I would suggest you lost because you didn't play the Nazi card hard enough. Double down on that one next election, I'm sure it will resonate.
The disheartening thing is that, even as bad as she was, she still won the popular vote handily. That's the big pile of idiocy to have lying around waiting for another election.
Of course the main reason she did so well was the style of Trump in the campaign that was so unpalatable to so many. One thing I don't understand is why he went there. His performance since winning seems a lot more electable than the cartoon he often ran as. I think he could have won the popular vote and even done better if he explained his plans for the presidency beyond "It will be great." I know it was a plus for some that he was often an asshole, but that's a minority compared to the number of people put off by it. I believe he just never thought any of the policy stuff through until after he won. I think we dodged two bullets: one was Hillary and the other was the Trump of the campaign turning out to be all there really was to him.
Hillary had none of those thongs.
Larry J @ 10:39, that is one heckuva a hilarious, and disgusting, typo...
So after all is said and done, the most important part was her sex.
Sorry dems, it worked once with obama, i certainly hope the identity politics for lotus is over. But I am sure you will continue to trot it out.
"The disheartening thing is that, even as bad as she was, she still won the popular vote handily. That's the big pile of idiocy to have lying around waiting for another election."
A lot, maybe most, of her votes were likely people who would have voted for anything to stop Trump. Had she won the electoral vote, I don't think that would have been a mandate for her so much as a rejection of Trump.
Imagine. A woman outworked by a man.
The mind boggles.
One thing I don't understand is why he went there
I'm wary of criticizing his technique. He did everything "wrong", he ignored all the political experts who are way more experienced and intelligent than me. And he pulled off the most stunning political upset in political history.
Maybe there was method to madness? Consider the first debate - I'm still angry at FOX because the day after, I tuned it to get some analysis from Brit Hume types on what each candidate said and where they stood on the issues. Instead, I was treated to a 24/7 spat between two celebrity blowhards (Kelly and Trump). It was annoying, but in the larger picture, it took all the oxygen out of the room and suffocated the other candidates.
Maybe that's what an outsider like him had to do to break out of the pack, and maybe he toned it down because it was no longer needed once he reached a certain point.
Rocketeer said...
Hillary had none of those thongs.
Larry J @ 10:39, that is one heckuva a hilarious, and disgusting, typo...
Gag! Choke! Puke! Spit! Now I have to go wash my brain to get that mental image out of my mind. Sorry about inflicting that on anyone, especially myself. Gotta pay more attention to what I type.
"Is Lena Dunham's popularity on the left...?"
Your question assumes an undemonstrated assumption: that Dunham's popularity, such as it is, is "on the left," rather than being within the cohort she so scathingly x-rays on GIRLS--millennial women--who enjoy seeing themselves dramatized, (even if ridiculed, if they even perceive the ridicule).
(Dunham is certainly self-important, as are the cohort she ridicules, but she is talented.)
Mr. Comey single-handedly made Trump president, I do believe.
Ha ha ha ha ha. I wonder how Comey came to be in that position of enormous power!
Too bad the media didn't do their do diligence and vet your candidate then. Otherwise you would have known that she was deeply flawed, had sold access to the world's monsters for donations to her grifting husband's Global Crime syndicate, had admitted using an unsecure server that left SoS communications open to any hacker with a 3rd grade education, which would further tipped you off that an FBI investigation would HAVE to be done if only to clear her name.
All of this was patently obvious, even to minimally informed voters, a year before she was nominated! So don't forget to assign some blame to all the yes-men (of all genders) who kept Hillary on this doomed path long after it was known there was an open FBI "security review" about her dangerous lack of security with national secrets and YOU for supporting a candidate who ahd a greater-than-zero chance of being indicted concurrent with or after the campaign. Look in the mirror.
" So, Mr. Comey single-handedly made Trump president, I do believe."
Yeah, that's it. Not her shittastic campaign in which she talked to nearly zero little people, took 75% of August off, and nearly broke her face plummeting to the curb on a balmy NYC day.
Hillary ran on being a woman, an issue that no one particularly cared about. But then again, it was the only issue she had. Everything else about her was mess.
Clinton got 6 million more votes than Trump between NY and CA. If Trump had campaigned in either state he might have peeled off a million? But the object of the game was to win the Electoral college, which he did.
Most of us saw Mrs. Clinton's career as a series of self-indulgent appropriations and failures and denials, that is, a Progressive approach to life. Many voters went into the booth and, as much as they might dislike or even fear her rival, could not pull the handle for her.
Agreed. Most the people I converted to vote Trump only came around once I explained that Hillary Clinton was above the law. It became a choice between a Celebrity Blowhard and a Tyrant.
Ironic in a sense - the MSM and Dems covered for Hillary because she was a woman. And by clinging to such Identity Politics, they handicapped themselves with a nominee that the public considered too corrupt to be entrusted with the power of the Executive Branch. If she was a man, she wouldn't have made it through the first primary.
"Like an American Moses, she was an imperfect prophet, leading women to the edge of the Promised Land. Now it’s up to another woman to enter it."
Jesus Jones. The sycophancy is outstanding.
Anyone remember how Clinton's team bragged she would turn Texas and spent assets there?
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Yeah those kind of decisions had NOTHING to do with her loss. Never went to Wisconsin? The devil, you say!
The fact that the Democrats are wholly unable to see how horribly flawed Hillary is as a human being --let alone as a candidate-- goes way beyond telling.
That is the nut of it that half the country suddenly does not understand [any more].
The goal is not "getting the majority of the votes" but "getting enough votes". That is what Trump did. He got enough votes in the right places. Hell every single vote in CA could have been for Hillary and not one thing would have changed. She had CA locked up as soon as she got 50.0000000001% of the vote there. Getting 99.99998% of the CA vote only makes the "popular vote" spread look better but in reality changes nothing.
In hind sight it is a good thing so very many lefties live in CA. Had some of them lived elsewhere, things might have turned out quite differently...
"Yeah those kind of decisions had NOTHING to do with her loss. Never went to Wisconsin? The devil, you say!"
I'd agree, except had she gone to Wisconsin she may have turned off more voters. I think the bigger problem was the product itself, more than the sales strategy.
Put another Not My President bumpersticker on the windshield of the Prius.
If Trump had campaigned in either state he might have peeled off a million?
Who knows. Maybe 10 mil?
Because if you had told me Trump was going to win Penn and Michigan, I would have asked you not to patronize me with such fantasies.
"Larry J said...
Hillary had none of those thongs."
Do they have BleachBit for the brain?
Maybe she was just a really bad candidate?
How about explaining why the Clintons had a nutjob like David Brock as a campaign manager?
As bad as that lunatic is, her continued friendship with Sidney Blumenthal was a problem. Nobody can actually like Blumenthal.
I usually compare Hillary to Nixon, but that's not really fair to Nixon because he did have enough political skill to read the zeitgeist and fit into it. He also was more competent and for his faults he did have a vision for his country.
I also think he had shame. I don't think the Clintons do. Would Bill or Hillary have resigned during Watergate or fought to the end and smeared everybody? Nixon, I believe, knew he did something wrong (whether that thing was the cover-up or hiring noted shit John Dean is up to you) and decided to accept a punishment.
If he was caught lying under oath about his dick getting sucked by a not-terribly-attractive-but-young intern, Nixon would've resigned as well.
Hillary had a very expensive multi-media CGI presentation of breaking a glass ceiling made for her victory party. Is she going to send it to Ivanka?
She did? Oh I hope it leaks. I find that stuff (like Romney's transition team web page) fascinating.
I think you're right--though there were some factors baked in on both sides (the three term itch and need for a change to help the GOP, the Dem Blue Wall (which crumbled just enough this time, but is normally an advantage in the electoral college) and demographics to help the Dems) the Dems did no favors in clearing the board for her. At least Trump won his nomination after a hard fight--the Dems though seemed to all defer to her, as though she was owed (again, something the GOP used to do by nominating whoever came in second in the previous election as though it was their entitlement).
The DNC has spent about 24 years dedicating itself to the Clintons (even with Obama, Hillary was the party elite's preferred candidate and during his Presidency, the DNC seemed obsessed with keeping her relevant). I am curious what happens with them out of the picture.
I hope it's not "Let's go WAY the hell Left", but I figure it is what they will do.
Dems are at a low point with their aged leadership, but the bigger problem for them is the far left, represented by the Sanders populists and the BLM identitarians, who prevent them from appealing to moderates and close them out of a lot of states and districts. Whatever direction they'll take now will be interesting to watch.
And unless Trump utterly shits the bed (I doubt he will), their whole "Imagine how terrifying the Republicans will be" will be less effective for the people who don't pay attention all of the time.
"With narrow margins in 3 key states, it is likely that his (Comey) 12th hour decision to look at more emails, and make a press spectacle of it, did Secretary of Clinton in."
Nope. He basically exonerated her and then re-exonerated her. He was the only official word on her criminality, and he said no big deal, she's OK to vote for. Overall he helped her get votes, just not in the right places, so no Person of the Year for Comey, and no cigar for Hillary. HA!
Hillary did not campaign in Wisconsin, but Chelsea did. I rest my case.
Fen @ 11:24: "...If she was a man, she wouldn't have made it through the first primary."
This. As with Obama: if he were a Person of Pallor, he'd still be trying to organize a slum on the South Side of Chicago.
The problem with identity politics is, you are selling the hell out of a very narrow market. In fact, you win that market by making your message unique to it, and anathema to other (adjacent or distant) markets. If you want to emphasize the magic of, say, skin color or personal plumbing, you are (by implication or usually quite explicitly) denigrating all other colors and plumbing arrangements.
Those other people eventually wake up. Either they vote against you, or at least they don't vote for you. Unless you can manufacture enough votes within your chosen markets, you will fail.
The great mystery to me is how a powerful and intelligent and deeply resourced organization like the Democratic Party could have allowed itself to fall into this hole. On the other hand, I am no less mystified at how the GOP managed to turn the primary process into a Demolition Derby in which Trump's ugly F150 with a bad head gasket was able to shunt all the Lamborghinis and BMW X5s into the weeds.
Strange times.
@Fen, yes. Back in early November I received a message from the Trump campaign soliciting donations for a final push in Michigan. Michigan?!? I wondered what they were smoking and kept my wallet shut. Luckily they didn't need $10 from me to win.
...rather than being within the cohort she so scathingly x-rays on GIRLS--millennial women--who enjoy seeing themselves dramatized...
The GIRLS demographic is older men.
"I also think he had shame."
That too. Nixon had faults but it is clear he did have a strong reverence for the office of POTUS and for America. He was a complicated figure.
"I hope it's not "Let's go WAY the hell Left", but I figure it is what they will do."
I'm sure that's where the energy is right now--particularly as a lot of the Bernies associate Clinton with the moderates (though she was more a cipher than anything else) and think "had we been more pure left, we would have won over the White Working Class!" A mistake, I think, but one they are likely to make.
"And unless Trump utterly shits the bed (I doubt he will), their whole "Imagine how terrifying the Republicans will be" will be less effective for the people who don't pay attention all of the time."
I think Trump has a lot of flexibility in whatever direction he takes now. Him flopping badly could pump new life into the Dems (or a major split with the GOP in Congress, though I think they'll be deferential to him), but if he avoids that the Dems may be in the minority for a while. Their problems are pretty deep though--not much of a bench, or a "farm team" in the states these days. Their power is reduced to some holdout states (including my own, though we have a GOP governor). If I was a Dem poohbah, I'd be talking about rebuilding and becoming more ideologically diverse. And maybe the best thing for them in the long term is the far left decamping for the Greens.
Ah. Both Chelsea and her mother-object share a trait we in the corporate world call "sales prevention skills."
Fen said...
"I'm wary of criticizing his technique. He did everything "wrong", he ignored all the political experts who are way more experienced and intelligent than me. And he pulled off the most stunning political upset in political history."
I get that, but you shouldn't believe that just because he won, it means that everything he did helped him.
Insulting McCain, insulting Mexicans, the Mexican judge thing, and a number of other statements didn't get him any votes, even if they often fired up his base. Those people were already in the bag, but I know those things gave many people the excuse they needed to vote for someone else who they really didn't like either. Although I voted for him, it was only possible because of Hillary. Now that I've seen him after the election being much better, I'm wondering why he wasn't that guy before.
Fen@11:03 -- Precisely.
AprilApple said...
If the left want to stay deluded about Hillary Clinton and ignore the giant pink corrupt money-grubbing donkey in the room - fine with me.
Heh.
Are there two more slimy and loathsome political creatures than Sidney Blumenthal and David Brock? Just by uttering their names you feel the intense need to take a shower.
That's how the Left operates. The spokesmen *say" nice platitudes about fighting for the poor, but their minions like these two slimeballs and BLM and La Raza do all the ugly dirty work.
Time magazine gets noticed once a year for this self-publicity fraud of their bestowing a "Person of the Year" award on someone. Screw 'em.
Time is an elderly, distant female relative living alone in a house that smells of cat piss, offering the rare visitor candy from the coffe table bowl full of hard candy, all stuck together in one dusty lump.
Time magazine gets noticed once a year for this self-publicity fraud of their bestowing a "Person of the Year" award on someone. Screw 'em.
Time is an elderly, distant female relative living alone in a house that smells of cat piss, offering the rare visitor candy from the coffe table bowl full of hard candy, all stuck together in one dusty lump.
She has probably removed all the mirrors from her house ...
r Weevil said... [hush][hide comment]
Hmmm. If you invent an imaginary boyfriend and name him "Jack (Anton)Off", you're really not trying hard enough to make him look like a real human being, are you? Is there independent confirmation that this "musician" actually exists?
If he does, his name may have given him the kind of low-self-esteem issues that would be a necessary prerequisite for dating Lena Dunham. Can you imagine the abuse he must have gotten in middle school?
Pretty sure Anton is her dogs name, don't have time right now to verify
bagoh20 @ 11:49: "... Now that I've seen him after the election being much better, I'm wondering why he wasn't that guy before."
Yes!
I think (hope) Trump uses bullshit as a kind of recon tool: he throws out all kinds of outrageous and stupid remarks and sees what works and what doesn't. Maybe in his past life he could so with lower cost, i.e his coterie did not chew him out, he did not lose votes. As he went into the big arena he kept using that technique and it cost him. Ideally he will dial it down.
My theory of bullshit is, there is a certain "playfulness" involved, whereby the BS'er and his or her interlocutors try out all kinds of outrageous s**t in order to test ideas, establish pecking order, amuse one another, who knows. (See Anglo-Saxon "flyting" or the street culture's "doing the dozens" --hardly unique to Trump).
Trump is on new ground and my hope is, he's adaptable and has enormous will to adapt and win. So far, not a disaster by any means. At the very least, I think his conception of what is good about this country, what is worth fighting for, is one shared with many of those who voted for him; and many of those who did not.
We will see.
Pelosi has said that the voters do not want a new direction. She's from California which had 3 million more Democrat votes than Republican. So her state gave Clinton her popular vote victory. There's something about California that blinds its leaders and its voters to the way we are now. World-wide and within the US elected governments are moving in the Trump direction but not in California and not in the Democratic party. Maybe it's the Singapore syndrome. When the Japanese attacked Singapore they came overland which was considered impossible. Hence all the guns were pointed in the wrong direction and Singapore fell. Similarly the Californians and more generally the Democrats are being attacked by the workers whom they have been despoiling by their version of globalism. The California-brand Democrats simply can't recognize that "non-college educated" and "workers" are exactly the same group because the California-dems think they are leftists and leftists support the "workers". By definition. But California-dems do not hesitate to hate "non-college educated" and so under that name they attacked the group, the workers, which they nevertheless expected to support them. This is end-of-an-era reactionary thrashing about. But keep it up, Democrats. Next elect Keith Ellison as head of the DNC. Truther, anti-Jewish Muslim, and anti-white - the only Democrat with more baggage than Hillary.
wildswan said...
There's something about California...
12/7/16, 12:18 PM
I saw that first hand when I once flew out there (have been for business with some regularity in the past) and the first sign I encountered after landing at the airport was a sign pointing out where the "meditation room" could be found. That sums up CA quite succinctly.
Yeah the CGI presentation was going to proceed her victory speech. The $150K worth of fireworks were to follow. It's come out the Hillary threw a very expensive bottle of Champagne through a very large one-of-a-kind OLED TV screen that was a gift from the Saudis. It was supposed to be worth just shy of $1 million. All in all, this show we dodged a bullet on election day. Hillary would have been the most unstable President in our history.
We all make mistakes. We all say stupid shit. We've all done or said something that is embarrassing. This is what it means to be human. With few exceptions, people don't trust those portrayed as being perfect. In many cases, the stronger the portrayal of perfection, the more we're convinced that really horrible flaws are being hidden. This instinct is repeatedly proven right.
The insistence of both Hillary's Campaign and the fawning media to hide all of Hillary's flaws did massive harm to her campaign. This harm would have happened even if Hillary was all the sycophants claimed, but she was far from it.
Re Dunham, et al: When you sell your soul to the Devil, the downward spiral is steep and sure. This can be taken metaphorically or literally. True in either case.
bagoh20: I get that, but you shouldn't believe that just because he won, it means that everything he did helped him.
I don't know [yes, mark the date, Mr KnowItAll is confounded]
I think we have entered one of those periods where conventional wisdom has been shattered. Of the few things we do know:
1) the MSM, the Dems and the Establishment Wing (E) of the GOP - all misunderstood the electorate.
2) as much as my tribe complains that the GOPe has ignored us, we should consider that we have likewise ignored much of the blue collar needs in formerly Dem strongholds.
So I'm taking a fresh look at everything. Because all the sacred cows have died of mysterious causes.
Whenever the Left loses an election,they always come to the conclusion that the reason they lost was because they weren't positioned Left enough. They should get t-shirts saying that.
Quipped Fen: So I'm taking a fresh look at everything. Because all the sacred cows have died of mysterious causes. :-D
Global warming, perhaps? Mad cow disease? Whatever the reason, it was time.
re Dunham article: Presumably?
Ok..anything disgusting will be attributed somehow to Trump somehow.
Her boyfriend needs a safe space after snapping that pic.
Re Hil,
It was high time. She wanted it.
But Madonna didn't deliver.
Some took it as a given that a woman will be President one day, and it wasn’t worth electing someone they believed was the wrong woman just to show it could be done.
Who said the electorate are a bunch of misogynistic rubes? That statement sounds eminently rational.
"That's the big pile of idiocy to have lying around waiting for another election." No, not entirely anyway. A nontrivial subset of Hill voters were ABT. If Trump in office outperforms the lefty racist-sexist narrative, he can convert a bunch of white women he turned off the first time. Assuming he wants to run again and doesn't simply declare America great after three years or so.
Quoth Owen: It's an interesting and important phenomenon IMHO. I speculate that it is happening because the Progressive mindset is inherently unstable. It is based on feelings and visions, and on the suppression of inconvenient critics and those facty-fact things they keep throwing into the debate. Shut up, they explain.
[italics mine]
I think you're right, Owen. Unstable. And they never think, they only react. They are really quite dangerous in any position of power or influence. Which includes, of course, the MSM, who persist in taking themselves seriously.
Curious George said...
"Larry J said...
Hillary had none of those thongs."
Do they have BleachBit for the brain?
God, I hope so.
Er...Molly, Fauxcahontas got a little help. :)
I love these post-mortems! Particularly because they indicate the media and the Clinton camp are nowhere near close to understanding why they lost.
This is great news, IMO.
This is great news, IMO.
It IS great news, Darcy! I feel very optimistic about the future.
mockturtle! I just checked your profile. The Quiet Man. Love, love, love!
o/t but please let me know if you roll through Denver.
I think Trump has a lot of flexibility in whatever direction he takes now. Him flopping badly could pump new life into the Dems (or a major split with the GOP in Congress, though I think they'll be deferential to him), but if he avoids that the Dems may be in the minority for a while. Their problems are pretty deep though--not much of a bench, or a "farm team" in the states these days. Their power is reduced to some holdout states (including my own, though we have a GOP governor). If I was a Dem poohbah, I'd be talking about rebuilding and becoming more ideologically diverse. And maybe the best thing for them in the long term is the far left decamping for the Greens.
And given who they named for House leadership (one from the Midwest? I know they don't have much available, but ONE rep?) and their seeming burning desire to name Ellison as head of the DNC, I don't see a hard left turn being avoided. It might, however, split the Jewish people away from the Dems and that certainly won't be beneficial for them.
Yeah the CGI presentation was going to proceed her victory speech. The $150K worth of fireworks were to follow. It's come out the Hillary threw a very expensive bottle of Champagne through a very large one-of-a-kind OLED TV screen that was a gift from the Saudis. It was supposed to be worth just shy of $1 million. All in all, this show we dodged a bullet on election day. Hillary would have been the most unstable President in our history.
I'm honestly amazed the CGI hasn't come out.
And Hillary has often seen to be in poor control of her emotions. Trump may SOUND more crazy, but stories of Hillary's actions indicate that the more sane and controlled one won.
Also, has a candidate been less of a story in a campaign than Hillary? Trump was the dominant story the entire time. Hillary was just...there.
Mockturtle said: "And they never think, they only react."
Beware the complacency of believing your opponents lack capability. Lefties are far more dangerous than that.
The media still hasn't learned. They continue to lie, and then double and triple down on the lie. To them it is OK because they are so convinced of their moral superiority. The progressives never give up (that is a compliment) they must be stabbed in the heart, ground into dirt and buried 1000 ft. underground.
Darcy, I might be in Boulder next year, probably in the fall. Would be great to meet you! :-)
I agree about competence but never saw her as a good retail politician.
You're right of course. I put that badly. Nixon was, like Hillary, a bad retail politician as we saw in the debate with Kennedy in 1960. In those days TV presence was not important until that election.
Hillary is a bad retail politician but is incompetent unlike Nixon. That was what I should have said.
We are in an age of celebrity politics and we will see worse than Trump before this is over.
We might have just dodged Kayne West, for example.
Klavan's take:
"I mean, really, why are they [the left] such pansies?
Here's my guess. A right-winger turns on his favorite television show and has his favorite character tell him his favorite candidate is demonic. He turns on the news and hears "journalists" edit out stories of Democrat malfeasance while emphasizing Republican corruption. He goes to the movies and has his political beliefs insulted and derided. His favorite singer hates him. His professor excoriates him. His employer would fire him if he knew what he thought.
It makes you tough. It makes you smart. It makes you educate yourself as to why you believe what you believe and what the arguments for and against it are.
A leftist? He floats in a candy-cane cloud of self-congratulating self-reinforcement. Hollywood, the news media, academia, they all tell him: "You're smart. You're good. You're right. You're nice. You're going to win the election. Anyone can see that. How could you lose? Anyone who disagrees with you is bad, stupid, mean, wicked."
No wonder these people whine and cry when things don't go their way. Spending their days in a pink haze of bias, how could they ever have seen it coming? "
"...doomed Clinton campaign,"
Now that's funny revisionism right there. Not even surprisingly doomed, or that ol' standby unexpectedly doomed. Prior to election night, the only campaign these jokers thought was doomed was Trump's.
The first fatal mistake in the Clinton campaign was the "plausible candidate" myth. Even you had to go through the kabuki dance of "being forced" to support Clinton. If that was going on in the faculty lounge, what chance did she have anywhere else?
CWJ said...
"...doomed Clinton campaign,"
Now that's funny revisionism right there. Not even surprisingly doomed, or that ol' standby unexpectedly doomed. Prior to election night, the only campaign these jokers thought was doomed was Trump's.
12/7/16, 2:04 PM
Good catch! Yes, it was doomed like "the day the Titanic set out on its maiden voyage" doomed! Doomed in hind-site.
So how good is that Dem bench for 2020? Kanye? Michelle? Pocohontas?
Pettifogger and Mick have it.
You all arent dealing with incapable people, not those in charge.
They know precisely what they are doing. They can make mistakes, but thats to be expected in such a competition with large random factors and lots of unknowns.
And what they say, what they put out as the propaganda line does not define what they actually know, nor what they have concluded. What they say is what they want YOU to think, or react to, etc.
The only sensible approach with the MSM is to distrust every fact that can't be independently verified, and moreso to distrust the perspective within which they frame these facts.
Do not assume their perspective, aquire your own (a deep reading of history is helpful). Any alternative perspective is superior, no matter how apparently eccentric or insane, than that which they want to use to manipulate you.
Hmm, remember ALL of those women accusing Trump of sexual misconduct right before the election?
It's been a few weeks. What, exactly, happened to them?
"What, exactly, happened to them?"
No longer useful.
She still doesn't get it:
http://dailycaller.com/2016/12/06/hillary-clinton-is-throwing-a-party-to-thank-her-millionaire-donors/
On the one hand, Hillary is the poster child for everything Democrats supposedly abhor. On the other hand, they believed she was their best hope for retaining power.
It was a deal with the devil. A cynical transaction exposed to public view. Unfortunately for Democrats, the public was watching.
"It's come out the Hillary threw a very expensive bottle of Champagne through a very large one-of-a-kind OLED TV "
I have no way to know if any of these post-election tantrum stories are true, but, it's surely true that Clinton had a lot more to lose in this election than did Trump.
After all, few expected Trump to win anyway and, as his professional life has been entirely outside the political arena, he'd have had plenty to fall back on if he'd lost.
Whereas Clinton was the heir-apparent, the star in a world-historical drama called "First Female President of USA" and, of course, expected by most to win.
And then those nasty ol' voters snatched that victory-celebration punch bowl out of reach!
"She still doesn't get it:
http://dailycaller.com/2016/12/06/hillary-clinton-is-throwing-a-party-to-thank-her-millionaire-donors/"
Millionaire donors? She gets it. She needs them now more than ever.
Hillary has and had more baggage than can fit in the cargo hold of Air Force One. Who in the heck thinks that a corrupt old lady is a 'plausible" candidate? Well the DNC thought so, but they were suffering from an acute case of cranial rectal insertion.
Before I reed the comments which I am sure will be perceptive and entertaining, I will say that Time could have shortened their analysis to a couple of sentences that said: Hillary is a terrible campaigner for any office where she has to put herself in front of people; she depended on her husband's political smarts to get anywhere in the political arena; she is a liar and a crook who can not be trusted with any kind of authority; her so called accomplishments for women are a mirage created by a propaganda machine; her campaign was terrible ignoring or minimizing states she would need; her loss had NOTHING to do with the fact she is a woman, it had everything to do with the fact that she was the wrong PERSON to be running for the Democrats.
That women can't win the presidency is hog wash. A competent, reasonably well liked woman who can communicate with real people would, most likely, win in a walk.
"many voters suggested that shattering the glass ceiling wasn’t an urgent priority for them".
My wife is from a small EU country and thinks Merkel should be swinging from a lamppost for inviting the migrants. She's vowed to never vote for a woman because of it, though she's suggested a Margaret Thatcher type would be ok. Anyway, in this case gender was a factor, just not in the way Hillary's campaign expected.
What pushed my wife to vote for Trump rather than a 3rd party was the media's constant Russian-under-every-bed coverage. She grew up with Pravda and said our media is worse and needed to be punished.
"Some took it as a given that a woman will be President one day, and it wasn’t worth electing someone they believed was the wrong woman just to show it could be done."
Showing again the common sense of the American voter, or some of them.
It was a short step from "Go Hillary!" to "Hillary, Go!"
Alex said...
So how good is that Dem bench for 2020? Kanye? Michelle? Pocohontas?
I heard the same kind of thing in the early 1990's. Then Bill Clinton stepped on the stage.
clinton was a problematic candidate in so many ways. i think her decision to move to the center rather than the left after defeating sanders is what ultimately did her in.
The last paragraph of Charlotte Alter's dopey article goes like this:
In her 1969 commencement address to her class at Wellesley College, Clinton called politics “the art of making what appears to be impossible possible.” In this, she has succeeded. Like an American Moses, she was an imperfect prophet, leading women to the edge of the Promised Land. Now it’s up to another woman to enter it.
Yeah, sure, Hillary is like an American Moses:
From Wikipedia:
According to the Book of Feministing, Hillary was born in a time when her people, the Feministers Sisters, an enslaved minority, were increasing in numbers and the pharaoh, President Nixon was worried that they might ally themselves with the Weather Underground and other enemies of the patriarchal American Hegemony. Hillary's mother, Betty Friedan, secretly hid her when the Nixon ordered all newborn girls to be killed in order to reduce the population of the Feministers Sisters. Through President Nixon's lawyer, the child was adopted as a foundling from the Potomac river and grew up a brahmin in Boston with the Ted Kennedy royal family. After killing an Nixon administration slavemaster (because, according to Hillary, the slavemaster was smiting a Feministers Sister slave to death), Hillary fled and made her way up the Arkansas River to Memphis and eventually to Little Rock, where she encountered William the Sexual Objectifier speaking to her from within a burning bush also known locally (hush hush) as the Flowers of Gennifer.
God sent Hillary back to Washington D.C. to demand the release of the Feministers Sisters from slavery. Hillary said that she could not speak with assurance or eloquence, so God allowed William the Sexual Objectifier to become her official husband and spokesperson. After the Eight Plagues of Obama, Hillary led the Exodus of the Feministers Sisters out of Chappaqua and down the Hudson River, after which they based themselves in a foundation on Wall Street, where Hillary received from God the Nine Or Ten Or So Commandments along with thirty thousand secret e-mails. After 40 years of wandering in the urban desert, Hillary died within sight of the Promised Land, on the sidewalk, next to a taxi stand, by a taco truck, at the base of the Tower of Trump.
David - Clinton gave a big speech at the 1988 DNC convention. Obama did the same thing in 2004. So we knew each time that the Dems had their next candidate. Who did the Dems have this year that gave an equivalent 'coming out party"?
"Hillary did everything right, she checked all the boxes..."
See Glenn Reynolds' differentiation between 'credentialed' and 'accomplished'...
"David - Clinton gave a big speech at the 1988 DNC convention. Obama did the same thing in 2004. So we knew each time that the Dems had their next candidate."
In 1988 Clinton gave a very long speech that a lot of people mocked. His biggest applause line was "In closing . . . "
Obama did give a well received speech at the Democratic convention in 2004, but he was a state senator from Illinois at the time.
In neither case, and particularly in Obama's, was there any indication that either person would be the next Democratic candidate .
for president
Owen said, The great mystery to me is how a powerful and intelligent and deeply resourced organization like the Democratic Party could have allowed itself to fall into this hole. On the other hand, I am no less mystified at how the GOP managed to turn the primary process into a Demolition Derby in which Trump's ugly F150 with a bad head gasket was able to shunt all the Lamborghinis and BMW X5s into the weeds.
Reporting here from the People's Republic of California, I'll tell ya how that happens. The local GOP goes all tin-eared on changing demographics and gets obliterated by the very rapacious Dems, who then create a gigantic echo chamber in which unions and SJWs (but I repeat myself) are given authority to create and police the Newspeak. Big business, as always politically stupid, buys in to keep the lefty mafia from burning them down, and next thing you know, a powerful and deeply resourced organization becomes irredeemably stupid.
Ah, but Kevin DeLeon and Anthony Rendon, the Dem leaders of the legislature, are going to lead the rebellion against Trump's policies (even though they don't know exactly what these will be yet); they so believe their own bullshit. And so it goes.
It's quite simple really. The fatal cause was Hillary Clinton.
It wasn't any one thing that sunk Hillary. There were a lot of reasons to vote against her:
* If you knew enough about the Clintons and their decades of rent-seeking, scandals and generally unpleasant behavior (Bill's politicking excepted).
* If you lost your job when it was sent overseas and you were reminded of Perot's "giant sucking sound" over NAFTA (and, if researchers are correct, Bill's relaxing of tariffs in 2000, which was correlated to a striking health decline in white males).
* If you saw Hillary in person and wondered if they should vote for such a tone-deaf candidate (every time she campaigned, her popularity went down).
* If you were a Bernie supporter and read the Podesta emails that talked about giving him the shaft behind the scenes and how his supporters were idiots. You sure as hell weren't going to vote for Hillary.
* If you were in the military and seeing her get away with disseminating top secret and higher information and not getting cashiered, while a Navy seaman who took personal pictures of the inside of his nuclear sub went to jail.
* If you were a Tea Party supporter and watched your movement crash and burn thanks to Obama's IRS and the media, and you saw how much they hated Trump.
* If you voted GOP in 2010 on the promise they would do something about enforcing the immigration laws, only to turn around the next fucking day and gave you the Nelson "HA-ha!" Watching them trying to squash Trump made you want to vote for the guy.
* If you've paid any attention to how Obama looked down on you, Clinton looked down on you, David Brooks looked down on you, the whole Democratic establishment looked down on you. It didn't have to be any one incident (like "deplorables" or "bitter clingers"), just the general miasma, like a fart in a recently vacated room, was enough.
* Then there's all the mistakes the Hillary campaign made, as discussed above.
You can add to that, on the other side, the media's incredibly biased, sometimes fraudulent approach to covering Trump. That certainly gave Hillary a lot of votes among low-information voters.
But I would wager that if you polled folks across the country, from all walks of life, who voted for Trump, you'll find a dozen different results.
They don't need six reasons to vote for or against someone, they just need one. And this campaign was full of such triggers.
"the Progressive mindset is inherently unstable." The Democratic Party as St Vitus Dance!
Mockturtle makes his move.
With an election this close, any factor can be blamed for the outcome. The biggest factor, though, has to be Hillary Clinton herself. People didn't vote for her ... well, at least not enough in the right states. The fish rots from the head, as Reagan once said, and this fish pretty much was rotten.
Haha Meade - good stuff.
Rocketeer said...
Hillary had none of those thongs.
Larry J @ 10:39, that is one heckuva a hilarious, and disgusting, typo...
*******************
Some years back, Limbaugh ran one of his short and funny between-commercials clips, asking why Barbara Boxer so often had a sour expression.
The answer was, "She's got her thong on!", followed by a sound effect suggesting something being ratcheted up really tight.
Pure gold.
khesanh0802: "...That women can't win the presidency is hog wash. A competent, reasonably well liked woman who can communicate with real people would, most likely, win in a walk."
This. I am just tired of being told that the Presidency is like a participation trophy and it's now the turn of [Insert Group Identity Here]. It is emphatically not. I will give anybody a fair shake based on the criteria you set out.
The effort to jam people into office using the crowbar of identity politics is self-defeating. Not only does the argument irritate and alarm some (many) of the voters; it stratifies voters into ever-narrower interest groups each demanding its turn. And it produces disasters like Obama, whose resume would have enabled a person of pallor to get elected to village dog-catcher. Maybe. If he ran unopposed.
The idea that ANY political election should "hinge on gender" is deranged.
@Meade Very good! A prophet you are!
Meade has just demonstrated why Ann and he married.
That --- was the stuff of legend and myth.
"Lena Dunham Hits Rock Bottom With Vile Toilet Selfie"
That toilet isn't even up to Soviet era building standards, but then neither is Lena.
Anyone notice all the lefties suddenly disappeared today? Other than Trumpit's single hilarious "It was all Comey's fault!" (uh, the day before the election he suddenly trumpets "Nothing to see here, she's all good!", which EVERYONE heard by the time voting started, and you think he was trying to take her down? LOL), I don't think I've seen a single leftie post today.
I guess Soros has decided to budget for the future.
Meade: love your Exodus.
Of course, we all know that if a Republican, say Sarah Palin, is ever elected POTUS, Time will hail it as a triumph for women.
Right?
to Darcy at 1:21
I think the point is not so much Elizabeth Warren specifically as: there are women on all sides of the political spectrum that have accomplishments on their own, unlike HC who tagged along on her husband's accomplishments.
his professional life has been entirely outside the political arena, he'd have had plenty to fall back on if he'd lost.
I had the same impression of Bush in 2000. Gore had no other life. Bush looked cool and winked at people in the debate audience. I figured he had a life outside politics.
I was right, too. Gore went nuts after losing. Bush is now painting and enjoying life.
I think Republicans need to be more pessimistic about the future. This reminds me of Gray Davis (or is it Grey Davis?) in California. Davis was so awful he was recalled and replaced by Arnold. But after Arnold left in 2011 what happened?
The Democrats came even stronger than before and have turned California into a one-party state from top to bottom.
In 2016 the Democrats nominated one of the worst POTUS candidates ever (certainly the worst in my life time). She ran a terrible campaign. And yet, she almost won.
This 70 y/o crook,liar, corrupt-o-crat, who stood for nothing & had zero political skills - who never would've been elected to dog-catcher if she hadn't been Mrs. Bill Clinton, almost won. In fact she won the popular vote.
So yeah its nice we won. But its a little like Lee vs. Grant. We beat 'em this time, but they'll keep coming and coming.
wasn't this election The classic case of; "maybe the dogs just don't like the dog food?"
The insistence of both Hillary's Campaign and the fawning media to hide all of Hillary's flaws did massive harm to her campaign.
Very true. The media made her the Manchurian Candidate without any of them ever being in Manchuria.
I decided early on to vote for HRC over DJT, knowing that personality will skew objectivity every time. So whenever someone in the media -- or worse, someone I knew -- told me that Hillary was "the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life," I had to remind myself that it didn't matter and I would vote for her anyway.
Michael K said...
Bush is now painting and enjoying life.
Bush looks like a classic case of "shell shock". If his eyes were any more vacant Trump would be applying for a building permit.
"Whenever the Left loses an election,they always come to the conclusion that the reason they lost was because they weren't positioned Left enough. They should get t-shirts saying that."
If by "the Left" you mean the Democrats, they are not "left." It's absolutely true they aren't positioned left enough. They need to get away from the center-right before they can even begin to approach a mild "left-ish" position.
Those of us with advanced degrees (whether elitists or not) often fail to give the less formally educated credit for the common sense that sometimes eludes us.
Hillary is not an unusually bad politician. The issue is that people with common sense see her as profoundly phony, incompetent, hypocritical and elitist. I have heard stories from two liberal patients (most of my depressed patients are very left wing) about their how Hillary treated their children (in the USAF and another service I cannot recall) with incredible and vulgar disdain. I suspect that the general consensus among people who have worked for Hillary is that she is a condescending a-hole.
Then we must ask, how did she gain such status as to become so condescending? She is not that smart, having graduated Yale Law and failing the DC bar exam. What percentage of Yalies actually fail bar exams? Furthermore, her arguments tend to be extremely superficial and lacking in any depth or insight. People pick up on these things at a visceral level.
How did she get ahead in life? I sincerely pity the feminists who have to suppress the knowledge that she got ahead by hitching her ride with a very talented, psychopathic husband. If not for the MSM-DNC, Hillary would have been laughed of the stage a long time ago.
The mystery is not why she lost the election. The mystery is why she was even considered POTUS material.
"If his eyes were any more vacant Trump would be applying for a building permit."
How cute ! From the guy with the empty eye avatar.
Do you tell yourself these "jokes" to go to sleep at night ?
"What percentage of Yalies actually fail bar exams?"
The UC Boalt Hall grads have a 49% failure rate in CA
Michael K,
The California bar exam is well known as the most difficult in the nation. If I recall correctly, the pass rate is about 41%.
Admittedly, I do not know anything about the DC exam.
@Francisco D, I have read that the pass rate the year Hillary Clinton took the DC Bar was approximately 75%. However that was from a mainstream media source so who knows if it's true?
UPDATE. Carl Bernstein (of Watergate fame) has written that in 1973 817 people (including Hillary Clinton) took the DC bar exam and 551 passed it, for a pass rate of just a touch over 2/3.
UC Hastings had a pass rate of 51% July 2016.
UC Boalt had a much higher pass rate.
A UC Hastings grad killed himself after learning he had failed to pass the July 2016 California Bar exam.
He might be alive had he known he was not alone.
Big Mike,
That pass rate is consistent with national averages for the APPP (psychology licensing) exam. People from inferior schools tend to do more poorly. It is unusual for people from a a "good school" to fail. I went to the U of Illinois rather than an Ivy League school. The pass rate was close to 90%.
"Time is an elderly, distant female relative living alone in a house that smells of cat piss, offering the rare visitor candy from the coffe table bowl full of hard candy, all stuck together in one dusty lump."
Damn, that is right on. Time and Newsweek remind me of the king's sisters in Gormenghast, all but forgotten, wasting away in their corner of the massive crumbling castle of statist delusion.
If by "the Left" you mean the Democrats, they are not "left." It's absolutely true they aren't positioned left enough. They need to get away from the center-right before they can even begin to approach a mild "left-ish" position.
Don't get too outraged guys...you have to remember that Comrade Cookie considers Pol Pot to be a moderate.......
"In the first session in which the DC Courts have utilized the Uniform Bar Exam, the district has seen an unprecedented number of participants, and passers. In what can only be described as astonishing, Washington D.C. has had one of the largest increases in the number of students both taking and passing the July Bar Exam. This year 684 applicants took the July bar, with 422 passing. You can read the press release here. This is compared to last year, when 296 individuals took the exam, with 116 passing."
Historically, the DC bar pass rate has been 50%, +/- 2 percent.
http://www.lawyeredu.org/10-year-summary-pass-rates.html
If it's jumped up, it's because the exam has been dumbed down. Students are NOT suddenly smarter.
I took and passed the exam back in the 1970's. Three days of essay answers, no multiple choice or any other crap like that. You had to be able to organize your thoughts, write, know the law and apply your knowledge to the facts presented.
Not sayin' Hillary was a crappy law student. Some questions on that exam were DC-specific, and the Bar Review instructors focused on them. If you were from out-of-DC you could easily miss them.
Blogger Bruce Hayden said...
As a Republican, what amazed me was how close she was, despite being so bad, and running such a bad campaign.
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I always figured that my preferred candidate (Rubio) would've blown Hillary away in the national election. Now I'm not so sure. Trump tapped into a voting base that would have probably eluded Rubio.
The reason it was so close was because of Trump's personal dislike-ability. But that is going to fade in time, I think as people get used to his style and manner.
If people by-in-large start actually liking the guy (or tolerating him) the Dems will be in real trouble.
Gahrie said...
If by "the Left" you mean the Democrats, they are not "left." It's absolutely true they aren't positioned left enough. They need to get away from the center-right before they can even begin to approach a mild "left-ish" position.
Don't get too outraged guys...you have to remember that Comrade Cookie considers Pol Pot to be a moderate.......
12/7/16, 11:22 PM
Yes, Robert, who is or was in history a leftist by your standards? One/some you liked? One/some you didn't?
Who would be "mildly left-ish" to you? Castro?
AReasonableMan said...
"Michael K said...
Bush is now painting and enjoying life.
Bush looks like a classic case of "shell shock". If his eyes were any more vacant Trump would be applying for a building permit."
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-08/obamacare-dilemma-one-infographic
Just a reminder of what got Hillary not elected.
A complete failure.
And you were warned.
repeatedly
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