4525

A bad candidate who got almost three million more votes than the guy who supposedly won.

So no. I’m not on board with that, and I’m getting tired of it being forwarded as a some sort of emerging truism. She was amazing in the debates, and great as a candidate. She got hosed, and so did we. That doesn’t make her a bad candidate.

-xtien

4526

I guess what I was trying to say is that the point of the insults should have been to cause Trump to show his insecurity in a public forum – again and again – and call him weak and dangerous because of it rather than try to pitch that message to the public. Provoke Trump into sending the message himself. Nobody managed that successfully. They never really quite got under his skin during public appearances. Megan Kelly probably came closest.

4527

No, see, he did win. Not supposedly, but actually. The popular vote doesn’t matter. It sucks, but it doesn’t.

Imagine a Democratic party candidate that Comey could not have torpedoed so close to election. That fake news would have been harder to believe for those closer to center. That didn’t have a record of things, even things she shouldn’t have been blamed for, that made center-ish conservatives turn up their noses. That maybe wouldn’t have people saying “where there’s smoke there’s fire.”

That shit matters. It sucks though. My come to Jesus moment was when I realized that’s what friends on both the far left and middlin’ right had been telling me during the entire election season. I’d say Trump/Stein/Johnson was a terrible candidate and quote or reference some things that they’d done that should immediately disqualify them and they’d say, “But I just can’t vote for Hillary Clinton” and I’d say, “Don’t vote for Trump, ok?” and we’d move on with non-political stuff. This happened for months. But Hillary was good in a debate! Didn’t matter. But Trump groped a woman. Didn’t matter. But… but… but…

Hillary was unlikeable by a LOT of people. Trump was also unlikeable. But he got the votes where it mattered and he’s president. It didn’t matter what HE did because they didn’t like HER. We go to an election with the electorate we have, not the one we want. And if we’d listened, maybe we’d have been able to do something about it.

I do realize that you could reverse most of this whole thing in an alternate reality where Clinton won. Replace all Clintons with Trumps and vice versa. But isn’t that amazing? That it was even close? That Dems ran a candidate almost as disliked as Trump? And don’t show me a poll, all of those were wrong. I staked my whole damn worldview on those things and they were wrong. The election result was devastating to me.

I LIKE Hillary Clinton, I did not vote for her as a “lesser of two evils”… I just wish the Dems would have listened.

Or maybe it’s just the normal swinging back and forth of the direction of this country and the candidate didn’t matter, what do I know?

By the way, what would a worse candidate have looked like?

Edit: I should probably just delete this and come back and repost it in 6 months. It’s still a little too soon. :/

4528

Great movie with Vincent Price(?) :-)

4529

To who? And done what? Which Dems? What are you even advocating here? “Imagine a world where we won! Wouldn’t that have been better? How could you people not SEE?”

4530

Hey, speaking of Comey and the fucking emails, guess who’s still using unsecure email servers? You guessed it, White House staffers!

4531

To the people farther afield from center democrats?

Run a different candidate.

Sorry, the DNC. They basically forwarded Hillary Clinton as their “chosen” candidate. Not saying she didn’t win the primary fair and square, which she did.

That the democrats (voters and DNC) rethink what they want from the party and reject candidates that don’t pass the smell test to the average American.

This bit is a little insulting, to be honest.

4532

There’s also this:

And the whole thing where killing people is bad, even if you don’t like them or their politics. Until someone gets to a level where their offenses warrant the death penalty, it’s pretty dangerous to suggest killing them as a solution to your disagreement.

4533

Hey, maybe Russia can hack them like Trump suggested and release the dirt! Oh wait…

4534

Bernie Sanders. Voted for Bernie Sanders in the primaries. The ones who voted for Hillary Clinton in the primaries. We’re advocating nominating a candidate that inspires people instead of one that everyone is like, “Ok, I guess.”

4535

But it is a very effective and quick means to eliminate dissent and get back on track.

4536

Bernie Sanders lost to Hillary. He wasn’t even good enough to beat her. Sure, he might’ve been “inspiring” to some people, but obviously not enough.

4537

This is the problem, though - 3 million more Americans thought Hillary passed the smell test. What candidate would have done better? How were those candidates prevented from running, other than by their own assumption that Hillary would beat them? The voters really only had a choice between Bernie and Hillary, and given that Hillary got more votes and lost only because of a massive shift in formerly safe states that happened so late it wasn’t even accounted for in the polls, it’s not really clear what Bernie would have done better (other than not be vulnerable to a political attack by the head of the FBI). Saying we should have nominated him because “hey, who knows, maybe he would have won, we know she didn’t” is ridiculous hindsight revisionism. Maybe the GOP should have nominated someone in 2012 who couldn’t be destroyed by comments about the 47%, but those sheeple all lined up behind silver spoon Mitt.

He inspired so many people that he lost decisively to the ho-hum candidate. Damn, too bad we missed out on star power of that magnitude. I mean, I liked Bernie’s message and I voted for him, but he was just not as popular, not as qualified, and not as in tune with the party as his opponent. I assume nearly everyone who voted for him wanted Hillary to beat Trump, too, but sitting around for the next 4 years saying “I told you so. Damn, see what Trump did? I told you so, should’a listened…” isn’t really going to get much done, and that’s a case where the result is clear (Hillary as president, not Trump), rather than murky at best (does Bernie pull together enough support to beat Trump, does Trump even get the nomination if Bernie is the clear favorite for Dems?).

4538

The perception among prospective Democrat candidates (e.g. Joe Biden) was that Hillary had this thing in the bag and that she and Bill and the rest of the Clinton operatives had all the money people, the political pros, and maybe even the DNC already firmly in her camp. The one thing wikileaks did prove is that corruption within the DNC was even worse than we feared.

A Republican friend and I watched different Joe Biden exit interview last few weeks. We both concluded that it is pretty much impossible to hate the guy (not that some partisan couldn’t manage the trick) but decent Republicans at worse would have concluded that Joe is dumb, his politics are awful, and I’m so tired of 8 years of Democratic rule that I’m not going to vote for him. But plenty would have stayed home or left the presidential ballot blank.

If the Democrats had nominated somebody like Cory Brooker that I actually like and respect, I would have donated money to his campaign.

There are very few things that Republican party can agree on especially in the age of Trump, but a profounded distrust and often hatred of Hillary Clinton are at the top of the list.

4539

There was no corruption in the DNC. Don’t swallow the Russian kool-aid. Not wanting to waste resources on a candidate that you think has no chance of winning is not corruption, it is efficient operation of a political organization with limited resources.

4540

Some Trump administration officials and Capitol Hill Republicans are discussing the possibility of passing sweeping tax cuts without offsetting revenue increases — an idea that threatens to balloon the deficit and undermine the GOP’s reputation as the party of fiscal discipline.

Didn’t that die like back in the 80s with Reagan?

4542

No, because the public is stupid, and the media too lazy to do the work of disproving it.

4543

The GOP has been in the post-fact world on that issue since the 80s. Clearly, they are the serious, sober, good-looking, sexy party of fiscal discipline. This is because they say so. The so-called “fact” that the GOP keeps proposing tax cuts without paying any attention to the effect on revenues is irrelevant to the truthiness of their reputation for fiscal discipline.

… So how long before Trump signs an executive order repudiating the debt, or more likely foreign debt? Between Trump-the-bankrupcy-king and Bannon-the-Leninist-bombthrower, I don’t see how it doesn’t happen.

It will probably be shortly before Trump announces his triumphant retirement, though, because out of all Trump’s insane plans it’s one of the few the GOP might actually oppose.

4544

4545

That image is great because it will never need to be updated.

Trump is like the George Costanza of politicians. He just does the opposite of what reason would dictate… and it works every time, somehow.