The Vagaries of Clinton's Campaign

I mean… she lost to the worst candidate in history. Pretending she wouldn’t have lost to a real candidate is silly.

Even a scumbag like Cruz would’ve beat her. Because she lost to fucking Trump.

She was a bad candidate who got overconfident and completely fucked the dog. Campaigning in red states? And then losing blue ones? That’s a colossal fuck up on every level.

Trump is a terrible person on every conceivable level and an abysmal leader but he won because his campaign spoke to people.

He said the shit other republicans were afraid to say, and he was rewarded for that.

Pretty much. That and people hate Clinton and always will. Then she barely tried on top of it.

I think she did her best, her best was just not very good.

Or she got bad advice and followed it, but same thing isn’t it?

The thing that drives me crazy is people who will acknowledge Trump is being and doing terrible things but that it’s all balanced out by how much Trump being absolutely terrible makes liberals even more mad. “It’s not presidential, it’s criminal, but that blatant lying and threatening the FBI investigation really makes liberals SO ANGRY so I just love it.”

Trump could murder an orphan at every hole of his golf course this weekend. That would suck, sure, because they’d be dead orphans on the golf course. But on the other hand I bet that would make liberals even more angry

So much hindsight bias. If 100k votes had flipped you’d be reading so many takes on bizarre Trump’s campaign . If Comey letter or any other swingy factor hadn’t been in play, we’d be surprised that the incumbent party managed to win the popular vote by 4 or 5 percent. Historical that almost never happens.

That base is going to shrink a little over the next three years- the thing is they are making liberals that mad, as well as many non-liberals. This is why, provided elections are free, Trump will fade out- there just won’t be the anti-Hillary vote in 2 or 4 years. Trump’s hard base seems to be about 35% of America, and prob about 40% of voters- I think that’s Trump’s floor.

The only thing the Dems need to do is avoid a complete civil war over the Bernie/Hillary thing, and that means finding someone who appeals to both camps.

The big thing right now is to delegitimize Trumpism among younger Americans completely, so it mostly dies out by itself in the next 20 years.

I suspect at some point the fever will break. Even a lot of Trump voters are going to get tired of complete chaos from their government. They used to be able to exult in the random acts of their congresspeople and how mad it made liberals. But they had an even-tempered adult in the White House who was willing to listen to their shit. Now it’s just temper tantrums all day, every day. At some point, that’s going to get old.

That’s only true if you have hope for the future. These folks don’t. I really think Trump’s hardcore supporters are in a death cult.

I am not confident in 2020.

The problem is that while people don’t like trump and don’t like the republican party, they also don’t like Democrats and they probably aren’t going to like the democratic 2020 option either (who is almost certainly going to be another very establishment Democrat).

I can’t find the link, but i seem to remember that polls were showing that Americans thought Hillary Clinton would favor the Rich even more than Trump, which is a huge (and absurd) problem. It just shows how out of touch the Democratic party is with the American people (with policy and/or messaging), even if the Republican party is just as bad or worse.

I don’t think you can blame Bernie at all. It isn’t like the stuff he talked about was a surprise to anyone. Oh Clinton takes a ton of money from special interests and gives private speeches to ultra rich backers, so surprising! In reality, he treated her with kid gloves and barely went after her at all except when she directly ran counter to his core values (special interest money in politics mostly).

The way i feel Bernie hurt Hillary the most was in giving people a better option. For years they were fine with a revolving door of similar politicians and then they saw a brief glance of sunlight through the clouds. It is hard to really feel inspired after that is taken away. Also, Hillary’s surrogates (completely on their own i’m sure) massively attacked both Bernie and his supporters with completely made up things. Fake incidents of violence, charges of racism/sexism, etc. They didn’t just go after Bernie either, personally attacked his voters, voters that they would need. It goes without saying that this doesn’t encourage them to vote for you.

The biggest problem though was certainly her not having a message beyond “First Female President” and “I’m not Trump.”

Well, I think things will be more favorable for someone better than Hillary to come out of the Dem field in 2020, for several reasons

  1. It’s going to be a clown car. I suspect given Trump’s unpopularity, which won’t go away even if the economy doesn’t tank, we’re going to see at least 10-12 candidates.

  2. the DNC won’t be able to put their thumb on the scale as much. Bernie supporters have gained more influence at the county and state levels of the Dem party, and they’ll have superdelegates themselves this time.

  3. The only candidates who could be considered heir apparents are Joe Biden, Elisabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders. None of those three will have credibility issues with the base. Biden might have some, but his ability to be a fighter will win over all but the most hardcore Berniecrats. Warren was considered by most Bernie supporters to be an acceptable replacement for Bernie. Bernie is Bernie, but he won’t win and probably won’t run this time.

Even the establishment candidates will be more credible as economic populists than Hillary was. People who weren’t hardcore Hillary supporters assumed she would do anything to gain power, and people believed the worst about her. I did, and honestly I thought she’d be a lousy president myself, but one who would be a lot better than Trump- which is why I held my nose and voted for her.

The only legitimate presidential candidates who might have credibility issues are Cory Booker and Amy Klouchbar, and Cory Booker has no chance in a crowded field. Klouchbar might but I think she’s a longshot.

one thing that could mess things up is if a celebrity jumps in the race such as the Rock or Mark Zuckerburg, but I don’t think they’d win a primary.

Note: I’m going to make it clear, I thought Hillary was credible personally, but not politically. I think she had good ideas, but with her massive unpopularity (and I think she’d only have 40% right now myself), she would have no political capital, and Dems would be running from her- and 2018 would be a massacre for Dems congressionally. What we are going through now with Trump- I believe it was truly inevitable at some point, and in a way, we’re actually lucky it’s Trump and not someone more competent- the ruthlessness was going to come from any Republican, and if the economy had a recession in 2019, I think Hillary wouldn’t have cracked 150 electoral votes in 2020.

#Franken 2020

Klobuchar, on the other hand, would be awful and I will volunteer/donate to the (primary) opposition should such a measure be necessary. She’s just the worst kind of milquetoast nanny-state Democrat. Bleh.

I mean, she’s inoffensive as a Senator and I don’t even have to hold my nose that tightly to vote for her every 6. But for POTUS? We can do much, much better.

I don’t see Biden running. He will be 78.

Biden won’t be running. Bernie won’t be running.

That’s because they’re both older than Trump, and age is going to be a massive issue in the next campaign.

(Because the excuse the GOP is going to eventually go with for Trump is, “Poor guy, he wasn’t all there, whaddaya expect, he’s in his 70s!”)

They can’t do that because their patron saint was as well.

I’ve thought about a ‘way too early 2020 thread’. For me I’d like to see, in no particular order:
Franken
Sherrod Brown
Kirsten Gillibrand
Jason Kander (maybe, but he does have centrist appeal)

I think Warren will be too old. None of the above are terribly charismatic, which might be a problem given Democratic response to those with less than God like charisma. Whoever it ends up being I just hope it’s someone without a hint of controversy so the likes of the NYT and the host of Beltway pundits don’t go all rabid bothsidisms (as they have, time and time again.) If this last election proved anything is that the power of confirmation bias can never be underestimated, that and the American electorate in general is just too damn lazy (or stupid, or both) to take their civic duty seriously.

I also think it’s equally and maybe even more important for Dem’s to start taking back control of states. There’s plenty of damage that can be done regardless of who controls the WH.

Joaquin Castro’s day will be coming, but may be 2024/8 rather than 2020. He’s 42 now, so he’d be young-ish, and is not that well-known outside of texas yet. He chose not to run against cruz for senate in 2018, so he’s got something in mind, and I doubt it’s just staying as a house rep from san antonio.

His twin brother Julian also might be thinking bigger thoughts, but I’d be surprised if it’s the 2020 presidential race.

The name I’d throw into the ring is Tammy Duckworth. I think she’s a badass.

It truly is a mystery why Clinton’s message didn’t get out…


Like every other media critique of the campaign, this one ignores the media’s own role in shaping the narratives that drove the election. The media’s absolute inability to engage any sort of self-reflection/introspection is why I’m not in the least sanguine about the chances to minimize the damage possible by the current administration.

Still, all the information was out there for all to read. If you just sit passively back and let slogans drift to your ears, how can you be an informed electorate?

Based on my anecdotal summary of people at work that I talk to and/or have lunch with, the issue is not the information being available, it’s that a huge majority of people just don’t fucking care. Facebook was and still is an acceptable medium for news for a large lot of people. And we now know that was indeed one of the issues this last election.

I read the news on the internet, watch it on TV, listen to it during the drive to and from work, and even discuss it on forums. I’m betting most of us here are the same way. We are literally the representation of a very small fraction of people that voted. It’s fucking scary. In fact, I remember asking people who voted who they picked for our state Governor or other non-Presidential selections and getting way too many answers of, “I don’t remember.” Just poke and press buttons and leave. “Oh, that Hillary person is the one that lied about emails. I won’t press that button.”