Mourning in America - Trump Year One: November '16 to

longneck - i'm really sorry. there's never a good time for that news, but to have it happen this week. oof. :-/

re: clinton being a bad candidate

there was a really obvious problem, occasionally stated but apparently ignored by her team: she never gave anyone a reason to vote for her. what would be different about a clinton presidency, what would people have to look forward to? she did have a few initiatives she could have talked about, even if they weren't exactly the most inspiring, like addressing student loan debt. maybe she thought that since the GOP would block everything single thing she wanted to do, it wasn't worth highlighting. and of course, i realize that it's tough to talk about a brand new inspirational vision when you're following 8 years of obama, 4 of which you served in as a cabinet member. but regardless, in the end she effectively stood for nothing, offered nothing to vote for. she could have let her surrogates and the rest of the entire fucking world tear Trump down while offering her alternate future, but since she had nothing else to offer, she joined in as well.

yeah, clinton came off as weirdly vague about things. even her sloganeering was in no way memorable.

"she never gave anyone a reason to vote for her. what would be different about a clinton presidency, what would people have to look forward to?"

it's because trump was so fucking awful and rising in the polls she wasted all her time tearing him down; look at the debates, they were 90% about Trump and Trump's views. She never got around to making a case for herself.

like if you asked people what her goals were and what she wanted to do most people would have trouble remembering. i realize that doesn't say much when people don't even know who the vice president is in this country but still....

"even her sloganeering was in no way memorable"

you mean you didn't like "Chillary" beer cozies???

but it really is the complete opposite of trump. everyone remembers what he said he was gonna do. wall. deport. more jobs. etc.

what would be different about a clinton presidency

Why should anything be different? Obama has been a great president, is broadly popular, and the economy has pulled back from total collapse. "Four more years of this, basically" is a good reason to vote for somebody.

yeah, sadly, i'd settle for status quo hillary. obviously.

she was clearly gonna bomb even more

but then the angry people would have just been four years more angry. i don't know. i don't know how to make Indiana a more robust state.

but eh, foreign kids and future terrorists, fuck em xp

"everyone remembers what he said he was gonna do"

and in that period where Hil just repeated every word Bernie said, all of her words sounded like lies including "and" and "the'

anyway KM otm

"Four more years of this, basically" is probably a better slogan than "I'm with her", tbh.

One of many reasons I hope protests continue, at least to some degree, is that Trump is above all else a man who defines himself by his success, and president or not, he's still a private businessman. I can't imagine his properties will seem that appealing with hundreds, or even dozens, of angry protesters out front, or even the threat of same. This might be the first president in eons, if ever, who is *financially* vulnerable if not politically. He may or may not give a shit if people are upset, but he'd sure care if his fortunes started faltering.

i don't know, i thought it was pretty clear what she was offering, whether via rallies, debates or ads. she's just not a good seller of it. by her own admission. she's a list-maker. during the debates, whenever hrc would speak about her proposals, i could see my friends' eyes glaze over, and their comments would be about her demeanor, about trump's expressions on the split-screen, or about "how she was doing." i don't think we're listening, that's all -- partly because we're watching the "theater" of it all, but compounded in her case because of her rhetorical/charismatic shortcomings.

I hate paying money for something I never use.

You are using it though. You aren't paying for health care, you are paying to be insured against the chance that you have medical issues that result in large fees. But if you want to look at is as directly paying for "health care you're not using"...you almost definitely will use it at some point. Relying on paying out-of-pocket for med bills is what has caused millions of Americans to go bankrupt. They all didn't see the utility in "paying money for something I never use" either.

https://www.greatagain.gov/

i'm sick

xp:

"Stronger Together" is memorable enough, but most voters simply care little about celebrating diversity. The civil rights struggle doesn't win new voters. Many of the Bernie slogans were just as bad: "Not Me. Us." The slogan should have focused on bread and butter issues that expand the coalition while still addressing the Occupy movement concerns. Something like "A Fair Deal".

Let’s say you want HBO. So you go to your local cable provider to get HBO and the only way they’ll let you get HBO is to sign up for a premium channel package, which includes HBO but also includes Cinemax. Now, maybe you don’t want Cinemax, and you don’t care about Cinemax, and maybe never personally plan to ever watch Cinemax, but the deal is: If you want HBO, you have to sign on to Cinemax too. You have to be a Cinemax subscriber to get HBO. And you go ahead and sign up for the premium channel package.

finally someone able to explain politics to the economically disadvantaged in a way that everyone can appreciate -- overpaying for subscriptions to premium cable so you can keep up with the latest Girls. "oh, that's what's going on? i hate that" said frank dirt of yatesboro, "paying for those extra cable channels just to get HBO was what kept me from keeping up with mortgage payments after I lost my job."

Or "A New Deal"

Sorry bad jk, point taken

Scalzi's not addressing the disadvantaged. He's addressing literary sci-fi fans.

Clinton underperformed with them as well?! Damn

It's an analogy. And the last time I checked most of Trump's voters are middle-class or higher.

Bigger issue with "Fair Deal" is that its the slogan Harry Truman ran under, TBH. But the point is, slogans based on identity poltics may make Democrats feel good about themselves, but mean nothing to those whose concerns aren't in the identity politics world.

Replace "HBO" with "premium sports package," then.

Whose identity ?

Isn't Trump all about identity politics? Just in a (cough cough) veiled fashion?

I would just say Dems have exhibited tone deafness or discomfort with the kind of identity politics that plays in broad swaths of the white electorate

To the bafflement of Democrats in Wisconsin, for instance, the late Clinton push there did not mirror the economic messaging of the local labor unions. One played back Trump's worst remarks about women; another, his mocking of a reporter with a physical disability; the last, a warning from a nuclear technician who worried that a reckless President Trump would start a war.

That decision was backed by data showing that voters reacted most strongly to his controversial comments. But it did little to motivate Clinton's base of supporters, especially when they were faced with questions about her judgment in using a private email server as secretary of state.

Again, in Wisconsin, the results proved the case - a state where Clinton did not make a single stop during the general election.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/ct-hillary-clinton-mistakes-20161111-story.html

relying solely on identity politics is what did them in

Stronger Together was weak sauce imo. I still don't know what it means outside the specific context of the convention.

Isn't Trump all about identity politics?

Who read "Stronger Together" as a reminder that Democrats are a coalition of minorities, special interests (from labor unions to trial lawyers), progressives, and pragmatists.

If you're not a minority, don't identify with a special interest, and aren't politically engaged on the Left, "Stronger Together" doesn't have much to offer you.

I think it's simplistic to call that just identity politics. They were going after his character and suitability for office. The nuclear technician remark is not a pitch to "inclusiveness" or whatever . Now, yes, the prism through which they read character was invariably that of progressivist values (anti sexist, racist etc), but in an ideal freaking world, those are just fundamental traits of decency. The message in those ads need not only be read as "let's celebrate our diversify". They could equally be read as an appeal to old-fashioned decency. Trump insulted a pow, a gold star family, etc.

Xp right "stronger together" doesn't appeal to those drawn to a different identity politics (white, working class, rural), but an identity politics nonetheless

Or the campaign looked at Brexit and literally decided to use almost the exact same slogan as the Remain campaign because what could go wrong

ok yeah me saying "identity politics" when i meant mudslinging, or whatever the new term for that is

Oh ok

if we had still lost after putting all our energy into campaign slogans and a louder platform instead of highlighting the fact that donald trump is one of the worst human beings in america, the monday morning quarterbacking would be "hmm maybe we should have spent more time highlighting that donald trump is one of the worst human beings in america." it was never clear that those last undecided voters would just shrug that off and say yolo.

I think clinton would have had to go 'big league' with her campaign platform to even make the slightest impression. promise things that could obviously never happen. 30 million new high paying jobs in the midwest and you get to work from home too and be your own boss.

she wasn't making any big promises because she expected to be held accountable for them.

Asked whether the tone of his campaign had gone too far, he said: “No. I won.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/12/donald-trump-appears-to-soften-stance-on-range-of-pledges

this answer is so vague and terrifying. do you think he meant that the tone of his campaign had not gone too far because it was necessary for him to win (in which case he's admitting that being a voice of hatred is part of his appeal)? or is he trying to say that the fact that he won means that whatever he said is now mainstreamed/normalized? something else? it's such a bizarre answer.

corporate logic; success justifies new definition of reality by the people at the top of the hierarchy.

It worked. I won. So obv it was the right gameplan.

if we had still lost after putting all our energy into campaign slogans and a louder platform instead of highlighting the fact that donald trump is one of the worst human beings in america, the monday morning quarterbacking would be "hmm maybe we should have spent more time highlighting that donald trump is one of the worst human beings in america."

yeah, but it didn't have to be either/or. and i wouldn't reduce clinton's failures to not having a good "slogan". it's more than that. as i said earlier, literally the entire rest of the world was already playing the role of pointing out the ways that donald trump is a terrible human being. clinton was right to acknowledge his terribleness. but only one person in the entire world could offer something to vote FOR as an alternative, and she didn't do that. she recited lists of what she planned to do, but 90% of her own rhetoric was about donald trump. it's not her fault that the election went trump's way - white people, either eagerly voting for racism or looking the other way , made this happen - but she didn't succeed in convincing people to vote for her as opposed to voting against trump. someone upthread said they were happy voting for her knowing she would be an extension of the obama administration. that kind of argument is fine and it works for a lot of people who were going to vote for her anyway, but it doesn't convince anyone else. everyone else wants to be able to say "if i vote for hillary clinton, X will be different. that's why i'm voting for her and why you should too."

A couple of pieces from The Guardian today.
1) women writers on Hillary Clinton's election defeat
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/nov/12/we-are-witnessing-the-politics-of-humiliation-siri-hustvedt-joyce-carol-oates-and-more-on-the-us-election

2) fictional representation of the female president or women in power including some history of who's run over time.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/nov/12/hillary-clinton-we-failed-her-sarah-churchwell

in trump's past business deals, once the contract is signed, all that matters is what's in writing and what can be enforced in court. in a political campaign, there's no enforceable contract. people just hand you massive amounts of money and power and they have no rights until the next election. trump obviously felt this was very liberating. he's never governed and if even he's given it much thought (unlikely), his ideas about it have never been tested by experience.

Trump only likes being a politician and bitch slapping his enemies. He has zero interest in governing.

https://www.greatagain.gov/

so awful

someone upthread said they were happy voting for her knowing she would be an extension of the obama administration. that kind of argument is fine and it works for a lot of people who were going to vote for her anyway, but it doesn't convince anyone else. everyone else wants to be able to say "if i vote for hillary clinton, X will be different. that's why i'm voting for her and why you should too."

yet obama is leaving the office w/ fairly high approval ratings. after 2000 the argument was 'why was gore not running as a 3rd clinton term?'

honestly think the damage she took to her character was ultimately more relevant than any not-absurdist promise she could make to america. and I don't know if the clinton campaign itself had much it could have done to turn that around.