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

I totally think that Hillary should've put herself in her ads - why do we need to see the same clips of Trump that the media has been covering nonstop again? What happened to "when they go low, we go high?"

Hillary never really gave people an idea WHY she wanted to be President

I'd go along with this -- and other than her general ideology regarding how to take the country in particular directions, I still don't think I know the answer to this. Ambition? You're just that big a patriot? Dunno, to me it doesn't seem like the kind of job to go for unless you REALLY REALLY WANT IT, IN A WAY THAT NO SANE PERSON COULD DOUBT. Whereas with Trump, it was like "well everything's terrible, and I won't apologize for being an asshole because I'm the only guy with balls enough to fix it." We may all die a horrible nuclear death because of it, but dammit that's charisma!

pretty counterintuitive to not focus on the fact that your opponent is LITERALLY ONE OF THE WORST HUMAN BEINGS IN AMERICA

eh one of the worst to run for president yeah sure, one of the worst public figures well probably, but

Yeah, at the time I thought it was a common-sense approach because I still can't grasp anyone finding his blustering narcissism palatable much less his offensiveness acceptable. Even in a light-red area literally everyone I interacted with was horrified by his behavior (or said they were). I made assumptions about how other people would view it.

But I don't go to church and the median age at bars is closer to 30 than 50 and comic book customers don't really talk about politics and even though my county went for him @51%, the urban part I'm in 98% of the time mostly voted for Hillary.

Hillary never really gave people an idea WHY she wanted to be President

i don't understand this response. she repeatedly said she wanted to serve working families, and in particular, address wealth inequality, improve paid family leave, reform the criminal justice system, safeguard LGBT rights, and a ton of other things. she did not reflect my personal politics in every particular, but she had a very clearly articulated platform. are you saying it was too specific? not broad enough strokes?

also, for serious, she spent a bunch of her early career advocating for children's rights. i feel like her campaign rhetoric grew pretty directly from that.

like, why did we spend all this time focusing on the fact that this guy is a serial rapist / criminal instead of 'talking about the issues'?

because we assumed most americans had at least a tiny bit of decency and wouldn't let that shit slide, regardless of politics. in retrospect that was a pretty bad thing to assume!

xp

that is several dozen words longer than "to make America Great Again"

i suspect this will be read as shrill + reactionary on ilx, but if you tell me her campaign wasn't about anything but ambition, i am going to assume that your reaction is in part about her gender.

I'm not saying she didn't have reasons, I don't think she communicated them effectively. There was no grand MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN narrative to tie into, or Obama/Bill's hope.

How about 'to break every barrier'? 'To prove we're stronger together'? Yeah, they're bad, but slogans are like that. Anyone on here not actually horrified by 'make America great again'?

my wife, who is not American incidentally, watched the first debate with me. a debate Hillary was widely said to have won, and Trump to have lost (badly). after 5 or 10 minutes of seeing them go back and forth she said "he's going to win the election". and i was like whuuuut. she said he had a simple message, and delivered it simply. he knew how shit worked, and he was going to fix what was broken. he knew how to get good deals, and he'd get a good deal for the american people. vote trump. i was like "well don't you think that's a bit reductionist"

i think she was very detailed whenever asked about her vision for the country. that is not the same thing as not giving people a reason why she wanted to be president.

it's a good slogan. it's also a total anti-semitic dog whistle.

also it's hard to get the media to focus on anything you're saying about 'the issues' when trump is sucking up all the air in the room

in order to get any policy/theme through that noise she would have to get it tattooed on her head

xp

horseshoe otm. it was clear to me why hillary wanted to be president and i was excited to see what she would do in office. i guess the problem was that she didn't boil it down into a catchphrase that appealed to the people who flipped for trump in the midwest.

her campaign was fn tite, she bodied him 3x straight in most-watched debates, ran on a platform building on a president with 60% approval rating's legacy, had brutal attack ads on the worst person to ever run for office plastered across america--the fact that it was even close tells u a lot more about the electorate than whatever vague niggling complaints u can make about her or her campaign

misogyny played a bigger role in her defeat than her messaging though, imo. trump's incompetent campaign totally overshadowed his populist "message." people had to work to hear it, and they did, unlike with hillary.

xp - thread too fast for me!

are you saying it was too specific? not broad enough strokes?

actually, using your examples, it seemed like the opposite -- she had lots of reasons why she felt it was important to be president, or things she felt she could improve. But a question would be -- "why you, and not some other person who shares the same ideals?" And again, if I asked Trump that question, I'd expect a "because no one else can do what I do" kind of response. Misguided, arrogant...but personal, and leaving no room to wonder why he, of all people, wants the job.

she did body him tbqh. tracer, i can see your wife's response to that debate making sense if she only watched the first ten minutes. also i find all the talk about soundbites and messaging tiresome. if reality is complicated, political solutions are complicated, and i am not going to criticize politicians who engage with problems in a complex way.

xxp

beyond that, individual parts of that could be met with a 'huh' and questioning the authenticity - people rightfully questioned how much Clinton Democrats really care about wealth inequality. They voted for a guy who actively gives zero shits about inequality but he could bluster about jobs to them.

re: family leave stuff, isn't that actually a pretty niche audience - essentially middle-to-upper middle class people hear that and get excited. The working family with blue collar jobs knows it will never and can never apply to them (short of European social democracy).

hillary's answer to that would be that she had the most experience, and that she had more high level connections at home and abroad than anyone else, which she could leverage to accomplish her goals. xp dom

like, if left-wing populists like bernie sanders were willing to race-bait with dw griffith-esque slogans like make america great again, i'm sure they would be more likely to be elected, but thank fuck they're not

But a question would be -- "why you, and not some other person who shares the same ideals?" And again, if I asked Trump that question, I'd expect a "because no one else can do what I do" kind of response. Misguided, arrogant...but personal, and leaving no room to wonder why he, of all people, wants the job.

You: why should you, Mr Trump, be president and not someone else
Trump: Because
You: well this leaves no doubt in my mind, thank you. Clinton, same question
Clinton: *long detailed response*
You: hmm... I see that you have a lot of reasons why you feel it is important to be president, but I'm not really seeing a straight answer here

re: family leave stuff, isn't that actually a pretty niche audience - essentially middle-to-upper middle class people hear that and get excited. The working family with blue collar jobs knows it will never and can never apply to them (short of European social democracy).

― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Monday, November 14, 2016 5:56 PM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

maybe working class women did not believe her, and maybe it would be impossible given the republican congress, but i believe she planned to work on paid family leave for all. working-class families could sure use it.

But a question would be -- "why you, and not some other person who shares the same ideals?"

OK but the answer would be "because one person on the stage has those ideals and the other one is an asshole who doesn't give a shit about you or anything but himself" and I feel like that's basically what she said.

Tracer Hand, most of the common wisdom was that Trump lost it after 20 minutes, giving the victory to Clinton. There was a big swing in the polls after that, indicating that what she presented really was more popular. I remember watching the first half hour of the second debate and thinking 'she is toast in 2020', though. The whole thing was just so ugly and traumatic at that point, I wanted nothing more to do with it. And I'm an addict.

Trump boldly promised to turn back time to the 1980's before Trade and Technology killed manufacturing, and to turn back the clock culturally on everything that's transpired since.

I'd go along with this -- and other than her general ideology regarding how to take the country in particular directions, I still don't think I know the answer to this. Ambition? You're just that big a patriot? Dunno, to me it doesn't seem like the kind of job to go for unless you REALLY REALLY WANT IT, IN A WAY THAT NO SANE PERSON COULD DOUBT. Whereas with Trump, it was like "well everything's terrible, and I won't apologize for being an asshole because I'm the only guy with balls enough to fix it." We may all die a horrible nuclear death because of it, but dammit that's charisma!

I agree with you about charisma, but to the bolded: something seems a bit "off" to me about how you frame the question, at least with regard to this particular person, Hillary that is. The question "why would you want to be President?" is not really the same for HRC as it is for DJT. Hillary had already (a) lived in the White House (b) been subject to intense, persistent, partisan scrutiny (c) served in the highest levels of the Executive Branch (d) served in the most prestigious chamber of the legislative branch (e) met with foreign heads of state (f) made decisions alongside the Prez (g) I could go on and on. In a sense, she had already, long ago, gone into the kinds of jobs you don't go for unless you "really really want it" and she had already been marinating in that milieu her whole career. Her motivation for seeking the Presidency will unsurprisingly lack the urgency and clarity of purpose i that we can see in Trump, for whom the office represents a new and radical life change. I think "ambition" is a reductive concept, in some ways, not that it's entirely irrelevant. I see it more as a matter of identity. Hillary saw herself as a leader since her days at Wellesley, and has never stopped doing so since. It's just what she does.

i for one am glad we've had this discussion and all agree that the democrats and clinton did everything right, and it's all [someone else's] fault. can't wait for 2020!

Make America Great Again always reminded if that (geographically illiterate and politically inaccurate) phrase beloved of UK tabloids and Tory wankers, "Putting the Great back in to Great Britain".

i believe that enthusiasm was lower for hillary than for obama in part because some portion of the country sees her as an evil harpy who killed vince foster and won't bake cookies, but that does not really seem like a legitimate critique. also, what about trump's authenticity for christ's sake?

xp for fuck's sake i'm not saying she's above critique. i am not persuaded by "she didn't have a reason to be running."

In 2004 when Bush (barely) won again at the peak of dissatisfaction it seemed fairly apparent that a significant number of Americans want/need the embrace of control and assuredness (ie the usual flip-flopping stuff - because it's unmanly to change your mind), even when that assuredness is obviously wrong.

A lot of this is pointless - there are more of 'us' than there are of 'them,' the side of decency and humanity is just getting continually fucked by a white supremacist system designed to favor the economic elite. Even if Hillary could have run a better campaign, it's academic because with a flawed campaign and poor assumptions about the decency of some of our fellow Americans she would be President in any good and reasonable political system.

I don't think anyone said she "didn't have a reason to be running."

Even if you're horrified by campaign slogans (like, uh YES WE CAN), seems it would be tough to sum up her why in a job interview sentence.

So although HRC did have a vision, and many of us saw that, it simply wasn't as emphatically alive on the television screen as was Trump's.

no. her job interview sentence would be, just like i have done all my life, i want to use the presidency to serve working families.

to be clear, what I said was "Hillary never really gave people an idea WHY" - which is communication not motivation.

but she said, i believe in public service and want to serve working families 1 million times.

pretty counterintuitive to not focus on the fact that your opponent is LITERALLY ONE OF THE WORST HUMAN BEINGS IN AMERICA

if people cared about this she would have won by 50 points

ultimately this election was a harrowing experience for everyone and I think Hillary played into it more than I would've liked. her running nonstop commercials with Trump mocking the disabled reporter or saying "they're rapists" didn't help. it wasn't getting people excited about Hillary, it was making them just wish the whole thing was over.

i for one am glad we've had this discussion and all agree that the democrats and clinton did everything right, and it's all [someone else's] fault. can't wait for 2020!

― k3vin k., Monday, November 14, 2016 6:01 PM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I still think the main thing was her surname and reputation. i barely know anyone who has isn't of the belief that she's a criminal/corrupt/etc

if you want to say the clinton foundation is skeevy and she should have shut it down years ago when she planned to run for president, that seems like a legit critique. if you want to say her caginess read as untrustworthy, that seems like a legit critique. if you want to say bill clinton is a toad and she should have sloughed him off years ago, AMEN. if you want to say she's terrifyingly hawkish then the 1% of this country that cares about the lives of brown people in other countries agrees with you. but i think the idea that she did not communicate why she wanted to be president is weak sauce.

<3 u horseshoe. unstintingly.

"terrifyingly" is hyperbole btw i was trying to get in the head of someone like kevin k.

it wasn't getting people excited about Hillary, it was making them just wish the whole thing was over.

― frogbs, Monday, November 14, 2016 6:07 PM (fifty seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

now we get 4-8 years of it!

i love you too, in orbit.

btw the "superpredator" thing sucked, for sure. i am not saying she is above critique.

i think a lot of people just don't really pay attention. Maybe apply the thinking we do about why popular music is popular to why candidates do well in politics, idk.

y'all should step away for a few minutes, have a drink, watch Marnie.

For better or worse, she was on the hook for Bill and Obama's administrations and both saw real wage stagnation, economic pain for a lot of people and a scarcity of solutions to the problem. We can rightfully blame Republicans for much of it but the fact that Bernie did so well and Obama beat her should point to people not necessarily buying into the view that she was serving working families. Should she have distanced herself or been more combative? Probably, but then you get shrill and blah blah blah.

I think you're viewing this as anyone on ILX saying she was unfit or unqualified to be President in any way, and that's untrue.

and again, "basket of deplorables". kinda cool how the Trump side managed to totally self-own themselves with that, but...still, you don't insult the electorate

truth is I think a lot of people saw parts of themselves in Trump. they aren't proud of the fact that they've said some racist things or once mocked someone with a handicap, or that they rate women or talk dirty with the dudes. they don't approve of that behavior but seeing Hillary and the Dems condemn him and basically call him a horrible person for doing it may have hit a little close to home for them? like, back off, I'm a good person, these are just words.

No way this could in any possible way be bad and wrong, right?

Julianna Goldman ‏@juliannagoldman 54m54 minutes ago

.@realDonaldTrump team has asked @WhiteHouse how his children could receive top secret security clearances - details on @CBSEveningNews