Hillary Clinton: Classic or Dud?

How exactly do you run against a candidate like Trump? Outside of visiting the Midwest, what should she have done differently? The campaign was so strange. Every single thing Trump said or did was national news, while Hillary's dense policy speeches got no coverage whatsoever. Trump could say something stupid like "Obama and Hillary founded ISIS!" and talking heads would debate whether or not that was true for an entire day. Trump could get positive coverage by not tripping over his dick for 24 hours, whereas nearly every single story about Hillary was negative. Trump's supporters didn't care that he was unqualified or a bigot - in fact, they loved him for it. What do you do?

If the Clintons were as nefarious and connected to shady dealings as people want to think they are, they would have had Trump killed.

move left to inspire some of the 45% that doesn't vote imo

Clinton DID move left and was roundly criticized by people on the left for it.

Xpost a lot of the infighting can be attributed back to the spareness of that primary field. Other serious candidates, (especially pushing more progressive challenges) vying for it would have diluted the false dynamic, excessive villainizing that took hold.

Clinton's biggest weakness as a candidate is that it did not actually matter what she said or did; a significant percentage of the voters who would agree with a large amount of the things her platform represented were going to reject her out of hand or look for reasons not to support her because she is Hillary Clinton (as evidenced by this thread).

I mean an actual left candidate, not someone whose rhetoric pivots on occasion

yes, we didn't believe a goddamn word of her Bernie impersonation

AND, so far it seems the takeaway from this election that is ringing true with white (male) Democrats is "we need to be more racist in order to get votes", which is going to lose them so many of the votes they already have that we should all really just start hoarding now and wait for 11 more years of blatantly incompetent Republican government to roll through the country before voters start thinking "maybe we should pay more attention to the ramifications of these policies rather than just following whoever yells at brown people the loudest".

imo Dems don't need to "win back" white racist blue collar voters as much as they need to energize and turn out *other* groups of voters - youth, latinos, etc. I'm always irritated when people act like the electorate is a fixed thing, instead of something that shifts and mutates depending on who's on the ballot, who's enfranchised, and who's motivated.

ie as if you can't win a majority in Michigan unless you get some old, uneducated white racists to vote for you

How exactly do you run against a candidate like Trump? Outside of visiting the Midwest, what should she have done differently?

I think she could have tried to appear more human, less scripted - more 'delete your account' tweets, unprepared zings in the debate etc.

the fact that people feel so removed from hillary clinton the human being made it easier to attach all kinds of nonsense to her, whereas trump's 'realness' let him get away with murder

hillary clinton "not appearing human" is a horseshit projection imo not something inherent to her

trump could've tried to appear more human and less like a sentient boil that had dragged itself out of a sewer having learned precisely three words of english

to a certain extent, sure. but she very, very rarely went off script and her whole campaign was run like an anonymous machine - not just her. like, who would follow the hillary clinton twitter account? why would you want to receive those tweets? in donald trump tweeting about his breakfast burrito or whatever.

xp

anyway, i'm done, alfred and djp resoundingly otm throughout this thread

'in donald trump tweeting about his breakfast burrito or whatever.' was supposed to be 'in contrast, donald trump was tweeting about his breakfast burrito or whatever.'

And uh she won the most convincing popular vote count in American history, so clearly this election was notIke the others.

i don't know i'm starting to think morbz/clinton and the resultant frequent flare-ups are a good case study for bullshit discussion loops and opportunity to develop best practices to address them

i'm starting to think you are Donna Brazile

I realize we're all concerned about like basic survival rn but I do think there were encouraging things about the race. However you feel about Sanders (and there's no way in hell he should ever run again, and not only because no one needs to relive these arguments again in 2019/20), the fact that an old fart who touted himself as a socialist was able to compete on the national stage thanks mostly to small donors is a big deal (and for anyone significantly left of center, kind of a revelation - less about Sanders as a candidate, imo, and more for the possibility his relative success represents) and should really be looked at as a model to build on rather than an aberration to be resentfully dismissed. I really think that if the Dems run anyone to the right of Warren (barring the sudden emergence of another Obama-level orator/personality in the interim), they're missing out on the chance to evolve and champion policies and viewpoints people actually, y'know, like rather than begrudgingly go along with cause the alternative is to align with utter ghouls.

in other words I'm trying to think positively which is probably a mistake lol

i'm starting to think you are Donna Brazile

― Supercreditor (Dr Morbius)

one of us cannot be wrong

feel like the fairly huge collapse in the vote between obama and clinton in low income people of all races is a problem that is not going to be solved when a less hated republican candidate comes up against whatever the democrats idea of a presidential candidate is next time around

also the idea "you can't beat trump because he is teflon and can say anything blah blah blah" is basically highly untrue, and also extremely defeatist considering the fact that someone will have to fight a presidential race against him in 2020

trump is easily beatable. with a couple of twists in the narrative Hillary would have won, maybe Sanders too. Biden would have probably handily defeated him, everyone loved Uncle Joe. I know, Morbs. but still, it's true i think.

also, the idea that democrat's policies are more for the rich than trump's is indeed dumb, but what are the democrats answers to these issues brought up in the polling in that wapo article yesterday:

50 percent of Obama-Trump voters said their incomes are falling behind the cost of living, and another 31 percent said their incomes are merely keeping pace with the cost of living.
A sizable chunk of Obama-Trump voters — 30 percent — said their vote for Trump was more a vote against Clinton than a vote for Trump. Remember, these voters backed Obama four years earlier.
42 percent of Obama-Trump voters said congressional Democrats’ economic policies will favor the wealthy, vs. only 21 percent of them who said the same about Trump. (Forty percent say that about congressional Republicans.) A total of 77 percent of Obama-Trump voters said Trump’s policies will favor some mix of all other classes (middle class, poor, all equally), while a total of 58 percent said that about congressional Democrats.

xp. biden is even to the right of clinton in everything but hawkishness but i mean yes, at least he seems sort of genial and is not without charisma

re teflon trump, jim- has to be allied with the ability to campaign from outside the system, not just the incumbent party. he wont have that in 2020

Everybody is also weirdly ready to forget that pretty much all the smart people who do nothing but think about this - Sam Wang, Larry Sabato, other aggregators - were putting odds of her victory in the 95%+ range. They were only undecided about whether it would be the biggest smackdown in 100 years, or the biggest smackdown in 1,000 years.

Yeah, 538, I hear you cry. Outlier 538 was roundly mocked (here and elsewhere) for being Not So Sure. However, that was less about whether she would win but by how much. They saw there was a large pool of undecideds, and registered resultant uncertainty, but still kept their predictions safely Hillarific.

There were serious discussions about whether Republicans were done as a national party, or simply done, full stop. There were serious panels about whether Democrats should focus merely on winning this particular election decisively, or focus instead on maliciously pounding Republican faces ignominiously into vats of steaming offal forever more. You guys don't remember this? It was in all the papers.

In light of all those things, messages like "She should have done more outreach to organized labor in the Upper Midwest, DUH, how come she was so stupid as to not have done this one simple trick?" rings a bit hollow. So does "[Different Candidate] would have won easily, jeez! Why didn't everyone simply vote for [different candidate] instead of this OBVIOUSLY toxic hagbeast?"

At the time, it looked to almost every knowledgeable person like her campaign was cruising to comfortable victory. It's really flattering to assure yourself that YOU, in that situation, would have seen through the complacency. Surely YOU would have insisted on 17% more appearances in the Madison - Sheboygan - McWhateverville market, a 12% increase in ads on WXYZ, a handshaking appearance at Pipefitters Local #5746.

42 percent of Obama-Trump voters said congressional Democrats’ economic policies will favor the wealthy, vs. only 21 percent of them who said the same about Trump.

these people are morons who live in a fact-free environment and thus cannot be appealed to with logic or well-reasoned arguments. forget about them. turnout voters that *can* be appealed to rationally.

xp

YMP otfm

"the fact that an old fart who touted himself as a socialist was able to compete on the national stage thanks mostly to small donors is a big deal (and for anyone significantly left of center, kind of a revelation - less about Sanders as a candidate, imo, and more for the possibility his relative success represents"

I agree with this and this should be a huge takeaway I just wish a lot of his own supporters looked at it this way rather than this idea that he had something stolen from him.

xp simon:

I don't think Bernie would have won. There's just too much dirt on him in the oppo files, that the GOP held in reserve and Clinton never campaigned on.

Then again, what I wanted was a fire breathing moderate, without decades of (mostly fabricated) baggage. I believe Liz Warren could have taken 2016.

yeah, again, I don't think Sanders himself is the point. I think what he points to in terms of viable long term strategy for appealing to a broader voter base (and, yknow, improving material conditions for a lot of people) is.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C-1yPXCXgAYiYAS.jpg:large

Everybody is also weirdly ready to forget that pretty much all the smart people who do nothing but think about this - Sam Wang, Larry Sabato, other aggregators - were putting odds of her victory in the 95%+ range. They were only undecided about whether it would be the biggest smackdown in 100 years, or the biggest smackdown in 1,000 years.

Yeah, 538, I hear you cry. Outlier 538 was roundly mocked (here and elsewhere) for being Not So Sure. However, that was less about whether she would win but by how much. They saw there was a large pool of undecideds, and registered resultant uncertainty, but still kept their predictions safely Hillarific.

We tend to forget: a 95 percent range still means a five percent chance of Trump winning. Or:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDoncJckows

idk when everyone thinks youre a shoe in to win and you dont win thats now usually a sign to not examine things critically afterwards

painting it as attacking hc or being wise after the fact smacks of an agenda of moral superiority which serves little or no purpose. not to say anything serves any purpose i mean yr president is a ham sandwich.

*not* usually

painting it as attacking hc

lol try reading this thread again

no fkn thanks but cmon ilx politics threads aint for the fine strokes

certain people - you may even be able to guess who they are - explicitly attack hc on the regular

How exactly do you run against a candidate like Trump? Outside of visiting the Midwest, what should she have done differently? The campaign was so strange. Every single thing Trump said or did was national news, while Hillary's dense policy speeches got no coverage whatsoever. Trump could say something stupid like "Obama and Hillary founded ISIS!" and talking heads would debate whether or not that was true for an entire day. Trump could get positive coverage by not tripping over his dick for 24 hours, whereas nearly every single story about Hillary was negative. Trump's supporters didn't care that he was unqualified or a bigot - in fact, they loved him for it. What do you do?

― frogbs, Tuesday, May 2, 2017 9:34 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

would it have killed the Obama DOJ to try to indict some of the banksters post 2008? feel like this utterly fucked them with some of the PWT who voted for trump.

42 percent of Obama-Trump voters said congressional Democrats’ economic policies will favor the wealthy, vs. only 21 percent of them who said the same about Trump.

these people are morons who live in a fact-free environment and thus cannot be appealed to with logic or well-reasoned arguments. forget about them. turnout voters that *can* be appealed to rationally.

xp

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, May 2, 2017 3:22 PM (twenty-five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah they voted obama 4 years ago but can never be persuaded to vote dem again.

certain people - you may even be able to guess who they are - explicitly attack hc on the regular

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, 2 May 2017 22:44 (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

cmon now you couldnt bellysnake antman pubes under this bar

yeah they voted obama 4 years ago but can never be persuaded to vote dem again

they aren't subject to "persuasion", was my point. they can't be relied on.

this continuing desire to identify some reasonable rationale for voting for Trump is so weird. vast majority of his voters were delusional, racist, misogynist, or some combination thereof. I don't want them in our party.

its a fair point, but it comes down to whether you think the aim is to win using logic and reason, or indeed to win in any specific manner at all, or whether the aim is just to win.

and if you reject the latter approach...... oh shit a trump!

would it have killed the Obama DOJ to try to indict some of the banksters post 2008? feel like this utterly fucked them with some of the PWT who voted for trump.

like in what universe do these "PWT who voted for Trump" accurately remember the events of 8 years ago, much less the legal rationale required for indictments, much less what a fucking indictment even is.

xp

or whether the aim is just to win.

the goal is to get a governing majority. (Trump didn't get that - and the Dems are confronting the issue of how to assemble such a majority w out racist/misogynist wingnuts)

ok, but for yr 'without' disclaimer refer to my post again

Your point is well taken, darraghmac. As long as the point is to gather wisdom that may help us advance good and defeat evil in the future. Personally, I remain skeptical that these are the main motives of everyone who traffics in the "Hillary blew [an obviously winnable election]" and/or "Bernie would have won [this obviously winnable election]."

I suck at sports metaphors, but here goes: Imagine you're the commander of a sportsing team. It's the eighth chukker and the only scoreboard you can see says you're four touchdowns ahead.

What is your thought process:

A. "Oh, shit, we're only four touchdowns ahead? That sucks! We need to win by at least eight! So we'd better take lots of risks in the next inning, and unleash the Hail-Larry play where we totally jimjam the opponent's hassenpoop up their Snitch."

B. "Looks like we'll win this BowlCup as long as we play it safe and don't fuck up. So we should probably play conservatively, avoid risks, try to not get our star Seeker injured. Let's just try to keep moving the puck toward the goal-thingies."

C. "This sure looks like a nice lead, but the scoreboard could be wrong. So we'd better take lots of risks. Let's totally hassenpoop the opponent's jimjammers. Quick, call in the left wing and the right drumstick, we're gonna run the untried Hail-Barry play where we shotput the shuttlecock up the crease."

D. "Even though the scoreboard says we're winning, tacheon transmissions from the near future have informed me that we actually lost. We'd better totally change our strategy. Move the wingbangs over to the jibjab, and balk the rubber with a gelatinous wicket!"

And uh she won the most convincing popular vote count in American history, so clearly this election was notIke the others.

― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, May 2, 2017 6:01 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no she did not

like in what universe do these "PWT who voted for Trump" accurately remember the events of 8 years ago, much less the legal rationale required for indictments, much less what a fucking indictment even is.

xp

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, May 2, 2017 10:58 PM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I can't find the tweet but some focus group/study of the voters who tipped the scales for trump were still PISSED bout 2008 and there being no consequences for the people who started it