Here’s a good rule: If you can’t call them on the phone to complain, blaming a person/people does not serve a function. By which I mean: Voters are not accountable. They are 100% not accountable. Attempts to hold them accountable only ever alienate them.
The DNC has phone numbers, they are an institution, they can be held accountable, and all of the blame rests there. (The RNC also has a phone, but they aren’t accountable to you.) Saying “Grr, stupid voters” is literally what people were saying to voters who picked Stein or Johnson or vowed not to vote before the election. It turns out when people say things, you should believe them. Trump won, which means history shows that this does not work. It didn’t work when GWB sailed into office either.
This cuts both ways. Bernie supporters arguing that he couldashouldawoulda won, are just blaming a different set of voters, i.e. primary voters. The allegations of “rigging” are unsubstantiated. The reality is the DNC worked against him in subtler ways, and it wasn’t conniving, he was an outsider coming in and dropping elbows. The reality is he should have become a Democrat four or five years earlier at the very least. Again, I’m blaming someone with a phone line here. He ran an excellent campaign, but it was too little, too late, and he kind of went about it the wrong way. I’m sympathetic and I voted for him, but it was a bit much to expect dark blue Dems to vote for him, and he had no name recognition in the beginning.
Blaming the voters is a waste of your time and mine. Blame the people who make decisions that capture voters. I blame Bernie for not capturing the Dem vote as much as I blame Hillary for being a bad candidate and refusing to adapt to criticisms over her. Her “apology” for the email scandal was bad. It doesn’t matter whether the it was a non-scandal, politics isn’t about what’s right, it’s about winning. If you fail to win, you failed. Qualified has nothing to do with picking presidents. You should have learned that in high school.
