From what I saw, Clinton did fine in the debates. I don’t know how much I trust that she ran her own Twitter account all or even most of the time. Frankly, she’s part of a political establishment that is used to letting professional handlers manage them. Trump, and to a lesser extent Sanders, both seemed to reject that approach, and I think that gave many of the people who voted for Trump more of a sense that he was raw and real, not a polished product. How much that’s true, I don’t know. But living in a red state, I did see a lot of Trump supporters who didn’t think the Clinton campaign reached out to them. I’m not saying she needed to personally meet as many people as possible (though that did help Trump and Sanders also took a personal approach), but her campaigners missed an opportunity by acting as though anyone who might vote for Trump was a lost cause.
And, frankly, I think her saying many of them were deplorable was an incredibly bad misstep. Instead of pointing out that Trump appealed to some really bigoted people, she came across to them the way Trump came across with his racist comments about Mexico sending criminals. It galvanized them against her.
I suppose. I think the limousine liberals, as @anon15383236 so aptly describes them, have drunk their Kool-Aid so long they think their bubble is the center of the American kosmos. Blind seemed a more diplomatic term than deluded.
I agree RE: the debates. Her campaign said, I believe, that the Twitter comments which were signed “Hillary” or just “H” were actually from her personally, and the ones which weren’t signed were sent by her staff. (Trump’s, famously, were identifiable by whether they were tweeted from an Android phone or from an iPhone) But either way, I’d have counted those words as coming from her, whether they were typed by her or by her staff.
I was really just checking because you were saying that HRC’s comments were fine, but that you felt like the campaign wasn’t reaching out enough, which made me wonder what those campaign communications were, because whatever they are, I think I must have completely missed them, being on the other side of the planet. (I haven’t been in the US for a presidential campaign since the Clinton/Dole/Perot race in 1996; I’m sure a lot must have changed since then!)
And, frankly, I think her saying many of them were deplorable was an incredibly bad misstep.
Agreed. That was a statement which hurt her badly. I’d argue that the worst bit for her was that she said “half”; that fully half of Trump’s supporters could be put into that ‘basket’ of ‘deplorables’, which made it immensely confrontational for those Trump supporters, whereas if she’d instead said “some”, it would have been much less problematic for her.
Except what they were proven wrong on was people’s willingness to vote against the regression of civil rights over personal gain. No matter how you dress that up, the data was bad because people didn’t want to admit that about themselves and not because meme magic. Thinking people were better than they were might be delusion, but I generally assign people giving them positive traits they didn’t see themselves as naivety.
When a limousine liberal says “only racists would allow Trump to office” they expect a viewer to think “that’s right” and not “I’m not racist.”
And therein lies the disconnect. Because a lot of Trump supporters aren’t racists, but the Democrats took a with us or against war-footing instead of trying to understand what those people (wrongly) thought Trump would do for them that was worth ignoring being the same tent as people like the KKK, and then try to reach out to them instead of alienating them. We can debate the morality of the Democratic stance till the sun goes out, but the practical effects are plain as can be.
I don’t think that statement had as much impact as is generally thought.
Yes, it riled up the Trumpkins, but they were riled up already.
Clinton’s problem wasn’t a huge turnout for Trump; there wasn’t one. It was low turnout for the Dems. Forget about the things she did that pissed off the Trumpkins, think about the things she did to piss off the one hundred million non voters.
The post-election analysis is focussed way too much on “how do we make Trumpkins like us?” (short answer: you can’t) and not enough on “what can we do to attract non-voters?” (how about: become a genuine, non-corrupt social democratic party?).
Who also supported Hillary by all indication until they didn’t, and the socialist opportunist angle is not easily shaken. Likely he would be tied directly to wanting the government to invade their lives more and to want a laundry-list of changes that are scary.
And some, like Russ Feingold in Wisconsin, underperformed Clinton.
We missed them too on this side of the planet. It didn’t get covered by the media. For most of the election the media had the idea that since they had already given HRC lots of air time in stories about emails and Benghazi, they need to provide the rest to Trump getting his hair mussed by Jimmy Fallon and saying that he had “the best” policies.
Too bad the people who engaged with him didn’t also come out and vote for him in the primaries in more key states. We can speculate all day about how he might have done in the general, but that’s all it is, speculation. We can be pretty sure we would have heard the word “socialist” ad nauseum, Trump would certainly have made a big deal about Jane’s egregious mismanagement of Burlington College (and used it to derail any “free college tuition” discussion), all the Republicans who voted Libertarian this round might have decided Trump was the lesser of 2 evils, and ultimately we would have had two old white guys running for President.
I like Sanders, I caucused for him, I voted for other Sanders supporters for office in my state’s branch of the party, and I’m sorry we’ll never know if he would have done better against von Clownstick, but that’s the reality, and it makes no sense to try to move forward taking this speculation as fact.
I’m not going any further on hypotheticals on this one but there is a lot more back and forth that could happen on guns alone.
However, the entirety of the “Bernie would have won” story is based on three things:
Clinton couldn’t pull decent numbers on the popular vote - which is weakening
Bernie voters both stayed home and held their nose voting for Clinton - which is really only supported if #1 is true
The economy was the driving factor - which is also reliant on people just not showing up to vote
The entire point is that Clinton getting 63 million votes could mean the Bernie voters did vote Hillary even in those regions. After all the primary is what, 15% of the voting population? We will never know if he could have pulled off 2/3 of the states when I felt he could have before considering Hillary getting within 10K on MI and getting +2 million in the popular vote.
I question Bernie pulling Obama '08 numbers which is what it would require.
Yeah, I kinda agree. And shoulda, woulda, coulda is no good regardless. It’s like how sportsmen are never as good as they are when they aren’t in the team. And if Clinton really does end up winning the popular vote by millions…
This is where I think you’re oversimplifying. It’s an understandable mistake, and I’ll admit that I as much as anyone painted them with a broad brush as well because I thought anything that scarred prospective Clinton voters into getting off their butts and to the polls was worth doing. But I think there are a lot of Trump voters that weren’t vocal and didn’t show up to his rallies, but still ultimately voted for him not because they hated her, but because they didn’t believe she cared about their concerns and thought Trump did (he didn’t, but he pretended to).
Basically, I think it’s fallacious to think everyone who voted voted because they were angry or afraid, and when people say to those Trump voters who weren’t that they are and that’s why they’re a lost cause, and they know that’s not why they voted, the dialogue that might get them to vote for a Democrat or at least not for Trump simply never happens.
One conversation I suggest never ever having is a two-hour theology discussion with your Catholic father-in-law when you yourself happen to be an atheist. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be over here kicking myself for doing just that.
What numbers and breakdown I’ve seen suggest that Trump voters were the same mainstream Republicans that always vote GOP. There were a few defectors, and a few new people who were brought in to replace them, but not many of either. The GOP’s been the white supremacist party since Nixon, and the party faithful are effectively religious about voting GOP, so I don’t think any other explanation’s really called for than that the same GOP base that’s always turned out turned out the way they always do and with the same numbers they always do.
The problem here was Dem. turnout in a few important states for a litany of reasons. Coordinated voter disenfranchisement by the GOP in GOP controlled states and the SCOTUS’ attack on the Voting Rights Act is one we should keep in mind - the DNC/Clinton sucking/Russian interference/the FBI interfering with the election/etc certainly played a role. This isn’t all just Dems sucking, it’s also GOP (and foreign) authoritarians actively preventing the vote and manipulating electoral outcomes. All other things being equal if the GOP hadn’t mass disenfranchised voters, I think we’d probably be talking about Pres. Clinton, since what numbers I’ve seen back that up.
True. But they also supported Clinton less than they did Obama.
According to exit polls, “low income groups” went big for President Obama: 63 percent of voters with family income under $30,000 voted for Mr. Obama, as did 57 percent of those with income between $30,000 and $49,999.
