Bernie would have won if the DNC wasn't so heavily focused on it being her "turn". And then it was Joes "turn" after that. Bernie was the only person Trump was afraid of.
Not saying you're wrong or anything. Just adding to it.
However, I am not convinced Bernie could have gotten an agenda through either. It's not exactly like his political ideals are even loved by a lot of the Democrats in government.
Not saying I wouldn't have wanted him for president, I voted for him. But I am not convinced he would have been any more effective than Carter.
It's really hard to implement a progressive agenda when even the so-called left isn't on that agenda's side.
Look to FDR as a model of what happens when a progressive agenda gets a firebrand President. It's not like the politics were all that different, or Congress any less corrupt.
The point is that it's a self-imposed handicap. If a party has 50%+ in both houses and the presidency, they have the ability to pass whatever they like and choose not to use it.
Claiming that was the easiest election in history discounts the fact that just under half the voting public didn't respect a very-experienced politician with a history of pro-people causes and perseverance; they wanted the man with no experience and scandals buzzing around him like flies.
UK citizen here. Already had 3 women prime ministers.
It wasn't that Hilary was a woman, simply she was more dislikable than Liz Truss and seemed to put nothing out to convince people to vote for her. It wasn't clear at all what she stood for or what her platform was.
It came across as entitled and like she took the electorate for granted. No matter how great or good you think you are, or how bad your rival is, you still have to ask the electorate to lend you their vote.
She stood for literally nothing. Just like Biden. And the DNC was caught cheating during the early primaries to thwart Bernie. Just like how Biden went from 4th to 1st overnight after coordinated drop-outs in 2020. At least they didn't actively commit fraud like in 2016 I guess.
Do you remember the PUMAs in 2008? More Bernie Bros were willing to vote Hillary in the general than PUMAs were willing to vote Obama.
But we're getting distracted, you can't blame Bernie supporters because the politician chosen by the DNC had the blood of millions on her hands, and was just generally unlikable.
You run a politician that offers the people fuckall, of course they're not gonna take a day off work to vote for you, they'd rather have the money.
mmhmm I'm sure it had absolutely nothing to do with her terrible voter turnout
Which I'm sure had absolutely nothing to do with her sketchy performance under Obama.
And I'm sure not a single Democrat cared that the DNC went around saying "screw the primary we already chose our candidate" during the scam of a primary.
I don't think it was a particularly easy election. A majority of the people I know (which isn't much admittedly) protest voted. Most thought her win was inevitable. I bet my friend in February that If it was Drumpf/Clinton, Drumpf would win. If so many people didn't feel burned by her being picked over Sanders, she would have won electoral and popular.
I still remember how, as people on the ground in Michigan were seeing it coming and begging for more GOTV volunteers, her campaign flatly refused, instead sending volunteers to Iowa thinking she could win a red state and dunk on Trump. After all, the info on the ground couldn’t be better than their New York polling.
She thought she could just with by being not Trump (which, sure, should have been enough), but decided to not provide anything to vote for, rather than just voting against Trump.
She wins, we still have Roe and a bevy of other positive SCOTUS decisions from a 5-4 liberal court (maybe even 6-3). But she and Ginsburg screwed us over.
I mean.. I voted for her.. I tried to convince others. I'm cognisant of the media, Russia, the DNC..
She also kinda forgot to campaign the rust belt and took for granted the folks on main St that didn't bounce back with wall st, yet "took a risk on a black guy" and got burned by "intellectual corporate Democrats"
She never set foot in states she didn't have to lose and it felt like Michael Moore was the only watching in real time with me.
Nah, I blame the media. If any mainstream media actually bothered to report seriously on Bernie and especially the turnouts he was pulling at his rallies, we probably would have had more than enough people energized to vote in the primary and the general. Instead, the MSM acted like Bernie wasn't a real candidate. I stopped supporting NPR after how dirty they did him.
Not a single reasonable person said this. The tweet is totally about how she was freaking terrible at campaigning.
You sound like a person who either didn’t go vote or voted for the guy who cheated on his wife with a porn star while his wife was at home with the newborn.
Back in 2016, WikiLeaks was in direct communication with Trump Jr. and telling the campaign to claim the election was rigged and stolen if he lost. He was pulling a lot of stuff behind the scenes outside of the scope of journalism. It's clear Assange was likely a mouthpiece for Russia to sow division in the US during this period.
Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.
"She did it. Maybe without meaning to, but she did do it."
But how was this ever enough to justify voting for the guy who has no morality, cheats and bullshits his way through everything, selects his entourage based on loyalty over competence, divides the country through purposefully polarizing statements and filed for bankruptcies 6 times, 5 of which were casinos? And that was what we knew before he was elected.
That's just showing how superficial a lot of the voter base really is.
My two cents:
The average American has a literacy rate of 7th-8th grade and not only does Trump talk to that level he also repeats things constantly so people can remember it.
Couple that with all conservative biased media constantly blasting the same messages people believe Trump was looking out for them.
Compare to Hilary who has been painted as out of touch with voters and courting high value donors since Bill was president and the Bernie thing she needed to capture more independents but she didn't.
I dislike the establishment left, but 2016 was one of the most propagandized, misinformation filled, and corrupt elections - in no way can it be considered an "easy election".
Hindsight is 20/20... The electorate sees no where near that well, and didn't at the time.
The truth is fascism and pseudo or proto fascism is never an easy thing to defeat, because it breaks the rules and can appeal to forces and parts of human nature that most politicians won't or can't run with. This is why most fascists are praised as gifted speakers - even Trump - because they're appealing to powerful parts of human nature which are usually not spoken about in politics, let alone addressed directly.
I completely agree. Hillary was subject to non-stop manufactured scandals insinuating she was a complete criminal (Benghazi, the emails, etc.). Plus Trump successfully tapped into the "punish the libs" and "it's okay to be racist" contingents. It wasn't a great campaign, but to suggest that it should have been a cake walk for her is ridiculous.
It's easy to make her sound like a victim when you ignore the fact that she did everything in her power to rig the DNC primaries in her favor AND propped up Trump's early campaign as much as she could. The situation we find ourselves in is certainly not exclusively her fault but she definitely deserves more of the blame than any of us do. She set the board exactly how she wanted and still couldn't win the game.
A. What candidate wouldn't use whatever was available to them to win the election? She obviously didn't do anything illegal or Trump's DOJ would have nailed her (and they sure tried).
B. Gonna need a source for the Hillary propped up Trump's campaign part.
Illegal and anti-democratic aren't always the same thing. You can certainly be one without the other. Though to be clear there have been allegations of outright illegal activity by the Clinton campaign and the DNC as a whole during the 2016 election, but the specifics are fuzzy in my memory and that's not what you're asking about so I won't attempt to address it further here.
Here's the first article I read through after a quick search to find a source for you. If you don't like the source I'm sure you can use the timeline and references it contains to find something from a source you prefer.
So to take [Jeb] Bush down, Clinton’s team drew up a plan to pump Trump up. Shortly after her kickoff, top aides organized a strategy call, whose agenda included a memo to the Democratic National Committee: “This memo is intended to outline the strategy and goals a potential Hillary Clinton presidential campaign would have regarding the 2016 Republican presidential field,” it read. “The variety of candidates is a positive here, and many of the lesser known can serve as a cudgel to move the more established candidates further to the right. In this scenario, we don’t want to marginalize the more extreme candidates, but make them more ‘Pied Piper’ candidates who actually represent the mainstream of the Republican Party,” read the memo.
Eleven days after those comments about McCain, Clinton aides sought to push the plan even further: An agenda item for top aides’ message planning meeting read, “How do we prevent Bush from bettering himself/how do we maximize Trump and others?"
I agree with you that it wasn't a cakewalk, but the problem was she treated it like a cakewalk. She assumed she had it locked up, and ignored all polling that didn't support her landslide victory. She punished downticket candidates who didn't bend the knee by skipping their districts in places like Wisconsin and Michigan, because she assumed people would show up for her.
She ran a terrible campaign, kowtowing to the worst attacks, thinking it was politics as usual, acting like she was above the fray while she was face down in the mud getting stomped on.
She should have gone on the offensive. She should have presented a vision for a better America. She failed us all, and for that she deserves as much scorn as we can conjure.
I don't know, it seems like when she even mildly went on the offensive, people on both sides (and especially the media) ripped her for it. Remember the "deplorables" things?
For ages, I don't think even Trump's campaign thought he had much of a chance (many sources have said he didn't even want to win). And remember, she did win the popular vote.
I don't think she did nearly as well as she could have, but there's a lot of hyperbole about her that I think is misplaced.
Let's also remember that most people didn't REALLY think Trump had a chance in 2016, even most Republicans voting for him. If everyone that would have voted against Trump had shown up (less than 60% of eligible voters turned out in 2016), it would have been no contest. He didn't even get the popular vote in the end. But nobody took his campaign seriously and counted on everybody else to turn out to make the obvious but boring choice.
In 2020, though, we had the highest turnout of eligible voters since 1920 (still an embarrassing 66.6%). The only reason that the turnout for 2020 was so high is because so many people were so eager to either maintain or end Trump's reign that people were charged up and went to the polls. The only realistic way that Trump doesn't win this time though is if everyone who was so charged in 2020 remains as charged this time, or a new bunch of voters, like newly eligible young voters, show up in droves... and I'm very concerned that that doesn't happen.
I can’t imagine young voters being disenchanted more than they are when the Biden admin ignores their pleas to stop a genocide and walks all over them like spoiled children. He needs them now more than ever. I can’t see him realizing it, however.
Chapo Traphouse said it quite well with today’s episode: he isn’t willing to sacrifice his pride for the good of democracy. And Dems aren’t willing to shame and embarrass him to protect it either. We’re fucked.
Biden doesn't actually believe in democracy. Biden supports democracy in the same way corporations support gay people during June. If Trump dismantles democracy, he doesn't care. Biden's big talk is all kayfabe. Biden is the face and Trump is the heel.
Threatening the DNC with a Trump presidency is like threatening your kids with McDonald's
If everyone that would have voted against Trump had shown up (less than 60% of eligible voters turned out in 2016), it would have been no contest.
Everyone needs to read and comprehend this. The number of people who didn't want Hillary or Trump was greater than the number of people who voted for them. But the system doesn't reward abstaining. Trying to make a statement by not voting only serves to reward the people who you are abstaining from. Fucking vote, people! Write a candidate in if you have to. Vote for your dog. But get off your asses and use the right that hundreds of thousands of people died to protect.
The DNC stole the nomination from Bernie Sanders. Thus losing the democrats the election. And us getting Trump. I was Pro Bernie myself, THeeeen Pro Trump. Because I figured Trump would fuck shit up enough it would get Americans to get off their lard asses and give a fuck. Didn't realize he would try an actual, though pathetic, coup on january 6th.
It would have been easy if Clinton's team hadn't deliberately helped Trump, thinking that putting a fascist on the world stage would make their jobs easier.
"Obama has been doing a great job for 8 years and I plan to continue his legacy as best I can. We're going to give more money to workers and students and also legalise weed."
Boom. That's all winning an election took in 2015. It's Clinton's fault she needed to go and defeat fascism and failed.
While she's not free of blame for losing, the primary opposition party candidate colluding with a foreign power to manipulate the election definitely had more of an effect on the result than anything she did. DNC emails poisoning the progressives support for her while Comey's investigation into being made public (because of Republicans leaking it) eroded away the support of independents and undecided voters.
In an alternate world whete the RNC emails got leaked and Comey's investigation of Trump got leaked to the public and there is no way Trump wins and likely is in handcuffs before Jan 20 2017
Can't say I'm happy with how he handled things, though it does need to be said he didn't bring the investigation to the public, he took it to congress, who immediately leaked it.
Sure. People who think the GOP isn't a terrorist organisation are going to be the death of this country though. It's too late to act like that's not the case imo
You mean the electorate that was voting for Bernie en masse but Wasserman-Schulz and the big donors didn't want that so they threw the rest of the primaries to go Hillarys way? The electorate that was disenfranchised by their own party?
Did trump and the Republicans prevent her from campaigning in swing states and heavily campaigning in democratic strongholds?
Hillary absolutely deserves blame for how her candidacy fucked the dog so hard she lost to Donald trump. She doesn't deserve all the blame for her loss by any stretch, but she does not need to be sanctified as a martyr of some kind.
