I was someone who was initially annoyed by the Perez thing since Ellison was a consensus pick, but by the end I saw issues w/ Ellison that would have pushed me to flip to Perez. It was complicated, but the two guys genuinely get along and having both there is probably a good thing.
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Hillary Clinton publishing book about 2016 election in Sept titled "What Happened"
- Thread starter johnsmith
- Start date
Audioboxer
Member
If Brexit could be reversed us Brits would probably be spending more time talking about the ways to get that done rather than just talking about the people who voted for Brexit. All we have is the later. Although to be fair there, there has been a lot of tactical pressure on how to try and achieve a "soft Brexit". So we have spent a good bit of time talking about achieving that after the initial fews months of "Omg I can't believe how we just voted leave".
The general election game when you lose is to try and as quick as possible focus on how to win next time, because elections happen every 4 years unless it's a snap election. Brexit doesn't happen every 4 years, we had one chance there and that is the margins on a vote that important when it arguably goes wrong. You've got to play game as the system is setup. The left in America has to try and win 2020 and like it or not that won't be achieved just talking about how shit Trump is and bemoaning the die hard Republicans I mentioned earlier in this thread who will vote Republican from 18 to 88 (or whenever they die). It's why I don't think reliving 2016 is going to help and as a consequence of this book coming out so "soon", I think 2016 is going to rage on for months more in American political discourse. You don't need to forget 2016, but for the next few years it has to be on the damn back burner or you can seriously start taking that meme "Trump 2020" seriously. The Republicans aren't going to wait around for the Dems to sort their shit out to start their 2020 campaigning (yes, cue jokes about how can anyone possibly re-elect Trump now ~ Seeing as this post started talking about the UK, America, look at how we keep electing Conservatives no matter what they do).
The left in the UK is a bit of a shambles as well, as in the major opposition party can't seem to win again. You do not want the Democrats to be going through the slump Labour is and end up with 10+ years of the Republicans having a free reign. It's true the way people vote are bringing us this, but the Labour Party has for years now been full of bickering, fighting, power trips/wars, blame games and more. The divides of camp Clinton vs camp Bernie are like the breeding ground for a Democrat party in America like British Labour. Hence, please don't let 2016 and Hillary vs Bernie be still raging on in 2019. Corbyn went in heavy on the youth just there in the snap election and it brought some decent progress, so as I said earlier left leaning parties appealing to youth works. The problem for Corbyn is as above he is leading a Labour party in an identity crisis and full of arguing and bickering. Not only do you need to try and pick a good candidate, but you need to get the vast majority of the damn party trying to support the candidate and not self-sabotage from inside.
This is just my 2 cents, or 2 pence, and as I said earlier I have ignorance around American politics as it's not my country. However, you can't deny there are similarities between the left failing in America and failing in the UK. Politics is that pendulum I mentioned and it is possible to get it to swing, but you don't want to be waiting 8+ years to find whatever it takes to convince the 5~15% that is needed to win an election to vote your way again.
So mostly this:
But also the 50 state strategy was Howard Dean's work as DNC chairman in 06 and 08. He then left the position after 08, and the DNC moved away from the strategy, partially because Obama didn't support them, partially because they were incompetent without Dean's vision (maybe these are related)
I mean, Elison was backed by all the usual "establishment" Dems (Pelosi, Schumer, Reid) that get the "focused on pleasing massive donors" brand, so it's not like it was the grassroots campaign vs the establishment elites. And they're co-chairs anyway so I don't think it's a big deal, Elison has power, and like you said Perez has the credentials. Both of these candidates were pushed by members of the establishment. Elison got the Sanders blessing so he also got the grassroots support. I think it'll be fine, especially when you hear about the Dems plans for the first 100 hours they get congress back (Medicare-for-all, $15 minimum wage, etc.)
Careful, a certain someone will probably post that this is proof that she is fatally ill and had a mini-stroke right then and there.
cromofo
Member
Malfunction in the reptilian operating system.
Arrogant Bastard
Banned
OMG you found the evidence that she is terminally ill and her health is crumbling.
Oh, you found the clip that showed that she was sick with pneumonia and over exerted her self.
UpDownLeftRight
Banned
Thanks for responses guys. Guess I have a bit more insight into it now. I suppose in effect it's easier to take the blame of loss and hope your next candidate has a better run.
Amibguous Cad
Member
Latinos voted for Trump roughly as much as they did Romney, which was a surprise given all the anti-immigrant rhetoric.
In other words, Bernie lost among committed democrats that would have supported the nominee no matter who he or she was, and won decisively among independents and disaffected millenials that stayed home last November.
TurnipFritters
Member
Boy I bet they feel dumb now.
Barkley's Justice
Member
"See What Had Happened Was"
I mean, I don't think you should be taking our votes for granted like that. Bernie had to earn our votes, right?
The ol' "fuck you, I got mine" voting block. Nothing like sitting back and doing nothing. A vote for Fred Flinstone is better than not voting at all.
Arrogant Bastard
Banned
Yes, but some people would have you believe it was some cabal that orchestrated it this way against Sanders. When the fact of the matter is, Sanders couldn't pull in prototypical democrats.
Clinton had plenty of failings. All I ask is for people to look in the mirror when they call on her and her supporters to accept responsibility for a failed campaign. 2016 was a one crazy cycle with tons of blame to go around, no one gets out without accepting a portion of it.
As someone who supported Bernie and voted for him int he primary only to come home to Clinton, I'll be buying her book. I would buy Bernie's book too, I find 2016 to be utterly fascinating; more so, because it seems to have caused people to go fucking mad.
Finale Fireworker made a really good post about this in PoliGAF, but the summary is, people are crazy because grieving is hard.
Amibguous Cad
Member
I think it's wise to tailor our electoral strategy to the electorate we have, not the electorate we wish we had.
You're welcome to view the people who stayed home on election day as stupid - and I'm not thrilled with them, either. But the bottom line is - the squeaky wheels gets the grease, and who the squeaky wheel is has changed. Moderates used to the squeaky wheel - they could always defect to the other party, after all. They don't do that any longer - parties are very good at making their voters hate the other guy, so Rockefeller Republicans were perfectly fine with voting for Trump, if unenthused. Centrist Clinton supporters would have done the same with Bernie.
The new squeaky wheel is - not extremists, per se, but at least the disaffected. Those who have been so poorly served by the political class that they tend not to show up at all, or vote third party when they do. For Bernie, that was professional-class millenials that face a much worse future than their parents, and for Trump, that was the rural blighted white working class. If you can drive turnout among either of those, you'll be good - since it's nearly impossible to lose your moderates in the modern age of polarization.
That means that, yes, smart political parties will take your vote for granted. That puts you in essentially the same position as the extremists used to be - you will be expected to hold your nose and vote for a candidate you're not thrilled about because tactically they have the best chance of winning.
Massive Duck. C.M.
Banned
There are a lot of Americans who are completely indifferent to bigotry and the thought of someone like Trump being president doesn't bother them enough to vote intelligently or at all if the opponent isn't inspirational enough.
Basically, what you're saying here is that I should aggressively refuse to vote for the Democratic candidate, even if it costs my party electoral victories, because it's the only way for me to become the "squeaky wheel" again.
Are you sure this is good advice?
Also, just to be clear, I'm still not a moderate.
There is a ton of stuff being posted pointing to exactly this as the reason for the result.
It's being handwaved by many because it doesn't fit with the reasons they feel the election turned out the way it did.
Massive Duck. C.M.
Banned
lol at the new squeaky wheel being people who decide not to squeak
Brexit was a simple election; whichever side got 50% of the vote +1 vote, won. so yeah, the result was surprising, but also analizing it is easy, yeah, there was a good part of racism in it
the US presidential election is a stupid system. If it was a simple election, Hillary would have won. a simpler explanation of "Trump appealed to racism" is not enough due to that, because Hillary did win the popular vote. and not everyone who voted hillary is not racist, and not everyone who voted trump is
but people focus on Hillary cause everyone can think of a something she did wrong in the campaign, and given the small margin of defeat in the states she needed, those reasonings are probably right. there are a ton of things Hillary could have done differently, even small things, and we wouldn't be in this problem now. so people focus their anger on Hillary because this means her campaign was defective, even incompetent
nobody likes incompetence in their own side
Arrogant Bastard
Banned
But Bernie went bust by a larger margin than she did...
I don't want the loser, I want the loser who lost to that loser. I'm not sure that is a winning strat.
the_darkness
Banned
Why, is it ghostwritten by every dipshit who voted Trump or stayed home?
Fuck this attitude.
Arrogant Bastard
Banned
This isn't even a hot-take, scroll up and look at the data man...or maybe shrug it off and do a drive by post. Link
Audioboxer
Member
The UK is saddled with FPTP which can be "unfair" and many citizens do try and campaign for a different system here. Something with better proportional representation. If it doesn't look like the American system is going to be revamped any time soon, then it's about winning within the system you have. Your opposition has to play within the current system as well. This is where I watch many debate about how the Dem campaign could have been better focused on travelling to more of the so called swing states. It seems this is something Obama objectively done better than Clinton, and as the gif pages back seems to show Trump did more of.
This isn't to say you stop campaigning for the system to be changed, it's that whilst an election is happening within the system that stands the party has to be wary of that and act accordingly. I bet you some genuine American bucks whoever runs for 2020 for the Dems actually goes to more places than Clinton. Anyway, that's probably enough butting my head into American politics for a while. More today than the past 6 months combined lol. I'll retreat to the Brexit OT!
Amibguous Cad
Member
I mean, yeah, basically.
The Tea Party was perfectly willing to sacrifice the short-term political advantage of the Republican Party as a whole to shift the party in their direction, and they were spectacularly successful. Lose a couple of winnable senate and house races, strike the fear of god into republicans fearing a right wing primary challenge. Political parties are always tug of war of various interest groups threatening to defect against the whole in order to set more of the overall agenda. You've certainly seen that in the Sanders/Clinton struggle, with the freedom caucus threatening to torpedo health care reform and then not, and the various other ways that they've tried to keep together the factious GOP caucus on Health Care. If you think you can win the fight, by all means.
The disaffected have the upper hand in negotiating though, in that they literally do not care as much. Their threats to simply not turn up are much more credible than anyone who's bothering to debate politics on a message board.
To be perfectly clear, I'm no more happy about this state of affairs than you are, but I would rather acknowledge it and win than put forward imminently reasonable Democratic candidates that get steamrolled by loonies on the right that manage to mobilize disaffected constituencies -and- hold on to their centrists.
I'm not sure what that data is supposed to show me? That a robust primary with 10 candidates and no superdelegates would have had the same outcome? Maybe but we'll never know. What we do know now that we have hindsight is that hilary was the wrong candidate and for those of us who care about progressive ideals no DNC candidate against trump would have us in a worse position right now than hilary left us.
Arrogant Bastard
Banned
Can you name a single democratic candidate that would have beat Clinton that actually wanted to run?
I was implying that the "Bernie or Bust" camp did their part to help shape the election.
I am happy you are still rocking that avatar I made.
Freeza Under The Shower
Member
No she isn't. A true democracy would make the winner of a popular vote its president. Which she did by 2.5 million votes, which is hardly an arbitrary difference when all voters are just 120 million.
The way US gaf has responded to her loss is bizarre. As if the person failed, and not a completely banana republic system that has no place, meaning, or even function in the modern world. If anything, Russia was right in proving that the US really is no better than a dictatorship by gaming the system just enough to expose it for what it is: a steaming pile of crap.
You guys really don't understand statistical problems as a result of a structural design. Her "loss" was not her fault, the same way that Trump's "win" had nothing to do with his actual campaign, votes for him, or anything he even did. He didn't win, he got picked to win by a third party, and the rest was luck due to the way the system is designed.
This really wasn't a black swan event, as Taleb claimed, but the single largest quant blow-up in political history. Nobody knows what to do with it because of that, because nobody properly understands wtf happened. Game design is basically what happened. Someone saw the game's flaw, exploited it, and now here we are.
A lack of SDs does not make the system "more robust". Over on the GOP side, you don't think that the party wishes that they had proportional representation and SDs to try and stop Trump?
the_darkness
Banned
If you blame Hillary you're part of the problem.
No because the democrats that could have won a competitive primary and general against Trump wouldn't want to run against her when it was "her turn".
Edit: I should say I am grateful Clinton's run made me take the step of joining the DSA. It made me realize that the DNC is no longer a party i can financially support.
TurnipFritters
Member
So that's a no, you cannot name a single one of the infinite supply of democrats that could have won the primary and the presidency.
I don't understand how losing to Trump somehow undermines Clinton's achievements or how viable of a candidate she was.
She didn't lose to Trump.
She lost to this sweeping idea of "making America Great Again" that has been brewing for a decade. The republican party has been creating and waiting for this moment for years. You could see it with the Tea Party, which eventually for swept up into just standard politics. Then on the other coin you have hundreds of thousands adolescents who got dragged into GamerGate and their movement who used fake news and social media to further influence others.
If it wasn't Trump, someone else could have easily taken advantage of these groups of people.
On top of that you have the group of people who are so bent on change and shaking up Government that they'll willingly fuck over everyone else just to watch things burn. Or the crowd where a better future for any minorty or persecuted group isn't progressive enough, and maintaining Obama's legacy isn't good enough.
Clinton lost because people wanted to be selfish, racist, hating asshats. It's no rocket science.
She didn't lose to Trump.
She lost to this sweeping idea of "making America Great Again" that has been brewing for a decade. The republican party has been creating and waiting for this moment for years. You could see it with the Tea Party, which eventually for swept up into just standard politics. Then on the other coin you have hundreds of thousands adolescents who got dragged into GamerGate and their movement who used fake news and social media to further influence others.
If it wasn't Trump, someone else could have easily taken advantage of these groups of people.
On top of that you have the group of people who are so bent on change and shaking up Government that they'll willingly fuck over everyone else just to watch things burn. Or the crowd where a better future for any minorty or persecuted group isn't progressive enough, and maintaining Obama's legacy isn't good enough.
Clinton lost because people wanted to be selfish, racist, hating asshats. It's no rocket science.
Arrogant Bastard
Banned
Don't give me this crap. Obama was a unicorn and he couldn't beat her via popular vote and barely squeezed out a win. You cannot name a single one, can you?
You guys can keep this up if you want, but the fact of the matter is Clinton isn't the evil bitch you want her to be.
Oh, a disillusioned democrat who didn't get his Bernie? Good luck with the protest vote for the rest of time, I'm sure it is gonna work out well. DSA are pussies, they are just a bunch of corporate shills. I joined the CPUSA, I cannot support shills anymore.
GoldenEye 007
Member
lol good luck. You will only further enable the GOP. Democratic Socialists of America. Jesus.
Biden (obviously), Gore, Warren, Frankin, possibly Booker, Iger, Likely GIllibrand.
Would any of them of run had clinton not decided to? guess we'll never know.
But that's the game we all agreed to. Clinton knew the rules, so did Trump. Trump had very few paths to victory compared to Clinton and he used them. It really is on Clinton if she couldn't even be bothered to visit Wisconsin.
Sun Bather
Member
The book that documents Berndawgs tyranny.
Like, Obama is partially to blame here as well, as she was clearly his chosen successor years in advance and he helped clear the deck for her.
The problem w/ avoiding that specific situation going forward is that the DNC head serves at the pleasure of the president. It's possible we may want to alter that in some capacity.
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