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[Imp the Dimp]

Read all of it, very interesting. Thanks for sharing!

 

[Bizazedo]

Thank you for posting. Calm opinions like this are always interesting, but....

Once the general came around they never once underestimated Trump, they saw what he did to the Republican field. There was no arrogance just pretty much sheer terror at the fact that their candidate was losing to a person who no previous campaigning rules applied to. Issues didn't matter at all, they tested and tested issue based tactics and messaging in the rust belt to no avail, it was a pure personality battle.

Because of my old job I knew a lot of people at the highest levels who had lots of doubts about her campaign and openly worried she was going to lose months ago.

I'm having trouble seeing this versus all the reports that have come out lately. I'm sorry, but a campaign worried about losing does not do the campaigning that they did (or did not do, more accurately). Something is not jiving in the two stories.

That and....

Trump showed that he can win campaigns by annihilating his opposition be it a room full of white men or the most qualified person to ever attempt to run this country.

C'mon, now, that seems a bit much.

 

[TheLaughingStock]

You're talking about Hillary Clinton here?

Lol. I doubt it.

 

[aorange999]

Yeah, um, I'm gonna call bullshit on this part.

I might agree to an extent, but remember she was a Senate candidate, who was also first lady. Its the perspective I'm talking about, she has been a VIP for 30 years and for someone like that she is surprisingly nice. Chelsea otoh...

 

[God Dayumm]

OP, is it true Hillary got violent with Podesta? Any vertical video of the commotion?

 

[LegendofJoe]

I'm a little weirded out by Bernie fans who try to use campaign postmortem talk as a way to try to find restitution for getting yelled at or to express their I-told-you-sos. We should be looking forward for ways to fix the party, and Bernie's movement, message, and focus on the working class are the way forward.

Agreed

I hope we can mobilize the public enough to ensure that 2018 (and 2017 in places like VA) don't turn out the way the last several non-presidential elections have. Hopefully, the fact that the GOP is sure to pass some heinous legislation between now and then will be enough to get the vote out.

 

[Maiorum]

Chelsea otoh...

Come on man, don't leave us hanging.

 

[TheOMan]

Thank you for posting. Calm opinions like this are always interesting, but....



I'm having trouble seeing this versus all the reports that have come out lately. I'm sorry, but a campaign worried about losing does not do the campaigning that they did (or did not do, more accurately). Something is not jiving in the two stories.

That and....


C'mon, now, that seems a bit much.

Yeah - I'm having trouble reconciling that.

 

[excelsiorlef]

I'm a little weirded out by Bernie fans who try to use campaign postmortem talk as a way to try to find restitution for getting yelled at or to express their I-told-you-sos. We should be looking forward for ways to fix the party, and Bernie's movement, message, and focus on the working class are the way forward.

Part of the way forward... absolutely.

But the rush to proclaim him the way forward is distressing.

 

[theignoramus]

Thanks for the report, pretty interesting. Just out of curiosity, what was the mix like of male/female at Clinton HQ during the campaign and at Javitz during the night? I saw far, far more women then men but it could have just been the photographer focusing on people they wanted to.

Just curious if internal skew biased perceived results. I was 100% sure Trump was gonna lose because I only really talked politics with the women in my family (the guys were all 100% Trump so really not much to talk about) and every single one of them told me women would never vote Trump, so I just sorta assumed "well... 50% of the voters are women, plus the 20-25% minority vote Hillary gets easily puts her over the top". Wonder if that sort of thing happened elsewhere too.

I keep reading reports that educated people just flat out refused to admit they were Trump voters if they were around other people with college degrees.

 

[aorange999]

Thank you for posting. Calm opinions like this are always interesting, but....



I'm having trouble seeing this versus all the reports that have come out lately. I'm sorry, but a campaign worried about losing does not do the campaigning that they did (or did not do, more accurately). Something is not jiving in the two stories.

That and....


C'mon, now, that seems a bit much.

I don't know I think she is pretty qualified...?http://www.vox.com/2016/8/1/12316646/hillary-clinton-qualified

At no point did this campaign think they were a lock to win, they thought they had a good chance and in a campaign that means better than 50-50. People might think that guys just show up to work and say we've won lets do nothing. Campaigning is an exercise in GOTV, polling, messaging, fundraising there are so many different factors, the foot is never lifted off the gas peddle. Strategy shifts but the work never stops. The spectre of 2008 was embedded at the core of the campaign from the beginning, there was way more arrogance and entitlement back then.

 

[Neoweee]

I keep reading reports that educated people just flat out refused to admit they were Trump voters if they were around other people with college degrees.

There's not much of a sign of this. National polling was more accurate than it was in 2012. Was there a Shy Obama effect back then? Also, the polling error itself is correlated with how Trump did in that county or state, i.e. polls that looked Pro-Trump were actually more pro-Trump, and those that were pro-Clinton tended more pro-Clinton in their errors.

 

[Acosta]

Nice insight and write up, thanks for it.

 

[RustyNails]

Robby Mook, I always knew you posted on gaf.

 

[toadsworth]

Eh. I used to work for a polling company. Polling well is really, really hard. The maths behind it is relatively simple - you have something called the central limit theorem, which says that as your sample size increases, the sample mean approaches the population mean; or, as the number of people polled increases, how they say they'll vote approaches how the population says they'll vote. Get a sample size of ~1,000 and you have a margin of error of 3% with 95% confidence - that is, 95% of the time, the sample mean will be within 3 points of the population mean.

But then...

The first problem is if the sample isn't actually randomly selected. Imagine, for example, you don't conduct your polls in Spanish. You can't possibly contact any Spanish voters, so you have a bias in your sample and you'll end up with the voting figures for the population absent Spanish voters, which might be significantly off the real result.

The main way this actually reflects itself for pollsters, though, isn't language. For this election, it was differential response rates. Basically, when we call and say "do you mind if we ask a few questions?", you only get the answer "yes" about 7% of the time. 93% of the time they just say "no" and put the phone down. That means we're not selecting randomly any more - we end up oversampling the sort of person willing to answer the questions and undersampling the sort of person who isn't willing to do, usually the politically interested and the politically disinterested respectively. Unfortunately, these two groups don't vote the same way.

The second problem is dishonesty. There's two sorts of this problem. The first is: will this person vote at all? If I asked 5 people how they'd vote, and 4 said Blue and 1 said Red, but in the election, only Red turned up, my poll would have said 80/20 but the result would be 0/100. And the trouble is: there's absolutely no way to find out what the honest answer is. Some pollsters try asking people how likely they are to vote: for example, are you 7/10 likely to vote? 8/10? and then they exclude all people below a certain bar. Unfortunately, this doesn't work as well as you might expect, because different groups are differently accurate about their self-assessments. A millennial who says they are 7/10 likely to vote is actually much less likely than an older person who says they are 7/10 likely to vote. So the second way you can do it is by demographics - i.e., millennials normally vote at this rate, old people at this rate. But the trouble is that this leaves you massively susceptible to 'revolutionary' candidates, who can mobilize people in previously unforeseen ways.

The second part of this second problem is dishonesty about who you vote for. For example, you might want to vote for the racist candidate, but not want to admit it. So you'll say you're undecided, or you're voting for the other candidate, even though you're not. There's... really no way to do much about this for a pollster.

The third problem is undecideds themselves. If I poll 4 Red people and 3 Blue people and 2 undecideds, everyone thinks the pollsters are saying Red will win. But if all the undecideds swing behind Blue, they'll win 5-4 - and it looks like I was wrong. And because they're undecided, you can't really make any safe assumptions about them.

And finally the fourth problem is 'shock' events - last minute things that make people change their minds in between polls and polling day.

The trouble with this US election is that almost all of these happened at once! And there's really very little you can do about them. The more similar candidates are to previous elections, the better polling works. Obama vs. Romney and Obama vs. McCain? Easy to poll; Obama is obviously the same guy, McCain and Romney similar enough the same assumptions both work. But Trump vs. Clinton? Hard as heck to poll. And despite that, pollsters didn't do too bad. The standard error was about 2.3 percentage points on the national level. That's pretty close! The trouble is that was also the difference between President Trump and President Clinton.

Thanks for the write up. Lots of factors in polling I never really thought about.

 

[Neoweee]

Not aiming this at you personally, just a reflection of how that''s one narrative that seems to be gaining strength and also seems to be popular because it confirms what a lot of people (again, not you personally) already thought. That includes news outlets. As good sources as they are, when it comes to events like these I think we'll never have an actual objective answer because a lot of it is pure opinion and conjecture. The closest we'll get to an accepted truth is probably whatever the historians settle on.

I completely agree with this. It is still too soon to come up with definitive explanations for what happened. So many things failed this year to allow a demagogue into the presidency, and pointing at any single thing as the cause isn't going to be accurate.

 

[jakonovski]

I suppose sufficiently advanced fear, or rather the attempt of hiding it, can be confused for arrogance.

 

[guek]

I'm a little weirded out by Bernie fans who try to use campaign postmortem talk as a way to try to find restitution for getting yelled at or to express their I-told-you-sos. We should be looking forward for ways to fix the party, and Bernie's movement, message, and focus on the working class are the way forward.

I'm more weirded out by the amount of absolute refusal by some to recognize Bernie's quick rise to prominence in the party and how instrumental he's going to be moving forward. Apparently it's ok to cite Elizabeth Warren all day long but heaven forbid people look to leadership to the man who's both stepping up to the challenge and currently the most well liked Democrat not named Barack Obama. I realize that's not exactly what you're doing though, it's just that it appears to be a common sentiment on GAF from the usual suspects.

 

[RustyNails]

Yeah, um, I'm gonna call bullshit on this part.

Why? Hillary Clinton's resume was the most accomplished of anyone to run for country as it pertained to public service.

 

[HP_Wuvcraft]

How much crying did you see?

What was the transition like from YAASS QUEEN to oh shit?

That was basically my night at the DVC in Los Gatos.

 

[BoosterDuck]

You're talking about Hillary Clinton here?

She's not?

Yeah, um, I'm gonna call bullshit on this part.

Her husband gets paid as much as a presidential cabinet member every year, she co-founded and runs an A rated charity and she was the former Secretary of State. Why would she be entitled?

 

[TheOfficeMut]

Why? Hillary Clinton's resume was the most accomplished of anyone to run for country as it pertained to public service.

I don't think people have a difficult time divorcing experience from perception.

If you didn't know the people and had the resumes of Hillary Clinton and every single POTUS laid out side by side, I think you could agree that she was one of the most qualified individuals to ever run.

 

[Cymbal Head]

Once the general came around they never once underestimated Trump...

Because of my old job I knew a lot of people at the highest levels who had lots of doubts about her campaign and openly worried she was going to lose months ago...

The pollsters giving her the victory made them rest a little easier but I can confirm they saw their chances as better than 50-50 not any kind of landslide ever...

Many chants of Love Trumps Hate and disbelief that this could have happened. People wanted to see her but there was a complete and thorough understanding that this was an extraordinary event.

The idea that the campaign was in constant fear of losing and never underestimated Trump or overestimated their chances doesn't square with complete disbelief when the results came in. If they figured their chances were close to 50-50, why would they be so shocked to lose? Shouldn't Hillary have prepared a statement, and prepared herself mentally for the prospect of delivering it?

 

[aorange999]

I've got to run so won't answer anything else but

Eh. I used to work for a polling company. Polling well is really, really hard. The maths behind it is relatively simple ....

This is wonderful.

I completely agree with this. It is still too soon to come up with definitive explanations for what happened. So many things failed this year to allow a demagogue into the presidency, and pointing at any single thing as the cause isn't going to be accurate.

This. What I wrote in the OP is just a personal account of what I think. For someone who tried not to be involved this year I got caught up again!
I guess my conclusion is this: Hillary was an uncharismatic but electable candidate and the team and strategy they put together to try win this election was not the right one. Trump became a formidable force that harnessed the media due to his preexisting celebrity and got a pitch perfect message to mobilize and switch voters. Too many other factors are out there to ignore, 8 years of Barry, gender issues, white men's last stand, economic woes due to a changing world but I'll leave that to the historians.

The idea that the campaign was in constant fear of losing and never underestimated Trump or overestimated their chances doesn't square with complete disbelief when the results came in. If they figured their chances were close to 50-50, why would they be so shocked to lose? Shouldn't Hillary have prepared a statement, and prepared herself mentally for the prospect of delivering it?

I can't really answer this question, but I think that because they could barely organize a victory event they simply didn't have someone preparing anything for her. If they lost it was going to be a shock, I mean just look at the reaction of the country and the world (GAF?). The numbers never lied to them and in the end expected to win because the alternative was something noone wanted to imagine.

 

[Deku Tree]

I believe that you believe all of that but a lot of it is very hard for me to believe in the face of all the evidence, the lack of campaigning in the Important areas, lots of closed door fundraisers and very few visits to rural areas in the rust belt, etc.

 

[Bizazedo]

I don't think people have a difficult time divorcing experience from perception.

If you didn't know the people and had the resumes of Hillary Clinton and every single POTUS laid out side by side, I think you could agree that she was one of the most qualified individuals to ever run.

Basically, resume wise, I agree. She has a long resume.

Experience doesn't necessarily make someone the best choice evar, though, which is the main distinction.

Still light years better than Trump, but just saying the laurels seem a bit much in the face of how she lost.

 

[Makonero]

What good is being experienced if you don't learn from your mistakes? Hillary made the same mistakes that made her a loser in the 2008 primaries. She made mistakes by not listening to her husband, to people on the ground, or by doing the normal amount of campaigning.

 

[wondermega]

Lots of interesting insight on this thread, good reading and thoughtful analysis. It will be very interesting and enlightening to hear more talk like this as the dust clears, and hopefully the Dems - trounced as they currently are - can learn and use to their advantage when it's time to come up again.

 

[Boney]

So journalists are crossing Clinton and making up all these post campaigns stories?

I don't think so. Not to doubt you were there on the inside but how you see or perceive stuff will be different from the next person.

But trying to assassinate his character was the worst move the campaign could pull. No matter how many campaign strategies leaked or how thin the ice was for her you don't hand over the election after you've seen how he ravaged through the primaries based on insults and gloating. She didn't campaign for increased minimum wage, college tuition reform, tax reform to focus on the super rich, infrastructure, criminal justice reform and Wall Street regulation (lol). From you accounts it seems the campaign was running around like a headless chicken in fear of this orange illiterate which ruined them.

The Washington bubble was running against a needle.

 

[Lothar]

If the campaign was worried that she had a chance of losing, then why didn't she go to Wisconsin once?

 

[Neoweee]

If the campaign was worried that she had a chance of losing, then why didn't she go to Wisconsin once?

Because all of the paths of losing they saw didn't involve Wisconsin?

http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/wisconsin/

Polls showed her up by almost 10 points in Mid-October. That's the data they were dealing with.

The big fear was about the LOWER Blue Wall. Nevada, Colorado, and NH, all of which were considered wildly more in play than WI.

 

[Boney]

Because all of the paths of losing they saw didn't involve Wisconsin?

http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/wisconsin/

Polls showed her up by almost 10 points in Mid-October. That's the data they were dealing with.

The big fear was about the LOWER Blue Wall. Nevada, Colorado, and NH, all of which were considered wildly more in play than WI.

“For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia"

 

[Neoweee]

“For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia"

Yeah, assuming Republicans would break ranks en masse was a gargantuan blunder, and probably the definitive one of the campaign. The Republican party saw who Trump was and didn't care.

 

[Boney]

It's crazy how the benefit of hindsight makes it that anyone can see all the cracks of the campaign.

 

[Massive Duck. C.M.]

“For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia"

Someone actually said this?

Fucking hell, the campaign really was deluded

 

[excelsiorlef]

It's crazy how the benefit of hindsight makes it that anyone can see all the cracks of the campaign.

I mean yes that's why it's called hindsight.

 

[Count Dookkake]

It's crazy how the benefit of hindsight makes it that anyone can see all the cracks of the campaign.

To be fair, plenty were pointing out the cracks all along, but the response was like that of the scumbag mayor in Jaws.

 

[Team Filler]

It's crazy how the benefit of hindsight makes it that anyone can see all the cracks of the campaign.

Anyone yeah, but not everyone it seems. The amount of blame shifting I'm still seeing in threads is astonishing, though not entirely unexpected in GAF of all places.

 

[excelsiorlef]

Someone actually said this?

Fucking hell, the campaign really was deluded

They thought Trump was Goldwater 2.0.

The last time the Dems won the white vote was against Goldwater...

I've said before they believed too strongly in the moral ability of Americans to do the right thing and thought this was a chance to expand the Dem base..


They fucked up.

 

[RedAssedApe]

thanks for sharing. interesting narrative that paints a different picture from what others have claimed.

i kind of want hillary to write another book.

 

[Razorskin]

How many times did you hear fight song that night?

 

[dramatis]

I'm more weirded out by the amount of absolute refusal by some to recognize Bernie's quick rise to prominence in the party and how instrumental he's going to be moving forward. Apparently it's ok to cite Elizabeth Warren all day long but heaven forbid people look to leadership to the man who's both stepping up to the challenge and currently the most well liked Democrat not named Barack Obama. I realize that's not exactly what you're doing though, it's just that it appears to be a common sentiment on GAF from the usual suspects.

I am also pretty weirded out by how people who never admitted to the faults of their losing campaign are now trying to solidify their narrative of the reasons why another campaign lost.

Let's be honest, if Sanders lost the primary and Hillary lost the general, both of them are losers, and neither is the future. Sanders never stepped up to the challenge, he wasn't good enough to pass phase 1. The template for winning is still Obama.

I am also weirded out by the strange need for the Sanders faction to insist that everyone else is telling a false narrative, when of course said faction is also spinning history and numbers in their favor. So let's not be overzealous here.

 

[213372bu]

It's crazy how the benefit of hindsight makes it that anyone can see all the cracks of the campaign.

Some people have been calling it out all along; wouldn't say it's just hindsight.

 

[boiled goose]

Campaign strategy and emails hurt, but lots of other factors mattered as well.

Candidate baggage. Vp pick. Wikileaks. Dnc scandals. Etc.

 

[broncobuster]

I'm a little weirded out by Bernie fans who try to use campaign postmortem talk as a way to try to find restitution for getting yelled at or to express their I-told-you-sos. We should be looking forward for ways to fix the party, and Bernie's movement, message, and focus on the working class are the way forward.

As a Bernie supporter, I agree with you. Also really weird seeing certain people saying "take the L" and treating the election like NPD sales.

 

[Dirca]

How much crying did you see?

What was the transition like from YAASS QUEEN to oh shit?

A tidal wave of delicious liberal tears.

 

[Team Filler]

As a Bernie supporter, I agree with you. Also really weird seeing certain people saying "take the L" and treating the election like NPD sales.

Not surprising, considering the way some of Hillgaf were acting earlier in the year I'd rather have console-war type shit instead.

 

[guek]

I am also pretty weirded out by how people who never admitted to the faults of their losing campaign are now trying to solidify their narrative of the reasons why another campaign lost.

Let's be honest, if Sanders lost the primary and Hillary lost the general, both of them are losers, and neither is the future. Sanders never stepped up to the challenge, he wasn't good enough to pass phase 1. The template for winning is still Obama.

Yeah, I agree with all of that.

I am also weirded out by the strange need for the Sanders faction to insist that everyone else is telling a false narrative, when of course said faction is also spinning history and numbers in their favor. So let's not be overzealous here.

Not so much this though. I'm not sure what you mean by a false narrative unless you're referring to the idea that Clinton screwed up an easy victory. There really isn't a "Sanders faction" anyway, just a few vocal people who are obsessed with the idea that he would have won in an alternate timeline.

 

[Korigama]

Campaign strategy and emails hurt, but lots of other factors mattered as well.

Candidate baggage. Vp pick. Wikileaks. Dnc scandals. Etc.

Out of all the many factors that effected the outcome of the election (and there are plenty to account for), the choice of Tim Kaine as VP couldn't be less relevant. Beyond carrying Virginia, I can't picture it as having had any real effect on anything.

 

[GregLombardi]

Thanks for sharing.

The anger at Hillary around here is unacceptable IMO. Again, some of the anger is justified with regards to reasons why Trump won. But why Trump won is 7 volumes deep, and IMO only 1 of them is Hillary.