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New Clinton postmortem of campaign includes criticism of Sanders policy promises

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aeolist

Banned
If that's the case then it makes even less sense to blame it entirely on Hillary.

why? if they've been disenfranchised the democratic party shares responsibility, and if they don't see her as representing their interests hillary certainly is to blame
 

zelas

Member
DI6NSUDV4AAWRaJ.jpg


Damn. Definitely a buy to finally hear some candid Hillary.

Yeah I was definitely noticing that during the campaign. Hillary could have truly decimated the Bernie pipe dream on top of what voters were already doing at the polls. But with the alternative being Trump it just wasnt worth the risk of alienating the key percentage of his base that were already looking for any excuse to stay home/not vote for Hillary.

Bernie trying to put on a bandage after going scorched earth during the campaign didnt come close to undoing the harm he did. This is why people are reluctant to let outsiders run for a party's nomination. Some candidates don't care if they leave the party in shambles. I bet some of his supporters would actually encourage him weakening the democratic party.
 
I voted Bernie in the primary despite the same misgivings with him that HRC lists, because I wanted her campaign to move to the left. It didn't work.

But I have to agree with a lot of the posts in this thread. 2008 and then 2016 showed that you don't win elections nowadays with measured, rational positions on policy. You win by telling the voter you're going to bring hope and change and #MAGA, details be damned. If anybody has learned from this, then 2020's campaigns are going to be totally full of hot air.
 

kirblar

Member
why? if they've been disenfranchised the democratic party shares responsibility, and if they don't see her as representing their interests hillary certainly is to blame
Of course you'd say that it's the Democratic Party's fault when the GOP is disenfranchising voters in states they control.
 

JABEE

Member
I'm a strong believer in the horseshoe theory. Bernie's ideas were just as unrealistic as Trump's, even though they were better and for the greater good.

It may be true that Bernie's ideas wouldn't have actually been possible with the state of Congress, but I think it's better when political discourse moves further left versus the continual shift to the right. He may have been ineffective, but I think part of the role of the President is to shape the political mood and expectations of the country. I don't think the things he was promising are actually impossible in this country.
 
Hillary should have listened more to Bill Clinton and allot less to Robby Mook when it pertained to the Mid-West.

Bill would have wanted her to go to Wisconsin and Michigan. But lol Mook goes, "make a concert in Philly where you are already cemented"
 

DOWN

Banned
I know most of y'all are Clinton defenders, but this is petty and screams of just trying to assign blame on someone else.

Girl needs to accept that she was just unlikeable and lost an election that literally no one should have lost
That’s a bit nonsense. Nobody wants to hear a fake “it was all me” book which wouldn’t be any bit honest. And you frankly have no clue how many factors (including herself) she covers in this book.

On top of that, to suggest that Trump didn’t have significant support and that the only reason he got more electoral votes was because Hillary simply drove her own away is BS. He had plenty of committed and interested voters - and there were numerous factors worth discussing that contributed to her defeat.
 
She won the primary because she won the most delegates and votes. You can't win the democrat or republican primaries without the south. How Bernie didn't know that is beyond me.

End of the day, while Bernie's last months were pathetic he didn't do or say anything comparable to what Hillary and her husband did and said in 2008, when it was clear she would not be the nominee. This is a person who has never accepted blame or responsibility for anything in her unimpressive political career so I'm not surprised she's blaming others here.

Clinton tells panel she takes ‘absolute personal responsibility’ for election loss

You are full of shit.
 
"We need to stop relitigating the 2016 Primary"

This is going to go on as long as it's apparent Bernie will run in 2020. Bernie supporters and surrogates are already going after his would be 2020 opponents. They're still shitting on the DNC and depicting it as some boogeyman that's simultaneously all powerful and completely incompetent. They want a complete takeover of the Democratic Party and I expect them to become even more rabid when he announces he's officially running again.
 

MZoon

Neo Member
Well she is not helping the democrats in the mids by blaming the progressives (and profiting by doing so) and she was way worse against Obama.
What a hypocrite, no sympathy.
 
Hillary lost because everyone was against Hillary except intelligent people who knew the stakes.

Those who voted on raw emotion cost America a decent president.
This.

It was always a choice between Hillary and Trump. Bernie was a distraction and people that allowed themselves to forget this fact were dumb IMO. It didn't matter if you liked her or not, it was a matter of picking who was most competent for the job, and America failed in this regard. Now we have an idiot who doesn't know his ass from his head in the White House thanks to emotional voters.
 

Suikoguy

I whinny my fervor lowly, for his length is not as great as those of the Hylian war stallions
Framing Bernie's argument that too many politicians supported virtually all of the several trillion dollars in spending on war since 9/11 and never asked how much it would cost.. but then turned around and to say we can't afford to pay for a single payer bill and act like it's ridiculous that someone is even proposing it, as "2 second abs" is really stupid...

Their differences in votes and records of where their priorities are here in this regard was absolutely not just superficial marketing stuff. She did not campaign on either single payer or Medicare for all until Bernie basically held his endorsement hostage for it. I don't see what that quote applies to outside of maybe the minimum wage ordeal.

And the quote on her saying Bernie couldn't come up with something that she changed a position on because of a donation is another example of her not understanding the criticism. We have ethics rules for a reason. It's not about trusting individuals it's about trusting everyone. Do we honestly believe a political culture in which taking massive donations from wealthy financial firms prior to running for office on a large scale doesn't lead to corruption? I mean come on... it was a financial conflict of interest and something she shouldn't have been doing if she intended to stay in public service.

https://hbr.org/2017/09/research-opposition-to-federal-spending-is-driven-by-racial-resentment

Using data from the 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES), we looked at the impact of three factors in particular: party identification, ideology, and racial resentment. Also known as symbolic racism or modern racism, racial resentment is a post-Civil-Rights-era view rooted in the denial of continuing discrimination against African Americans, doubts about their work ethic, and resistance to government efforts to reduce racial inequalities. The CCES asks questions that measure these views.

As one might have guessed from the racial undertones often present in public discussions on fiscal politics, greater racial resentment was associated with lower support for spending. This remained true even when we accounted for other demographic and political characteristics, such as gender, race, age, education, income, party identification, ideology, and so on. In fact, racial resentment was far more powerful in predicting opposition to federal spending than economic self-interest was — for example, it was four times stronger than income. Its influence exceeded even that of party identification, which is notable in our era of hyperpartisanship. So economic characteristics do matter in the way we would expect; it’s just that other factors matter more.

Until more progressives understand what they are fighting against, I will continue to share this important study.

Spending Trillions to fight overseas "wars" against brown people is fine, in fact it's a bonus for many voters. But, don't spend any money in the US on free health care, minorities will benefit.
 

pigeon

Banned
I voted Bernie in the primary despite the same misgivings with him that HRC lists, because I wanted her campaign to move to the left. It didn't work.

But I have to agree with a lot of the posts in this thread. 2008 and then 2016 showed that you don't win elections nowadays with measured, rational positions on policy. You win by telling the voter you're going to bring hope and change and #MAGA, details be damned. If anybody has learned from this, then 2020's campaigns are going to be totally full of hot air.

People are seriously looking at the GOP's complete incapacity to pass legislation because of their eight years of nonsense promises that allowed their entire party to get hijacked by a Nazi and saying "yeah, I want that?"

No guys. No.

Let's propose policies that are strong and socialist, but also clearly implementable.
 

DOWN

Banned
My hot take:

Clinton's fault was being a realistic in a campaign with a con man.

I watched this unfold in real-time during the debates.

Man: "How will you protect jobs in the coal and fossil fuel industries?"
Clinton: "I won't. Those jobs are going away. We need to create new jobs for them."
Trump: "I WILL PROTECT THEM."

Man: "How will you fix the immigration crisis and deal with illegal immigrants?"
Clinton: "We should be a land of opportunity that has mercy on foreigners, even Muslims."
Trump: "I WILL PROTECT YOU FROM SCARY IMMIGRANTS."

Man: "How will you fix health care?"
Clinton: "Obamacare isn't perfect, but we can take steps to improve it."
Trump: "I ALONE CAN FIX IT!"

Over and over and over. With both Bernie and Trump, she tried to educate Americans that the issues were more complex, avoiding the soundbytes, avoiding grandiose promises.

She told the truth... but the truth wasn't POPULAR. Telling coal miners they won't get their jobs back is the truth, but it won't win votes. Telling people who are scared of losing their jobs to illegal immigrants that we'll "work on it" instead of "fixing it" won't give her a vote.

She said the truth, but not what they wanted to hear. Trump played on that and used Bernie's own campaign style against her. The thing is, many Trump supporters didn't even believe Trump... but he said what they WANTED him to say, and Hillary didn't. She came in with a plan, and Trump came in with a DREAM.

"We need a plan to fight ISIS..."
"I'LL DEFEAT THEM IN 30 DAYS, BELIEVE ME!"

And here we are.
This is true tbh. She was very measured and realistic about policy and how Congress would be essential to getting anything reasonable done. Bernie and Trump were the land of false promises and revolutions that wouldn’t happen.
 

JustenP88

I earned 100 Gamerscore™ for collecting 300 widgets and thereby created Trump's America
That "ponies" analogy is giving me flashbacks to times I stumbled into conversations about economic policy with my conservative Oklahoman co-workers and I do not appreciate that and will not be subscribing to the author's newsletter

Rather than apologize for not understanding a post about how Bernie Sanders, the out of nowhere social Democrat who was the longest of shots, was never treated seriously by the other side in an understated but questionably ugly manner given he's an old Jewish man, amusingly but accidentally in a similar vein of what you previously wrote, you double down with this post edit?

I'm confused. You would like me to apologize to you because you said something to the effect of "Hillary didn't have legitimate competition because Bernie is a 'weird old socialist Jew'?"

I guess since you're chasing me down, I'll go ahead and trust your nuance here. I don't think you're actually a Stormfront Nazi, Cagey.
 

Cagey

Banned
"Not a legitimate candidate because he's a weird old socialist Jew."

We'd probably both be better off if we assumed the other was joking.

Between the "Jew" shit and the slobbering over the "how do we pay for our poneez" analogy that seems like something you'd learn at a seminar Newt Gingrich would give at a Heritage Foundation event, I'm having a hard time telling exactly where I am right now.
Rather than apologize for not understanding a post about how Bernie Sanders, the out of nowhere social Democrat who was the longest of shots, was never treated seriously by the other side in an understated but questionably ugly manner given he's an old Jewish man, amusingly but accidentally in a similar vein of what you previously wrote (hadn't yet fully read your post), you double down with this post edit?
 
Of course you'd say that it's the Democratic Party's fault when the GOP is disenfranchising voters in states they control.

And yet Clinton had trouble mobilizing voters in States that are Democrat or Democrat friendly.


It's not Democrats fault that the Democrat Party has slowly been abandoning its values over the past couple of decades. It is not their fault that they don't want to vote for Republican Lite.
 
D

Deleted member 231381

Unconfirmed Member
If hell does indeed exist and I do wind up there, I can only imagine it will be a place where everyone relitigates the 2016 Democratic Primaries for all of eternity.

Trump won. What makes you think you're not in hell already?
 
Doctor 1: You have heart disease. It's incurable, but if you change your habits and your diet it will decrease your risk of having a heart attack and improve your quality of life.

Doctor 2: You have heart disease, but don't worry, I have a magic pill that will cure it, and you can go on doing everything you were doing and be happier and healthier than ever before.

Many, many people are going to choose Doctor 2, whether his name is Bernie or Donald. And they are going to dig their heels in and endlessly argue about how not believing in magic pills is your problem for either lacking blind faith or idealism.
 

kirblar

Member
And yet Clinton had trouble mobilizing voters in States that are Democrat or Democrat friendly.

It's not Democrats fault that the Democrat Party has slowly been abandoning its values over the past couple of decades. It is not their fault that they don't want to vote for Republican Lite.
I mean, if your value was white supremacy, than yes, the Democrats have been abandoning that.
 
I wonder how some of you would read accident reports. They typically list all factors that led to the accident. Do you take each and decry, as if it were presented in a vacuum, that the driver must take responsibility?

Here? Kind of. Do you remember the Tesla auto-pilot thread?
 

DarkKyo

Member
I guess I'm just confused about the point of this type of criticism within the context of a primary.

So, clinton supporters who are outraged about Bernie knocking the wind out of Clinton's sales, let me ask you what exactly you are taking issue with.

If the only time Bernie ever challenged Clinton was during the primary, why is that so wrong? Are you saying it was not moral to challenge Clinton for a chance at being the democrat candidate? He fell in line and supported her when the primary was over, so I'm having a hard time figuring out where he went wrong in your eyes.

On the other side of the aisle, should the countless other Republican challengers to the rising popularity of Trump be faulted by the Republicans for challenging him? To that end was their challenge as fellow primary candidates even effective in changing public opinion of him the way you're claiming Bernie changed Clinton's image? Why is it only okay to demonize Bernie for being a primary candidate when he was just trying to speak for a growing sentiment in the left of the country that the DNC just outright wanted to ignore? Are you saying we shouldn't even have primaries because the debates of the primaries might hurt your candidate's chances in the general?

Your outrage is always so humorously misplaced if you really want to put even some of the blame on Bernie and his supporters for Clinton's terrible campaign and other unfortuitous circumstances(like Comey's televised statement). Let's not forget that Bernie didn't even want to talk about the e-mail stuff during the debates because he knew how asinine the whole thing was. Meanwhile Clinton's entire campaign after the primary could only consist of slinging mud at a man made entirely out of feces.
 

DOWN

Banned
This political tactic has been used since the days of the Gracchus brothers. Literally thousands of years old. Especially knowing who Sanders was and what his message was, she should have had some kind of counter to it.
Everybody thought she’d win. Promising the Moon seemed unnecessary and would threaten to make her another hollow promises politician. She got more votes than Bernie so she thought her plan was working. We all even thought she was going to beat Trump hands down, but alas
 
Like what?

Well it isn't illegal to do so.

WaPo

From the article: "“The DNC reportedly argued that the organization’s neutrality among Democratic campaigns during the primaries was merely a ‘political promise,’ and therefore it had no legal obligations to remain impartial throughout the process,” a reporter for Newsweek wrote."
 

kirblar

Member
Keep saying ridiculous things like this, let the DNC keep moving to the Right, and you'll keep seeing them lose elections.
You mean saying things like the fact that the Democrats' embrace of civil rights directly led to GOP dominance over the ensuing decades since LBJ? https://agenda-blog.com/2017/07/03/...beralism-and-the-white-working-class/#more-42

No, I will not stop saying things that are true just because they make you mad because they contradict your preferred narrative.
 

Cryoteck

Member
This is in the past, lets leave it there. I hope in 2020 we're all excited about the democratic candidate and not at each others throats like we are now.
 

Gattsu25

Banned
Well it isn't illegal to do so.

WaPo

From the article: "“The DNC reportedly argued that the organization’s neutrality among Democratic campaigns during the primaries was merely a ‘political promise,’ and therefore it had no legal obligations to remain impartial throughout the process,” a reporter for Newsweek wrote."
Any actions?
 

Bronx-Man

Banned
People are seriously looking at the GOP's complete incapacity to pass legislation because of their eight years of nonsense promises that allowed their entire party to get hijacked by a Nazi and saying "yeah, I want that?"

No guys. No.

Let's propose policies that are strong and socialist, but also clearly implementable.
Exactly. The GOP isn't a party we should be emulating at all.

Funny, your guy has made quite the career of blaming everyone but himself.

Yikes.
 
You can't take responsibility for something if the very next words out of your mouth are why it was out of your control.

Actually it's quite easy to parse.

Her actions and decisions caused the election to shift closer than it should if she made different choices.

The outside influence and factors out of her control moved the scale to where it turned into a tossup.
 
You mean saying things like the fact that the Democrats' embrace of civil rights directly led to GOP dominance over the ensuing decades since LBJ? https://agenda-blog.com/2017/07/03/...beralism-and-the-white-working-class/#more-42

No, I will not stop saying things that are true just because they make you mad because they contradict your preferred narrative.

Ah. Clinton lost because "All white people are racist".

That's stupid.

That's not why Hillary Lost and if the DNC adopts that attitude they'll never win another election.
 

stuiggs07

Neo Member
This political tactic has been used since the days of the Gracchus brothers. Literally thousands of years old. Especially knowing who Sanders was and what his message was, she should have had some kind of counter to it.

Problem is i'm not sure that there is a counter to it. You can break these promises down number by number and show that they don't add up, but at the end of the day people will believe what they want to believe.

We had the exact same problem over Brexit. I lost track of the amount of times the whole "350m per week to the NHS" was quashed, but come the day of the referendum people were still regurgitating the same bullshit promises.
 

Socreges

Banned
This is strange to me. Didn't Sanders and Clinton both operate within the same campaign and debate paradigm? Did Clinton not also try to undermine and deligitimize Sanders and his platform? Weren't both shown to peddle falsehoods or half-truths during debates? But because she emerged as the Democratic candidate she's going to point to Sanders' efforts within that prior context as causing her the election?

And to be specific, regarding innuendo, didn't she continually imply that Sanders was sexist when it came to her misrepresenting the 'shouting' episode?

Sorry for all the rhetorical questions!

Also, I much appreciate the thread title change. GAF has usually done well avoiding clickbaity garbage but maybe OP just lives in that world.
 

Nydius

Gold Member
You can't take responsibility for something if the very next words out of your mouth are why it was out of your control.

Or by writing an entire book titled "What Happened". The obvious inference of the title is that the fault lies elsewhere. If she truly takes "absolute personal responsibility", she shouldn't have written this book. Instead, her best course would be to fade into the background and let the Democratic party recover without her continually picking at the metaphorical scab that was 2016.
 
Blah blah blah overpromises etc. Shut up, your campaign and platform sucked. I can't think of single talking point from your campaign that could of materialised into actual policy, Hillary.

Bernie was campaigning with poetry which is how you are supposed to because it can lead to the unthinkable happening. The logistics of his promises were in the works but I think are possible with a D congress and president. Don't get mad at him for having a vision and wanting to move the country in the best direction regarding healthcare.

The only thing I resent about bernie's campaign is how he low key used the whole "corrupt politician" slander against Clinton. The right has used that baseless shit against her for a long time and maybe it seemed like good material at the time but it did lasting damage to her and helped Donald. He should of taken the high road and went after her stale shit campaign with zero vision instead of using low blow material painting her as a corrupt politician only out for wall street interests.
 
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