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[royalan]

So *after* that point, what she endured from the right was far worse than anything Obama went through, or what?

Also, I'm pretty sure that her approval rating tanked precipitously every previous time she ran for office, even if not quite as much as it did last time.

What's the point of playing the oppression olympics here?

Maybe Clinton's approval rating plummeted when she ran for office because of the way that she ran for office, for example running negative attack ads instead of positive ads about her policies.

Your timeline is way off.

 

[Father_Brain]

I mean, it's perfectly fair to point out that Clinton's approval ratings were a lot higher when she wasn't running for office, but doesn't that kind of undermine the notion that her historic unpopularity this past cycle was just the culmination of a decades-long smear campaign?

 

[old manatee]

Your timeline is way off.

https://youtu.be/7yr7odFUARg

 

[Father_Brain]

What's the point of playing the oppression olympics here?

The point is that the factors clearly not specific to Hillary - right-wing smear campaigns against Democrats, exacerbated by bigotry against people who aren't straight white men - are being used as excuses for the factors that are specific to Hillary, namely her unpopularity and subsequent defeat.

If the right-wing smear machine is so invincible, it's hard to explain how or why it proved unable to twice defeat a black man named Hussein, or even to drag his approval ratings down to Dubya territory before he left office. Unless one argues that he just had an easier time of it.

 

[kirblar]

The point is that the factors clearly not specific to Hillary - right-wing smear campaigns against Democrats, exacerbated by bigotry against people who aren't straight white men - are being used as excuses for the factors that are specific to Hillary, namely her unpopularity and subsequent defeat.

If the right-wing smear machine is so invincible, it's hard to explain how or why it proved unable to twice defeat a black man named Hussein, or even to drag his approval ratings down to Dubya territory before he left office. Unless one argues that he just had an easier time of it.

No one is using them as excuses! The only way to read this as "excuses" is if, in your mind, the only acceptable explanation is to blame it 100% on her campaign, which is completely ridiculous given the circumstances and the insanely narrow margin of loss. That is not to say that they're not at fault, but this was a perfect storm of circumstances, of which their bad campaign and mediocre candidate was only part of the problem.

Plenty of Clinton supporters (myself included) have been very critical of the campaign. This whole back and forth we keep seeing is eerily reminiscent of the campaign, where one side would produce a detailed explanation and the other side would yell at us for not giving them the easy, simple explanation (ITS ALL WALL STREETS FAULT!, reinstalling Glass-Steagal fixes everything!) they wanted

 

[pigeon]

Yup. It's unfair that Hillary is as widely disliked as she is for the reasons she is, but it also wasn't fair that Obama was relentlessly smeared and lied about for close to a decade, and yet he somehow managed to leave office with high approval ratings and without a single scandal sticking to him.

Of course the right-wing smear machine had it out for Clinton for years; of course much of the animus against her was driven by sexism, just as much of the animus against Obama was driven by racism. But sexism and right-wing smears aren't sufficient to explain her unpopularity*. She's just not a very good politician. Stop making excuses for her failure.

You're literally responding to somebody saying that Hillary didn't have the charisma and likability to succeed by saying that Hillary wasn't a very good politician and they're making excuses for her failure.