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The final staff letter of the Hillary Clinton Presidential Campaign

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C

ChouGoku

Member
The Technomancer said:
I am astounded at how much simultaneous deflection I see liberals desperately trying to make about why people voted for Donald Trump while simultaneously immediately turning on the woman who ran on the most detailed progressive platform in decades by an order of magnitude. This is why we're so fucked, because when they lose they blame us and when we lose we blame us.

Let's stop treating conservative voters like idiots and children please.
Click to expand...
The problem is a lot of people didn't believe she would do those progressive things, and they had some merit to not believe her with all the flip flops throughout the years, her raising tons of money from wealthy donors instead of campaigning, and public vs private positions showed in the Wikileaks emails.
 
C

Chitown B

Member
Schlep said:
I agree with people annoyed that there's very little ownership taken. I was a Bernie supporter in the way I was an Obama supporter. He inspired me, and I wanted to vote for him.

With Hillary, the only reason I voted for her was due to Trump being the alternative. I see her as the definition of spineless. She'll do or say whatever is in her best interest at the moment. Maybe the impression is right, maybe it isn't, but I feel like a lot of people share that view.
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this
 
K

Kin5290

Member
ChouGoku said:
The problem is a lot of people didn't believe she would do those progressive things, and they had some merit to not believe her with all the flip flops throughout the years, her raising tons of money from wealthy donors instead of campaigning, and public vs private positions showed in the Wikileaks emails.
Click to expand...
Here's the problem. Even if the emails published by Wikileaks were unaltered, Wikileaks was still providing an editorial function by labeling emails in a way that made them sound the worst. Like how "public vs private positions" sounds bad, but if you were to actually read the email and understand the context you'd understand that she's talking about a basic negotiating tool for accomplishing something you want through compromise.

Wikileaks also relied heavily on the lack of knowledge held by its audience. Take the "oversampling" bullshit.

And considering that Wikileaks revealed itself to be a partisan propaganda organization in bed with a white nationalist, a lot of these "progressives" got played.
 
T

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
Schlep said:
I agree with people annoyed that there's very little ownership taken. I was a Bernie supporter in the way I was an Obama supporter. He inspired me, and I wanted to vote for him.

With Hillary, the only reason I voted for her was due to Trump being the alternative. I see her as the definition of spineless. She'll do or say whatever is in her best interest at the moment. Maybe the impression is right, maybe it isn't, but I feel like a lot of people share that view.
Click to expand...
I feel exactly the inverse about the two of them, and the problem is that you can never prove that he wouldn't have faced the exact same enthusiasm problem with the larger dem base that Hillary had with his base.

And please, let's not say that "minorities would have fallen into line"
 
D

DrForester

Kills Photobucket
No accountability. More I read, the more I'm OK with her not being President (not that I'm at all OK with Trump). She lost the same way she lost the 08 primary. Arrogance. Thinking it was her turn and she was owed. "I'm with Her", because we apparently owe her something.


Here's my final message to Hillary Clinton.
Djn9ClD.gif
 
S

Schlep

Member
The Technomancer said:
I feel exactly the inverse about the two of them, and the problem is that you can never prove that he wouldn't have faced the exact same enthusiasm problem with the larger dem base that Hillary had with his base.

And please, let's not say that "minorities would have fallen into line"
Click to expand...
Don't take it the wrong way. I'm not saying "They should have nominated Bernie!" He had very real problems with his campaign that may or may not have been resolved by election day.

What I'm saying is that Hillary was not a compelling candidate to a lot of people on the left, and was the exact candidate the right needed to fire up their base. The DNC thought they had the left in the bag, and would entice the right by trotting out a moderate like Hillary. Because Bernie existed, however, they lost a lot of the far left of the party and that showed in the lack of turnout.
 
S

SURGEdude

Member
Crayolan said:
A lot of people voted for Hillary solely because she's not Trump. Now that she failed at the one job they cared about--keeping Trump out of office--there's nothing left to be positive about.
Click to expand...

This is the most concise reflection of my views I've seen thus far.
 
B

bachikarn

Member
I think it is probably fair to say that if the letter did not come out, Clinton would have won with probably a comfortable lead.

I think it is also fair to say that they could have done things differently so that they still would have won even with the letter.
 
J

Jenov

Member
bachikarn said:
I think it is probably fair to say that if the letter did not come out, Clinton would have won with probably a comfortable lead.

I think it is also fair to say that they could have done things differently so that they still would have won even with the letter.
Click to expand...

I think that's fair. The post mortem will hopefully give more insight too.
 
K

Kin5290

Member
bachikarn said:
I think it is probably fair to say that if the letter did not come out, Clinton would have won with probably a comfortable lead.

I think it is also fair to say that they could have done things differently so that they still would have won even with the letter.
Click to expand...
This is fair and probably right.
 
N

NimbusD

Member
I really don't disagree with these things, though she's missing addressing her and the DNC's blind spots.

There's an opportunity now for a stronger and better DNC than there's ever been because we now can address those short comings.

But in spite of all of that, it was all of the things bulletted in this letter PLUS Clinton's blind spots that caused Trump to win by the skin of his teeth. I honestly think without the comey letter, Clinton won. With a still horribly low turnout, but enough to put her over. Without the international, uh, influence, she wouldn't have even been close enough for the comey letter to kill her campaign.

But all we can do now is move forward, and address the biggest problems that we can actually do something about. We've lost a lot for a lot of stupid trivial things, but we have to make the best of this by addressing our worst flaws and pouncing on them. We can't be the republicans who fucking cherished their own flaws for the last 8 years and hope we get lucky enough for a wild card like donald trump to put us over in 4 years.
 
E

Elandyll

Banned
The letter says she might have squeeked out a victory without the Comey letter, and that may be true. 90.000 Michigans showing up at the polls and voting Dem down the line but leaving the president square blank would showm that (Trump won Mi by 22k votes).

But then again, against Trump, she should have won big.

Now, yes, winning a third term is extremely hard historically, but there is also no denying that she was both a very flawed candidate and her campaign made a ton of mistakes (ignoring the rust belt most of all), while it looks like some external forces were also at play (Russia, Wikileaks, FBI...).
I also believe the very flawed polling helped depress the turnout in key states, with the story that her victory was pretty much assured.

In the end, she might have been a very qualified candidage, but she wasn't the right candidate (and didn't have the right VP) at that time, and against that Gop nominee in particular.
For the record, I don't think Bernienwould have fared much better, if at all.
A combination Warren/ Castro would imo have been a winning ticket.
 
Z

Ziltoidia 9

Member
mullet2000 said:
If one good thing came out of all of this, it's that the term "YASS QUEEN" is irreversibly damaged and unusable now.
Click to expand...

And fight song.


Danny might be able to redeam "YASS QUEEN", but I don't know. I never liked it, but if there is one person that could, it is Daenerys Targaryen.
 
Z

Ziltoidia 9

Member
Yoda said:
I really hope the Democrats manage find some real leadership.
Click to expand...

Well in less than a day, Bernie got 250k people to sign a petition to get Keith Ellison as the DNC chair. A Bernie/Ellison combo would be great, add in Warren and we got a great tri-fecta.
 
K

Kotetsu534

Member
They first argue that the successfully portrayed Trump as the worst ever Presidential nominee in history. Then it is argued that the only reason they lost a tight race was due to unfortunate events in the last week which swung the polls a couple of points and turned undecideds against them. But if he was the worst candidate ever, surely a strong candidate with an effective campaign would have blown him out big time, harder than George McGovern or Barry Goldwater, winning almost every state? Their explanation is facile.
 
B

Blader

Member
Elandyll said:
In the end, she might have been a very qualified candidage, but she wasn't the right candidate (and didn't have the right VP) at that time, and against that Gop nominee in particular.
For the record, I don't think Bernienwould have fared much better, if at all.
A combination Warren/ Castro would imo have been a winning ticket.
Click to expand...
Booker is about as tied to Wall Street, if not more so, than Hillary.


Kotetsu534 said:
They first argue that the successfully portrayed Trump as the worst ever Presidential nominee in history. Then it is argued that the only reason they lost a tight race was due to unfortunate events in the last week which swung the polls a couple of points and turned undecideds against them. But if he was the worst candidate ever, surely a strong candidate with an effective campaign would have blown him out big time, harder than George McGovern or Barry Goldwater, winning almost every state? Their explanation is facile.
Click to expand...

Well, those kinds of blow outs don't exist anyway, I think it was pretty clear regardless of how bad Trump is he was going to win almost every red state.

That said, I agree with an earlier post in this thread: Comey's letter may have tipped the final scales against her, but the fact that the race was close enough for that to happen is indicative of some serious campaign errors and Hillary, fairly or unfairly, just being too unlikable to just enough people.
 
F

Freeza Under The Shower

Member
Fracas said:
This forum's turn on Clinton is absolutely unreal.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it's shocking for me too. Particularly because the Comey letter was a direct hit (for massive damage, blah) to her critical weakpoint: the (delusional, but somehow existing) notion of her being not trustworthy. It wasn't just some random guy, it was the FBI, lending immediate credit to what had been slow to degrade already. People with lower education respond highly to appeal to authority, and psychology tells us that humans don't process good news just the bad news so the second letter meant dick in removing that. It is a very large factor in explaining how she got to be unfavorable.
The second would be the Electoral College nonsense, meaning the loss of the rust belt suddenly means a loss on all. The only way to combat that or even prep for it is to campaign on a few swing states and ignore the rest. Somehow, the Trump campaign DID realize that and got the support in locomotion, which was really not there -or not much- before the Comey letter started the train (I seem to recall there being a name for this process in social action theories, but it escapes me right now). They're really not wrong in their reasoning there. It's a complex pattern, not the simple 'this!' or 'that!' gaf is now trying to play at just to pretend they didn't set themselves up for a loss. The candidate didn't lose, you people did. Gaf just wants to restore feeling superior by blaming someone else, too. Quite a bit of irony.

That said, they definitely fell for the nerd fallacy of trusting in statistics and not talking to people on the ground. It's like predicting the weather: even if you know the macro average, you still can't predict local weather more than 48 hours in advance. Anything beyond that is conjecture at best. However, the vast discrepancy between polls and results does show an extreme error in method and subsequent beliefs among staff and potential voters, like gaf here.
But! They are far from the only ones to do so. For those of you who fail to notice it: nobody called the UK election going to the Tories either, and they themselves then proceeded to dramatically miscalculate the Brexit referendum. And back in Obama vs Romney, the latter was convinced he was winning too, and only then discovered he wasn't, similar to Clinton's defeat. These patterns cannot be explained (anymore) by conventional polling methods and analysis, and additionally voters have become too volatile or too disconnected from political reality to correctly understand what it is they're voting for (see Brexit's Google results immediately that night).
Civic Literacy is always low (roughly 7 to 10% of the population), but the age of smartphones, conspiracy alt-right becoming mainstream, and the age of bullshit (see Fox News, where people watching it are much less informed on topics then people who watch zero news. And that's a real number btw), have changed dramatically how and at what speed these processes can play out. Most voters likely only changed their minds within the last 48 hours before the election date. There is no polling method on this world that could prepare anyone for that. See Britain, see Brexit, see most likely the upcoming election in France due to having the same system as the US.

They didn't lose because of lack of skill, they lost due to a lack of voters, which can only be explained, lacking any causal way to do so, by lack of luck and voter volatility (not being able to trust someone to actually act as they say). Don't confuse success for having a plan. Donald Trump doesn't have one, and he's been successfully elected because Democratic voters didn't show up.

The question should not be "who is to blame" (seriously, stop that, gaf), but "how do we get the information we need in order to make informed campaign decisions for the future". Otherwise, you're going to lose the 2018 Congress election too. That I can guarantee.
 
cheezcake

cheezcake

Member
Freeza Under The Shower said:
Yeah, it's shocking for me too. Particularly because the Comey letter was a direct hit (for massive damage, blah) to her critical weakpoint: the (delusional, but somehow existing) notion of her being not trustworthy. It wasn't just some random guy, it was the FBI, lending immediate credit to what had been slow to degrade already. People with lower education respond highly to appeal to authority, and psychology tells us that humans don't process good news just the bad news so the second letter meant dick in removing that. It is a very large factor in explaining how she got to be unfavorable.
The second would be the Electoral College nonsense, meaning the loss of the rust belt suddenly means a loss on all. The only way to combat that or even prep for it is to campaign on a few swing states and ignore the rest. Somehow, the Trump campaign DID realize that and got the support in locomotion, which was really not there -or not much- before the Comey letter started the train (I seem to recall there being a name for this process in social action theories, but it escapes me right now). They're really not wrong in their reasoning there. It's a complex pattern, not the simple 'this!' or 'that!' gaf is now trying to play at just to pretend they didn't set themselves up for a loss. The candidate didn't lose, you people did. Gaf just wants to restore feeling superior by blaming someone else, too. Quite a bit of irony.

That said, they definitely fell for the nerd fallacy of trusting in statistics and not talking to people on the ground. It's like predicting the weather: even if you know the macro average, you still can't predict local weather more than 48 hours in advance. Anything beyond that is conjecture at best. However, the vast discrepancy between polls and results does show an extreme error in method and subsequent beliefs among staff and potential voters, like gaf here.
But! They are far from the only ones to do so. For those of you who fail to notice it: nobody called the UK election going to the Tories either, and they themselves then proceeded to dramatically miscalculate the Brexit referendum. And back in Obama vs Romney, the latter was convinced he was winning too, and only then discovered he wasn't, similar to Clinton's defeat. These patterns cannot be explained (anymore) by conventional polling methods and analysis, and additionally voters have become too volatile or too disconnected from political reality to correctly understand what it is they're voting for (see Brexit's Google results immediately that night).
Civic Literacy is always low (roughly 7 to 10% of the population), but the age of smartphones, conspiracy alt-right becoming mainstream, and the age of bullshit (see Fox News, where people watching it are much less informed on topics then people who watch zero news. And that's a real number btw), have changed dramatically how and at what speed these processes can play out. Most voters likely only changed their minds within the last 48 hours before the election date. There is no polling method on this world that could prepare anyone for that. See Britain, see Brexit, see most likely the upcoming election in France due to having the same system as the US.

They didn't lose because of lack of skill, they lost due to a lack of voters, which can only be explained, lacking any causal way to do so, by lack of luck and voter volatility (not being able to trust someone to actually act as they say). Don't confuse success for having a plan. Donald Trump doesn't have one, and he's been successfully elected because Democratic voters didn't show up.

The question should not be "who is to blame" (seriously, stop that, gaf), but "how do we get the information we need in order to make informed campaign decisions for the future". Otherwise, you're going to lose the 2018 Congress election too. That I can guarantee.
Click to expand...

You cannot say that lack of voters has nothing to do with lack of skill. A presidential candidates primary goal is to get people to vote for them, everything else is a mean towards that goal. A campaign which failed to get people to vote for their candidate is, by definition, a bad campaign. We also have polls indicating that the Comey letter swung polls 2-3%, can you honestly say the incredible complacency of the Clinton campaign is justified seeing as they apparently only had a 2-3 point advantage in key states. And while I agree that firing off blame carelelessly is largely useless, we do need to identify why the Dems just lost the easiest presidential election they could've possible asked for. So far it's looking like the result of a misguided campaign strategy which completely disregarded rural white moderates in the rust belt because of fundamentally bring out of touch with the working class. The people who formulated this campaign strategy need to be held accountable so the same mistakes aren't made in the future.
 
S

Sixfortyfive

He who pursues two rabbits gets two rabbits.
Freeza Under The Shower said:
Yeah, it's shocking for me too.
Click to expand...

Is it?

Can't say that I expect people who fall in line for the party for the sake of pragmatism and the defeat of a common enemy would be likely to exhibit a lot of personal loyalty for this person when the plan blows up in everyone's face.

And I can't think of a single good reason why they should, either.
 
SenjutsuSage

SenjutsuSage

Banned
Hillary was a bad candidate. She took a lot of things for granted and simply didn't prosecute the case against Trump in a convincing enough way and let him get away with absolute murder for weeks. Even then I still thought she was a shoe in to win, but after the shock you have no choice but to admit what went wrong.
 
D

Diffense

Member
Clinton was indeed the problem. Some people were writing about this. I just saw this article on huffpost but it was written back in March. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/musa-algharbi/the-dnc-is-about-to-coronate-donald-trump_b_9462374.html

Donald Trump is going to be the next president of the United States, and he will have the Democratic National Committee to thank for it. Much has been made of the “math” of the Democratic nomination, and how it favors Hillary Clinton — in large part due to her huge lead in unpledged “superdelegates.”

But for a moment, let’s set aside the math of the Democratic primary, and look at the big picture: What matters for the general election is who can win swing states and ensure high voter turnout and enthusiasm in solidly blue states. In this regard, Bernie Sanders is clearly the more electable candidate.
Click to expand...

Bernie Sanders can beat Donald Trump, possibly taking the House and Senate with him. Hillary Clinton can do none of these things. Polls be damned: if Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic nomination, Donald Trump will win the presidency. Count on it.
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Wow. "Polls be damned", "Count on it". Talk about being vindicated. IIRC Hillary's 2016 vote count is less than Romney's when he lost to Obama in 2012. More racist, islamophobic Americans voted for a Kenyan/American named "Barack Hussein Obama" than for Hillary. And before you say, "sexism" her own demographic was ambivalent towards her this year. The loss comes down to HRC and the kind of politician she is who was wrong for the moment. Unless they can admit that, the postmortem will be incomplete.
 
D

duckroll

Member
What an embarrassing pile of excuses. Comey, Comey, Comey. Nothing about their miscalculation in relying on data too much, no reflection on their failure to reach out to certain states, nothing on failing to energize their base. Just Comey. It would have been better if they jusy said they lost the election in the last week because polling data gave them such a hard on tey got complacent. None of that either! Comey!!!!
 
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