It is time to reassess the supposed unique weakness of Hillary Clinton as a candidate.
She shouldn’t have been nominated, some contend, because she had been demonized by right-wing media for 30 years. She wasn’t “likable” enough. She turned off conservative women. She triggered people’s inherent misogyny. I’m sure there are other widely believed tropes I’m overlooking, but you get the point.
Biden ran essentially the same race she did — lots of position papers nobody read, lots of ads that amounted to “do you really want a lout like Trump?” — and flipped barely any votes in the process. Winning Wisconsin by 20,000 instead of losing it by 20,000 is statistically insignificant; we might have seen just as much variation if we had re-run the 2016 election again a week later. Hell, this time around more white women, more Blacks and more Latinos voted for Trump than last time.
The conclusion is obvious: Hillary wasn’t a uniquely bad candidate. Perhaps this — a bare 50% some of the time — is the result for any Democrat who insists on running on some kuymbaya bullshit about how “we’re all Americans,” and “we’re better than this,” but that misreading of the public will is not unique to Hillary.
Or maybe we just have a fucked-up electorate, which is the biggest drawback of democracy.