So Maybe Hillary Wasn’t the Problem
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.
Fucked up and rather stupid electorate, remember, I live in farm country. But we also saw the rise of the white supremacists, heavily armed idiots roaming the streets looking for trouble a’ la Boogaloo and random murderers like Kyle Rittenhouse. We now reap the wild wind of open carry and the proliferation of military style weaponry.
Yeah, we’ll see what they do now.
People ask me the big appeal of Paris, and it’s not just the benefits of city culture. It’s not having to worry about guns. There’s no chance anyone I encounter will have a handgun. Even the police don’t carry handguns — they use Uzis.
I think we shouldn’t discount the effect of the Russian disinformation campaign in 2016. I’d be curious to find out how many sites, tweets, posts, FB groups were taken down this time around, how many tweets were flagged, including from the big T and his family and the administration.
Good point. Trump was more effective when he outsourced the disinfo.
I think we need to look at Donald Trump. He is a unique force that juiced conservative knuckle dragger turnout. Obama ran the same kind of race you are describing in 2008 and 2012 and he won very convincingly twice. The difference in 2016 and 2020 was Donald Trump. When Trump was not on the ballot, Republican turnout plummeted in 2018 and Dems won. I think it will be interesting to see what happens in Georgia in January and in 2022. If the Dems, liberals and progressives can stay engaged and actually vote in 2022, with Trump not on the ballot, I think it will be interesting to see what happens.
I agree. We had Trumpism w/o Trump in 2018. Worked out well for us.
BTW, I think I just saw Madinah Wilson-Anton in the crowd at the Riverfront. She looked very happy.