Starting with the one person who, more than any other, bears the greatest responsibility for last night’s tragedy…
Jill Stein.
If it hadn’t been for her deluded unicorns-and-ice-cream fantasies of universal health care and an end to militarism, the 64,000 people who voted for her in Florida would have had to vote for Clinton, who of course was entitled to their votes in the first place.
(Clinton’s margin of loss in the state was 128,000? And Johnson got 200,000 votes? Still Stein’s fault.)
Next, all the holier-than-thou self-proclaimed progressives who spend the entire campaign disparaging Clinton. Their relentless harping on ancient history like Libya and Goldman Sachs succeeded in fatally dampening enthusiasm for the Democrat.
Nor will posterity forgive their perfidious idol Bernie Sanders. Who can calculate how much damage he inflicted on Clinton with his egotistical challenge to her nomination, his insane belief that his platform was a viable challenge to Clinton’s neoliberalism.
If the DNC hadn’t done its best to insure the nomination for Clinton, a Sanders ticket would have guaranteed defeat in the general election.
That is, a larger defeat.
I do hope Al Giordano rethinks his intention to primary out Bernie Sanders in 2018.
How does one primary an Independent office-holder?
Thought the return to Indie status was just to fill out his current term since he ran as an idie.
Wasn’t my impression, but perhaps I’m wrong.
The Vermont Democratic Party leadership has allowed no authorized candidate to run against Bernie in 1990 (or since) and in return, Bernie has repeatedly blocked third party building.
Bernie Sanders is extremely popular in Vermont according to recent and past polling, so chasing rainbows is not the best idea.
Hmm, think Al is more the mud slinger than the rainbow chaser.
Ted Rall also has the numbers from these other states, as of noon Eastern.
Pennsylvania (20 electoral votes)
Trump 2,912,351 votes
Clinton 2,844,339
Stein 48,998
Clinton + Stein = 2,893,337
Result: NO CHANGE
Ohio (18 electoral votes)
Trump 2,771,984 votes
Clinton 2,317,001
Stein 44,310
Clinton + Stein = 2,361,311
Result: NO CHANGE
Iowa (6 electoral votes)
Trump 798,302 votes
Clinton 652,437
Stein 11,180
Clinton + Stein = 663,617
Result: Result: NO CHANGE
In addition to that I’m waiting for their explanation of how and why in a blue-blue state like RI where Obama received 62.7% of the vote in 2012, Clinton carried the state with only 54.9%.
Methinks they relied too heavily on Obama’s personal popularity and ignored that he hadn’t delivered on his hope and change promise and voters still want the hope and change. And apparently, will go with a devil if that’s what he offers and nothing is on offer from his opponent.
http://www.ianwelsh.net/on-trumps-performance/
HER other logo was “No, we can’t.”
I don’t want to dump too much on the superficial marketing of politicians because the writers are limited by the clay of an actual candidate. And for some reason in this election cycle many catch phrases or descriptors for an opponent tickled the fancy of the writer but fell flat for a wider audience. For example, Trump’s “crooked Hillary” may have worked with his base but it lacked everything necessary to make it zing. “Basket of deplorables” was similarly wretched. “Pizza rat” for Trump — Billmon’s construct (and he’s usually good at this sort of thing) — didn’t catch on because it failed to communicate anything. I was also not fond of Bernie’s “revolution.”
Ultimately, Hillary offered nothing because she’s both tone deaf and lacks vision. The first V-jay-jay was simply not enough regardless of all the money collected and spent to advance HER, lining up virtually the entire Democratic Party and US media for HER, and the celebrity fests that ended up being so over the top in numbers and frequency that they turned people off.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/5-takeaways-2016-presidential-election-231065?lo=ap_b1
Now she can dedicate herself full time to the Clinton Foundation.
Though, somehow, I suspect that Morocco, Qatar, and the like will suddenly find themselves less inspired by its charitable activities.
It’s been a few years since I attempted to read the CF financial statements, but iirc most of the $2 billion cited worth of the foundation was based on pledges. Those gift pledges are expected to be honored and rarely are such pledges to charities not fulfilled, but don’t think they are legally binding. The Foundation may have to hustle to remain in the good graces of those donors and at the moment all they have to sell is its ‘good works.’
Never say never. She’ll be back like the Energizer bunny.
No, she won’t. She looks like she aged ten years in the past twenty-four hours. She does have a health problem that affects her balance and apparently her stamina. May not worsen much and probably not life threatening, but it wasn’t so easy for her to get through this campaign. So, this was her last one.
Sure. Chuck Schumer as Minority Leader is all the elite really need, you know… Neoliberalism does not go down that easy.
Um, actually you’re demonstrating that your self-indulgent remarks about hippie punching are bogus. You’re absolutely right, the Stein vote added to the Clinton vote would have made no difference. I think Booman argued here, and others have argued elsewhere, that she was fundamentally defeated by the Trump vote in ex-urban areas, which swamped Hillary’s big urban majorities.
We have a pretty weird situation in which Trump got a substantial EV majority while losing the popular vote. Compare this with the 2000 election, when Dubya barely squeaked past 270 EV.
Neither Jill Stein, hippies, nor hippie punching made any difference.
http://theintercept.com/2016/11/09/democrats-trump-and-the-ongoing-dangerous-refusal-to-learn-the-le
sson-of-brexit/
>>she was fundamentally defeated by the Trump vote in ex-urban areas
that was booman’s argument and may be accurate in PA.
a good diary at dkos says the story was different in WI; there she was defeated by people who voted for Obama 4 years ago but stayed home yesterday.
IOW – “I’m not Trump” was enough for 9.1% of Obama’s ’12 voters to show up. Some of that falls on Obama because he wasn’t good enough that they there was enough value in a 3rd Obama term for them to show up and vote (and that assumes that Hillary was being honest in her pitch).
nonsense. the 3rd Obama term was just a weak slogan. she’s not Obama. from the policy pov, just think fp. from the personal pov, well, nothing need be said. from the pov of inspiring GOTV, just one example, think of his approach to BLM vs. the predator and 3 strikes residue. many of us wrote about the depressed turnout that would ensue with her as candidate. they couldn’t salvage it with some last minute “3rd obama term” claims
My comment should have read: “I’m not Trump” wasn’t good enough for 9.1% of Obama ’12 voter to show up …
We can quibble as to whether or not Clinton would have governed as an Obama third term, but not that the promise was featured in her campaign. In both the primary and general election.
I suspected this was gonna be a LOW-LOW turnout election. Look at the voter’s evaluation of the two that the parties hawked up. At least the Republicans allowed their base to choose their poison. It paid off. Somehow I don’t think they will be introducing super delegates any time too soon. But I could be wrong…
yes, I wrote about that often, as did others.
But it wasn’t LOW-LOW turnout. If voting were restricted to those voting FOR a specific candidate is would have been LOW-LOW and possibly the lowest ever. So, we can see the power of fear in driving turnout for candidates that not so many would ever vote FOR is there were another viable alternative to defeat the candidate that one loathes, but that’s not how two-party systems work.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/11/republicans-won-power-but-they-didnt-win-america.html
I assume the writer meant to describe the corruption as “alleged” as well and just forgot for some reason.
I gather the hippie punchers also believe that Gary Johnson voters were really hippies who voted for Johnson instead of Hillary to show their purist liberalism.
Get this – Johnson beat Stein by about 3.4 to 1 (as of now, though 3rd party numbers often aren’t tabulated promptly). So, if Hillary got a third of Johnson voters and every single Stein voter, Trump would have have won by a bigger margin.