I don’t like Jill Stein. I don’t have one good word to say about her. It has nothing to do with her being a member of the Green Party or deciding to run for president and it has everything to do with her personality, her lack of intelligence, her sanctimonious dishonest bullshit, and her almost regal hypocrisy. I am not a fan. And I’ve been mocking her (mostly on Twitter) for having so little support that she can see Zero from her house.
And, it’s true, virtually no one voted for her and for good reason. I’d guess that three-quarters of the votes she did get were not cast in support of her personally but more as just a way of saying that you didn’t like your choices or that you’re to the left of Clinton or that you didn’t like how Sanders was treated, or whatever.
Here’s the irony, though. Now there are a bunch of people coming out who are really incensed that she’s getting blamed (along with Gary Johnson) for throwing the election to Donald Trump. And what’s their argument?
Their argument is that it’s impossible for her to have destroyed the country and probably the world because she didn’t get enough votes to change anything.
Now, first of all, that’s a contentious assertion. She and Johnson did get enough votes in enough key states that their voters alone could have changed the election. But this debate gets muddled quickly because no one keeps their categories segregated. Are we blaming Jill Stein for putting her name on the ballot? Or are we blaming the people who voted for her for not voting for Clinton? Are we going to include the people who stayed home because Stein wasn’t on the ticket (in some states)?
So, let’s not make this too complicated. Did Jill Stein and Gary Johnson cause Donald Trump to win simply by putting their names on the ballots in key states? That’s kind of unknowable. We can argue about how we think their voters would have behaved if given only two choices. It’s a close call, and it will probably never be decided conclusively.
The next question, though, is would it have been easier to say they did if they got more votes? And here I think the answer is clearly yes, particularly for Stein. If she had gotten 10% or 20% of the vote, no one would be disputing that she had cost Clinton the election. So, this defense of her really comes down to saying that she didn’t make Trump our president but only because she failed to win more support.
It’s a very odd defense of Jill Stein. She tried to throw the election to Trump but it turned out that Trump didn’t need her help.
It really doesn’t make her look better. She had no appeal so she did no damage so don’t be mad at her.
Okay.
That’s great.
But this is all a distraction because it’s not about who was on the ballot but about who voted for anyone but Clinton. It’s the voters who committed this act of self-harm, not Jill Stein. How many people would vote today for Clinton knowing that Trump would win if they didn’t? How many Stein voters would?
How many people who didn’t show up to vote because they weren’t “inspired” or because “it didn’t matter” or because “they’re all crooked” would now show up to say, “Uh, Donald Trump? No. That’s fucking crazy!”
Because the true argument here isn’t over whether or not candidates should even put their names on a ballot. The true argument is over whether people should vote for third party candidates if there’s a clear choice between the top two.
In this case, wankers and idealists fucked us all. And that’s the way it is.
Yeah, you can absolutely blame Clinton and her advisers and the strategy and the running mate and the ads and the last thirty years if you want.
But the voters decide. Did you decide to use your vote to stop Trump?
If you didn’t, you take your lumps before Jill Stein or Gary Johnson. They didn’t force you to do anything.
More broadly speaking, people need to look themselves in the mirror and stop trying to blame everyone else. It doesn’t matter. It’s not going to ever be resolved. It’s not helping.
I know a number of people who voted for Stein. After the election, one of them was bitching and moaning on facebook about Trump being elected. Another good friend, a Sanders supporter who held her nose and voted for Clinton, called him out, saying, “Then why the fuck did you vote for Stein?” His response was to defriend her.
I said to my friend who called him out that I think it counterproductive to cast blame. There’s blame enough to go around and, as I think you said yesterday, we need to come together and stick together, both to support each other through the pain and to take action to obstruct the evil of asswipes like Paul Ryan.
My friend responded that she agrees, but for God’s sake don’t bitch and moan about Trump after voting for Stein. I mean, fuck, don’t thwack yourself with a two by four and then complain about having a headache.
From my observations of that crowd, they’re a bunch of children — wanting to keep their pure white souls above the fray, letting others do the dirty work of voting for the lesser of two evils for them. Turns out their votes were needed. No they’re not happy. Boo fuckin’ hoo!
Perhaps a subtle but important difference between assigning blame and correctly assessing the failures of strategy and doctrine in defeat.
True, and to be fair we all fucked up. Those of us who backed Clinton, not realizing she didn’t have what was needed this cycle. An Irishman I know swore up and down that everyone should back Bernie because he was the only one who could defeat Trump. Now I don’t know if he was right and we’ll never know, but what I would give to rewind the tape and run it the other way.
Agreed.
Thank you for this. Before I continue with my rant let me state that I, nearly everyone in my family and most of my friends voted for Hillary. Unhappily, but when the votes are tallied that’s irrelevant. We didn’t support Hillary Clinton in 2008. We were pretty upset when it became evident she planned to run again (which we suspected in 2008) and said then that she had so much baggage she’d pull the entire party down. By spring and summer of 2015 many were saying that. Not just Bernie. Or lowly folks like us.
After the primaries (and my state caucuses) I was so pissed at my local Democratic party (nominated a candidate with trunks of baggage), my state party (super delegates were campaigning for Hillary 6 mos before the caucuses, which Bernie won with 60-65% of the votes) and Obama (for turning over the party apparatus to the Clintons) that I re-registered Green. A minor little protest to express my displeasure with the party. May I repeat. I did not vote for Jill Stein. Neither she nor Johnson is qualified to be President. And then there was the fear factor of getting Trump for president.
Not only did Clinton have a lot of baggage, but she ran a poor campaign. Never went to the small cities and towns, including in my state. Bernie went to small cities in both WI and MI, for which he was both criticized and ridiculed. He knew where the dissatisfaction was, and he won both. Hillary had no presence whatsoever in my rural county where Obama had a field office and which he won despite it being both rural and pretty conservative. In the last weeks of the campaign she was still having events with big donors, which must have enraged those who feel left behind. It’s been a long time, but we’ve lived in 3 Rust Belt states. They are devastated–economically and culturally. Their residents called deplorable (OMG what a gaff). And labeled “fly over states,” suggesting they’re of no consequence.
This is not meant to be a salt-in-the-wound rant. I am as shaken up as the next person. My life’s work is now endangered by what the President and Congress will likely do. We al fear for our family, friends and communities, let alone the world. But we need to examine how the Democratic Party got to where it now is (didn’t happen over night) and do something about it. Our core constituency of working class whites was abandoned. The most progressive wing was ridiculed for wanting bold, major change instead of incrementalism.
I’m still not sure bold change is the answer. Lasting change tends to be incremental. That said, the Clinton campaign did not reach out to state parties the way Obama did. Here in cold-stone blue Washington state there was no connection between the state party and the campaign. Four and eight years ago, I made calls for Obama to swing states from local Democratic HQ in my town of 80,000.
I still got on the computer and made calls to swing state for Clinton. But sitting alone at my computer there was so much less positive energy. They didn’t see the value of investing in states that weren’t in play. It’s been abundantly clear for years that this is not effective.
If Hillary’s income was reduced by four decimal places she might understand. I don’t think anyone whose personal income exceeds the combined income of the town they visit can possibly understand why they are “deplorable”. But I really think that she views them as subhuman.
Clinton never went outside Democratic strongholds within each state. Never gave people in “red” counties and towns the opportunity to see the person behind the media image.
She and Bill Clinton did visit small towns on the Ohio River in the 1992 campaign and it was key to winning some of those states.
Staying too much in the comfort zones is why the comfort zone of the Democratic Party keeps shrinking.
She is too important for normal people to be important to her.
In the abstract?
Sure.
But…to paraphrase Barbara Bush, “Why should I waste my important energies on something like that?”
A basic failing.
She made it to all of the financial meetings, though.
And people noticed.
Then she lost.
So it goes.
AG
This, x 63.4 million
Between the time the Clintons hatched their plan for her to run and the actual election, the country and world had changed. She hadn’t/couldn’t.
That is absolutely right. It’s vitally important to correctly assess the reasons for defeat, otherwise you don’t learn the lessons and you either repeat the same mistakes or make new ones, perhaps even worse, based on having no idea what doesn’t work and why.
The problem is, of course, that the difference is indeed subtle — and when people’s emotions and egos interfere with correct assessment, it is difficult or impossible to keep blame, or merely the perception of blame, out.
Because at best, we have to satisfy two needs: (1) we want to know the real reasons for failure; (2) once we think we do, it is very difficult not to be angry about mistakes, and the reasons those mistakes were made — which means blame.
I have to say, if blame is correctly assigned, it is part of the process. It needs to be. It’s painful and difficult, but, as Robert Reich said in the DFA conference call, anger is not bad if it is constructive.
What we don’t want is those Republican specialties, scapegoating and destructive anger.
BTW, I agree with what Booman said about Jill Stein. I don’t like her any more than he does. But then again, I don’t dislike her any more after the election than I did before it.
It’s sort of like the Al Gore problem, except that what happened with Gore involved very heavy ex post facto manipulation by the Republicans, which did not happen in this election. And that’s a big difference.
The real reason for the defeat is that, in some important ways, the Democratic Party has its head up its ass.
Let me hint at one of the many ways it does — an important way that relates to communication. The Democratic Party is NOT “the minorities party”. it is the INCLUSIVE party. We desperately need to relearn the meaning of the words “for everybody”. The Democratic Party today speaks of “Black, Brown, etc., etc. Great. But we need to speak of Black, Brown and White, just like we used to. But best of all, let’s talkmore about “evrybody.” Martin Luther King understood that. Bernie Sanders understands that.
An interesting fact: McCullin almost certainly cost Trump Minnesota.
Good lord. If Johnson hadn’t been on the ballot, his voters would either have stayed home or voted for Trump and then Trump’s win would have been even bigger.
Why do Democrats always act like children believing they are entitled to votes they didn’t get? Republicans didn’t spend days, months, years, decades blaming Perot and Perot voters for GHWB’s loss in ’92. They didn’t like accepting the loss any more than Democrats have accepting all their losses.
The Green Party runs a candidate in presidential elections to preserve its ballot line. Otherwise, they would have to go through the arduous process of re-qualifying the next time around. Rules put in place by Democrats and Republicans to protect their ownership of what is supposed to be our government and not theirs.
The buck stops with Clinton, the DLC, Obama, all elected Democratic politicians, their hired help, and all their wealthy donors. They chose to shove an obviously weak candidate with a significant amount of baggage down the throats of first Democratic primary voters (and lied and cheated to do so) and then the general electorate.
I’ve long viewed Dukakis as one of the worst Dem nominees because he lost to a weak opponent. Now Hillary has made him look better.
The next thing I expect to start hearing is that it’s ultimately Bernie Sanders’ fault for even thinking of running against Hillary Clinton in the first place. Just the fact that I can even invent such a ridiculous excuse says tons about the Democratic Party. What crap. Jill Stein ran for president as much as Donald Trump did. So what. As if she did something wrong just by being who she is and for exercising her right to run. You want my opinion?: it’s all the Clintons’ fault. So there, the circle is round. Stop it and let’s all grow up.
You mean you haven’t heard that yet? The people that were outraged that Bernie campaigned against Hillary in the first place are in some cases even more outraged that a lot of his supporters appear to have been proven right.
There was nothing wrong with running. He just should have been more careful about some of the divisive rhetoric because he wasn’t able to pull everyone back on board after tanking her approval ratings within the party. That’s one of the things that hurt us and I’m sure with hindsight Bernie regrets it.
IOW he should have kissed her ass and acted as John The Baptist to her Jesus Christ. Then she could have revealed her direct descent from the throne of god and Trump should not have DARED to oppose her.
The lesser evil DID win this election.
Parallax, You mean he should have praised her while he was running against her as if he had no intention to win? What a lame criticism. Was his rhetoric so divisive. Maybe the truth about her was divisive. In fact he handled her with kid gloves, like a lady might feel entitled to demand.
That’s a problem inherent in our primary system. Bernie had no control over it. Afterwards did his best to help Hillary win. Most of those voters were never Hillary’s to lose. They were just Sanders’s. A lot of them actually blamed Sanders and called him a sellout, evebn though he said from the beginning that if he lost he would support her.
Agreed, and yet for all her faults Hillary won the popular vote and did better than most Democrats in down ticket races. People didn’t just vote for Trump, they gave Republicans a huge mandate almost everywhere where there were competitive races. So its not all Hillary’s fault either. Somehow, despite the Democratic Party’s favourable/unfavourable score always being much higher than the GOP, people voted for GOP candidates anyway at a time when the GOP was hugely divided. What gives?
I’ll have to wait until the final numbers are in to review Hillary’s state totals compared to that of Democratic Senate candidates. I know she did better than Feingold in WI which is surprising because he was consistently polling very well. But Hassan appears to have done better than Clinton in NH by a point.
Current tally — Hillary received 2,000 more votes than Feingold.
That’s distorted by 3rd party voting. Hillary lost by 27,000 votes. Feingold lost by 99,000. That’s a big difference.
And oops, we’ve all been wrong saying Stein didn’t make a difference. She got 30,000 votes. So yes, Stein made a difference in Wisconsin.
You’re assuming that Stein drew from Hillary. She may have drawn people who rarely vote, independents, or even some Republicans. Do we have any numbers on this?
If Stein had not been on the ballot I would have voted for Johnson, not because I like him but as a protest. If only Clinton or Trump were on the ballot, I wouldn’t have voted. If, as some on the Left suggest, I were forced to vote then I would have voted for Trump. I wouldn’t vote for that corrupt bastard Clinton for dogcatcher.
I believe there are millions who would agree with me on this.
Exactly. A strong leftist did worse than Clinton. A soft leftist did better. There’s a lesson there: pushing hard on left policies will cost us votes and should be done only when we can afford to lose them. Statewide in CA/NY/etc. or in urban districts? Fine. In swing districts? Don’t do it.
Leftist or not, Feingold belonged to another era, as did Hillary Clinton. We needed someone bold and fresh.
Here’s what happened in Colorado. Hillary won but her support was dropping fast in the last couple of weeks. Hence personal appearances by both Trump and Bernie. Bennet barely won over a weak, nutty and totally unknown candidate. Two superb female candidates for H of R lost. Whatever happened to the women who were predicted to come out in droves and vote out the old white guys? Didn’t happen here and from what I can tell didn’t happen nationally.
One thing no one has brought up is the Comey effect. We happen to think it was more important than any of the other things being discussed. Too late in the game to counter. Fell on fertile ground.
You can’t say we needed “bold and fresh”. As you say, 2 H of R candidates actually lost (I’m assuming they count), while Teachout, who IMO is very much bold and fresh, apparently ran behind Clinton in NY-19.
Teachout was running in the epicenter of Clinton support. Clinton obviously wasn’t able to bring in the female vote for either Schwartz or Carroll. Bennet, who is very moderate, barely won against a nothing candidate. His early lead evaporated like snow in the sunshine.
The point is not that Teachout lost, the point is she did worse than Clinton. Her more activist positions pushed voters away (in a swing district), as seems to have been the case with most of the more-liberal candidates.
And while Teachout and Feingold did worse than Clinton, Bennett did (a little) better. Just more evidence that the center-left Democrats do better than the bold left Democrats.
Consider his opponent. He should have clobbered him.
Same for Feingold.
That’s incorrect. The district Teachout ran in favors Republicans. She only recently moved there and was viewed as an outsider. Whereas, Faso is a local guy that has been viewed favorably enough.
Another advantage that Faso had is he’s held elective office and Teachout hasn’t.
If those are Russ Feingold’s legs sticking out from under the liberal bus, are any of us safe?
Trump has no mandate. You don’t get a mandate unless you get not just the most votes, but the most votes by a very long way. And he didn’t get the most votes at all.
100% true but unfortunately irrelevant. Votes don’t matter, power does. Obama’s clear mandate was worthless getting things passed. If McConnell lets the filibuster stand, we’ll be fine, but unfortunately he does understand it (unlike the Democrats in 2009) and I’m confident it will be gone.
Mandates only matter in one direction. Any victorious Republican, no matter how slim the margins, automatically has a mandate because “the people have spoken” and “elections have consequences.” Victorious Democrats are urged to be cautious and are warned that they must immediately appease the Right and adopt their policies as a logical “appeasement stage” of their governance, or they’re being “divisive.”
What “gives” is that Trump directly and emotionally connected with a large subset of the U.S. population while HRC really did not connect in any way other than intellectually with anyone.
Hot vs. cold.
In my post The Choice Was Between a Slow Failure or a Fast Failure I wrote:
That’s what gives.
It’s almost McLuhanesque.
AG
” People didn’t just vote for Trump, they gave Republicans a huge mandate almost everywhere where there were competitive races. So its not all Hillary’s fault either.”
I don’t see how the consequent follows from the antecedent.
When you consider why people voted for Trump, it was because of the choice available. A lot of people voted for Trump not because they particularly liked him, but because they couldn’t stand Hillary or the party that nominated her because of the way they nominated her.
And a lot of people, especially a lot of potential Democratic voters, especially a lot of young people, stayed home.
We don’t know that, Marie.
Buried in a little corner on the internet is the raw exit poll results from Florida and New Hampshire from 2000
They contain the exit poll results to the question: If only Gore and Nader were on the ballot who would you have voted for.
Fun historical fact – half of the Nader voters refused to answer the question in Florida. Though it really doesn’t matter.
I don’t know if the exit poll asked the question this time. What I do know was in general Clinton’s number was a little better in the two way than in the four way ballot.
It does not appear, though, that the margins are close enough for Stein to have made the difference in states that = 270. Moreover, in two states where she did, the Clinton campaign was non-existent.
In many places Stein supporters DID decide to vote for Clinton if the state looked close.
WISCONSIN DIDN”T!. Clinton never went there, nor ran an ad. Michign didn’t!! She went there only in the last day. Never ran an in ad until late.
And that matters. It is one thing to vote for Stein in a hard fought state that is close, it is another to vote for her in a state that does not appear to be close.
The blame needs to be laid first and foremost on Clinton – who left the back door open – and I said here in SEPTEMBER that she was doing that.
I was worried about Colorado – a state she won by a whopping 3 points.
The tactical decisions of the Clinton campaign are simply indefensible, and pretty obvious if you know anything about the electoral college.
They spent 4 of the last 8 days in Florida, a state they did NOT need to win.
They campaigned where they didn’t need to win, and didn’t campaign where they did need to win.
We lost 4 states by a point: MI, WI, PA and Fl. There was no Clinton campaign to speak of in two of them.
They spent time and resources in OH (lost by 8) and Iowa (lost by 10).
And that folks, is the greatest example of incompetence I have ever seen in Presidential Politics.
That mattered more than fucking Jill Stein.
This, over and over and over again.
HRC ran a incompetent, bad campaign. Going after disaffected Republicans? A waste of time and money. Focusing on Trump rather than issues, such as Medicare being taken away by Republicans and gay marriage being repealed? It just added to his outsider mystique. Going to Texas, Arizona, and Georgia? Premature by 20 years.
This was an Ivy League campaign that just got trounced by Wrestlemania and Twitter. All of your donors, data, and demographics were garbage.
And the most infuriating thing is that they are not going away, forever, for their utter failure and incompetence.
You know where time and donor money is best invested now?
Hackers. This is now something that will be standardized and normalized in modern campaigns. We have a hacker gap, and we need to start offering money for our own white hats.
You don’t take hundreds of thousands of dollars from banks and high tech start ups right up until the last week of the campaign and expect to win disaffected Republicans or Republican leaning independents. Delusional.
I’m actually find with that, as long as the ads run in WI than say, Georgia.
This was mismanaged and should be studied at length, but without the words “Jill Stein” ever cropping up. Even by 3rd party standards Stein did poorly.
The problem with Stein is not her voters per se but the eagerness on the hard left to catapult right-wing propaganda, and to actively support Trump in order to complain about Clinton. Stein herself is part of this, although not the main driver.
Yea – this is mostly nonsense.
The hard left didn’t catapult right-wing propaganda.
It had plenty of reasons for disliking her with it.
But good Christ the hard left doesn’t matter in this country.
Blaming them is just silly.
Have you see this?
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2016/11/a-lesson-in-tone-deafness-by-bloggersrus.html
Incredible.
Incredible is right. And Digby once again hits it out of the park. Everyone should read this.
I know! And that’s Becerra. Isn’t he one of the good guys? In the Progressive Caucus and everything?
Co-Chair of the Progressive Caucus.
We’re going to need a bigger bus.
Or floor jacks, so we can fit more people under it.
I’m less concerned about who is under the bus than if we can find people with minimal competence to drive the fucking thing.*
* preferably not off a cliff
Did you actually read the piece in question? Would be interested to discuss specifics.
“darkest impulses” my ass. As if the instinct for survival isn’t a fundamental of all life”.
Some people, I’ve heard, manage to indulge their instinct for survival without race-baiting, Islamophobia, antisemitism, misogyny, and a hearty endorsement from the KKK. Others, I’ve heard, try to align their instinct for survival with shit that might actually help them survive.
Maybe there’s more than one way to act on the instinct for survival? An ‘instinct for survival’ may have motivated Emma Goldman and Adolph Hitler and Malala Yousafzai. Doesn’t make them the same.
Well, right. But if it was only the “race-baiting, Islamophobia, antisemitism, misogyny, and a hearty endorsement from the KKK” people that voted for Trump, he wouldn’t have won. So fuck them, but I suppose the rest of them were afraid they might not survive under Clinton. The wonder is why they do think they will survive under Trump? but at least I can see why they entertain the hope. They’re fed up.
This is frightening.
Thanks for the link.
She couldn’t campaign on Medicare and SS when she had already promised the wall Street bankers who gave her millions in campaign and personal cash that she would deliver them to Wall Street.
Booman writes:
Has he turned his own mirror to the wall?
Looks like…
AG
Oh AG will you ever not be a brat.
Not if other people keep contradicting themselves, no.
AG
Hey Arthur, if Trump seeks to turn the USA into a reckless, fascist dystopia does that not render the whole, elegant Permagov notion superfluous? Never blame on global neoliberal conspiracy what can be explained by mere fascism.
You’re blaming the victim.
There were two ballot issues in Colorado to break the hold of the two major parties on our political life. One to end caucuses and go back to primaries, and the other to let unaffiliated voters vote in primaries. Both won handily.
We’re going to regret that second one when the Republican leaners come to ratf*ck us in the 2020 primary.
I don’t know anyone who shares your opinion on this. Could be true, but I think there are going to be some real benefits that flow from these two propositions.
Reforms can be good – I’m very happy with the CA jungle primary. But this reform is bad as long as the parties have separate primaries. When only one primary is significant (as is likely in 2020) there’s a huge incentive for supporters of the other side to vote in our primaries. Whether they vote for the worse candidate or the more conservative one, it’s likely to hurt us.
Okay. This goes into another long line you proof you are nothing more than an authoritarian left-wing nut right alongside your claims that the CIA made those ISIS beheading videos, that lefties have always been correct, that lefties don’t put other people down while in the next paragraph you put people down and make the ‘no true Scotsman’ fallacy (btw, you wouldn’t happen to know where that post went would you? I seem to have misplaced my link to it and it would be ever so handy to have.), your fanatical belief that any talk of Putin in a negative light is ‘Red Baiting’ at it’s finest, your believe that somehow the US is always wrong, your believe that other countries get sphere’s of influence but not the US, and your believe that the ‘Clintons’ are always a joint unit with one brain even though they are two separate people.
See unless I missed something somewhere, in a Democracy the buck stops with the voters. Period. As a fundamental truism people get the government they vote for. It doesn’t matter if Hillary Clinton was a bad candidate or if Donald Trump was a bad candidate. People knew what Trump said, knew Trump was a lair, knew Trump was promising things he can’t actually deliver, but voted for him anyway. The buck stops with the voters.
Any other believe is not just an acquiescence to the authoritarian view that we elect ‘Leaders’ instead of lackeys like their actual titles suggest, but perpetuates and reinforces that authoritarian narrative.
Lazy voters try and make it the job of the candidates to convince them why they should vote for them by making candidates talk about what the candidate wants and believes, when that isn’t what is supposed to matter. Especially to a liberal or leftist.
But your entire argument is “Clinton didn’t do what I think she should have done (which is die in a fire somewhere) so it’s her fault people believed the known lying psychopathic scumbag and elected him. The people who knowingly voted for the scumbag with knowledge a forehand of exactly what the scumbag was, believed, and would do are absolutely blameless.” This… is a really dumb argument. It’s absolutely bonkers in how illogical it is.
Unless of course your argument is really that they didn’t know what they were voting for because they are morons and idiots, in which case you really don’t then get to talk about how it’s wrong to deride them and call them names.
Either Trump voters are self aware and rational actors, or they aren’t. It’s a binary position by definition of the phrases ‘rational actors’ and ‘self aware.’ If they are rational actors and self aware then the buck stops with them, period. If they aren’t rational actors and self aware then liberalism and democracy are pointless and we should embrace oligarchy because pandering to bigots, racists, and morons is a lost cause for liberalism and democracy by definition.
Telling the Democratic Party they have to pander and give ground to people who want them dead or in chains, metaphorical or real, is a dumb thing to do. That however seems to be the new general consensus on what has to happen.
” People knew what Trump said, knew Trump was a lair, knew Trump was promising things he can’t actually deliver”
And knew Hillary was a bigger liar. They’d seen her for 16 years in government. They’d seen Trump only on TV. I’ll confess my own error here. I’d known Bernie Sanders only from the “Brunch with Bernie” segments on the Thom Hartmann show, so he completely gulled me. I’m still recovering from the revelation that he was just Hillary Clinton’s stalking horse.
He wasn’t, Voice. Nobody here would agree with you on that, either.
Yes!
Something tells me you are as fed up with those filled with hate as I am.
.
I regret to inform you that this very insightful and pertinent dilemma you have raised is exactly the kind of argument that preoccupied Weimar liberals beyond the point when history suggests they should have been planning their escape.
I don’t disagree with much of this, but it also presupposes that Bernie didn’t have his own failures in the primary campaign. Nobody stopped him from appealing to his colleagues in congress early on to get their support. Obama ran as an outsider too, but also cultivated his colleagues, who he knew he’d need if it came down to super delegates. Only Bernie knows why he didn’t do that, but he should have. Obama didn’t have to complain about the DNC; Edward Kennedy backed him.
Also, in California, and I saw this first hand, Bernie had some huge rallies that a lot of younger folks went to, including some in my office. Clinton held smaller venue affairs, ones attended by older folks. They didn’t get the same sort of front page coverage, but they attracted a lot of consistent voters. This did her well when Election Day rolled around as younger voters simply did not show up in the same way.
Clinton also started her campaign with a listening tour. This helped her make connections with people, particularly African American voters. Bernie could have done something similar, but he didn’t. This definitely gave Clinton an edge later on.
Last, I do want to note that the DNC and the Clintons don’t control state elections, county clerks, or voting precincts. The people got to vote and they chose Clinton, right or wrong.
She didn’t take rural WI or MI in the primaries, as Bernie did. He actually campaigned there, which is a much greater commitment to the voters than listening to a dozen hand picked people.
Bernie Sanders took Idaho, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Montana, Wyoming, and North Dakota in the Primary as well. If you think that somehow taking rural counties in the primary translates into taking them in the General Election, I’ve got a bridge to sell you in New Jersey. Only one previous owner.
I get your point, but it’s not quite that simple. Most Republican states still have plenty of Democratic voters or at least independents that would be willing to vote for the right D candidate. So even if not for the presidential, it could have had a significant effect on other state and local elections.
Honestly, thank God the Greens chose Jill Stein and not someone with a positive and compelling message who people would actually vote for. Seriously it wasn’t Stein. Her core voters would never vote Democrat even if the Greens evaporated.
There will be Greens in every election and if Democrats don’t have a way to get their actual voters out, then they can play spoiler.
The guy I know who voted for her is a diversity averse flag waving military veteran who was all flustered by the Veritas video drop and who likes to talk about how liberalism doesn’t make sense. That was his protest vote. A born again Christian semi-zealot. Does that sound like a natural fit.
The Greens will attack the Democratic party candidate each election. It’s what they do. The Democratic party is where their potential voters are and the more illegitimate the Democratic party is, the more Green curious voters they might get. That’s been their core message forever and would be no matter who was on the ballot on our side and who was leading them. We could have run Lawrence Lessing and still she would have attacked him as a neoliberal neocon GMO promoting sell out.
She was a bad candidate.
You make a great comment – if they had nominated someone better this would be a different conversation.
There are about 500K who will always vote for Green. Discontent opened that door wider, but Stein was not a good enough candidate to take advantage of it.
Clinton was lucky in that regard.
That racist rant by her running mate didn’t help. If I had thought she had a chance, I wouldn’t have voted Green. I voted Green as a protest to the two major parties.
Stein was unqualified as was Trump. At least Stein had mostly good policies although her plan to unilaterally cut the military by 70% was insane in today’s world. As a future goal it was good, as a current policy bad.
An act of self-harm? That’s silly. Set aside the fact that our team lost the game and all the hurt feeling that goes with that and start dealing with facts. America was chock full of wankers and racists before this election and it will be forever. All the problems of income inequality, crappy middle class jobs, Wall Street corruption, and endless war identified by Sanders and others were not solved by Obama and were certainly not going to be solved by Clinton.
If you want to blame a few million people (out of a couple of hundred million) who are disgusted and disillusioned by US politics for not supporting what they perceive as a system unresponsive to their problems, that’s fine. Voters aren’t harming themselves. The political elites of both parties have been inflicting harm on them for a very long time.
I’ve worked in manufacturing plants across the Midwest for nearly 30 years. None were unionized and I’ve always found my co-workers essentially hostile to all I believed as a democrat. They didn’t even care about being part of a union. Those mostly white men and women were never on our side because we have never done anything for them. They know they are on their own and they knew it wasn’t going to change no matter who was elected president this week.
Democrats cut their ties long ago when they equated Labor with Unions. I’ve worked union and non-union. Working union was better. Better pay, better benefits, better protection from adverse actions. but it also discouraged any cooperation with a manager and kept a lot of useless worthless freeloaders on the workforce.
From what I’ve read, unions in Germany have more responsibility and they act in concert with management to make the enterprise prosper. They just want the workers to have their cut. American society is so consuming with fucking your buddy and gaining unearned wealth that I don’t think it can work here. Maybe the German healthcare system can’t either.
The industry I work in buys lots of process equipment from German companies. I’ve spent time at two plants in Germany testing equipment and have hosted techs from Germany in the USA repeatedly. They are a class act. I wish I could speak German!
They have apprentice systems inplace that put the USA to shame.
I don’t know if it could work here, but we would never have the ability to organize such a thing. It flies in the face of our go it alone way of life. We have a really crappy culture if you are middle class.
So True! I’ve been in Germany many times as an electronic engineer. Same experience … but Germany is a socialist state! About Germany’s infrastructure of roads, highways, bridges and mass transportation … no comparison to the States.
Btw, did ‘republican’ Trump mention he wanted to invest in infrastructure … spend federal money?
I’m sorry, Booman, but Jill Stein has nothing to do with anything.
We lost this election because we didn’t have a compelling message, our candidate wasn’t trusted, and the campaign took for granted states that weren’t there.
Obama and his administration, much as it pains me to say it, failed to sell their own accomplishments so that people would be motivated to hang on to them this year. And TPP should never have been contemplated.
We also lost to a demagogue, and there’s such a cultural gap between people who fell for him and the rest of us that I have no idea how to bridge it. I hope someone better than I am figures it out soon.
“I hope someone better than I am figures it out soon.”
It’s just been empirically proven in the most disastrous way that I know nothing about US politics. So, while I should keep my mouth shut forever … yeah. I’m with you on that, a thousand times over. And I’m ready to sell my house and my kids and put everything into 2018 and then 2020. But I don’t know how. I don’t know who to trust, who can help.
Boo talks a lot about the Democratic Party being just a vehicle. And clearly, as an empty shell of a bus, it’s what we need. We live in a two-party system, so we need a party. But also clearly, our vehicle is fundamentally broken–far, far, far more completely that I’d imagined. I thought it had a problem with elitism and centrism and military-and-financial hawkism, but was at least professional and competent.
I was wrong.
This is a tremendous failure of our elites. (I include myself as a tiny slice of an elite, for being a member of the party and phone-banking and donating and such.) Is it also a failure of our entire model of politics?
It is corrupt. Fealty to the Clintons was more important than competence. the Democratic Party has no principles beyond a desire for power and the palm held behind for the donors to fill.
Both were demagogues. This time Pompey beat Caesar, that’s all. Don’t act like Clinton had anything to offer to anyone but the 1%
You forgot to mention what she did not offer:
Repeal of the ACA
Reactionary SCOTUS appointments
Enabling greater voter suppression
The only people who can bridge it are those of their own who understand them but also have a wider understanding of the country and the world.
I think you overestimate the numbers that would vote to stop Trump because ‘thats crazy.’
Thats was the core plan of the campaign wasnt it? So either they dont care or they dont believe the craziness is going to happen. I might have mentioned it once or not but the ‘unfit for office’ line always baffled. It basically told the Trump curious they were wrong/foolish for being Trump curious which obviously is going to backfire.
Translated into simple terms: the whole bunch that coasleased around Hillary Clinton failed to take Trump seriously and treat his supporters respectfully as equal citizens. Isn’t it: hubris, arrogance, disdain or whatever. Going all the way up to Barack Obama himself, maybe in the first place.
Taking Trump seriously means understanding the depth of danger he represents. Bernie Sanders said “‘Trump is the Most Dangerous Presidential Candidate in the Modern History of This Country'” Would that qualify as taking him seriously?
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/07/30/bernie-sanders-trump-most-dangerous-presidential-candida
te-modern-history-country
As for his followers, to take them seriously means to understand their fear and anger. Aside from the died-in-the-wool racists, I have a lot of sympathy, I would only say that I do not think they have good judgment.
I understand the anger against the Wall Street establishment that Hillary Clinton represents. But it was harder for me to understand why they would trust a con artist like Trump, except that they had no other choice except not voting. And a lot of people just didn’t vote.
The flip side was emphasizing her resume. How upper middle class! Ivy League education? Check. Senator from a large liberal coastal state? Check. Secretary of State as the situation in the Middle East continued to deteriorate? Check. Ally of Wall Street? Check.
These were not pluses in the minds of many voters. They showed she wasn’t one of them and didn’t care about them.
Of all the changes that I would like to see in the country, there is only one that could reasonably happen in the next four years, and that is legalization of marijuana. I voted Libertarian for that reason, and I don’t intend to apologize for it.
I live in Wisconsin, a state that essentially nobody thought could go to Trump. Of the four major candidates, I voted for the one that I thought was the least objectionable. I think that that is what one is actually morally compelled to do,
Clinton could have come out in favor of legalization. But that didn’t happen. Hence, my vote.
It’s so nice for you that you could make marijuana the sole determinant of your vote. Now when Medicare is privatized, the public lands are sold off to extractive industries, the international climate-change effort is destroyed, civil rights laws for which so many died are eliminated, and the public fisc is looted for the benefit of billionaires, you will no doubt find a way to get high and ignore it all — including the part you and people like you had in making it happen. I’m sure you will be terribly blissful.
Why the Hell do you think Hillary Clinton would have been any different! Except for civil rights, she would have done exactly that.
Neoliberalism is just Neoconservatism without the religion and racism. And regarding racism, the Bush family has intermarried with non-whites but the Clinton family hasn’t.
JFC. Are you a child?
downrated for pure ad hominem attack.
Okay, but how about you chill with the ad hominem attacks you’ve been making against Clinton and Democrats?
I know one is about community rules and the other is not, but you don’t have a lot of credibility to be complaining about the tone. And it’s not helping.
I think their is a difference between a content free personal attack on a poster and an attack on a public figure. Remember what Harry Truman said about heat and kitchens? I don’t think he was talking about two voters in a local bar, the 1950’s equivalent of blogs.
I’ll go back to c99 for now. Would you mind a few policy diaries, technical in nature, that don’t mention any politician by name, but might mention economists by name?
Yeah, there is a difference.
I don’t dispute that. I made that clear.
I didn’t even dispute your right to make the rating.
I was making an additional point.
I fell you, man, but this is a little too much like blaming people who voted for the communists for the rise of the Nazis.
Blame the people who voted for the Nazis.
Actually, Hitler came to power largely because the Communists attacked the Socialist as just “social fascism” and refused to ally with them in the Reichstag even though combined they had more votes than the Nazis. Doesn’t this sound familiar?
Stein’s votes didn’t swing the election. But her avid insistence that Clinton was worse than Trump (yep, she said that) along with similar claims by other left activists and celebrities, might have. I thought I read (although I can’t find a link) than 23% of people who thought Obama wasn’t liberal enough voted for Trump. That would have been enough to swing the Midwestern states, and it’s largely caused by leftist leaders pushing the idea that Hillary was intolerable.
Correction – Stein did get enough votes to make a difference in Wisconsin.
Is Wisconsin fully counted?
How many votes was that?
Yes, exit polls show that a quarter who thought that Obama wasn’t liberal enough voted for a Trump. But it doesn’t follow that this is because of Stein. Liberalism does not solely mean abortion, gays, and civil rights. Many who considered Obama too conservative thought so mostly because of his trade policies, especially in the industrial midwest. Hillary has zero credibility with anybody on her TPP switch, and Trump apparently concinced a quarter of those voters to give him a chance.
The good news is that I dont think these voters are permanently lost in the way that CRA lost southern whites. But as long as Democrats ignore bread and butter issues, they will continue to lose except in cases when they have personally likeable candidates.
Do you have any ideal how crazy you sound by saying that Donald Trump is more credible than Hillary Clinton on anything?
Hillary Clinton changes her position on a issue she was required to agree with her boss, or former boss depending on the time, on or stab him in the back over and she’s not credible.
And yet Donald Trump, the literal human lie machine who lies about everything, is supposed to be credible on his views on trade?
You’re making excuses to somehow pretend that these people aren’t just fucking hypocrites. If Donald Trump tells you the sky is blue, you should demand proof from unaffiliated 3rd parties including live audio visual proof from multiple sources just to begin to not feel like you’re about to get scammed.
These people didn’t want better trade deals or no trade deals. They wanted a time machine they know doesn’t exist. But Donald Trump the liar told them he had one, and they believed him because they are delusional.
Ancient Greeks defined credibility largely as behavior predictability. So you can have a credible liar, if you know what to expect from him/her. In that sense, Donald may be more credible than Hillary.
Stretchinnnnng. Credibility is not an intrinsic property; it is a socially defined property like honor. It is more than predictability. A credible liar is the definition of a con-artist.
The failure is the social mechanism that is supposed to operate to vet candidates to weed out credible liars. Admittedly among politicians, that is not so easy to do. But we have had a relatively good run of screening out credible liars when we know they are lying through comparison with the facts.
The social process that let Trump get through took the position that facts don’t matter.
That process vetted Hillary as more corrupt and untrustworthy than the man who was lying almost constantly about almost anything, even irrelevant things.
In fact, the first statement he made after seeing President Obama yesterday was a lie. Obama extended the meeting from an hour to 90 minutes, not from 15 minutes.
The second statement was the first justification for suspending the rights of free speech and assembly. And it was a lie as well.
Nitpicking does make Trump and a runaway Congress any less dangerous. Any idea who’s going to be his Joe Lieberman and slow down his agenda?
“The failure is the social mechanism that is supposed to operate to vet candidates to weed out credible liars.”
That is the failure of this whole country, THD. Nothing new. That’s why Melville’s The Confidence Man IS “the great American novel.”
This is the country of the “Self-made man.” Yes, that’s a great thing. But it has side effects.
Fair and valid point. I concede this particular battlefield.
By the above definition of credible, Donald Trump is more credible than Hillary Clinton in the realm of lying and amend my original argument to some variation that unless we are talking about out and outright lies, Donald Trump is not more credible than Hillary Clinton.
He’s not crazy, nor does he believe that. What he’s saying is that a lot of voters found Trump more credible.
OK, that itself is hard to understand — but it’s true. Otherwise why did they vote for him? If you want to understand why, you have to put yourself in their shoes, not just say they’re wrong. That may be hard for you, but it’s the only way you can ever understand why this happened. The question is not whether they are right or wrong, but why they would believe that.
I have addressed this question up thread.
Obviously, there is a wild disparity in expectations from Trump. Someone is going to be terribly wrong.
The wild disparity is responsibility of his opposition. The Dems had to predict how Trump’s “draining the swamp”, trade fairness will realistically look like, even if that is not easy. Telling what people don’t want to hear is complicated, but it is worth doing it well. And there are methods: from basic techniques of pacing and leading (see item 2 here) to telling a story that opens up audience perceptions.
Facts, issues and Republicans never match. Trump knew he would have to run for president on the GOP platform to succeed. He did well for a salesman.
Certainly he conned the voters …
The old medicine salesmen used to sell snake oil as a curative, as a health benefit, when it of course did nothing of the sort. Snake oil is a fake, it doesn’t what the guy says it will….
Trump used to be aligned with policies of Democrats … woman’s free choice and single payer health care. A crook in the White House, we have been there before.
In my heart of hearts, I don’t think Trump knows what the fuck he’s doing one way or another. He’s just trying to figure it out now, and I’m not sure he’ll succeed. You need a lot of preparation to be president, and he doesn’t have it. A very important question is whether these asshats around him have any real control. I mean like Giuliani, Gingrich, David Duke. Palin. They’re all worse than he is.
I don’t see why they would have any real control. He could blow them off tomorrow if he wanted to. The real command central is his kids and Jared Kushner. I don’t know if Mike Pence will get a word in edgewise or not. Don’t see why he would either.
Trump has made a lot of promises. Many are mutually contradictory. Many are impossible. Many are just colossally stupid. Some of his supporters take these promises very seriously. But I don’t know that Trump ever takes promises very seriously. So that should be fun to watch.
In particular, the financial sector expects him to be friendlier to them than Obama was. But isn’t that the opposite of what voters elected him for?
Then again, the one thing you can count on Trump to understand, is to cater to his own needs. But I don’t see his brand surviving this. He’s alienated exactly the kind of people that have the money to buy his stuff.
So he’s going to have to diversify, and he will try to make the presidency into an extension of his business interests. But I’m not sure you can really do that. It will piss off almost everybody.
No, it’s not going to be so easy being Donald Trump. He doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing, and I think for the first time in his life, it may actually be dawning on him.
We’ll probably never know how many of those liberal voters voted because of TPP, but I suspect it’s a minority. Most people respond to social and media pressure and don’t do issue analysis. I think the driving force is opinion leaders on the left saying Clinton was more corporatist, more militaristic, and more dishonest, when she was less of each.
I think most Trump voters had no idea who Stein was, never read or heard much about here. People here do, but she was not all that visible to the general public.
Most Trump voters, sure. But there was a distinct faction of liberal Trump voters – not huge, but enough to flip the election – and I’m sure they did.
Exceptional claims deserve exceptional proof.
How do you know that in fact they were liberal voters?
I have to disagree. Even the statement that “She and Johnson did get enough votes in enough key states that their voters alone could have changed the election” is demonstrably false. Even ignoring the Gary Johnson vote, which is over 3 times the Stein vote, the only states Stein could have possibly made the difference if 100% of Stein voters voted for Hillary were WI, MI, and NH, which would give Trump 276 (maybe 275 if it would have affected ME-2).
Also counting the Gary Johnson vote, if Hillary had less than 1/3 of his vote and every single Stein vote, Trump would have gained in the popular vote, perhaps winning it.
And don’t say that it affected Hillary’s campaign. She ignored the midwest and concentrated solely on getting out the POC vote in the south and southwest.
Through most of the election Johnson’s voters split 50-50 or actually leaned Clinton. Nothing ever indicated a strong preference for Trump. Given the move to Trump at the end I think the actual Johnson voters had a distinct Clinton lead.
Wonderful comments, thanks all.
This will become a long-enduring topic: where to assign the blame for the coming destruction of the US as we know it and the now certain destruction of the 11,000 year old stable climate. (This is without considering which countries will be visited with destruction caused by our globe-striding military in its unending mission to “defend” us). The people of the future will read about and contemplate our catastrophic failure as a nation in 2016 for decade upon decade. The world is still discussing the topic of Adolph Hitler, for goodness sake, and likely will forever.
There’s so much blame to go around that it will have to be weighted somehow. The informed comments here point variously to voters and Dem leaders. The useless corporate media is not much discussed, nor the late in game machinations of the FBI and its Machiavellian director.
Given our absurd and nonsensical electoral college, if one wants to blame voters we can pinpoint this pretty clearly: there was a catastrophic failure of some number of voters in PA, MI and WI. Throw in FL and OH if you like. The stupid “battleground”, which the electoral college forces upon a disgusted nation, a nation which claims it “hates” the way the way prez campaigns are fought, yet of course can’t ever reform anything because: America!
These were states where most previously participating voters had for some time now considered that the office of the presidency should be held by a Dem, given the obvious insanity of the Repub party. But in 2016 some number of them decided either not to vote for the Dem, or thought that this time an obviously unqualified megalomaniacal con man should be awarded the office of the presidency. They made an appallingly wrongheaded decision, and our failed constitution ridiculously accorded them the critical power to decide the election in variance to the popular vote.
While opinion is likely going to coalesce around the idea that Clinton ran a terrible campaign and didn’t have a clear message, etc etc, the information to make an informed decision was/is available on many sites on the internet, the reality of what it will really mean to allow the Repubs complete control of the gub’mint was freely available.
And there is also the fact of the history of watching the Repub Congress and what it had proposed and pulled for the past 6 years. Indeed, even the comical “debates” were fairly revealing. It was not very difficult to determine what it would mean to give Repubs total control of the gub’mint, yet this group of voters in these previously blue states rejected the Dem Clinton in one form or another, and the electoral college gave them the power to force their disastrous decision upon the county.
The voters in the “battleground” cast the ballots or failed to cast them. They either weren’t “motivated” or made a boneheaded decision. They made the choice. The majority of the American people as a whole didn’t decide to ruin the country, a few voters in a few “battleground” states did.
Of course some blame must flow to the hapless leaders and Dem campaign generals and tacticians and to the useless corporate media for failing to make even remotely clear from their appalling coverage what the election of Trump and the Repubs would mean. But these “battleground” Happy Few either didn’t understand what they were doing, or did understand and thought “that will be great!” The goddam electoral college gave a few voters in a few states the ultimate power to wreck the country, and they did it. The planet will live with their decision forever.
In Madison’s original vision, the electoral college was independent of party in order to override popular passion and mob rule. Pledged electors for candidates undid that. And it is difficult to see how to select or elect electors who would be an authentic check and balance on a leader who seized power through a deception.
What we see being played out is the scenario that the right always used about how it was necessary to stamp out socialism to prevent Soviet authoritarian communism from coming to America. It is no surprise that the conservative movement is allied with Putin (also all other religious nationalist and extreme nationalist parties). That is the model they propagandized they were afraid of and must adopt the tactics of if they were to defeat Communism [big-C]. From the 1960s onward, the tactics they used were those they feared from Soviet Communism. They were the Fifth Column against democracy they claimed to be fighting, Edmund Burke to the contrary.
The people have spoken. And James Madison stuffed a sock in their megaphone, 220 years ago.
The rest is onanism,
That we are talking about Johnson and Stein at all shows how intensely Clinton people are looking for a scapegoat beyond Robby Mook and Hillary Clinton herself. They failed miserably at GOTV outside of Democratic strongholds. I’m not sure they developed as wide an organization in North Carolina as they claimed.
Trump has something that either was equivalent to a GOTV organization or made GOTV organizing irrelevant (which strikes at a core principle of democratic consensus).
And of course, there was massive voter suppression and not just in Florida.
Stein and Johnson were irrelevant. Blame Johnson for not sucking off enough Trump votes if you want to blame.
The Green Party continues not to be an functioning party in the traditional sense even as the consequences of Citizens United call into question whether parties affect elections at all anymore. To be in business as long as the Green Party has and still not be on all 50 ballots shows a fundamental weakness in the drive to win. The perpetual strategy of protest voting makes this perpetual.
At least the Pirate Party in Iceland has won something in less time than the Greens here have been around.
But the Democrats have lost out locally in too many places as well and the spread of gerrymandering will start making lazy Democratic strategists talk about voting Democrat as a protest vote to Trump in order for the Democratic Party to avoid making significant changes in how America conducts election campaigns within current election law and its lax enforcement.
And there needs to be at least one third party that advocates for complete elimination of corporation law and limited liability and can make a cogent argument why that Jefferson-Jackson position still makes sense.
I don’t know how to get parties that are not sheepherders, but we need to figure out how to do strong bottom-up politics, hashing out regional coalitions under some common principles of political process. How policy frameworks fit into that is a complicated issue that also needs to be hashed out.
But for now, we should be clear that a certain set of billionaires and moneyed interests bought the consent of half of the country to do harm to those people who consented. But then, the perpetuation of elite interests that dominated Democratic policy had the same effect.
Everyone receiving Social Security, Medicare, and on fixed incomes just saw their approaching catastrophe accelerated. And everyone with only 401(k)s need to understand the illusion they continue to live in. Below the 1%, it is impossible with boom-and-bust capitalism to prepare for a secure retirement. Moreso when Trump raids the Social Security Trust Fund to pay down $3 trillion of a $19 trillion debt. Or repudiates the debt and collapses the government bond market. When he does that, I suggest that the public repudiate all their debt too.
Of those who are to blame, Jill Stein is the least significant. This response is just to try to shut up one’s “LOTE”-spouting friends in mostly liberal, progressive, lefty strongholds of the country. You know, the ones with the dark blue spots on the map that voted 60%-70%-80%-90% for Clinton. It’s that irrelevant.
Maybe some people are trying to blame shift, but here’s the core of my point:
If we’re talking about Jill Stein and what her specific role and responsibility is, let’s be clear that arguing that she didn’t get enough support to fuck things up is not a defense of what she was trying to do.
Can you put it all on her? Of course not.
But it’s a really bad excuse for her and her campaign and her supporters that they avoided responsibility by being unintentionally unappealing.
If the question is over whether third parties are a good place to put your vote, this argues that they’re not.
Okay?
I have a lot more to say on these issues, but I don’t want to distract from this key point. You can’t absolve Jill Stein because she failed to do what she was trying to do. You can say she was too stupid to understand what she was trying to do. But you can’t say that her campaign wasn’t a threat to Clinton’s ability to beat Trump and that the better she did the more of a threat it would become.
“Can you put it all on her? Of course not.”
You can’t but I can. Her play here should have been to support Clinton. Kinda like suck it up buttercup we got bigger things here at play with the Orange Turd out there.
You write:
So…beyond all of the Green bashing, Libertarian bashing etc…both parties were totally without any chance of winning and had next to no part in the horrible loss of HRC and the Democratic Party in general…do you really think that the the Democratic Party can ever recover from its current corporate ownership in this system to become anything other than an alternating option in the ongoing sociopolitical fix system now in place here in the U.S.?
I do not, myself. Not if the U.S. maintains its current form, both economically and in terms of actually remaining a 50 state “union.”
If you do believe that it can be resuscitated after the coma that has been induced in it by the elitist, neoliberal mismanagement that the results of this election has rendered abundantly clear to see, please tell me how you think this can best be done. I would be most interested.
Thank you…
AG
Yes, but then all you’re criticizing is her INTENTIONS, not what actually came to pass. I agree she’s an ass, but that doesn’t mean she brought about Hillary Clinton’s defeat. The fact that she would have been happy to do so doesn’t mean that she actually did.
So if you set out to plan a murder and then screw it up in the execution phase, pun intended, and no one dies but the target is still nicked once by the whole 15 round mag you emptied it doesn’t count or matter for terms of guilt?
I mean your argument seems to basically be ‘Sure Jill Stein wanted to fuck Hillary Clinton over, and she did try fuck her over, but is was a really bad attempt and it didn’t really work so Jill Stein isn’t responsible for anything as far a the election goes.’ That sounds exactly as absurd as the first example I gave.
You can’t get brownie points for trying to screw over the Anti-Trump movement’s best realistic hope after the primaries just because you failed in your endeavor.
Jill Stein and a lot of Green’s spent a lot of time and energy calling Hillary Clinton worse than Donald Trump in every way. That matters. And she should have to take her lumps on that just like everyone else that put Trump in power.
Yes, that is my argument. How is a mere desire responsible for what happened, if she wasn’t in a position to actually bring it sbout?
It seems like every 1930s murder mystery has the same situation. There’s a always a suspect who obviously would have been happy to see the victim dead. That’s always a fake out, because that person is the one you’re supposed to suspect, but the real murderer always turns out to be someone completely different.
Except she did more than just desire. She had more than just intentions. Jill Stein actively worked towards the goal of making Hillary Clinton appear to be worse than Donald Trump. She did forms, made public statements, interviews with media, and used social media to drive the narrative towards that end.
That she wasn’t very successful doesn’t absolve her of her ACTIONS. And make no mistake, she did ACT on her intentions. It wasn’t ideal thought or speculation, it was actions.
People are responsible for their actions. She acted, she’s responsible for those actions.
I never said she isn’t responsible for actions. Just that her actions didn’t make any real difference.
Ok but this:
“And there needs to be at least one third party that advocates for complete elimination of corporation law and limited liability and can make a cogent argument why that Jefferson-Jackson position still makes sense.”
Why and who will buy into that?
Nobody. Limited liability was first enacted in New York in 1811 and soon became a cornerstone of our economic system. The real problem with corporations is (a) the 14th amendment and (b) the fact that corporate charter revocation is almost impossible.
Even to change these things would be very, very difficult — but at least it’s a worthy goal. We also need the government to break up trusts and monopolies.
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=1810
Clinton should have been the ONLY name on the ballot. Maybe she could have won then.
SHE DOES NOT OWN MY VOTE!!! Nobody owns my vote but me. You eastern so-called Liberals better listen before you lose EVERY election.
Just guessing here but my bet is there will be some changes made.
Again…echoing my own reply to Booman just above…
1-What changes need to be made?
and
2-How would those changes be accomplished?
Be specific, please.
I am really out of ideas.
AG
The first step could be to appoint a chairman who will work to make the party more inclusive. I also think we are going to need some way of holding back the changes about to be made by Trump and Ryan. We just may need those Occupy people now.
In a Trump regime we would have a Kent State moment…as many of them as would be necessary to put a lid on it…if Occupy actually tried to occupy.
And…exactly how would a party chairman “work to make the party more inclusive,” Jonf? I am quite serious here. How do you define the term “inclusive?” It is presently a code word for minority activity in a majority system. If someone found a way to make the Democratic Party “inclusive” in terms of large numbers of those unfortunately labelled as deplorables by the most important…until Tuesday last, anyway…representative of the party and/or simultaneously convinced masses of ghetto dwellers that it truly represented them at the same time…then we might have something.
That would be one hell of a magic trick, though. Maybe RFK could have pulled it off, but I can’t think of anyone else in living memory.
Can you?
AG
If someone found a way to make the Democratic Party “inclusive” in terms of large numbers of those unfortunately labelled as deplorables by the most important…until Tuesday last, anyway…representative of the party and/or simultaneously convinced masses of ghetto dwellers that it truly represented them at the same time…then we might have something.
That’s exactly what I said elsewhere on this thread — And I quote:
The real reason for the defeat is that, in some important ways, the Democratic Party has its head up its ass.
Let me hint at one of the many ways it does — an important way that relates to communication. The Democratic Party is NOT “the minorities party”. it is the INCLUSIVE party. We desperately need to relearn the meaning of the words “for everybody”. The Democratic Party today speaks of “Black, Brown, etc., etc. Great. But we need to speak of Black, Brown and White, just like we used to. But best of all, let’s talk more about “everybody.” Martin Luther King understood that. Bernie Sanders understands that.
http://www.boomantribune.com/comments/2016/11/11/15040/749/118?mode=alone;showrate=1#118
BTW, I can think of somebody who could pull it off. Bernie Sanders.
The people to blame for Trump being President are those that voted for him. That’s the people who chanted ”Lock her up” every single chance they got. It’s the same assholes who put band aids on their fingers to mock Kerry’s Purple Heart. You know, the ones welcomed at Trump rallies with ‘cunt’ on their T shirts.
It was a grievance election. It was NOT an election about economic anxiety, except in the sense that they have a grievance on that also. But their main grievance is race and sexual orientation.
Did nobody here actually look at his rallies? Does nobody here actually go out and listen to what others are saying? They are saying ‘How could anybody vote for that guy?’
And that is who is to blame……the people who voted for him. As soon as you (and there are plenty of such stupid people posting here) explain away this by blaming Democrats for what happened, you are excusing away the people filled with hate in their heart who voted for Trump. You give the haters agency, and far more power than they deserve. Now I understand how some of you want to do that, because your hearts are rotten with the same hate.
But Christ, the people responsible are the ones that voted for a completely unqualified, misogynistic, racist.
How many democrats actually post on this site, anyway?
.
.
One in which their main grievance was that Obama wasn’t running again.
I’m glad you had some nice words to say about Ms Stein. She will sign up for anything if it looks on the left. And from what I’ve heard, she has little idea of how to get any of it. But she does have some idiot supporters who will follow her into defeat and are proud of it. No lesser of two evils there, they will proudly tell you.
Whereas you, I infer, are a good party loyalist who proudly voted for the selling of America to the highest bidders.
No I voted to save us from Trumpism. They are already planning on making medicare a “premium” support program, aka here’s a few bucks the rest is up to you. You know bc medicare is going broke so it needs to be fixed along with repeal of Obmacare and Medicaid expansion. Its in the WaPo today. Watch for the Ryan plan to gut, er cut, SS. But who needs health care right? Better to use the money to build infrastructure.
In accordance with our host’s request,http://www.boomantribune.com/comments/2016/11/11/15040/749/121#121, I am dropping out of this thread.
Oh look, Ryan is going after Medicare in the Obamacare repeal!
You sure took your country back didn’t you, seniors?
When big media honchos literally LOL. July 26, 2015
And Keith told them, the party head honchos, and voters that Clinton was the wrong horse to back against Trump. But y’all decided that he was just another leftie purist.