Board 8 > Politics Containment Topic 130: Playing the Victims

(+) Yeah! (+)

I think at some point you've gotta give credit to millions of Americans for being very, very stupid though, instead of saying it's all Clinton's fault she lost.

We can also blame the electoral college system for being a terrible idea without involving any candidates.

I dunno there's a lot of blame to go around here.
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The vast majority of the blame is on the American public for voting this way.
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It's not all Clinton's fault she lost

But she knew the game going in and was facing the worst major candidate of our lifetimes

If the Warriors lose to a middle school basketball team, I don't want to hear them talk about how the conditions weren't right even if it's true
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She lost cuz she was horrible. Any decent democrat wins.
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Being a bad candidate doesn't mean you won't get votes, and it never has. Elections aren't skill based, they're weighted popularity contests.

Imagine if after your basketball match, the crowd voted on who won. But votes from certain crowd members were just worth more for no reason.
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Kenri posted...

basketball match

http://ftw.usatoday.com/2016/04/ted-cruz-basketball-ring-hoosiers-indiana-gop-primary/amp
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Corrik posted...

She lost cuz she was horrible. Any decent democrat wins.

Why didn't a decent Republican win?
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I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on this then!

I don't think that just because she was the one involved means she can't also acknowledge the other factors at play while everyone else can. It'd be one thing if she denied any responsibility herself, but she hasn't AFAIK. I get that saying it's 100% on you is the "expected" thing but I mean if it's not true it can be a bit weird to have that be the desired response.

I mean, I get it can be a thorny issue since there's civility/unity issues at work there... but I mean from an idealized world standpoint I dunno.
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I'm going to assume that her whole book isn't like that though and that she does go into her own campaign missteps

I would LOVE to know why her GOTV machine lagged behind Obama's.
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Jakyl25 posted...

Why didn't a decent Republican win?

because neither of the two decent republicans in the world were running?
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That's not fair to say "no reason." Some crowd members in the audience are bigger than others and deserve appropriate representation.
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HaRRicH posted...

That's not fair to say "no reason." Some crowd members in the audience are bigger than others and deserve appropriate representation.

Kenri was making the opposite point actually.

That voters in smaller states count more on an individual level if you break down Electoral College Votes per capita.
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People just have a hard on for blaming Hillary because if it isn't all her fault then they would have to take some responsibility for the shit show currently in office. I know this is hard to believe but it can be more than one persons fault.
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Kenri posted...

Jakyl25 posted...

Why didn't a decent Republican win?

because neither of the two decent republicans in the world were running?

Newt and Rudy had their chances.

(but seriously who are you talking about?)
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xp1337 posted...

Kenri was making the opposite point actually.

That voters in smaller states count more on an individual level if you break down Electoral College Votes per capita.

Yes indeed.


Jakyl25 posted...

Kenri posted...

basketball match

http://ftw.usatoday.com/2016/04/ted-cruz-basketball-ring-hoosiers-indiana-gop-primary/amp

also is it incorrect to call a game of basketball a match because i've literally never heard that before but i'd accept it as just a weird sports thing
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lordloki12 posted...

People just have a hard on for blaming Hillary because if it isn't all her fault then they would have to take some responsibility for the shit show currently in office. I know this is hard to believe but it can be more than one persons fault.

I know. I'm partially to blame for her losing Michigan. I accept and regret that now.

If I wrote a book about why I just couldn't resist voting for Stein I would expect mockery
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Kenri posted...

also is it incorrect to call a game of basketball a match because i've literally never heard that before but i'd accept it as just a weird sports thing

It's a "basketball game."
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there are no decent republicans

and hillary and her campaign members/voters are vastly disproportionately to blame for trump due to a) her inability to get people to vote for her in even close to the same numbers as obama (despite running on a platform of being his heir apparent) b) her fail strategy of not campaigning in the states that were her downfall c) the fact that all of the information available showed she was significantly weaker than bernie in the general and d) her pied piper strategy that elevated candidates like trump in the first place, when she likely would have been far stronger against someone like Jeb!

HaRRicH posted...

Kenri posted...

Jakyl25 posted...

Why didn't a decent Republican win?

because neither of the two decent republicans in the world were running?

Newt and Rudy had their chances.

(but seriously who are you talking about?)

it was really just a joke trashing republicans i didn't have anyone in mind

so much for the tolerant left am i right


Jakyl25 posted...

It's a "basketball game."

are the two really not synonymous in basketball's case

again i'm not doubting you this just seems bizarre
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velocycloraptor posted...

a) her inability to get people to vote for her in even close to the same numbers as obama (despite running on a platform of being his heir apparent)

This actually doesn't seem to be true now that I double checked my claim that her GOTV machine was weak

Unless you mean '08 Obama

She pretty much matches '12 Obama in swing states and overall. Trump just beat Romney
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Jakyl25 posted...

If I wrote a book about why I just couldn't resist voting for Stein I would expect mockery

not if you marketed it well

Steins;Gate 2016
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though i should say to add to what I said that people who voted trump are obviously who deserves most of the blame

but the incredible ego of stopping the more popular candidate because its your turn and then losing to the terrible candidate you hand picked to be easy to beat and then lost to deserves an incredible amount of shame

https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2017/08/29/man-who-fired-weapon-charlottesville-counterprotesters-identified-ku-klux-klan-imperial

With respect to the improvised flamethrower aimed at this dude before he shot, this guy who shot the gun in the crowd was in fact a part of the KKK.
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velocycloraptor posted...

but the incredible ego of stopping the more popular candidate

i mean if you get more votes than your opponent in both the primary and the general are you really the less popular candidate

makes you think
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velocycloraptor posted...

stopping the more popular candidate

Come on now

She beat Bernie by a bigger margin than she beat Trump
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Jakyl25 posted...

lordloki12 posted...

People just have a hard on for blaming Hillary because if it isn't all her fault then they would have to take some responsibility for the shit show currently in office. I know this is hard to believe but it can be more than one persons fault.

I know. I'm partially to blame for her losing Michigan. I accept and regret that now.

If I wrote a book about why I just couldn't resist voting for Stein I would expect mockery

If your reasons included things like Russian interference, fake news stories, voter's getting purged from the registration rolls, lopsided news coverage, and a bunch of racists who saw a man obsessed with undoing everything Obama it would be a book worth writing. Not to mention the people who got duped by the promise of jobs or those who would literally never vote for a woman.
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Jakyl25 posted...

Corrik posted...

She lost cuz she was horrible. Any decent democrat wins.

Why didn't a decent Republican win?

Because Donald Trump is exactly what the Republican Party wanted by bashing Obama and "the establishment" for eight years. They know voters are dumb and view the presidency as the only election that matters, so if shit's fucked up, even if it's entirely on Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, Obama gets the blame. Of course, the Republican Party created a Frankenstein's monster where they didn't realize their voters took "the establishment" literally as a boogeyman, and thus voted the guy who they saw on TV a lot.
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are you guys seriously going to pretend that the democratic primary voters are the same thing as the general election voters? all opinion polls showed that bernie did better among ind voters than clinton and did better against trump in the general. hes rn by far the most popular politician in the country. whatever you think of him, all the actual evidence points towards him being more likely to win.

also it should be noted that more clinton primary voters in 08 voted for mccain than '16 bernie voters went for trump when people want to blame bernie voters.

lordloki12 posted...

Not to mention the people who got duped by the promise of jobs

Hey I'm sure those 27 new miners who got hired because the coal companies can cut cost by dumping waste runoff into the drinking water thanks to Trump are happy

For now
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Yeah plus the potential of future job growth when people die off due to the poison now in their water supply.
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velocycloraptor posted...

a) her inability to get people to vote for her in even close to the same numbers as obama (despite running on a platform of being his heir apparent)

I wonder if that had anything to do with rampant sexism or all of the bullshit corruption allegations she faced for being a normal politician

velocycloraptor posted...

b) her fail strategy of not campaigning in the states that were her downfall

She would have still lost if she had won in MI/WI. She campaigned extensively in PA and FL. This was a mistake but it wasn't why she lost.

velocycloraptor posted...

c) the fact that all of the information available showed she was significantly weaker than bernie in the general

i) As far as I remember the polls from near the end of the primary had both her and Bernie beating Trump comfortably with Bernie maybe winning by a point or two more
ii) As I'm sure has been pointed out to you many times (including likely by me), Bernie had not yet been attacked by the GOP and had only been lightly attacked by Clinton. He would not have maintained those numbers had he actually been the nominee.
iii) What did you expect her to do, drop out despite the fact that she beat Bernie handily in the primary?

velocycloraptor posted...

d) her pied piper strategy that elevated candidates like trump in the first place, when she likely would have been far stronger against someone like Jeb!

I highly doubt Trump would have lost the GOP nomination had Clinton acted any differently. In any case, I do agree that it was stupid to hope that Trump would win the GOP nomination.
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The election was so close that you could make an easy logical argument that a male Hillary Clinton would have won, but there are so many what ifs that could have flipped the election that focusing on something that couldn't have been changed seems pointless. You knew ahead of time the deck was slightly against you and given the previous President it sometimes doesn't matter.
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velocycloraptor posted...

are you guys seriously going to pretend that the democratic primary voters are the same thing as the general election voters? all opinion polls showed that bernie did better among ind voters than clinton and did better against trump in the general. hes rn by far the most popular politician in the country. whatever you think of him, all the actual evidence points towards him being more likely to win.

also it should be noted that more clinton primary voters in 08 voted for mccain than '16 bernie voters went for trump when people want to blame bernie voters.

To be fair, when I blame the Bernie voters, it's less for not voting Hillary (I'm aware that they did), but more for their actions leading up to the election. The Democrats had a well-reasoned political debate that Hillary won. More people wanted to vote for her in the primaries. Yet you had vocal voices constantly touting the "DNC screwed Bernie" narrative (they didn't) and just generally acting like it was a chore to vote Hillary because she wasn't as good as Bernie. I don't doubt that the general negative attitude caused depressed voter turnout for the Democrats. It's bad enough when the Republicans are attacking our candidate, but when we're in-fighting, that only hurts us because Dem voters, unlike Republican voters, do care about more than just the letter next to a candidate's name. And they'll look for any reason not to get out and vote.
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velocycloraptor posted...

are you guys seriously going to pretend that the democratic primary voters are the same thing as the general election voters?

Sanders is the one who chose to run in the Democratic primary. Spoilers - it's decided by democratic primary voters.

all opinion polls showed that bernie did better among ind voters than clinton and did better against trump in the general.

The Republicans never ran a serious campaign against him and the Clinton campaign never took off the kid gloves. Of course he polled better!

hes rn by far the most popular politician in the country.

Again, IIRC, so was Clinton herself circa 2011 or so.

whatever you think of him, all the actual evidence points towards him being more likely to win.

I voted for Sanders in the primary! Maybe Sanders would have done better maybe he wouldn't have. (If he would have done better in the Rust Belt, for example, I think that deserves some consideration as to why) But he chose to enter the Democratic Primary and he lost it. He was not the candidate that most Democrats wanted. What about the ego of thinking you can demand a party to ignore its own members in favor of those not part of it?
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Kenri posted...

are the two really not synonymous in basketball's case

It's like when your aunt calls your Playstation a "Nintendo"

I'm still of the opinion that Sanders would have lost worse than Clinton had he won the primary. Some of Sanders' policies would have left moderate democrats voting either Republican or not show up.
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charmander6000 posted...

I'm still of the opinion that Sanders would have lost worse than Clinton had he won the primary. Some of Sanders' policies would have left moderate democrats voting either Republican or not show up.

I think it's unclear, personally.

Certainly I think he would have done better in some demographics, but the trade-off would be as you say.
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Maybe they both should have stepped aside for Martin O'Malley!
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charmander6000 posted...

I'm still of the opinion that Sanders would have lost worse than Clinton had he won the primary. Some of Sanders' policies would have left moderate democrats voting either Republican or not show up.

I agree. I also think that, given that a lot of Hillary's support came from minority voters, Bernie would struggle to capture said minority voters. This would hurt Bernie a lot more since he'd have to rely on picking up the working class white voters (who would be just as will to vote for Trump like they did in reality), and actually getting Millennials out to vote (which they notoriously do not do.)
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Minority voters didn't support Bernie over Hillary, but I'm confident against Trump they would have turned out almost as much as they did for her in the general.

If not, that's REALLY cutting off your nose to spite your face
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KamikazePotato posted...

The vast majority of the blame is on the American public for voting this way.

Going to repeat this because the kind of discussion going on right now shifts the point away from what it should be. You can treat elections like games and "but she would have won if she..." but then you're putting the onus on the politicians to run better elections, instead of the American people to make better decisions.
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the DNC did not "screw bernie" but they did absolutely do everything in their power within reason to stop him. they stacked the deck early with states Hillary would do well in, and had all the superdelegates endorse her early on, while the new coverage all showed graphs about how she was so far ahead as a result, and said Bernie had no chance, etc.

still, the reason some people acted like bernie or bust was because those people were not regular dem voters. they would not have voted for obama, biden, or clinton. To a lot of leftists, or people who regularly do not bother voting, Bernie WAS the compromise, and Clinton was too much for them. To a lot of ind voters, they respected him and hated her. You can argue over whether that is fair or not, but its true either way, To the "bernie wasn't attacked enough" shit, trump was attacked over significantly worse things to a huge degree and still won. Attacks can only do so much damage. Trump/Clinton was about battle of the people everyone hates, and the right wing asshole will always win that battle because wealthier, whiter people vote more often. Throw in someone people actually don't hate, and it is a whole new ballgame because you will get more voters, and ind voters liked bernie and still like him.


as for clinton being popular, she is popular when she is out of public eye. people don't like her when they see her.

Jakyl25 posted...

Minority voters didn't support Bernie over Hillary, but I'm confident against Trump they would have turned out almost as much as they did for her in the general.

If not, that's REALLY cutting off your nose to spite your face

I'm just saying, we were coming off the heels of Barack Obama, the first black president who really got out the vote from minority voters. Hillary didn't have that same level of enthusiasm, but she DID have the Clinton name, and Bill Clinton is loved by those demographics. Replace Hillary with Bernie (who as you mentioned, could not pick up minority voters in the primary), and I feel like you'd have a case of two 70+ year-old white guys running for office, neither of whom did a great job of addressing minority concerns. The way a lot of progressives felt about Hillary being less than enthusiastic about healthcare or free college...I feel like minority voters would feel similarly about Bernie, given how committed he was to his message of targeting issues of the working class and Millennials.
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I think Bernie might have picked up MI and/or WI, but he could have easily lost VA.
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bernie is more popular currently with minority voters than white voters

minority voters went with the person they knew, who their community leaders supported, etc. in the primaries. it does not reflect the current opinion. give bernie and extra couple months to campaign before the primaries start and he wins.

But does that change after the primaries and an enthusiastic endorsement by Obama and Hillary?

Bernie stood in the way of the "continue Obama's legacy" candidate, but had he won the primary, those fences would have been mended for the greater good, as Bernie tried to do in reality with Hillary.
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I think there's a good chance that Bernie receives fewer votes overall but carries more states - there's reason to believe that he can carry MI, WI, and PA and I don't know which states he loses that Clinton won

God now I want to see that Obama/Hillary hug but with Obama/Bernie

So tender
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So, what I'm getting here is that the Democratic party should have ignored the will of its own members in favor of the will of another group (independents) and that Clinton should have stepped aside? (But I thought a common criticism of Clinton/the DNC was that everyone had stepped aside for her!)

This feels a bit more negative than I like, but if you check the topics around the later stages of the primary you'll see I grew increasingly disappointed and uncomfortable with the rhetoric from the hardline Sanders supporters and the way this topic has gone is kind of a rehash of that.

FWIW, I don't think Sanders himself really partook in it or anything, but it really started souring me on the whole thing.
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Paratroopa1 posted...

I think there's a good chance that Bernie receives fewer votes overall but carries more states - there's reason to believe that he can carry MI, WI, and PA and I don't know which states he loses that Clinton won

Nevada and Virginia are possibilities. Given that Hillary TROUNCED him in the Virginia primary and narrowly won the state (likely with help from running mate Tim Kaine), he could win Wisconsin/Pennsylvania/Michigan, lose Virginia, and we'd have an even bigger shitshow because Trump would win the election by one state. Also, if he loses Virginia, then Pennsylvania's still in play too.
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