You just made the case for Biden, Obamacare isn’t baggage anymore, turns out it’s something people wanted but wanted it delivered better. Emails and benghazi, really? No chance emails comes up, given ivanka and jared and kelly all used personal emails. Benghazi, was a total swift-boat, and now trump has his own benghazi with those special forces killed in Mali, except the incompetent dems can’t exploit it. Not to mention, Ordinary Joe isn’t really connected to the big negatives. Biggest bet though is that after trump, i bet americans don’t go for more hyper-partisanship, they push toward the center – that dings kamala, booker, and warren – Joe doesn’t scare middle of the road conservatives or reagan dems. Not sure how much wishful thinking is in that bet. Like BS said tho, age is an issue – Biden at 75 vs trump at 72…that’s why I think a youthful Beto can be a good combo.
Warren is a bomb thrower not unlike trump. She’s entertaining and has more intellectual heft than trump, but I think if she won, then the dems quickly lose both the house and senate and her one-term presidency is mired in gridlock. It would be entertaining tho, if all we want is a presidency reality show.
To clarify, are you suggesting that
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Hilary was not well-liked by the voting population
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This was the result of propaganda by Fox
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There was nothing particularly wrong with Hilary as a candidate?
I’m saying that due to propaganda by Fox Hilary was held to a different standard as a candidate.
That by manufacturing controversies (number of indictments for emails/benghazi = 0, russia-gate: Like 15, so far and it’s not close to being done) HRC is deemed unlikable/untrustworthy while Trump is worse but penalized less.
Agree, liberal media took the high road and avoided casting Trump as unlikeable/untrustworthy and avoided manufacturing controversies and it has backfired.
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Without opining on whether Hilary “deserved it”, I agree that Fox laid it on pretty thick in regard to Hilary. FOX clearly has a conservative slant.
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But where I’m not ready to agree is the part where you take it a step further and insinuate Hilary was the victim of some double standard in the media. I feel like we’re not on the same planet right now and am genuinely curious as to where you got to that.
In the 15 months before the 2016 election, the Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, Politico, Washington Post, Slate, and the New York Times all reported more favorably to Clinton.
I want to clarify that this was sarcasm and I agree with startup. To act like media bias is why Hillary lost is to live on some other planet where large swaths of media weren’t doing the same crap to Trump.
I’d say Fox has a Republican slant…that is really not conservatism these days.
Tulsi Gabbard with Joe Rogan as her VP 2020 dem ticket. This would win
The issue isn’t with legitimate news sources, you’re looking at WSJ/WaPo which aren’t the issue. IThis is why I think Kanye kind of had a point, to his credit Trump was able to change the rules of how politics works. He manage to fundamentally shift the landscape which is why he won.
You seem reasonable and know Fox has a slant, but so does Breitbart Infowars, etc. Some people actually treat these things at legit news sources.
That’s where I think the flaw in your reasoning is, that you’re not looking at studies that reflect the voters. That we live in different universes from each other.
Here’s a link that explains it a little bit better:
https://cyber.harvard.edu/publications/2017/08/mediacloud
“We find that the structure and composition of media on the right and left are quite different. The leading media on the right and left are rooted in different traditions and journalistic practices. On the conservative side, more attention was paid to pro-Trump, highly partisan media outlets. On the liberal side, by contrast, the center of gravity was made up largely of long-standing media organizations steeped in the traditions and practices of objective journalism.”
But here’s the actual impact:
“Donald Trump succeeded in shaping the election agenda. Coverage of Trump overwhelmingly outperformed coverage of Clinton. Clinton’s coverage was focused on scandals, while Trump’s coverage focused on his core issues.”
This is the double standard I’m talking about. The ‘grab her by the pussy’ tape should have been the end of Trump, but somehow we aren’t talking about it. But Hillary’s emails were talked about plenty.
Maybe its because Hillary lacked a core platform to begin with. Anyhow, for every Brietbart there’s the dailyl kos or whatever. It’s really not so different and CNN is just as dirty as Fox. In the end, I think Hillary lost it by having a weak platform based on identity politics and failing to campaign in swing states aggressively or in some cases at all. Anything beyond seems like excuse mongering, should have been a layup win for a half decent politician.
And that’s something we’ll never agree upon. Hillary’s issue was that her platform was significantly more complex than ‘Build the wall and have mexico pay for it’. Things like climate change and campaign finance reform are boring and uninteresting. Getting into tax reform is harder to understand than a tax cut. But it should still have been an easy win. And as I’ve said before, Trump was able to effectively change the message and new coverage away fom his flaws and win the election, regardless of how anyone feels about his politics.
So this is essentially why she lost and why out of touch “coastal elites” still don’t get it. These things in and of themselves aren’t bad positions and global warming is least worst. But they aren’t the core of a viable platform to win a national election. You also don’t really have to “agree” that she didn’t even visit Wisconsin and barely campaigned in Michigan which she needed, those are statements of fact. But back to the platform, none of the three issues that jumped to your mind resonate with the more immediate needs of the the rustbelt. You have to win the national platform and your own words highlight the out of sync world view that lost the election, building my point. What’s truly mind boggling to me (because I like the idea of a strong, functional democratic party) is that nobody seems to have learned anything on that side with absolutely zero introspection and are still finger pointing outside their own strategy like they made no mistakes.
Fair point, I’m concerned about things that matter to me.
But I won’t argue with you, instead I’ll ask a question, I’ll try to learn why I’m wrong. Can you please give me the top 2-3 things that I don’t understand about the Midwest and how Trump has improved upon them? The one request that I do have is that you don’t mention the Dems, the coastal elites, or anything about the ‘opposition’. Keep is strictly to Trump/the GOP’s actions while they’ve held congress and the presidency.
The complete remaking of the judiciary is a huge issue for anti-democrats. Rolling back the Obama years. And the gutting of executive departments is another.
while hillary not campaigning aggressively in the rust belt is an issue, there is something to be said about the simplicity of platform argument. it is difficult to go to the rust belt and start making their ears bleed with complex platform points. yelling wall wall wall is much simpler and resonates. if hillary tried to match up against wall wall wall in the rust belt, it probably wouldn’t have helped much anyway. this is the key reason why some think that bernie could have held up better than trump. bernie could just yell a couple of emotinally driven phrases that summed up the bulk of his fairly radical platform.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtzWkKxVlBU
^ this is basically trump; if hillary tried to talk about reason and the benefit of the innarests, she likely would not be well received.
Let me preface this by saying I’m not arguing that Trump is good or that he’s helped in saying Hillary blew the campaign. What I did say is that misguided or not, his points did “resonate with the more immediate needs of the rustbelt.” So my takeaway I was aiming for is that a viable platform needs to address those needs and arguably if you believe he is doing a poor job of doing that, then to my point (and yours) there is a wide margin of opportunity there for a Democratic candidate with an ounce of introspection to capitalize on the flaws of Hillary’s campaign and better target the mid-west. They’re called “swing states” for a reason. But if you don’t acknowledge / can’t see that her campaign blew that opportunity then it will be hard to do that. That’s the essence of what I’m saying.
I mean, I don’t know if 2-3 things people “don’t understood” is accurate so much as 2-3 things that aren’t adequately acknowledged or addressed, or maybe people just don’t understand the severity. Those things being the impact of the structural economic shift on the rustbelt and then the host of knock on effects like the scale of the opioid epidemic in those areas and cultural backlash. I also think most people still aren’t grasping the underlying validity of the complaints against China and the fact that a healthy steel and aluminum industry is possible under fair trade terms without being globalist. IE making sure you have an inclusive economy with pointed measures. Were Trump’s policies misguided, possibly. But indisputably (I cover this space) his policies have supported a major recovery in US metal producers and a new wave of investment in high quality alloy and advanced strength steel production. Even the push to redesign NAFTA which focuses on trade of goods which disproportionately effects that region after ~25 years of being forgotten shows focus on the region. I’m more than happy to agree that these efforts could have been handled much more competently by another administration. My point is just that there needs to be a better focus there by the next campaign to ensure there’s not another implosion and I don’t think it’s a one or the other thing either.
I think you can do these things pretty safely within the Democratic platform (am I allowed to use that). I just think they weren’t in the prior campaign and should be better addressed in the next attempt if people acknowledge the mistep.
I guess the simple point I’m making is Democrats can either acknowledge missteps and come out with a platform that takes their goals like you listed but also puts emphasis on policies aimed at the rust belt and most likely win, or they can push some form of anti-Trump to stick it to all the deplorables and double down on a coastal agenda and likely lose. One path acknowledges the mistake and fixes it (what I’d like to see) and one only acknowledges that everything was done right and everyone else was the problem. I actually would put my money on the first because from what I understand the campaign strategists were furious and dumbfounded at H’s move, so I doubt that community will sign on for a repeat.
I agree with the spirit of BS’s post, but I am actually of the opinion that not being Trump is going to be basically all it takes to win in 2020 (far from purely anti-Trump). Things can change, but where we sit today it looks like it’s just as likely Trump loses as the Dems win.