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I dislike the establishment left, but 2016 was one of the most propagandized, misinformation filled, and corrupt elections - in no way can it be considered an "easy election".
Hindsight is 20/20... The electorate sees no where near that well, and didn't at the time.
The truth is fascism and pseudo or proto fascism is never an easy thing to defeat, because it breaks the rules and can appeal to forces and parts of human nature that most politicians won't or can't run with. This is why most fascists are praised as gifted speakers - even Trump - because they're appealing to powerful parts of human nature which are usually not spoken about in politics, let alone addressed directly.
It would have been easy if Clinton's team hadn't deliberately helped Trump, thinking that putting a fascist on the world stage would make their jobs easier.
"Obama has been doing a great job for 8 years and I plan to continue his legacy as best I can. We're going to give more money to workers and students and also legalise weed."
Boom. That's all winning an election took in 2015. It's Clinton's fault she needed to go and defeat fascism and failed.
Let's also remember that most people didn't REALLY think Trump had a chance in 2016, even most Republicans voting for him. If everyone that would have voted against Trump had shown up (less than 60% of eligible voters turned out in 2016), it would have been no contest. He didn't even get the popular vote in the end. But nobody took his campaign seriously and counted on everybody else to turn out to make the obvious but boring choice.
In 2020, though, we had the highest turnout of eligible voters since 1920 (still an embarrassing 66.6%). The only reason that the turnout for 2020 was so high is because so many people were so eager to either maintain or end Trump's reign that people were charged up and went to the polls. The only realistic way that Trump doesn't win this time though is if everyone who was so charged in 2020 remains as charged this time, or a new bunch of voters, like newly eligible young voters, show up in droves... and I'm very concerned that that doesn't happen.
If everyone that would have voted against Trump had shown up (less than 60% of eligible voters turned out in 2016), it would have been no contest.
Everyone needs to read and comprehend this. The number of people who didn't want Hillary or Trump was greater than the number of people who voted for them. But the system doesn't reward abstaining. Trying to make a statement by not voting only serves to reward the people who you are abstaining from. Fucking vote, people! Write a candidate in if you have to. Vote for your dog. But get off your asses and use the right that hundreds of thousands of people died to protect.
One guy thought Trump had a chance. Ome guy kept saying that Trump was going to beat Hillary, and we needed a better strategy than hers.
I can’t imagine young voters being disenchanted more than they are when the Biden admin ignores their pleas to stop a genocide and walks all over them like spoiled children. He needs them now more than ever. I can’t see him realizing it, however.
Chapo Traphouse said it quite well with today’s episode: he isn’t willing to sacrifice his pride for the good of democracy. And Dems aren’t willing to shame and embarrass him to protect it either. We’re fucked.
Biden doesn't actually believe in democracy. Biden supports democracy in the same way corporations support gay people during June. If Trump dismantles democracy, he doesn't care. Biden's big talk is all kayfabe. Biden is the face and Trump is the heel.
Threatening the DNC with a Trump presidency is like threatening your kids with McDonald's
This nonsense. Sanders would have won that if the DNC wasn’t corrupt as shit.
I completely agree. Hillary was subject to non-stop manufactured scandals insinuating she was a complete criminal (Benghazi, the emails, etc.). Plus Trump successfully tapped into the "punish the libs" and "it's okay to be racist" contingents. It wasn't a great campaign, but to suggest that it should have been a cake walk for her is ridiculous.
I agree with you that it wasn't a cakewalk, but the problem was she treated it like a cakewalk. She assumed she had it locked up, and ignored all polling that didn't support her landslide victory. She punished downticket candidates who didn't bend the knee by skipping their districts in places like Wisconsin and Michigan, because she assumed people would show up for her.
She ran a terrible campaign, kowtowing to the worst attacks, thinking it was politics as usual, acting like she was above the fray while she was face down in the mud getting stomped on.
She should have gone on the offensive. She should have presented a vision for a better America. She failed us all, and for that she deserves as much scorn as we can conjure.
Had she set foot in Michigan or Wisconsin at all during her campaign she probably would have won.
I don't know, it seems like when she even mildly went on the offensive, people on both sides (and especially the media) ripped her for it. Remember the "deplorables" things?
For ages, I don't think even Trump's campaign thought he had much of a chance (many sources have said he didn't even want to win). And remember, she did win the popular vote.
I don't think she did nearly as well as she could have, but there's a lot of hyperbole about her that I think is misplaced.
People were going to rip her for whatever she said. That's politics. Welcome to professional politics.
I agree that Trump's campaign seemed surprised to be doing as well as it was, but part of that was the DNC and Hillary pushing all the attention on him because they thought he was a clown making Republicans look bad. If that's not the miscalculation of the century, I don't know what beats it.
It's easy to make her sound like a victim when you ignore the fact that she did everything in her power to rig the DNC primaries in her favor AND propped up Trump's early campaign as much as she could. The situation we find ourselves in is certainly not exclusively her fault but she definitely deserves more of the blame than any of us do. She set the board exactly how she wanted and still couldn't win the game.
A. What candidate wouldn't use whatever was available to them to win the election? She obviously didn't do anything illegal or Trump's DOJ would have nailed her (and they sure tried).
B. Gonna need a source for the Hillary propped up Trump's campaign part.
Illegal and anti-democratic aren't always the same thing. You can certainly be one without the other. Though to be clear there have been allegations of outright illegal activity by the Clinton campaign and the DNC as a whole during the 2016 election, but the specifics are fuzzy in my memory and that's not what you're asking about so I won't attempt to address it further here.
Here's the first article I read through after a quick search to find a source for you. If you don't like the source I'm sure you can use the timeline and references it contains to find something from a source you prefer.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/11/hillary-clinton-2016-donald-trump-214428/
Here's a couple relevant snippets:
So to take [Jeb] Bush down, Clinton’s team drew up a plan to pump Trump up. Shortly after her kickoff, top aides organized a strategy call, whose agenda included a memo to the Democratic National Committee: “This memo is intended to outline the strategy and goals a potential Hillary Clinton presidential campaign would have regarding the 2016 Republican presidential field,” it read. “The variety of candidates is a positive here, and many of the lesser known can serve as a cudgel to move the more established candidates further to the right. In this scenario, we don’t want to marginalize the more extreme candidates, but make them more ‘Pied Piper’ candidates who actually represent the mainstream of the Republican Party,” read the memo.
Eleven days after those comments about McCain, Clinton aides sought to push the plan even further: An agenda item for top aides’ message planning meeting read, “How do we prevent Bush from bettering himself/how do we maximize Trump and others?"
the establishment left
Real interesting way to refer to the center-right.
I wouldn't even call them center right, anyone. They're what the right used to be.
There's nothing left about the DNC establishment. You need to update your terminology to be taken seriously.
I dislike the establishment left,
LOL, the what?
Genuine question, what is fascism?
You might want to look up Umberto Eco's definition and I think it might be called something like "needs served by ur fascism"...
...but basically it's authoritarian indoctrination into the idea that all individuals are subordinate to the state, and in order for them to be seen as having value they must give themselves entirely to the state's goals and ideals to the point of happily, willingly, unquestioningly, and mindlessly giving their lives for/to the state.
It's a kind of religious faith and fervor. It's designed to replace and subordinate all other values and more often than not, places absolute power and faith in a single individual... And there's often an irrational "cult of personality" around that individual. That person can "do no wrong" and is sometimes praised as a god or thought of as divine or having elements usually reserved for religion. They're sometimes cast in the role of a father figure or God Emporer, and are always a "strong man leader". Protection and veneration of them is the highest Aim in fascism (because everyone's brainwashed by propaganda to believe he can do no wrong, and followers are sometimes scared to question or admit otherwise).
Fascism is named after the Roman "fascia" which was a bundle of sticks (sometimes with a long axe handle in the middle), that was used to beat unruly crowds and protestors (this goes along with the "strong man dictator imagery"). The internal fascist perspective is that this represents the strength through binding of strict rules into a community that is stronger than the sum of its parts, so the individuals no longer matter, they must move as the collective community of fascist believers demand.
So it's a sort of radical authoritarian collectivism. It's very much like a cult, but a cult that grips the whole of political society and the masses, it usually involves propaganda, and religious overtones, meaning the people giving up their rights, freedoms, bodies, and lives believe it's in their best interests and may even get a substantial power trip from being the purveyors of popular violence in the name of their political religion. It usually involves political purges, and a complete conversion of society.
Fascism always requires enemies, and victims, people to target, blame, and be violent to. This often starts out as being the political opposition, then might also include demographic or ethnic or religious types, and almost always gay and queer people. Anyone different or who doesn't abide by the group's convictions around uniformity.
In Nazi Germany it was Gays, Jews, Subversives, and Criminals. In PolPot's killing fields it was anyone who didn't look Cambodian enough, or had any health defects, or disagreed or spoke out against the Khmer Rouge. In Hindu systems of Fascism it's often Muslims.
Each culture and nations fascism has different aspects, but they all have key characteristics, which is what Umberto Eco was trying to define.
So that's Fascism, named after some Roman shit, and usually has an angry "leather daddy" whose actually a loser at the top. It's kinda pathetic and usually recruits people who don't have a good sense of themselves and their own free will. People with low self-esteem who are angry and have grievances, who are upset at society or how it's treated them, and who don't question themselves or have a lot of empathy or self awareness of how others might be view things or be effected. Recruits are people who want to feel strong, but can't for whatever reason. The group fascism makes them feel they're being strong, and good, have a place in the world and brotherhood.
The best way to avoid fascism is to have a society based on shared community, transparency, justice, and empathy where everyone gets a say, but certain individualist limits are respected (eg. Self-autonomy, intellectual and political freedoms ect...) - and by making fascist movements and elements illegal or difficult to get away with. Also see Karl Popper's "The Paradox of Tolerance", or Herbert Marcuse's essay on "Repressive Tolerance" for more on this.
Right wingers: YoU cAnT EvEn DeScRiBe FaScIsM. FaScIsM iS jUsT wHaTeVeR yOu DoNt LiKe!
Very very well said.
This is why most fascists are praised as gifted speakers - even Trump
The fuck? I've never heard anyone say that. The guy can't string two sentences together. Gifted? More like special needs.
I don't know why people listen to Trump, but they do, and that means he's good at speaking.
The DNC stole the nomination from Bernie Sanders. Thus losing the democrats the election. And us getting Trump. I was Pro Bernie myself, THeeeen Pro Trump. Because I figured Trump would fuck shit up enough it would get Americans to get off their lard asses and give a fuck. Didn't realize he would try an actual, though pathetic, coup on january 6th.