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On February 12 2017 12:19 Aquanim wrote:Show nested quote +On February 12 2017 12:12 LegalLord wrote:
A short while ago, we predicted that the Republicans were in for a dark period of troubled times.
Then Hillary Clinton came on the scene and reversed the trend with her horrendous candidacy. That's my point though - I don't think that's a fair characterisation. Pretty much every prediction I've seen in modern politics that a party was in for "a dark period of troubled times" has turned out to be complete hogwash inside five years, and generally far less. No matter who they put up I am pretty sure the Democrats were almost certain to lose in either 2016 or at the outside 2020 - the pendulum always swings.
The pendulum doesn't always swing (at least not always predictably), but you're absolutely right that there were a series of structural factors that meant the election was likely to be a close one either way. All of these have been and continue to be dismissed with a wave of the hand by the people whose only interest seems to be to place the responsibility for her loss on HRC way beyond her actual share of the blame, instead of objectively analyzing the result in depth. There was an article referring to some of those "fundamentals" on 538:
Incidentally, Clinton slightly outperformed the “fundamentals” according to most of the political science models, which usually forecast the popular vote rather than the Electoral College. For instance, the economic index included in FiveThirtyEight’s “polls-plus” model implied that Trump would win the popular vote by about 1 percentage point. Instead, Clinton won it by roughly 2 percentage points. That’s not a huge difference, but it’s something to consider before assuming that Clinton must have been an exceptionally flawed candidate.
You can also take a look at this article presenting several models devised by political scientists:
In fact, of the major political science models that try to explain presidential elections, three predicted Trump would win and three others predicted only a very narrow Clinton victory. [...] But the point is that, in five of these models, these fundamental factors all pointed to a very close race that could conceivably go either way (while the other pointed to a Trump landslide). And yet the punditry and elites all assumed — both because of the polls, and simply because the GOP nominee was Donald Trump — that Clinton had nothing to worry about.
If you also take into account other factors (the rising "anti-establishment" sentiment that has also made progress in many European countries, the type of media coverage that characterized the campaign -- false equivalences, the "Clinton rule", etc. --, the role played by the Russian hackers and wikileaks, Comey's letter leading to a last week of intensely negative coverage for Clinton, which may very well have contributed to Trump's last-minute surge, the Sanders campaign's absurdly stupid and delusional decision to keep attacking and harming HRC and the DNC well after he had any chance of mathematically winning thanks to pledged delegates (since they thought Trump had no way of winning), etc.), a more accurate picture of the election result starts to emerge. This is again not to say that the Clinton campaign didn't make mistakes, because it absolutely did and they've been covered extensively in the thread. Yet even the claim that HRC was a bad nominee from the start because of her low favorability rating conveniently leaves out of the picture the fact that her rating changed over time (from being at a stellar high in 2012-2013, to even still in the positives in early 2015, contrary to Biden), for reasons that have to be taken into account in the analysis (if we zoom in on her specifically, we can mention the GOP propaganda on Benghazi and on her e-mails (which would have targeted any other Democratic candidate similarly), the media's fixation on the e-mail (non-)story, Sanders' attacks on her character and integrity, her distrust of the media and poor response to the e-mail story, some of her less popular (sometimes past) positions getting more exposure, and her simply running for office, notably), as many of them would have similarly affected other candidates (including Biden and Sanders) -- not to mention the fact that other candidates would have been vulnerable in other areas where she wasn't (for example her experience, some of her achievements, her name recognition/advantage with certain categories of voters, her knowledge of the issues, her composure during the debates, etc.).
In short, those dismissing the numerous factors, both structural and short-term, that participated in Trump's victory, in favor of placing pretty much all of the blame on HRC herself, do so at the expense of accurate analysis. She obviously shares a significant part of the blame, but the downplaying of those many other factors gives a clearly inaccurate picture of why Trump won.
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Some of the things you mention there (specifically, some of the short-term factors rather than the structural ones) are unique to Clinton (the emails, etc.) - but I think it's especially important to emphasise that each and every candidate for President, in this election or any other, is going to have their own particular short-term vulnerabilities, which you nodded to with
other candidates would have been vulnerable in other areas that she wasn't
Clinton was vulnerable on her history as Secretary of State.
Trump was vulnerable on... a number of issues.
Sanders would have been vulnerable on being a "socialist", and (IIRC) on his economic policies being poorly detailed.
I'm less familiar with the other leading Republican nominees but I'd guess Cruz was vulnerable on his religious views and shutting down the Government, Rubio on being a bit young? idk.
It's certainly possible to make an argument that Clinton's vulnerabilities were worse, but the simple fact that she lost the election does not immediately demonstrate that that statement is true.
I don't think that Clinton's weaknesses would have prevented her from winning an election in which the general political trend favoured her (that is, of course, an unsubstantiable opinion, although the sources you linked do indirectly support it).
On February 12 2017 14:47 kwizach wrote:
In short, those dismissing the numerous factors, both structural and short-term, that participated in Trump's victory, in favor of placing pretty much all of the blame on HRC herself, do so at the expense of accurate analysis. She obviously shares a significant part of the blame, but the downplaying of those many other factors gives a clearly inaccurate picture of why Trump won.
In my opinion this is a fairly accurate summation.
I also agree that saying that "the pendulum always swings" isn't entirely accurate. I would call that statement a reasonable and succinct first-order approximation.
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On February 12 2017 19:37 pmh wrote:https://www.yahoo.com/news/barack-obamas-white-house-photographer-092728130.htmlTrolling the president has become something to be proud of for americans,this is a new development. Trump was the first to troll,trolling president Obama with his birth certificate. Where will this end? Trump,i get the feeling that he is being played by literally everyone. I wonder if he realizes.
I think that Obama did a pretty decent job of ignoring birther trolls and focusing on being president, whereas it seems like multiple times every day we see Trump getting baited by people left and right. How's he going to govern if he has to take breaks to send out angry, irrelevant tweets?
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You need to go back to before the election when you were all smug and making ban bets because you thought she was going to win super easily. Then you need to question how much these structural factors like the pendulum swings and whatever kwiz can throw at us really matter a whole lot.
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Apparently Melissa McCarthy just had a second Sean Spicer SNL skit.
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I fucking hate SNL, and their new skits aren't really helping, though I can appreciate them as a form of resistance. That said, I'm pretty sure smug liberal humor is part of why Democrats lost the election so badly, so let's hope the folks laughing at home do something more with it.
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On February 12 2017 22:20 farvacola wrote:
I fucking hate SNL, and their new skits aren't really helping, though I can appreciate them as a form of resistance. That said, I'm pretty sure smug liberal humor is part of why Democrats lost the election so badly, so let's hope the folks laughing at home do something more with it.
Gotta love NBC. Remember when they pretended like they had some sort of moral or ethical standards?
“At NBC, respect and dignity for all people are cornerstones of our values”. “Due to the recent derogatory statements by Donald Trump regarding immigrants, NBCUniversal is ending its business relationship with Mr. Trump.”
Source
Now they make money covering him on NBC/MSNBC, then they make more when they make fun of him on SNL, meanwhile they cut Trump a check through MGM.
It wouldn't be so bad if they just admitted they'd air puppy decapitations, if it was legal and got ratings.
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On February 12 2017 22:20 farvacola wrote:
I fucking hate SNL, and their new skits aren't really helping, though I can appreciate them as a form of resistance. That said, I'm pretty sure smug liberal humor is part of why Democrats lost the election so badly, so let's hope the folks laughing at home do something more with it.
Though I've personally been growing tired of stuff like Colbert's daily monologue (it gets repetitive when his main subject is Trump for 2 months non-stop), the first SNL Sean Spicer skit was brilliant, and I found this last one was pretty funny as well. I suppose I just want to watch comedians who are a little more clever about harping on the Trump administration.
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On February 12 2017 21:40 Nebuchad wrote:
You need to go back to before the election when you were all smug and making ban bets because you thought she was going to win super easily.
...yeah, I'm pretty sure this doesn't describe me at all.
Then you need to question how much these structural factors like the pendulum swings and whatever kwiz can throw at us really matter a whole lot.
I guess that depends whether you're just coming here to score points, or to learn something.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
Anyone feel somewhat bothered by Trump referring to his other properties as "White House" as here:
I mean, there's probably worse things you can think of that Trump did, but for some reason this one stuck out to me.
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On February 13 2017 00:38 LegalLord wrote:Anyone feel somewhat bothered by Trump referring to his other properties as "White House" as here: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/830558065715998726I mean, there's probably worse things you can think of that Trump did, but for some reason this one stuck out to me.
I mean, it's directly advertising his properties as President, which would normally be considered an ethics violation, but I thought you didn't care about those. Just feel like he's demeaning the office then?
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On February 13 2017 00:38 LegalLord wrote:Anyone feel somewhat bothered by Trump referring to his other properties as "White House" as here: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/830558065715998726I mean, there's probably worse things you can think of that Trump did, but for some reason this one stuck out to me.
Trying to increase the value of his hotel that he still owns and controls by referring to it as a White House. Just another note in the long list of business conflicts.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On February 13 2017 00:46 ChristianS wrote:I mean, it's directly advertising his properties as President, which would normally be considered an ethics violation, but I thought you didn't care about those. Just feel like he's demeaning the office then?
Ethics violations matter - but they're generally somewhere down the list of problems.
Perhaps the problem is that it's not really just advertising - it's putting his properties on the public dime because they necessarily will require the security arrangements necessary for a president. NY complained about that with Trump Tower for example.
Also, using personally owned private property for political visits, I'm not sure what the precedent is there.
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On February 13 2017 00:38 LegalLord wrote:Anyone feel somewhat bothered by Trump referring to his other properties as "White House" as here: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/830558065715998726I mean, there's probably worse things you can think of that Trump did, but for some reason this one stuck out to me.
I suppose its better than the other way around 
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On February 12 2017 13:46 LegalLord wrote:
Even Billy Clinton, with his substantial oratory prowess, couldn't make HRC look like a good candidate when campaigning for her.
With a passably good candidate, the support of both Bill and Obama will be a strong boost to the 2020 runner. Whereas Trump probably has half the Republican leadership hating him.
The thing is, Bill's entire message felt so irrelevant the entire campaign. It was like they had every speech and talking point planned out 20 years ago and they never thought to update it. I would say this quality was seen throughout the campaign in many ways.
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On February 12 2017 23:48 Aquanim wrote:Show nested quote +On February 12 2017 21:40 Nebuchad wrote:
You need to go back to before the election when you were all smug and making ban bets because you thought she was going to win super easily. ...yeah, I'm pretty sure this doesn't describe me at all. Show nested quote +Then you need to question how much these structural factors like the pendulum swings and whatever kwiz can throw at us really matter a whole lot. I guess that depends whether you're just coming here to score points, or to learn something.
So what do you think we should learn?
(In other words, do you not realize that you're on the side of learning nothing from this?)
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On February 13 2017 01:08 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On February 12 2017 13:46 LegalLord wrote:
Even Billy Clinton, with his substantial oratory prowess, couldn't make HRC look like a good candidate when campaigning for her.
With a passably good candidate, the support of both Bill and Obama will be a strong boost to the 2020 runner. Whereas Trump probably has half the Republican leadership hating him. The thing is, Bill's entire message felt so irrelevant the entire campaign. It was like they had every speech and talking point planned out 20 years ago and they never thought to update it. I would say this quality was seen throughout the campaign in many ways.
Bill's message felt irrelevant because it was badly undercut by both Hillary's message and the message coming from Democrats at large. There was no shortage of stories about Bill's frustration over his wife's campaign strategy and messaging.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
Bill was selling a really, really hard sell, and for once he faltered.
To be fair, I probably couldn't sell Hillary either, so I can't blame him.
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On February 13 2017 01:08 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On February 12 2017 13:46 LegalLord wrote:
Even Billy Clinton, with his substantial oratory prowess, couldn't make HRC look like a good candidate when campaigning for her.
With a passably good candidate, the support of both Bill and Obama will be a strong boost to the 2020 runner. Whereas Trump probably has half the Republican leadership hating him. The thing is, Bill's entire message felt so irrelevant the entire campaign. It was like they had every speech and talking point planned out 20 years ago and they never thought to update it. I would say this quality was seen throughout the campaign in many ways.
I don't recall hearing that much from bill. iirc he had a couple gaffes early on this campaign, and they didn't use him too extensively, some, but not that much. To some degree I wonder if hillary wanted to win on her own without relying on her husband too much.
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EPT
