Three major tactical mistakes by the HRC campaign

[Fast Walker 52]

Last edited Tue Nov 22, 2016, 11:09 PM - Edit history (1)

Generally I think she ran a good campaign and I've been avoiding picking on her. But there are some things that could have been done that would have made a huge difference:

1) they way over-estimated how much Republican voters would overlook Trump's flaws-- I think they took for granted that he wouldn't get that many votes

2) they didn't control the media; they reacted too much to Trump, instead of trying to drive the agenda-- things like "America is still great", the alt-right speech, even "Stronger together" was a reaction to his divisiveness

3) they never crafted a SIMPLE economic message

Other mistakes:

4) not having large rallies until the very end

5) not having rallies in key swing states

6) disappearing after election night-- where's the fight for the aftermath, or even making sure the vote is counted properly?

[leftofcool]

1. Still pretending this election outcome had nothing to do with racism I see

[JTFrog]

2. Or sexism. Or Comey. Or Gerrymandering. Or the media. Or Russia.

They were supposed to control the media? Lolz. How were they supposed to do that?

[uponit7771]

28. 1

[still_one]

33. I think we were poised to win until Comey pushed the false narrative, and the media insured that

the BIG LIE, "the email investigation was being reopened", was spewed all over the place and gave massive coverage of every rightwing politician's view

The Sanders' supporters who voted third party, or refused to vote for Hillary was the final blow

In Michigan she lost by .3%. Jill Stein received 1.1% of the vote. Similar things in Wisconsin, and other critical states, and it meant the difference between winning and losing.

[boston bean]

57. And cover it they did. using the word criminal, let is hang for a week, then bring it back up two

days before the vote!

FUCK COMEY.

Took a lot to defeat this woman. Russian hacking and the premier federal law enforcement agency FBI to bring her down and do her in.

DAMN!!!!

[still_one]

65. It sure did Boston. She won the popular vote, and she has more character and integrity

in her little finger than these assholes have in their whole being

[treestar]

63. Exactly, that one is hilarious!

The media wanted its horserace, period. The only way to get coverage would be to fall behind. Even then they spent all their time on the Orange Toxin.

[JudyM]

66. It was tRump she was running against, it shouldn't even even been close.

[JTFrog]

67. Lol, ok. nt

[SickOfTheOnePct]

3. I think the racism issue falls under #1 in the list

The Clinton campaign overlooked how many Republicans would overlook Trump's flaws because they didn't realize the level and depth of racism.

[uponit7771]

29. 1, this is my hopeful take ... that the DNC will realize how many people will tolerate overt racism

... if it advances them

[treestar]

64. True, after President Obama had been elected twice

that might have seemed reasonable. I too did not appreciate just how bad it was.

[Fast Walker 52]

11. I'm not saying that at all... I don't think these were the most important factors in the outcome

Racism was HUGE. Media bias was HUGE. Comey's fuckery was HUGE. Russian fuckery was HUGE.

Just saying these few items were mistakes nonetheless. In a traditonal election year, they would have been important. Not this year.

[Ken Burch]

19. Of course not. Just pointing out that bigotry wasn't the only thing that mattered.

Why the insistence that we put it down to bigotry and Comey and nothing else?

Why does it have to be "either/or"?

[uponit7771]

30. Bigotry isn't in the top 5 though

[Ken Burch]

38. Not even saying THAT.

The problem is, if we assume it's MAINLY about that, we can't ever win another election, because it gives us no way to increase our vote share anywhere.

We can't just make every presidential campaign we ever run in the future exactly like this one.

[True Dough]

52. Exactly, Ken!

Well put.

[Nevernose]

37. Racism & sexism were not tactical mistakes by Hillary

There's a list as long as my arm of influences that Clinton had little to no control over.

[treestar]

62. Or the damn electoral college!

Winning the popular vote makes a lot of these types of comments silly.

Obviously the mistake was not enough time in swing states. But the polling showed she was ahead. PA is especially strange. Were that that many nonvoting racists in the middle? The cities usually overcome that.

[lunamagica]

4. She won

[closeupready]

6. ... popularly, but lost electorally. Like Al Gore.

[Cobalt Violet]

5. her ads were all reactions to trump.

None mentioned raising the minimum wage, reducing the medicare age to 50, debt free tuition. She should've made it loud and clear that she would do these things.

[Wellstone ruled]

7. From feed back that we were getting

via Phone Banking,you have articulated several of key topics not addressed in targeted ads. When the Comey nightmare hit,we lost the high ground that weekend. Headquarters went silent and that cost us the Election. We were warranted about the October Surprise .

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

8. I agree. A lot of the qualities we thought were awful about Trump

were regarded by his supporters as features rather than bugs. They liked his authoritarian, racist, misogynistic, hypernationalist approach. For every woman who was appalled by his pussy-grabbing, who knows how many other people found that unimportant (or even likable - a "guy's guy&quot in contrast with his promises to kick out the Mexicans and the Muslims and bring back manufacturing jobs (which won't happen)? She was preaching to the choir. She should have been out there in those blue-collar areas talking about jobs and other economic issues and there wasn't much of that at all.

Trump won at least in part because he was able to con people. Some people were specifically motivated by racism and other forms of bigotry, to be sure; but a lot were persuaded by his economic "plan" to the point where they didn't care that he was also a bigot and a proto-fascist (which doesn't say much for them, but that's a whole 'nother discussion). I wish Hillary and especially the clueless DNC had been more aware of what the mood really was.

[Fast Walker 52]

12. I think we (and her campaign) did NOT expect the weird appeal Trump had on the GOP

despite an endless series of things that would have destroyed a normal campaign.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

14. But they should have.

Maybe we ordinary folks couldn't see it, but the campaign supposedly had expert pollsters and demographers and such; why weren't they able to see it? We were too quick to dismiss Trump fans as just rubes and fools - and maybe they are, but they voted in droves. Why did the campaign just write them off instead of trying to persuade them that they were, indeed, being conned and that the Democrats had real plans to do them some good? There were certainly some hard-core bigots that probably couldn't be moved, but the campaign really blew it by not spending more time, money and targeted, smart advertising in some of the red states.

[uponit7771]

31. yeap, polling America is dead to me... not even a post mortem of WTF happened other than

... maybe someone in DoggyStyleAGoat county wasn't honest with all 23432 polls

[lovemydog]

22. I agree.

I think the negative advertising just played into paying too much attention to trump as opposed to letting people know how her policies could help people. I know it's impossible to quantify accurately, but I have a feeling it also kept some possible Clinton voters from bothering to vote.

[LenaBaby61]

9. The way I NOW see it ....

Sure there are a few things she might have done differently, but there's really not much she could have done to combat the FBI, the Russians hacking, WikiLeaks stealing info from the DNC and probably forging it, stop the voter suppression that was going on in certain states and on top of that you had a lot of racist components going on there with those who voted IE: People voting for a racist in tRump because there was a black man in the White House 8 years who was de-legitimized his whole presidency. tRump was given a PASS the entire election cycle and he never had to answer to much, yet the MSM gave him $2 Billion in free air time. How could ANYBODY compete with that?

And as for her controlling the media, you had a so-called but non-existent Liberal media who was, without a few exceptions, shilling for tRump. How in the world could she have gotten ANY play in the media when they were all down on their knee pads servicing him? I only watch 2 shows on MSRNCTMZ, but friends who watch all day long said you had most of the hosts up until the evening on there, and especially Andrea Mitchell flat out LYING about Hillary's record and talking non-stop about those emails and never fully focusing on tRump and his wrong doing. Put that all together with the racism, sexism and just plain ignorance on the voters part who just wanted a change and not knowing WHY, and you have the Perfect Storm scenario for what happened to Hillary Clinton.

[uponit7771]

32. THANK YOU ! all the others are peripheral to the FBI, Russians, voter suppression and endless dronin

... about emails

[Madam45for2923]

59. Exactly!

[MADem]

10. No. That's not why she won more votes but didn't achieve a majority in the Electoral College.

That IS what the conservative and right wing outlets are saying, though.

And of course, there's THIS:

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/media-manufactured-hillary-hatred

[Fast Walker 52]

13. just to re-iterate, I don't think those factors I listed were most important in this weird election

but they might have been able to help her win if they pulled them off.

[duffyduff]

15. More mansplaining b.s. nt

[lovemydog]

23. What's your take?

[mcar]

16. All these DU campaign experts

[Yonnie3]

17. Your list is food for thought

Just some of my thoughts. They all seem a bit tied together to me.

For 1 and 2: Almost all Clinton ads were negative, pointing out how bad Trump was. The media reported almost all of Trump's negatives and then to be "fair" rehashed her emails, thereby normalizing his crap. In the rating's war of the "news" channels, I'm not sure what could have been done to control the media.

For 1 and 3: An economic reach out might have been helpful with some of the voters, but the ones who have been suffering economically for the last decade may well have believed that Democrats already had their chance for eight years.

I'm also sure there were plenty of the anti-whatever folks who would ignore his negatives.

[Nay]

69. That's one of my takes on this election--after 8 years of a Democrat as president, not

much had changed for large swathes of people. We can say what we want about Obama keeping the country afloat, but that's about all he did (or maybe all he COULD do, considering Congress). Rightly or wrongly, enough voters in crucial states decided to break the gridlock by -- electing a Republican president. I think they are going to be mightily sorry, but maybe they can go blame it on that one junior Democrat over there in the corner of the House. Or the 'liberal media,' which will continue to fellate Donald Trump in front of their eyes.

I also think the "deplorable" thing was a huge, huge mistake, as was Clinton being reactive to everything Trump said or did. Framing, stupid! Never let the other guy do the framing! But she did.

Her winning the popular vote is testament to the number of people in this country who could see that Trump was a horror show and were willing to do anything to keep him out of office.

We've all discussed what could have been done better, but the worst blow was that snake-in-the-grass Comey, who (I believe) threw the election with that lying shit about emails. A pox on him forever. And why does he still have his job?? Mr. Obama, if you don't punish the shit out of people like Comey, you give other snakes a free pass to fuck you over, too.

Note to future Democratic presidents: DON'T APPOINT REPUBLICANS TO HIGH OFFICE. THERE ARE PLENTY OF GOOD DEMOCRATS WHO CAN DO THE JOB WITHOUT BEING SNAKES IN THE GRASS.

[many a good man]

18. I think she ran a fairly good campaign

I cringed though at "morning in America-" themed DNC. It was a good counterpoint to the Republicans' foreboding "malaise-" filled convention but I thought of all the millions of voters whose lives are still a wreck eight years after the financial crisis. I think it came across as tone deaf and cost her a lot of votes.

[pnwmom]

20. They never crafted a SIMPLE economic message? You mean, they never did the impossible?

There IS no simple solution. We're losing millions of jobs to computerization and robotics. Quick. Solve that problem.

[Fast Walker 52]

21. I hear you... part of it is they were too honest. Trump of course gave dumb, simple, dishonest

solutions. Unfortunately it did seem to work.

Still-- remember from Bill's '92 campaign? It's the economy, stupid.

[yardwork]

26. You're both right. This is the Democrats' challenge.

How do we tell the truth and simultaneously convey a sound bite solution?

Ironically, Hillary - demonized as a liar - was scrupulously honest. She didn't promise impossible things.

Bernie oversimplified and exaggerated how easy it would be, too. It was what irritated me about him.

[Fast Walker 52]

35. yes, exactly. It's an ironic tragedy that Hillary actually was the most honest of all of them

but got pegged as being untrustworthy. Not unlike what happened with Al Gore.

[yardwork]

39. And John Kerry.

[pnwmom]

34. But Bill's election was light years away from now. And she wasn't running against Obama,

like Bill was running against Reagan.

[lovemydog]

24. I've been thinking about that too.

It seems a lot of people who voted for trump just wanted to hear everything will get better and we'll get all those jobs back. They aren't coming back. That's a very difficult message to sell if you want to get elected to the presidency. Though in some ways I think Sanders sold it better, in terms of really appearing laser focused on it. I know it's all speculation now, like trying to analyze why we lost when there could be tons of reasons. I don't blame it all on one thing. It's still very new & very strange to me. I think I'm going through the stages of grief & am still stuck between denial & bargaining.

[Fast Walker 52]

36. Yes, I know what you mean

[LisaL]

42. Message doesn't actually have to be the truth.

[pnwmom]

43. Yup. Trump has proven you can lie through your teeth about everything

and still win the Electoral college vote.

So the question is must we descend to his level?

[LisaL]

46. Do we want to win elections or not?

[Scruffy1]

58. You are certainly correct.

His whole campaign was an atavistic endeavor to go back to the old days before automation replaced millions of jobs. The labor needed to produce everything has been steadily decreasing for a long long time. Besides which, once you have an automated process that is well controlled it makes no difference where you put it. One company I worked for manufactured the first year of new product in the USA and moved it to China after the bugs were worked out. The jobs are never coming back. But, I think the big mistake was getting into a wrestling match with a pig. Trump managed to grab headlines everyday and manipulate the media to his will. This was a tactic to screen and obfuscate any positive message from the opposition. A lot of voters don't believe the Democratic Party will treat them any better so they might as well vote their prejudices. I like Hillary, but I just don't think she's that great at the art of selling. Some have it and some don't. You can blame racism, sexism, and the media but in the end , it's the candidate who has to close the deal in spite of the obstacles. Blaming won't fix this. We need to get organized for 2018.

[yardwork]

25. I think the lies on social media had a much greater impact than we realized.

We now know a little more about what many of us suspected during the campaign. Instead of campaigning, Trump used an army of people writing false stories with catchy headlines that flooded social media.

Millions of people were fooled by fake news stories and believed incredible lies about Hillary. I think this played a huge role in the Midwest, where a lot of middle-aged white people - especially women - spend a lot of time on Facebook. I believe that this demographic was particularly susceptible to being fooled in this way.

Months ago we read that Trump's campaign invested a few million dollars in experts who knew how to target specific consumers and appeal to exactly what they want. This is the Facebook algorithm.

[BeyondGeography]

27. Mistakes were half of it

The rest was a lot of people simply don't like her, wanted a change and Trump was seen as a preferable alternative. I forget the exact numbers, but 57 percent said she was ready to be President and Trump was in the 30s. A lot of voters acknowledged her qualifications and looked past that to their desire for change. We ran the wrong candidate for the moment (Warren was the best option, IMO) and we still almost got away with it if not for her complacency and the ineptitude of her team.

[pnwmom]

44. Warren wasn't the best option

because she was an unwilling option. She didn't even try.

[athena]

47. And that's precisely why she's so popular among those who hate Hillary.

A woman with zero ambition is extremely likable. Warren is not without ambition, but since she chose not to run for the presidency, her level of ambition this year was negligible compared to Hillary's. We can't have a woman with ambition; it's too scary!

[pnwmom]

48. Exactly. n/t

[BeyondGeography]

54. She didn't try because Hillary was going to beat her

for the same reason she beat Bernie and was going to beat everyone else; she had the black vote pretty much locked up. Her lifetime of service to social causes and the grace that she showed after the 2008 primary earned their votes and no one was going to make much of a dent in that. Warren wasn't willing to pay the social costs of throwing punches at the woman who was going to break the glass ceiling and beat her anyway. Bernie only jumped in because she took a pass.

But as a result of our entire party tippy-toeing around Hillary, we ended up with a frontrunner who is a poor campaigner with historically high negatives and a self-described socialist who honeymooned in the Soviet Union (Trump would have had an absolute field day with him). We lost states we hadn't lost since 1984 and to an absolute train wreck at that.

Warren has more credibility than Sanders on economics (she's far more knowledgeable) without the commie baggage. She speaks directly and with urgency to people who know they're getting screwed and would have not been seen as a 3rd termer, which never works. I think she was the right candidate for the moment, but we'll never know.

These statements that Warren lacked ambition are laughable. Does Joe Biden lack ambition, too? Hillary had a hammer-lock on the nomination, which wasn't healthy in retrospect because she still couldn't get key Democratic constituencies to vote for her in sufficient numbers when it really mattered. I hope the party learns something from this, but, then again, you won't see an ex-First Family like the Clintons again for a very long time.

[pnwmom]

56. And yet this "poor campaigner" somehow managed to have the "black vote pretty much locked up."

So all that networking she did for decades doesn't count as campaigning? I say it does.

And this "poor campaigner" has ended up with at least 2 million more votes than DT, despite the highly partisan nature of our recent elections, the purging of millions of voters from the rolls, and the last minute interference of James Comey with his letter bombs.

Joe Biden has entered primaries before. Warren has not. And she's never shown any indication that she wanted to -- which makes her so much more attractive because if there's anything a lot of people don't want to see, it's a woman with too much ambition.

[NWCorona]

40. 1. Podesta's lack of taking internet security serious. 2. The campaign not taking Bill's advice

[Ace Rothstein]

41. Hillary also took way too much time off.

She was off the trail for half of August and took nearly a week off before each of the debates. Why was so much time necessary to prepare for debates in which very little policy was discussed?

[athena]

45. She did really well in the debates.

If she had made the tiniest mistake, had the slightest roll of the eyes, the media would have ensured that it was all over for her. She did win millions more votes than Trump, so I think it's misguided to criticize her every move. For all we know, the election may have been hacked.

[Ace Rothstein]

50. She was good in the debates.

My issue is that there was very little policy discussed. She didn't need 5 days to prepare for what the debates ended up being because of this.

[SMC22307]

49. 1) Bernie warned about focusing so much on personality issues.

If people have given up looking for work or are working low-wage McJobs, can't afford to send their kids to college, are getting creamed by healthcare costs, and plan to work 'til death, they're not gonna care about Trump's foul mouth.

[Fast Walker 52]

55. true... but it was more than simply a foul mouth

his whole temperament was gross and off-putting, not to mention the sexual assault stuff.

[SMC22307]

68. I agree, but if there are voters who are being crushed economically...

and plan to work 'til death, Trump being gross and off-putting doesn't matter. They need relief.

As far as the "sexual assault stuff," some women have come forward saying he groped them, etc., others are saying he never touched them or offended them in any way. Everyone is pushing an agenda. Voters may choose to consider all of the allegations, or focus on bread-and-butter issues. Bread and butter won this election.

[RandySF]

51. Regarding Number One

My jaw hit the floor for two as I listened to Republicans formulate justifications for voting for Trump. And they all boil down to "He's dangerous but I don't think he'll do everything he says". That sounds more like an abused spouse than a voter.

[Fast Walker 52]

53. yes, the GOP has once again proved themselves to be the most shameless motherfuckers on

the planet.

[Nay]

71. You know what's really horrible? All my life I have watched the shameless

motherfuckers grab everything and shove it into their mouths. In business, in families, in workplaces, in government. This is the fatal flaw of the human race, and will be our undoing. I'm glad I'm old. We had a small grace period when we could have taken the high road and made this world a truly beautiful place for everyone, but no, we decided to be greedy.

A big FUCK YOU to all the useless grabbers, users, abusers, and assholes of the world.

[Fast Walker 52]

72. yep... it's damned depressing

and then when people do get angry and fight back, they pick a ginat selfish asshole like Trump?

[Cosmocat]

60. She ran a very good campaign overall - her only "tactical mistake"

in retrospect was not spending enough time in Wisky and Michigan, but they spent a SHITLOAD of time in PA and lost it, so it might not have made a difference.

People still don't get what this race was - it was 60 million people giving the middle finger to the the other 60 million people.

VERY few people who voted for Trump did not now what kind of a POS he is.

There is nothing Hillary could have done to somehow cut through all of that.

[treestar]

61. I admit I thought after that tape women would bury him

in a landslide. Instead he got 53% of white women! Most white women are smugly satisfied with what they can get under a patriarchy. How could any female being vote for him after hearing that? They must think they are exceptions and that men talk like that about other women, but not "me."

[Fast Walker 52]

73. yes, there was some real insanity going on in this election

I don't know how else to say it, but serious sad abused behavior from women who voted for Trump.

It's like the women who always fall for the dangerous kind of guy, even after they get hurt badly.

[JTFrog]

70. Disappearing after election night? After Trump's "lock her up"....

After the BoBer's and the ugliest election I've ever witnessed, that question has to be asked?

I applaud her for showing up to accept honors for her tireless work to improve the lives of children.

I can guarantee that she and Bill aren't just sitting around somewhere saying "fuck it". But I kind of wouldn't blame them if they did.