General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Democrats say they now know exactly why Clinton lost [View all]Tom Rinaldo
(22,911 posts)There is always a stew of reasons why one person wins and another loses, especially when looking at an at least somewhat close election, with tens of millions or actual and potential voters.
The first job of Democrats after losing an election we should have won is to identify what changes we could have made regarding that election that might have led to better results.
The second job is to identify what contributing factors were beyond our direct control but which we can better inoculate against their reoccurring in a toxic way in future election.
The third job is to uncover and work to change any flaws or bugs in the election system, intentional or not, that worked to skew the results against us.
All of that matters because winning really matters because losing threatens millions of lives.
It is impossible to say that Hillary lost solely because of A B or C. or any one subset of any of those. It is more possible to identify issues that may have cost us a number of votes equal to or greater than the margin of victory/loss. They can't be looked at in a vacuum however, especially when resources are somewhat finite. More energy put into turning out base voters will likely turn our more base voters, but could also reduce the amount of energy devoted toward winning over swing voters thus losing us some swing voters; and vice versa.
There are usually some unforeseen (by one side anyway) bomb shells during an election cycle that help swing an election. There is often also dirty politics. Dirty politics of any sort will cost at least one side votes, but those votes lost can often be offset by a skillful campaign playing its cards well.
Personally I believe that had any one of these three factors not occurred Hilary Clinton would be President today. Had Republicans not systematically cultivated voter suppression techniques for decades Trump would have lost. Had Comey not intervened in the last two weeks of the election with a "reopened" FBI investigation Trump would have lost. Had the Russians not used cyber warfare in collusion with Trump, he would have lost as well.
Even so it was a close election. So it can equally be argued that had the devastating bombshell Access America tape about Trump's pussy grabbing not emerged in the last month of the election, that Trump might still have won even if Comey didn't "reopen the FBI investigation" in the final weeks. Had Hillary won Republicans might be arguing today that Trump wouldn't have lost if he hadn't directly insulted Ted Cruz's wife and insinuated that his father was involved in the assassination of JFK, thus effectively sidelining a Republican with strong conservative support from his side during the heat of the campaign.
Democrats knowingly nominated a candidate who had been battered, rightly or wrongly, by a prolonged FBI investigation into her. She had, rightly or wrongly, historically low public approval numbers for a Democratic candidate for President. Granted, she most likely would have made an over all excellent president, light years better than Trump. In hindsight she still might have won the White House, even with the Russians, even with the FBI, even with voter suppression, even with racism and misogyny, had she, for one thing, more aggressively campaigned in the rust belt. America twice elected an unseasoned black politician with a Muslim sounding name, against two highly seasoned Republican opponents in years, unlike 2016, when the Republican Party wasn't openly at war with itself throughout most of it. We lost the votes of too many people who helped us win in 2008 and 2012. That's not a controversial statement, it is simply a fact. "Too many" because that shift alone was enough to cost us an election we could not afford to lose. It is just one of many pieces of the puzzle, but each and every one of them should be examined. And that, it seems to me, was the over all purpose of this report that the Democratic Party itself commissioned.