Did Hillary Clinton lose because she was forced too far to the Left?

[Ken Burch]

84. 50% of the reason for the loss was the voter suppresion/Comey/Russian factor

(and all of us are agreed on the need to fight voter suppression on all levels).

The OTHER 50% was our fall campaign's refusal to actively reach out to the new, young voters who had backed the runner-up in the primary...an outreach effort that would not have required any significant change in the platform(mainly, HRC could have made a "Humphrey Salt Lake City speech" making it clear that, despite the ambiguity in the trade platform, TPP would actually be a dead letter if she was elected) and without betraying anyone in the base.

All we'd have had to do was run ads in states where the runner up had done well praising young activists for changing the platform for the better, reminding them that their work had made a difference, and making it clear that this party would be a place where they could freely work for the things they wanted).

We had a platform that, had we done that, had we emphasized what was actually IN the platform in the campaign ads, could have won over a lot of the people who stayed home or voted minor party.

Instead of trying to use the good things in that platform to make that kind of a positive appeal, we went back to the usual, always-failed approach of screaming about how terrible the other nominee was and of demanding the votes of these people. We all knew doing that didn't ever work, we already knew all that approach could do was alienate those people and make the dig in on NOT working with us, so why did we stay with what we knew would fail?

All we needed to do was to run on the merits of our ideas and point out how what we proposed would be better for the country.

If we do that NEXT time, we will win.