Moderators: LyricalRico, nate33, montestewart
closg00 wrote:Trump only won cause people loathed HRC even more, Bernie would have won the states that Trump
Barely won.
closg00 wrote:Trump only won cause people loathed HRC even more, Bernie would have won the states that Trump
Barely won.
Kanyewest wrote:closg00 wrote:Trump only won cause people loathed HRC even more, Bernie would have won the states that Trump
Barely won.
Yes, people irrationality hated Hilary Clinton. All the head to head polls indicated that Bernie would have done better prior to the election. Bernie wouldn't have simply had to not lose any democratic voters (and may have gained some independents) and he would also have won over the Jill Stein supporters. I think the big factor was that Hillary could have easily won had she not ignored campaigning in swing states like Michigan (her campaign manager ignored the advice of her husband) and nominated a different VP than Kaine.
Sure things could have changed, they could have called Bernie a socialist although they called Hillary a rapist enabler, someone who was racist due to the crime bill, Benghazi. It is simply that Hillary was unfortunately viewed as one of the most unfavorable candidates in presidential history (I believe the only who was more unfavorable was Donald Trump). And unfortunately, Hillary didn't draw many volunteers to her campaign like Obama, maybe due to complacency on the American people.
Kanyewest wrote:Sure things could have changed, they could have called Bernie a socialist although they called Hillary a rapist enabler, someone who was racist due to the crime bill, Benghazi. It is simply that Hillary was unfortunately viewed as one of the most unfavorable candidates in presidential history (I believe the only who was more unfavorable was Donald Trump). And unfortunately, Hillary didn't draw many volunteers to her campaign like Obama, maybe due to complacency on the American people.
dckingsfan wrote:Kanyewest wrote:closg00 wrote:Trump only won cause people loathed HRC even more, Bernie would have won the states that Trump
Barely won.
Yes, people irrationality hated Hilary Clinton. All the head to head polls indicated that Bernie would have done better prior to the election. Bernie wouldn't have simply had to not lose any democratic voters (and may have gained some independents) and he would also have won over the Jill Stein supporters. I think the big factor was that Hillary could have easily won had she not ignored campaigning in swing states like Michigan (her campaign manager ignored the advice of her husband) and nominated a different VP than Kaine.
Sure things could have changed, they could have called Bernie a socialist although they called Hillary a rapist enabler, someone who was racist due to the crime bill, Benghazi. It is simply that Hillary was unfortunately viewed as one of the most unfavorable candidates in presidential history (I believe the only who was more unfavorable was Donald Trump). And unfortunately, Hillary didn't draw many volunteers to her campaign like Obama, maybe due to complacency on the American people.
I think we can agree that Hillary garnered many more votes that Trump.
I think we can agree that Hillary's campaign ignored strategic states - the campaign was complacent.
I think we can agree that was the first election altered by social media and false information.
I think we can agree that Bernie would have needed to beat Hillary in the Democratic primaries to become the candidate - and he wasn't able to do that. I think we can see that Bernie isn't all that either - he is currently 3rd and sinking. He was always only popular with his following.
I_Like_Dirt wrote:Kanyewest wrote:Sure things could have changed, they could have called Bernie a socialist although they called Hillary a rapist enabler, someone who was racist due to the crime bill, Benghazi. It is simply that Hillary was unfortunately viewed as one of the most unfavorable candidates in presidential history (I believe the only who was more unfavorable was Donald Trump). And unfortunately, Hillary didn't draw many volunteers to her campaign like Obama, maybe due to complacency on the American people.
It's easy to create a narrative after the fact without being able to test it. Bernie wasn't popular enough to win the nomination last time and he isn't looking popular enough to win it this time. To make the leap to the point where, if he did get the nomination, he'd win, is a pretty significant logical stretch. It's also easy to say Hillary was unpopular. She was plenty popular and drove lots of votes. She wasn't Obama popular but neither was Bernie.
And yes, there would be stuff to say about Bernie. It doesn't matter what it is or if it's true, people who are looking for a reason not to vote Democrat are going to believe it, at least in part. There will be something on any candidate the Democrats choose to run. There was stuff about Obama - the birther nonsense, etc. That much is absolutely a given. Piling on Hillary is missing the point, really. Expecting Obama levels of popularity is basically like expecting a silver-tongued savior to come along and save everyone rather than holding the people responsible for their own actions.
Responsibility is such a lost concept at this point - personal, corporate, whatever. We love rights but we've basically done everything we can to encourage avoiding responsibilities. Some of it is probably a necessary evil but it doesn't hurt to at least consider the notion and ramifications. Take the justice system, for example. By design the idea is that there are no responsibilities unless your guilt can be proven. And there might be responsibilities even if you're innocent because you can't afford a good lawyer and wind up taking a plea deal to avoid being convicted, or you pay through the nose for a good lawyer which hurts financially. I don't have answers for improving on it so this isn't a suggestion for dramatic change - just more to present the idea that we need to consider these things and start speaking in responsibilities because the lack of such talk is basically doing away with accountability anywhere.
I_Like_Dirt wrote:Kanyewest wrote:Sure things could have changed, they could have called Bernie a socialist although they called Hillary a rapist enabler, someone who was racist due to the crime bill, Benghazi. It is simply that Hillary was unfortunately viewed as one of the most unfavorable candidates in presidential history (I believe the only who was more unfavorable was Donald Trump). And unfortunately, Hillary didn't draw many volunteers to her campaign like Obama, maybe due to complacency on the American people.
It's easy to create a narrative after the fact without being able to test it. Bernie wasn't popular enough to win the nomination last time and he isn't looking popular enough to win it this time. To make the leap to the point where, if he did get the nomination, he'd win, is a pretty significant logical stretch. It's also easy to say Hillary was unpopular. She was plenty popular and drove lots of votes. She wasn't Obama popular but neither was Bernie.
And yes, there would be stuff to say about Bernie. It doesn't matter what it is or if it's true, people who are looking for a reason not to vote Democrat are going to believe it, at least in part. There will be something on any candidate the Democrats choose to run. There was stuff about Obama - the birther nonsense, etc. That much is absolutely a given. Piling on Hillary is missing the point, really. Expecting Obama levels of popularity is basically like expecting a silver-tongued savior to come along and save everyone rather than holding the people responsible for their own actions.
Responsibility is such a lost concept at this point - personal, corporate, whatever. We love rights but we've basically done everything we can to encourage avoiding responsibilities. Some of it is probably a necessary evil but it doesn't hurt to at least consider the notion and ramifications. Take the justice system, for example. By design the idea is that there are no responsibilities unless your guilt can be proven. And there might be responsibilities even if you're innocent because you can't afford a good lawyer and wind up taking a plea deal to avoid being convicted, or you pay through the nose for a good lawyer which hurts financially. I don't have answers for improving on it so this isn't a suggestion for dramatic change - just more to present the idea that we need to consider these things and start speaking in responsibilities because the lack of such talk is basically doing away with accountability anywhere.
The Republicans had major opposition research ready to launch on Bernie Sanders that would have made his numbers drop quickly significantly in the polls. But Bernie was never attacked by Hillary’s team, nor by the GOP. Ask yourself why and the reason is obvious. The GOP wanted to run against Bernie. They knew they had far more volatile stuff to dump on him that the whimpering “emails, emails, emails” chant that had lost all its pizazz. Their strategy was to leave Bernie alone because the better Bernie looked, the worse Hillary looked. Newsweek’s Kurt Eichenwald laid out some of that oppo research and this is what he found:
Here are a few tastes of what was in store for Sanders, straight out of the Republican playbook: He thinks rape is A-OK. In 1972, when he was 31, Sanders wrote a fictitious essay in which he described a woman enjoying being raped by three men. Yes, there is an explanation for it — a long, complicated one, just like the one that would make clear why the Clinton emails story was nonsense. And we all know how well that worked out.
Then there’s the fact that Sanders was on unemployment until his mid-30s, and that he stole electricity from a neighbor after failing to pay his bills, and that he co-sponsored a bill to ship Vermont’s nuclear waste to a poor Hispanic community in Texas, where it could be dumped. You can just see the words “environmental racist” on Republican billboards. And if you can’t, I already did. They were in the Republican opposition research book as a proposal on how to frame the nuclear waste issue.
Also on the list: Sanders violated campaign finance laws, criticized Clinton for supporting the 1994 crime bill that he voted for, and he voted against the Amber Alert system. His pitch for universal health care would have been used against him too, since it was tried in his home state of Vermont and collapsed due to excessive costs. Worst of all, the Republicans also had video of Sanders at a 1985 rally thrown by the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua where half a million people chanted, “Here, there, everywhere/the Yankee will die,’’ while President Daniel Ortega condemned “state terrorism” by America. Sanders said, on camera, supporting the Sandinistas was “patriotic.”
The Republicans had at least four other damning Sanders videos (I don’t know what they showed), and the opposition research folder was almost 2-feet thick. (The section calling him a communist with connections to Castro alone would have cost him Florida.) In other words, the belief that Sanders would have walked into the White House based on polls taken before anyone reallyattacked him is a delusion built on a scaffolding of political ignorance.
Zonkerbl wrote:Hillary Clinton was more unpopular than Mike Dukakis? News to me.
I_Like_Dirt wrote:So the entire problem is Hillary and her unpopularity? I guess we agree to disagree there. Trump was even less popular. He won.
Kanyewest wrote:I think the difference of course is that Trump supporters love Trump. Not as many Hillary supporters love Hillary. Especially among young people. Clinton's especially on social media was bad, worse than Trump/Russia anyways.
EDIT: Whoops meant to say that HRC was one of the most unpopular candidates of all time, my bad
dckingsfan wrote:I think we can agree that Bernie would have needed to beat Hillary in the Democratic primaries to become the candidate - and he wasn't able to do that. I think we can see that Bernie isn't all that either - he is currently 3rd and sinking. He was always only popular with his following.
Ruzious wrote:Honestly, that by itself should be enough to impeach him, but there's probably a thousand other things that he's done that's ahead of it. It goes against the foreign emoluments clause in The Constitution. The level of arrogance he has is infinite.
I_Like_Dirt wrote:Kanyewest wrote:I think the difference of course is that Trump supporters love Trump. Not as many Hillary supporters love Hillary. Especially among young people. Clinton's especially on social media was bad, worse than Trump/Russia anyways.
EDIT: Whoops meant to say that HRC was one of the most unpopular candidates of all time, my bad
That's not the difference. There are plenty of Hillary supporters that love Hillary, though many of them are quiet about it for the flak they would otherwise take now. Hillary wasn't actually unpopular until things got underway and the mud started flying. A fair few Democrats were shockingly easily convinced, too, quickly changing their position from Hillary being a decent candidate to being an awful one after a bunch of fabricated hit pieces. People believed Hillary's health was potentially a weakness but not Bernie's and who's the heart attack? Who's the one who's 7 years older? People believed all sorts of stuff that made no sense and then, when they were surprised Hillary lost, they decided she was just a bad/unpopular candidate.
Beyond that, take a look at where Bernie's supporters are right now. They were targeted by misinformation the same way Trump supporters were. There's a huge divide that would have been absolutely easy to prey upon there.