2016 elections - because it's never too early

[The Minsky Moment]

\Probably smart because if Trump maintains the rigged narrative his opponents will now for some reason do a 180 on the question.

Except it looks like they were already committed on the recount.  Now Trump gives them perfect cover - "see even Trump thinks there were irregularities", etc.

[The Minsky Moment]

I also think I understand the psychology behind the completely ridiculous and pointless debate about popular vote.

"Oh, Clinton won the popular vote so it's the electoral college system that is to blame, not a shit establishment candidate. No need to change anything. Carry on."

There isn't a debate about the popular vote except in the mind of DJ Trump: Clinton got more votes.
The significance of the popular vote is that it is a fact and facts are useful for people who want to draw informed inferences.

For example, the dominant narrative of the 2016 presidential election, is , to paraphrase your words, the Democrats lost because they ran "a shit establishment candidate."

If that were true, we would expect to see - for example - that HRC ran behind other Democrats in the House.  In fact, the opposite is true.  We know that because we have facts like popular vote totals.  It turns out the 3 million more people voted for Republicans in House elections than Democrats.  Which means around 5 million people may have voted Republican in House elections while voting Clinton for President.

There could be a lot of explanations why that is so: Republicans had more incumbents running, maybe the Democrats ran a lot of crappy candidates in uncompetitive districts, maybe Trump was a less desirable candidate than a typical House Republican.  But still it is a very big fact that needs to be explained.  Because one obvious explanation is that Clinton was actually a pretty decent candidate but lost because the country turned against the Democrats as a whole in this election cycle.

No matter where you come out though, its useful to do with the facts as opposed to pre-determined assumptions.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Not looking at popular vote (because it doesn't decide who is President), it's undeniable that Hillary and her campaign made some mistakes. I also think it's likely that fundamental weaknesses of her as a candidate really hurt her in the actual voting. So I can't really say that it's untrue that "Democrats ran a shit establishment candidate."

I think they actually did just that thing. But I'm not convinced say, Bernie Sanders would've won. In a few of the states we actually had Senate candidates running with an anti-establishment message economically (like Ted Strickland in Ohio, Russ Feingold in Wisconsin) and those guys lost, and I believe they lost worse than Hillary did. Both were also previous office holders with various levels of political baggage, and in Strickland's case he was 75 years old and accused of running a very poor campaign on top of a lot of other problems (like being the Ohio Governor who oversaw the Great Recession, which he obviously didn't cause, but which isn't a mark of pride nor an obvious person you'd want running for Senate in an important Senate election year.)

In such a close electoral college race, I question the need to burn down the Democratic party from top to bottom, but a wider perspective would show that the EC is actually the place the Democrats did best in 2016. They did worse in Senate races, worse in House races, worse in state legislatures and worse in governor's mansions. All of these lower level races are both important for the long term health of the party politically, in building local support for Democratic policies, control of districting in 2020--but also because a lot of real honest to god governing happens at the State level and the Democrats are nearing a point where they're shut out of that level of government entirely. I think you could easily have ran an establishment drone like Tim Kaine against Trump and without say a 65% unfavorable rating like Clinton had he probably wins, even running the same exact campaign Hillary did. So you could just repeat what you're doing now and possibly win in 4/8 years (4 years is hard--incumbent Presidents who are doing a good job and have a good economy are very difficult to unseat, and Trump's policies which will likely be disastrous long term could legitimately cause enough short-term stimulus that we're in a good place economically in 4 years.) But unless you just want to keep repeating the Obama Presidency (rule by EO, lack of any ability to pass legislation and etc) the Dems do need to figure out how to be competitive nationally and not just in coastal/high density urban areas.

We have a system that requires you to be competitive across a large swathe of the country ,and the Democrats simply are not. Whining for a different system, I predict, will achieve nothing, regardless of the philosophical justness or rightness of your argument.

For Hillary herself, I think she was undone because she basically thought she was winning. She made the campaign about Don's unfavorables early, and largely never changed that messaging because the polls never suggested she needed to. She didn't do much at all to help her own favorability other than say "I'm not Trump, and Trump is crazy." I think what ended up happening is the deep unfavorability of both candidates did leave some people sitting at home or voting third party (Romney got a large % of the popular vote in his 2012 loss than Trump did in his win), but I think a lot of the people who actually decided this election viewed both Trump and Clinton as deeply unfavorable, so the message that "I'm not Trump" wasn't enough to sway them, the message that "I can fix your economy, and it's the fault of Mexicans and welfare programs for blacks that has us fucked up" appealed to these people. I think obviously there's a tint of racial animus to such voters to  begin with, but people aren't that simple, a lot of these voters also voted for Obama. Trump appealed to their baser instincts and Hillary did very little to counter him on policy in terms of messaging.

If you look at Obama 2012 his strategy from early on was to paint Mitt as an out of touch elitist, and I think the blue collar whites that voted for him bought into that. They probably disagreed with a lot of Obama's policies even then, and some of them probably weren't "thrilled" with the melanin in his skin, but they were willing to vote for a guy who seemed like he at least cared about the little guy versus a guy who was caught on tape bashing 47% of the American electorate for being tax leaches (when he himself paid 14% income tax on tens of millions in income.) If anything Trump is an order of magnitude more 1% than Romney, and probably was vulnerable to a similar strategy, but Hillary instead mostly focused on Trump's penchant for saying/doing mean things.

Hillary also just employed poor strategy. Like any money spent in Arizona was a waste and unnecessary, she finished the campaign with money to spend, and put very little into Wisconsin, never visited the state, and only started fighting in Michigan at the very end. She continued to invest money in to Iowa even after it was clear she was down 10% there, which is also questionable. Several people from the Obama campaigns (including lightly/veiled Obama himself) have said Hillary just did way less outreach and way less work than Obama did. Obama was way more active in visiting the states he was fighting for, maybe the reality is at 69 Hillary just didn't have the gas Obama did in 2012. But I think it's also possible she felt she was just going to get most of Obama's voters anyway, and she didn't need to fight for fringe voters like Democratic evangelicals. Obama's evangelical outreach director noted that Hillary basically didn't do anything to try and reach these voters. Her logic was probably that she was going to at best get 20% of them anyway, but Obama I think looked at it more like "Romney expects to get 80% of these people, if I can push that down to 77%, that could be meaningful in key states." Hillary basically is like a college football coach that didn't leave it out on the field, she didn't use all her plays, she didn't get aggressive with the substitutions or etc, and however else you want to delve into that metaphor. Obama ran a much more complete campaign in which he felt like attacking Mitt from every flank was worth it, and he had the money to do so (and so did Hillary), Hillary largely chose not to contest large swathes of the electorate.

I think Obama actually is a counter example to some of the screechers on the left who are saying "So what, now we need to kowtow more to WHITE MEN?" The answer is you don't have to do all or nothing, go after all the votes, and weight your energies based on the importance of a given state and the demographics of that state. For winning state and local elections, I think the Democrats need to find a way to let conservative democrats thrive/run where they need to run. These guys (conservative Democrats) were a force in politics literally for 40 years after the "Southern Strategy" under Nixon (until 2010), a lot of people argue these guys were always on the way out because of the end of segregation, but I don't think that had a 40 year trailing effect. I think the reality is conservative Democrats were still viable in a lot of the country until about 7-8 years ago, and it's largely due to messaging and strategic missteps that aside from a few people like Joe Manchin they're all but extinct now.

Just as an example of how stupid the Dems are, you had Zephyr Teachout running in the NY 18th, while this district isn't a cookie-cutter red district (it went for Obama in the Presidential elections) it's mostly been a right-leaning district at the congressional level for awhile (it's hard to necessarily trace because it's a district with newish borders somewhat upstate, the 18th used to be a Manhattan district before 1980), but it's got a lot more in common with say, a suburban district in Pennsylvania than say, a district in Manhattan or San Francisco, and Teachout is an extremely far left liberal. Progressive were creaming in their pants about her winning the nomination, and she got crushed by 10% in the general, Democrats need to do more to promote regionally appropriate candidates, and avoid nonsense like that, going forward.

[CountDeMoney]

Nice wall of text, but it doesn't absolve the electorate's collective responsibility in failing to keep Trump out of the White House.

[The Minsky Moment]

Just as an example of how stupid the Dems are, you had Zephyr Teachout running in the NY 18th, while this district isn't a cookie-cutter red district (it went for Obama in the Presidential elections) it's mostly been a right-leaning district at the congressional level for awhile (it's hard to necessarily trace because it's a district with newish borders somewhat upstate, the 18th used to be a Manhattan district before 1980), but it's got a lot more in common with say, a suburban district in Pennsylvania than say, a district in Manhattan or San Francisco, and Teachout is an extremely far left liberal. Progressive were creaming in their pants about her winning the nomination, and she got crushed by 10% in the general, Democrats need to do more to promote regionally appropriate candidates, and avoid nonsense like that, going forward.

The guy that ran in 2012 was more moderate with a prosecutorial background but lost against an incumbent.  He might have been a better choice this time around but c'est la vie. 

[OttoVonBismarck]

Nice wall of text, but it doesn't absolve the electorate's collective responsibility in failing to keep Trump out of the White House.

Right, let's cry about the dumb dumb voters some more, I bet that'll win you 2020.

[CountDeMoney]

Nice wall of text, but it doesn't absolve the electorate's collective responsibility in failing to keep Trump out of the White House.

Right, let's cry about the dumb dumb voters some more, I bet that'll win you 2020.

The first party to 1950 already won.

[Valmy]

Nice wall of text, but it doesn't absolve the electorate's collective responsibility in failing to keep Trump out of the White House.

Right, let's cry about the dumb dumb voters some more, I bet that'll win you 2020.

What will help them win in 2020 is go all in on attacking millionaires and billionaires. Because the voters are dumb.

[Razgovory]

Nice wall of text, but it doesn't absolve the electorate's collective responsibility in failing to keep Trump out of the White House.

Right, let's cry about the dumb dumb voters some more, I bet that'll win you 2020.

Where do we get doing what idiots want?

[Eddie Teach]

It's not a troll;  it's been an InfoWars conspiracy piece for quite some time.  He honestly believes this stuff.

I like Paul Begala's theory- this was a ploy to wrest the media coverage away from the massive conflicts of interest due to Trump's business empire.

[The Minsky Moment]

I like Paul Begala's theory- this was a ploy to wrest the media coverage away from the massive conflicts of interest due to Trump's business empire.

That story isn't going away though, it'll come back again and again.
That's the problem with draining swamps.  What's left may be arable land, but that just means spreading a load of manure everywhere.

[Eddie Teach]

Sure, but Trump might be thinking he can ride it out like the demands for his tax returns.

[Syt]

Tweeter in chief was busy again:

"@HighonHillcrest: @jeffzeleny what PROOF do u have DonaldTrump did not suffer from millions of FRAUD votes? Journalist? Do your job! @CNN"
"@JoeBowman12: @jeffzeleny just another generic CNN part time wannabe journalist !"  @CNN still doesn't get it. They will never learn!
"@FiIibuster: @jeffzeleny Pathetic - you have no sufficient evidence that Donald Trump did not suffer from voter fraud, shame! Bad reporter.
"@sdcritic:  @HighonHillcrest @jeffzeleny @CNN There is NO QUESTION THAT #voterfraud did take place, and in favor of #CorruptHillary !"


I especially like, "You have no proof there was no fraud!" Err, that's not usually how that works, is it?

[celedhring]

Tweeter in chief was busy again:

"@HighonHillcrest: @jeffzeleny what PROOF do u have DonaldTrump did not suffer from millions of FRAUD votes? Journalist? Do your job! @CNN"
"@JoeBowman12: @jeffzeleny just another generic CNN part time wannabe journalist !"  @CNN still doesn't get it. They will never learn!
"@FiIibuster: @jeffzeleny Pathetic - you have no sufficient evidence that Donald Trump did not suffer from voter fraud, shame! Bad reporter.
"@sdcritic:  @HighonHillcrest @jeffzeleny @CNN There is NO QUESTION THAT #voterfraud did take place, and in favor of #CorruptHillary !"


I especially like, "You have no proof there was no fraud!" Err, that's not usually how that works, is it?

Well, it was to be expected that post-truth would generate its own post-epistemology.

[Legbiter]

World's greatest twitter troll. He's using Facebook and Twitter like Roosevelt used radio for his fireside chats, bypassing the media.

His twitter account will one day be proudly displayed in the Smithsonian.  Alongside Clinton's email server.