This came in my email this morning:
For a short while in Boston last night, we were ecstatic. We beat the privatizers on Question 2, and we beat them across the state, with every demographic – except for the whitest, wealthiest towns. As Barbara Madeloni said from the stage at campaign headquarters, “We beat their money with our democracy.”
Our coalition victory against the privatizers was hard-earned and sweet. Our brave and beautiful young people were inspirational. Barbara Madeloni was electrifying. We were the righteous students, parents, and union members.
And then, as the national results started coming in and it became clear that Clinton was in trouble, DFER was spotted in the back of the hotel ballroom. As was Marty Walz, former state legislator-turned-paid-shill for the charter industry.
Some of us – those who’d been door-knocking, who had made calls, created charts, sent tweets, educated our neighbors, debated on stage – became angry. The Yes on 2 campaign, funded by so-called Democrats with zero history of being on the side of working people and the disenfranchised, had forced us to focus on a state measure, for months and months and months, at the exclusion of the presidential campaign. Not a single one of my comrades working themselves to exhaustion – unpaid – to defeat the ballot measure was also volunteering for Hilary. We couldn’t be in two places at once, and we rightly felt the urgency of defeating Question 2. We were also keenly aware that our colleagues in other parts of the country were counting on us to stop the charter tide in Massachusetts.
DFER and Marty Walz heard from us loud and clear last night. We let them know that their support for an expensive, divisive, diversionary campaign will not be forgotten.
Question 2 and the charlatans behind it went down in flames last night. Our bright spot on this dismal morning.

It’s not the author’s fault. He/she did everything right. Hillary messed up. She employed the Pied Piper strategy (see:wikileaks) and helped promote Donald Trump under the guise that Trump was the easiest to defeat. The RNC could have been very different. There could have been a tempered candidate. She played with fire and didn’t do enough to control it. We all got burned.
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Hard night to swallow, yesterday. This vote in Massachusetts — and the one in Georgia — were two of the bright spots. But it had the same feeling as in 2008, when Obama won, but so did Prop 8 in California. Gain and loss — at the same time.
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Bravo
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Hard work by dedicated activists won the day. Congratulations.
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This was a very insightful email. Immediately before Election Day, I heard a pundit express concern that the Democrats had seemingly lost the working class. Untrue.
The Democrats have not lost the working class; the working class has lost the Democrats. We’ve been abandoned in favor of hedge funds. The Party has been ripped from its base, ripped apart by money meritocracy. DFER, Wall Street, and Silicon Valley stole the White House for a casino boss. And they don’t care. They never did. They never will.
Real Democrats fought Question 2. Real Democrats support teachers’ unions. Real Democrats oppose privatization and the overseas sweatshops of globalization. Real Democrats must unite to expel the moneyed, meritocratic invasion, or we are all doomed to be forever led by populist hate.
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Yes, thank you, Massachusetts, for the one bright spot on a dismal morning.
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I’m reminded of a bumper sticker from 1974. An outline of Massachusetts and the words “We told you so”.
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Been thinking of that all day. We were the only state to vote for George McGovern. Richard Nixon carried all of the other 49 in his re-election bid of 1972. But by 1974 that man was gone! Would that a similar situation ensue.
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Will the Republicans in Congress actually impeach their own president?
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I think I’d rather have THE trumpster than Pence.
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If you had a choice between Trump, Pence or Ryan, and that was the only choice with no “None of the Above” who would you pick? Ryan is now #3 in line for the presidency.
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Sofie’s choice, eh!
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Worse than Sofie’s choice but still Ryan offers a choice where Pence offers nothing because he is worse than tRump? In fact, Ryan might be instrumental in blocking some of tRump’s goals.
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It will be an interesting four years politically speaking that is.
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painfully interesting
I understand the best lessons are learned from pain and loss
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McConnell has already told Trump that his proposal for Congressional term limits is a non-starter. I think Trump never realized that he had to get Congressional approval to do anything other than grant pardons (think Christie).
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Trump revealed repeatedly during the campaign that he is more ignorant than burnt toast when it comes to how the government and world works. In his little Trumpian bubble of a world, I’ve read that he is the ultimate micro-manager and nothing is done without his approval.
If he attempts to micro-manage the United States government from the White House, he risks total burn out of every nerve in his body.
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I remember it as saying “Don’t Blame Me. I’m From Massachusetts.” That sticker was proudly planted on my mother’s car bumper.
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My father sent me that bumper sticker when I was living in Canada. I put it on my ’69 Chevy van and there is proudly sat until the van finally had to go- in 1986.
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It’s a compelling e-mail explanation for Hillary’s loss. The working class is fatigued from always fighting for a piece of the pie, against the richest 0.1%. Instead of making it easier for labor, Democrats embraced the neoliberalism of Wall Street and the tech industry. As a result of Tuesday’s vote, which Michael Moore predicted would be a F—-U—… labor, our kids and America loses again.
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Some very good articles on this are available online–by Krystal Ball, Glenn Greenwald, Michael Moore, and others. Here’s one from the Guardian by Thomas Frank:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/09/donald-trump-white-house-hillary-clinton-liberals?CMP=twt_gu
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Excellent article! Thanks for the share Randal Hendee
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That “Pied Piper” strategy was also employed directly by the Clinton’s themselves, since New York Magazine reported in the fall of 2015 that Bill Clinton had called Donnie on the telephone prior to his declaring his candidacy and urged him to “make his voice heard” in the Republican Party.
Talk about being hoisted by your own petard!
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Hillary Clinton did what she needed to win the election. She could have done a bit more to explain how her plan would create more jobs, but criticizing her on that misses the main reason she lost:
1) her campaign chair was quite careless in letting his Gmail account get hacked — he typed his password into a hacker web site that looked like a Google site
2) her campaign vice-chair was careless in having her husband use a laptop that had access to the emails she used for her sensitive work
3) the FBI director saved the Trump campaign by making the revelation about emails on the Wiener laptop just 9 days before the election
If any of these did not happen we would have president elect Clinton right now.
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Can’t agree with your conclusion.
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Hillary’s campaign manager may have pulled off the biggest con and hatchet job in American history (my opinion). His PR firm’s CEO, self-describes, as a “GOP political operative and deputy campaign manager for former Gov. Jeb Bush”. With derision, Trump was described as having no ground game in the Brexit states, as contrasted with Clinton’s excellent ground game. The point? Black Ohioan, former state senator, Nina Turner, was booted from her scheduled speech at the DNC convention. But, there was time for Bloomberg’s speech.
Someone working for Gates and the Walton’s, might be pleased by the Clinton campaign’s outcome. IMO, the Koch’s have a totalitarian agenda. The illusion that Gates and the Walton’s don’t, has been protected.
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