Kurt Eichenwald of Newsweek covered the Presidential campaign for Newsweek. He wrote some powerful stories about Donald Trump’s international empire and how difficult it would be for Trump to separate his business from decisions he might make as President. Now that the election is over, Eichenwald explores two views that he finds to be common among Sanders supporters: First, that Sanders was cheated by the Democratic National Committee, which “rigged” the process for Hillary. Second, that Sanders would have beaten Trump. Eichenwald says he actually read the Republican opposition research on Sanders, and he cites some of it.
I post this with some trepidation because I don’t want to see readers get entangled in angry arguments about Bernie and Hillary. The election is over.
But I decided to take my chances because I like to share with you what I find interesting.
So, please, comment if you wish, but be civil, don’t insult anyone else. And let’s think together.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I believe Kurt is right Hillary was and is the best against Trump FBI did something it should not have done
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Yep. And in all the “the DNC rigged the election for Hillary” nonsense, and FBI gets away with it. That’s what’s most disheartening for me. And when you let them get away with it, it simply enables them to do it again.
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There were many factors that contributed to Hillary’s loss, but I think the most damaging was when Bernie lashed out when it was already mathematically impossible for him to win.
He questioned her judgment after a badly written headline made him think she was questioning his, and he claimed the DNC was rigging the election.
Sadly, those two themes made it to the very end.
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Hillary is the lady that said “We came, we saw, he died” and contributed to the destruction of Libya. She is the lady that was paid US$200,000 for one speech to the same bankers that are destroying American education. She is the speaker of the plutocracy that funds the Clinton Foundation. Enough?
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No, Bob, it’s not enough, because when Gaddafi was killed, I was happy, too, and I don’t think it’s fair to judge a perfectly reasonable and humane policy decision (to save a bunch of people about to get massacred) by what happened many years later due mostly to other factors. Hillary didn’t have the benefit of hindsight like you do.
And I’ll bet you didn’t complain when other former government appointees, including presidents, got paid megabucks for Wall Street speeches. I read Hillary’s remarks excerpted in the Podesta emails and was really impressed with her intelligence and nuanced grasp of policy. Her remarks were harmless and taken out of context repeatedly by people who wanted to malign her.
And the Clinton Foundation, like most well-run, respected charities, used connections to get money for wonderful causes. I have no problem with using rich or bad people’s money to pay for poor people’s AIDS medicines, and I don’t know why anyone would.
If you did not want Trump to be your president, then you should have voted for the only other person who could win. As a bonus, she would have enacted a bunch of policies you probably would have agreed with.
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Those massacre stories were lies and disinformation, on par with Bush’s WMD’s in Iraq, and however hateful Quadaffi was, it’s inarguable the US turned Africa’s most prosperous and egalitarian country into a failed state and recruiting platform for ISIS. It was geopolitical madness, compounded by Hillary’s casual and highly revealing response to a head of state’s torture and extra-judicial execution.
As for Eichenwald, while it may be true that Bernie would have lost to Trump, his reporting should transact at a high discount, since he was little more than an official scribe for the Clinton campaign.
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“…Africa’s most …. egalitarian country”?
I never knew that Libya under Gaddafi was Africa’s most egalitarian country. Didn’t the entire uprising start with Gaddafi killing pro-democracy protesters?
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Libya under Ghadaffi was a politically repressive dictatorship, but did have the most egalitarian income distribution and most developed social welfare system on the continent.
And while he did respond in kind to a violent uprising, the “massacre” talk was ginned up to provide a pretext for US/NATO bombing…
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Michael, please don’t forget that Gaddafi acknowledged that his agents blew up an American commercial jet in mid-air over Scotland. I knew someone on the plane. A 20-year-old student at Syracuse University. Her family was distraught and never recovered.
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Michael, I think even Amnesty International acknowledges that there were PEACEFUL protests in the beginning by pro-democracy folks and it was put down violently.
I’m not disagreeing that some of the repression could have been exaggerated, but it seems as if you are painting quite a rosy picture of life in Libya and I wonder if the people who lived there would agree.
(I’m not saying it isn’t even worse in the absence of a dictator now, but just that we need to talk honestly about this on both sides.)
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I’m with you, Bob. She didn’t deserve to be President, but now we’re stuck with Trump :(.
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This election was not a shellacking. It was a wipeout. Not only did the Democrats lose the White House and the Senate, but also three more gubernatorial seats, bringing the total number of Democratic governors down to 18. Republicans now control 32 state legislatures and share five. Democrats control 13. Scott Walker has positioned himself to lead the Republican Association of Governors. This cannot be blamed on the FBI nor fake Facebook posts. The Democrats call themselves “elites.” Yet they are not able to examine their own failings.
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I agree, but the “failings” should be examined in full, and simply “blame Hillary” is as superficial of an examination as any.
When Hillary Clinton receives more votes statewide than the Democratic nominee for Senate, just saying “blame Hillary” is lazy. Especially if some of the Dem Hillary votes went to Jill Stein, and the Senators running against a right wing incumbent Republican did not have a real 3rd party challenger. Why could those Senate candidates not even muster the Hillary + Jill votes? Or the Hillary ALONE votes? Running against right wing Republican incumbents?
It is more complicated than that, and simply embracing the scapegoating of Hillary does not add up.
Voters split their vote and rejected Republicans statewide they didn’t like and embraced Democrats they preferred. Look at the NC Governor’s race.
But they didn’t do it with progressive Democrats running for Senate who were not even as popular as Hillary Clinton.
Blame Hillary is a nice and easy scapegoat. But if she is MORE popular than those progressive Senators, then maybe there is something else going on.
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Naomi Klein pinpointed the DNC’s problem- neoliberalism. Time to end this era of Democratic party triangulation & favoritism to elites. We need to unify now & resist the entire Trump regime.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/09/rise-of-the-davos-class-sealed-americas-fate?CMP=share_btn_link
“They will blame James Comey and the FBI. They will blame voter suppression and racism. They will blame Bernie or bust and misogyny. They will blame third parties and independent candidates. They will blame the corporate media for giving him the platform, social media for being a bullhorn, and WikiLeaks for airing the laundry.
But this leaves out the force most responsible for creating the nightmare in which we now find ourselves wide awake: neoliberalism. That worldview – fully embodied by Hillary Clinton and her machine – is no match for Trump-style extremism. The decision to run one against the other is what sealed our fate. If we learn nothing else, can we please learn from that mistake?
Here is what we need to understand: a hell of a lot of people are in pain. Under neoliberal policies of deregulation, privatisation, austerity and corporate trade, their living standards have declined precipitously. They have lost jobs. They have lost pensions. They have lost much of the safety net that used to make these losses less frightening. They see a future for their kids even worse than their precarious present.”
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Democrats won the presidential popular vote by almost a million voters. Republicans hold the House by gerrymandering after another voter temper tantrum in 2010. So there is hope as the GOP hold on power is artificial and tenuous at the Federal level. But the 2018 map for the midterms does not favor the Democrats. So I’m tending more to agree with other posters here the battle moves to local governments and school boards. Plus donations to groups like ACLU, Planned Parenthood, and Trevor to fight on a separate front, while Dems focus on labor/economic issues
The national Democrats seem lost. They need to politely show the Clinton Coalition the door and regroup with a message directed at ALL working Americans, not just race, gender, or orientation. So far, the national Dems appear completely tone deaf to the issues facing Middle America. Appointing Ellison into a part-time job appears to be more of a step sideways as he is not forceful and committed like Bernie nor as inspiring as Obama.
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In many democracies the American 2 party system would be a 4 party system.
A right wing “Freedom caucus” party
A center right “Bush … Kasich party
A Clinton center party
And
A Sanders Warren party.
The power struggles by factions really point to the fact that these are not 2 parties but 2 electoral alliences.
They duke it out in primaries and tend to control regions but the whole thing is held together with chewing gum and string.
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Isn’t Ellison Bernie’s choice?
FYI – I believe that this message got lost but is still entirely valid — I hope the “new and improved” DNC that is approved by the “good” democrats will not forget that it is STILL important to call out bigotry and racist rhetoric.
Let’s not forget that just because your message gets lost in accusations of scandal and corruption does not mean you were lying through your teeth when you offered up that message.
“But the other basket — and I know this because I see friends from all over America here — I see friends from Florida and Georgia and South Carolina and Texas — as well as, you know, New York and California — but that other basket of people are people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change. It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from. They don’t buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they’re in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.”
followed the next day by: ” I won’t stop calling out bigotry and racist rhetoric in this campaign. I also meant what I said last night about empathy, and the very real challenges we face as a country where so many people have been left out and left behind. As I said, many of Trump’s supporters are hard-working Americans who just don’t feel like the economy or our political system are working for them. I’m determined to bring our country together and make our economy work for everyone, not just those at the top. Because we really are ‘stronger together.’ “
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The reason I follow this blog and respect it is because I was one of those Bernie or busters and, after reading the arguments that were made here, I went kicking and screaming from a Hillary Clinton hater to an enthusiastic vote for her (administration) on Nov. 8. I still would have preferred Bernie by leaps and bounds, but had to accept the Realpolitik of the times in which we live. As many commentators have stated so forcefully and eloquently, it’s time to focus and, as I have written with others, to resist. I’m still uncurling from my emotional fetal position, but I’m sure I’ll get there. Thank you, Diane, for helping to teach this old dog and giving me the motivation to organize and not give up.
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Agreed! Sanders supporters are despondent over Trump.
Echienwald can’t see the forest for the trees in this post. We won’t be able to stop Trump if we are divided into factions, which is exactly what this post will do. The DNC elite need to go- starting with John Podesta on down- & be replaced with Keith Ellison.
Trump is catastrophic. We need our unity to resist.
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/trump-victory-regime-change-lessons-autocrats-erdogan
Expect the worst
“Don’t look for ways to soothe your sense of alarm, or assume that a Trump presidency might turn out less harmful than he has so far indicated. Autocrats almost always turn out worse than they seem before coming to power. A presidential candidate who has uncontrollable fits of rage over perceived slights from a former beauty queen is likely to use every resource available to him to hound his enemies. In the United States, those powers are formidable indeed, ranging from a nuclear arsenal to the boundless surveillance powers of the NSA.
Don’t expect the Republican establishment to rein him in, as few Republicans were courageous enough to disavow his candidacy even when he appeared to be losing the election. Now that he controls the most powerful office in the land, expect them to be fully servile.”
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yupm
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Agree with Greg, grim, and Joel. The rehash is redundant. And Dems now led by Chuck Schumer will only get and offer more of the same.
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Wrote a friend earlier today about Schumer and realized through a typo the changing one letter makes him Schemer. Appropriate.
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I am so glad someone is saying this. I’m the Cassandra who is terrified that the “opposition research” combined with the alt-right’s ability to influence FBI and Congressional Committee investigations endangers every future progressive candidate.
Thank you for posting this.
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Sorry, NYCpsp, but I can’t help myself on this one:
“I’m the Cassandra. . . ”
I’d substitute Henny Penny for Cassandra.
Please take with the grain of salt and humour that is meant!
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Hey, I’m admitting it, aren’t I? I hope you are right!
But, for the record, I was posting here “the sky was falling” for the last few weeks before the election as all the anti-Hillary people were acting as if she was the second coming of Nixon and “no better than Trump”. I believed — as I posted ad nauseam during that time — that the casual acceptance from the left of Hillary’s corruption was giving the right’s memes far more power. Not just with Jill Stein Bernie voters, but for the Erie, PA Trump voters interviewed in the NY Times who kept mentioning how they didn’t like Trump, but Hillary was just too corrupt. And I was scared. And I wish you all were telling me “I told you so” now. This is the new world our children are growing up in. We have a Pravda Trump with Bannon as his chief advisor in the White House. We have far right celebrating and no denunciations from Trump – no trying to disavow them now that we won. And we have people in power whose main objective seems to be staying in power. And they are really, really good at it. Witness how they manipulated the election. Witness what the FBI did and how we’ve all forgotten about it in our rush to blame the DNC and Hillary.
In my opinion, no one is really taking them seriously, just like no one really took Hitler seriously at first. (I apologize for that. Before I get attacked I’m not saying Trump IS Hitler — just that Hitler was just a guy expressing white working class anger, too.) It feels like we live in la la land and all we need is the DNC to step aside now and a Bernie/Warren to save us all. And all the racism and xenophobia that was just unleashed will simply disappear or lose power to convince most voters. Because the Dems message won’t have a problem competing with whatever FBI investigations or House investigations or selectively released e-mails of their staff are released.
I hope you are right! I will be happy to be called Henny Penny. But anyone who doesn’t think that the sky has fallen just a little is (in my opinion) blind to the very dangerous time that we are about to experience.
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^^Correction:
But anyone who doesn’t think that the sky has ALREADY fallen just a little is (in my opinion) blind to the very dangerous time that we are about to experience.
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“the sky has ALREADY fallen just a little”
Hopefully it’s like a drop ceiling that will get ripped out by the new owners 4 or 8 years.
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I can’t see what you mean-LOL
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“Hopefully it’s like a drop ceiling that will get ripped out by the new owners 4 or 8 years.”
That would be great, as long as what happens in those 4-8 years isn’t too damaging.
There were only 6 years between 1938-1944 and millions of people – including children – were wiped out. Germany certainly recovered. I’d like to think they could have come to the place they are now without those 6 years because it certainly came at a cost – especially if you were Jewish, an intellectual speaking out, or one of the ethnic minorities targeted for the camps.
On the other hand, if you were an Aryan Christian German who hated Hitler but didn’t rock the boat, those years were difficult, but once over, perhaps you could appreciate that the country was in a much better place than it was before. It’s entirely a matter of perspective.
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Yes, exactly. Bannon is most likely one of the most dangerous people in Trump’s cabal- but let’s not overlook Pence’s Christian Nationalism.
“Trump appointed a white nationalist, Steve Bannon, as chief White House strategist — which was promptly celebrated by the American Nazi Party and the Ku Klux Klan.”
If the Democrats inside the DNC keep rehashing their loss by shaming their base, they’ll have learned nothing from this election. It’s time for them to make themselves useful & win back the flyover states and the working class.
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The only way Dems can remain a viable national party is by coalescing around the goals of the 2016 platform, not driving anyone out of the party, but broadening the base.
Trump will help rebuild the Dem party by his words and by the GOP dedication to trickle down. They will do nothing for coal miners, because power plants don’t burn coal. Many promises will be broken.
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Republicans have been breaking promises to the white working class for years and they still get handily re-elected. As long as they can pit white working class voters against the “other”, they win. As long as they can pit Democrat against Democrat, they win.
And they are very good at doing that and winning.
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God where to start .
Was the election rigged . First we did land on the moon . Oswald shot Kennedy and 9/11 was not an inside job.
How doe we define rigging . The Clinton hold on the Democratic party would have made Boss Tweed jealous . wITN
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i LOVE THIS LAPTOP, I WILL TRY AGAIN
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“But Sanders supporters puffing up their chests as they arrogantly declare Trump would have definitely lost against their candidate deserve to be ignored.” As a Bernie supporter I’m not puffing up my chest and saying he would have definitely won, but the data in the primaries strongly suggested that the country was craving an anti-establishment candidate. Every poll showed that Bernie would win by greater margins than Hillary. Bernie won in the states that Hillary needed to win. If democrats don’t look in the mirror and ask themselves “where did we go wrong”? they will get beaten again and again.
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I agree with Art Smart.I don’t know any Sanders supporters (and I was one) who are happy that Hillary loss or are puffing their chests. Everyone in this country loss when Trump won. We will never know how the election would have turned out if Bernie had won the nomination. But we do know that the party democrats ignored and demeaned their base. They failed to demonstrate through their actions that they would fight to protect the planet, protect the population from predatory corporations. The failure to listen to the people cost us the senate as well as the presidency. I voted for Hillary but the failure to convey a platform that energized the base is one reason for the Trump presidency. The politics of the centrists 90″s do not work and are failing the majority of the people.
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Agree Cheryl…Dems need fresh blood in charge, new leadership, and a complete makeover with all sides of represented, not only the Centerists. We had hopes that would be Warren…alas…
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Yes – and yes! Absolutely and unequivocally yes!!
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I spent the weekend having similar conversations and appreciate this collection of facts. I’m afraid people lost sight of what was at stake. Russia was involved. The Republican’s “went home.” There’s a lesson in there. Vote. Still with her.
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dont forget instead of going to the voters in the mid west she went after those republicans . Worked real good
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The Republicans were able to appease their evangelical base with Pence. Now we have a Christian Nationalist running the country.
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When Bernie was asked whether he would have won the election, he said today,”We’ll never know, but I would have loved to have tried.” Later today Bernie posted that the democrats need to sit down and retool their message. Democrats shouldn’t be losing to people that want to give tax breaks to billionaires.
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Nor shouldn’t be losing, retired, to people who support racism and all other isms….
Knowing now about Bannon, the Goebbels of the Trumpeters, Bernie would have seen the worst anti Semitic onslaught ever seen in America…and we may yet see this.
However, Trump just appointed Mnuchin, the IndyMac/OneWest hedge fund guy to head the Treasury. Go figure….
It is like watching an unending horror movie.
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And yet Ellen my wife runs into other Jewish people on on long Island and who did they support dismissing everything . They see his anti Muslim rants as a plus dismissing the anti Semites he surrounds himself with . Need I post Martin Niemöller . Never do people think their buying into racism will come back to bite the in the butt.
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Here’s what we know: she couldn’t have beaten Trump. Because he beat her.
Here’s another thing we know: with ever leak of email, there is increasing evidence of chicanery inside the DNC, with collusion between then, Clinton’s campaign, CNN, MSNBC. We know that first Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and then Donna Brazile were long-time supporters of the Clintons and openly contemptuous of Sanders.
Did the Clinton campaign stuff ballot boxes, destroy or ignore votes for Sanders? Find intriguing ways to settle “ties” in some caucuses that defy mathematical probability?
I’m not going to rehash everything that went on in the primaries, or bother to recount the ample evidence that Sanders would have outperformed Clinton against Trump. Because the true believers here make clear multiple times daily that all was marvelous and above-board and fair in the Clinton camp. And so at least one person concludes that SANDERS (who campaigned his guts out for HRC) is to blame for her loss.
Incredible.
Analyst after analyst of this election seems to focus on the extent to which the Clinton team was out of touch with crucial sections of the electorate, took blue collar voters in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania for granted, ignored pleas from Democratic candidates like Russ Feingold to come to their states, and basically blew it. And against a candidate who seemed to define running the worst campaign in modern history.
The question isn’t whether Sanders could have outperformed Clinton against Trump, but on what planet you have to live to imagine that he wouldn’t have.
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I’m sorry, but did you read Eichenwald’s column?
Also, did you know that Hillary received more votes than anyone in history except Barack Obama?
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Do you know that U.S. population has grown by about 40 million since 2000? I should certainly think Hillary would have gotten more votes in terms of sheer numbers. But the fact is that she got 7 million fewer than Obama did in 2012 when he was far less popular than he was in 2008. She simply didn’t generate the excitement for people to turn out and vote for her. Trump got fewer votes than Romney did in 2012 as well, yet still Hillary couldn’t beat him. And he was widely polled as the least popular Republican candidate in generations. What does that say about Hillary?
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It says the same thing about Hillary as it does about the Senators like Russ Feingold and Katie McGinty.
For comparison’s sake, this year McGinty got FEWER votes that Clinton in Pennsylvania. And she didn’t have Jill Stein drawing Democrat votes.
Back in 2012, when Obama won Pennsylvania, the Democrat running for Senate received 35,000 MORE votes than Obama.
It says that things are more complicated than the easy scapegoating of Feingold, McGinty and Clinton.
The article mentioned all the Bernie negatives that the Republicans planned to use. And yet his supporters still insist he would have remained popular, immune to all of them. The Republicans are VERY good at the smear campaign. It is hubris to insist that would be irrelevant. They had no problem co-opting the FBI to win. Unleash those forces on Bernie and maybe he can’t even muster the popular vote.
Or maybe he would still prevail — that’s what I’d certainly hope. But I’m not naive enough to think that it would have been a 50/50 chance. After all, John Kerry got slimed based on very little, against a very unpopular incumbent. Voters in Erie repeating the alt-right memes about Hillary’s “trust” problem, even if they didn’t believe most of what Trump said. This wasn’t about the economy. This was about trust.
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Dienne
I was waiting for somebody to bring that up . Thank you .
The stat that counts is 7000 . 7000 counties that voted for Obama and not Clinton.
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Not convincing.
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MPG
We are in full agreement .
If there is not a purge of the Clintonistas in this party we are doomed to repeat this . When Reagan crushed the working class he did not have the congress . Trump has the congress, the states . I give up, this is going to be a disaster .. This to bring it home is the result of DFER in every sector of the economy . Hillary made her campaign an effort to grab moderate Republicans . Neo liberal democrats should just move over to that party . They have done enough to destroy the party of FDR . The Democrats have not been in this position since 1922 . .
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Purge? Clintonistas?
Who gets to decide which Dems are purge-worthy and which aren’t?
If Ellison starts promoting charters, is he okay?
If Bernie says “maybe we should wait on any gun control” is he okay?
If a Bernie-approved candidate says “we need to boycott Israel economically until they agree to make any Palestinians who want to return to their country full citizens”, is he okay?
If a Bernie-approved candidate says “We need to support a 2-state solution to Israel-Palestine, is he okay”?
If Russia starts bombing the heck out of Aleppo, do we care?
I wish the solutions to our economic problems were as simple as Trump, and some of the Bernie supporters, seem to think they are.
I wish the solutions to what is happening in the world were as simple as Trump, and some of the Bernie supporters, seem to think they are.
Sadly, I believe we had a candidate who understood some of the complexity and that there aren’t always good solutions, just bad and worse. In my opinion, we blew it. And I am hoping the next candidate the Democrats offer also understands that the world and democracy is not simply as easy as identifying “Clintonistas” who should be purged from the party.
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NYC pp
Purge : remove from their position of power in the party . The Congress and the State Houses should be an indication of where neo liberal NDC democrats have brought this country . This party made a decision to abandon the working class which is probably better than 80 percent of the workforce .White and Blue collar educated and not educated. It has been a disaster for the party and in turn for working people.
Face it anybody who voted for Obama twice is not all of a sudden a FOX news Zombie racist .
As Dienne points out the electorate has grown by X million voters since 2000 . So like most narratives that more votes than narrative sits on shaky ground.
Am I pissed about Comey you bet. And I think I have called the actions of Giuliani bordering on sedition .Called for the imediate firing of Comey and investigation of the whole campaign . The Republicans for years have been in the dirt business ever since Nixon scuttled the peace talks in 68 . Some call it treason . Reagan the Hostage talks .
That does not negate the fact that education is the prime example of what Clinton’s NDC has done.
Diane says its not just about education their are more important thing
she is right. If the neoliber assault were limited to education Clinton would be President and not Trump .
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And I think if the rabid anti-Hillary Bernie supporters hadn’t joined the alt right into turning Hillary Clinton into a caricature of herself, with no redeeming qualities, “no better than Trump” (as we heard again and again), she may have had enough of those votes to win.
She STILL had more votes than liberal Bernie-approved Senators in those states. And those Senators should have also received the Jill Stein votes. I still don’t see any credible explanation for why voters would vote for Hillary and not Russ. Or Hillary and not Katie.
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I have come to depend on the intelligent conversations in this teacher’s room.I have noted the disagreements that arise, but until recently, never saw the level of rhetoric that reminded me of the social bogs where anything goes.
Facts and evidence need to prevail in arguments. Freedom of speech does not really entitle folks to freedom of expression… especially ‘ad hominem’ attacks. In other words, it is one thing to argue something you feel strongly about, but quite another to attack the person who wrote it.
At one blog, someone who read my article “How Could This Happen”said, ” I will read it when I need something to put me to sleep.” THAT is an intended insult but does not rise to the level of attack.
One could say, for example: “Hillary and the dems were seriously mistaken, and their foolish judgements handed this election to Trump.” Instead of this: “Maybe you, Hillary, Podesta, Wasserman-Schultz, Brazile, et al. aren’t quite as smart as you clearly think you are. Thanks for handing the Oval Office to Trump on a platter. Pied-piper strategy, anyone?”
That was the comment of a troll who FOLLOWED ME from this site to where I write at Oped News. That was a small part of the total ‘comment’ following what is usually a discussion about the article. THE PUBLISHER flagged it as ad hominem.
This was the article: http://www.opednews.com/articles/How-Could-This-Happen-The-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-Citizens_Democracy_Democrat_Election-161109-261.html
Hopefully, this site will continue to be a place where people can express their insights and conclusions, and their disagreements, without resorting to the very tactics of bullying that my article describes.
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I just read your article–DEAD ON. Thank you for capturing MY sentiment!
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Let’s be careful. The Democrats lost and their primary contributed to the problem. I doubt the rigged argument when Trump used it & the same with our friend Bernie. We live in a time of charged language distributed at the speed of social media with facts often lost in the process. Progressives need to organize by understanding others as well as themselves. We are already divided enough. A fair after action review will uncover the campaigns problems and we should adjust with zeal and determination. Keep our eye on building solidarity within the progressive movement not on assessing blame. The election is over. Today we fight on for our values and beliefs not each other.
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Michael, did Bernie say the primaries were rigged? If so, I missed it. And ‘rigged’ in the context of the Democratic primaries is a blanket term for all the ways the playing field was tilted one way long before the primaries began. Do you doubt actual, demonstrable facts? Who was the head of the DNC during the primaries? Who did she clearly prefer/favor? Did she set up a debate schedule that appeared to oddly favor minimizing the number of debates dramatically? Minimizing their impact by the choice of dates, days of the week, times?
How about how the primaries themselves were conducted, decided, etc. and their timing?
How about the email traffic that clearly shows collusion among the DNC, Clinton Team, and several major news outlets?
How much of that needs to be repeatedly shown to be true before you find yourself just summing up with one word: “rigged”?
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MPG,
Bernie lost the primaries by about 3 million votes.
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dianeravitch
Do we really want to go into an analyses of that vote . Suffice it to say chapter 6 of “Race Matters ” .
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The election was not rigged. Having super-delegates’ announced votes put her in the lead from the get go, however, influenced the outcome, and having some of those same super-delegates, who’d decided before the popular vote, able to exert additional influence through the DNC casts a pall on the primaries. If the primaries are to be for the delegates, super-delegates need to be at least diminished in number and limited to elected Congress and Senate officials, as the Sanders campaign-inspired subcommittee recommends by 2018.
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I was turned away from my caucus because the room was too small for the hundreds who turned out to caucus. For me, the system is rigged,
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We can all sit back and armchair analyze this – in my own opinion, I think Bernie could have beaten Trump. We will never know. The DNC did everything it could to anoint Hillary. Perhaps if the primaries were fair we wouldn’t be debating this now.
I never understood how Bernie could win a primary and walk away with less delegates than Hillary – and please don’t explain it to me, you’ll waste your words.
I would have voted for Bernie. I could not vote for Trump or Clinton. To me they are both vile, regardless of their views of education. Obama was horrible for education…I think Hillary would have been more of the same. Now don’t y’all go and beat me up.
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“To me they are both vile…”
And that meme is exactly why Trump won. As long as both are equally vile, might as well vote for the “change” candidate. Especially if his vileness is merely sexism and racism and not breaking the law.
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If you don’t want hostile responses, please don’t post hostile stories.
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To Patricia Blochowiak:
This is educational website with one SOLE GOAL that to educate, to cultivate and to open people’s HEART and MIND.
If people cannot be think logically and gear to humanity, civility and a logical mind, then there is nothing about HOSTILITY, except it is purely BLINDED and IGNORANCE.
What kind of leadership that is shown in fraud, cheating, bullying, and manipulation in public gullibility and trust throughout his career and with his association with notorious camaraderie? Sigh! Back2basic.
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Patricia: indeed.
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God where to start .
Was the election rigged . First we did land on the moon . Oswald shot Kennedy and 9/11 was not an inside job.
How do we define rigging . The Clinton hold on the Democratic party would have made Boss Tweed jealous
Witness the Black Congressional Caucus endorsement of Hillary Clinton . John Lewis talks of not seeing Bernie but he saw Hillary in the March on Washington . The claim was so absurd it was laughable . The Democratic establishment controlled by the Clinton’s anointed Hillary before she entered the race.. She came in with the overwhelming majority of supper delegates and a narrative that she was the inevitable candidate . Why even bother to challenge her. Not until 20,000 people showed up at rallies did the press acknowledge that Sanders was in the Race .. There is more but I will move on.
Was Trump all wrong complaining about the Media?.. YES! In his case he got more airtime than any candidate but the man was and is an ass who provided plenty of ammunition and still does. Everyday a new absurdity .
It would be hard to deny that that the media had anointed Hillary as well.
A few memorable moments . Chris Mathews does a softball interview with Clinton where he feeds her the questions than answers them for her, both laughing away. No disclosure his wife was running for congress . I felt like throwing at shoe at the screen. But it wasn’t just me the following day there was a piece in the New Yorker laced with four leter words describing that phony interview . That was followed shortly after by an MSNBC Town Hall hosted by Mathews that looked like a mixed martial arts match between Sanders and Mathews. Then there was the Daily News interview . Jaun Cole was a staff writer for the News who witnessed the interview. His take on the events, Sanders answers did not raise any eyebrows . The transcripts were handed to Clinton operatives and the editorial came out like an attack add. Then there was the Night that Sanders won the Wisconsin primary . Van Jones blows up and turns to the other pundits “Cant anybody here say that Bernie won tonight ”
So was it rigged? No ! But as Mills would argue Clinton was part of that political” power elite ” Thirty years in the center of the Democratic machine . They decided it was her turn and did all in their power to make it happen.
The case for Bernie. The black vote turned out in the same numbers they did for Kerry .
The Hispanic vote was not going anywhere . The women’s vote was not going anywhere.
and you can bet he would have picked a female running mate . Possibly Tulsi Gabbard who was a vet as well. So that brings us to the youth vote to which Eichenwald says this
“When Sanders promoted free college tuition—a primary part of his platform that attracted young people—that didn’t mean much for almost half of all Democrats, who don’t attend—or even plan to attend—plan to attend a secondary school. In fact, Sanders was basically telling the working poor and middle class who never planned to go beyond high school that college students—the people with even greater opportunities in life—were at the top of his priority list.. ”
The remark is demeaning and absurd on its face. Those young voters voting for Bernie were Whites 45 and younger. Not just college students they were the new working class white collar and blue collar devoid of defined benefit pensions. Most with out good employer based healthcare and in the case of millennials at least here in NYC working for 15% less than the previous generation and saddled with debt . His platform, the system is rigged it is the influence of money politics and that has to change. Healthcare it is time to join the rest of the civilized world and provide medicare for all. College at a time when more education may be needed public education should . be expanded past k-12 As it once was in many states of this country where free or low cost state schools were available to many of us posting here .To pay for this we were going to raise taxes on those that have benefited the most in this economy the wealthy.
So yes those college students that I joined opposite your University Diane were on fire for Bernie as would most of their working class parents have been .
The 90% Black votes she was seeing in the southern states were not transferable to the General and they were never going for Trump anyway.
.Hillary was winning the vote of retirees most of that demographic went to Trump.Those that were not going for Trump were going to do just like the Republicans did vote their party line. as they always did .
Hillary lost 7000 counties where Obama had won twice , many in the industrial Mid West .
You would be hard pressed to answer that Bernie’s position on trade would not have been more believable than the importer and chief’s . Hard pressed to argue that his lifetime of opposition to trade and standing up for the working class and union workers would not have resonated with these workers.
Those unions that actually put it to a vote went for Sanders . Those Unions where leaders made political calculations about power politics in the Democratic establishment went for Clinton . My 20 thousand member local supported Clinton in a Luke warm endorsement the week of the primary . It was the political expediency of having to deal with Andrew Cuomo and de Blasio. The membership was overwhelmingly for Sanders many of those same workers voted for Trump .
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It would have been a very different election. From start to finish, it would have been a very different election. Bernie filled a lot of stadiums. Actually, Bernie’s message filled a lot of stadiums. Senator Sanders had a resonating message instead of a long list of qualifications. I don’t know how many people would have voted for it in the end. It would have been a very different election, though.
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Everyone that voted for Hillary except Jeb Bush the only republican who actually voted for her. All of those millennials, a good portion of that angry blue collar vote . Instead of a fascist demagogue a democratic socialist.
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What’s the matter with Kansas? Now I have to ask, what’s the matter with the USA? We have president Trump, VP Pence and the prospect of Giuliani, Carson, Palin, Bannon, Gingrich and assorted other radical regressives peopling Trump’s administration. Holy maloney on steroids!!! We are really in for a tough 4 years.
I guess I will grudgingly grant that Sanders would have had a tough time beating down all the dirt that the Trump campaign would have thrown at Bernie not to mention screaming commie, socialist, commie, 24/7 for months on end. I got the feeling that Kurt Eichenwald is not a big fan of Bernie. Before Bernie began his campaign, he was sneered at, mocked and ignored. He was as much underestimated as Trump was. I think that once the people saw how genuine and sincere Bernie was/is, he would have had a good chance of winning. Thank goodness, he’s still in the senate. I really hope that the dems can some how stop the undoing of Dodd-Frank and the financial regulations that we do have. If Trump succeeds in undoing all the banking regulations, we will be set up for another financial meltdown of monumental proportions.
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Add Michelle and Eva as proposed candidates for Secretary of Education, via Fox News at about 4am this morning.
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What is the Matter with Kansas, well Joe as I have said before Thomas Frank answers his question in “Listen Liberal”
Years ago you abandoned the working class roots of the Democratic party . They paid lip service to Unions and working class people and then went on with policy that devastated your supporters . I do not have to tell Teachers about that . No group of workers more supportive of the Democrats. The policy they pursued was in the interest of the donor class.
You trivialized the pain of those workers, dismissing their concerns. What is the matter with you? Look how wonderful the economy is doing .unemployment is down to below 5%. You must be a loser, as Labor secretary Perez laughs it up with Bill Maher. The fact that two incomes were required to do the same for a family as one did a generation before ignored; stop your whining . Grandma is not watching the kids no more. When her pension disappeared she took a job at Walmart
Last night Lawrence O’Donnell who I generally agree with, played the latest narrative its not Trade its automation. Its the Robots.Those Carrier workers in Indian will be looking long and hard for that shiny new factory with all the robots . If they hope to find it they better get their passports. O’Donnell again, look how good Trade is. Look at all the foreign Auto companies in the South. Wrong again Larry, those are a shining examples of protectionism . The overwhelming modernization and automation of American Industry occurred before NAFTA and China’s entry into the WTO.
From 2000-2010 over 5million factory jobs were lost. That represents 15 million jobs with the multiplier effect. As whole towns closed down around those closed factories. Those voters in the Mid West know exactly where those jobs went . They trained their replacement workers . Yes the new factory that comes back employs robots . But that,s not where the jobs went . Those would represent new jobs. After the retooling of the seventies and eighties the population grew automation prevented job growth in manufacturing, but it remained stable . Neo liberal trade policy decimated these jobs .
So here is a worker that knows he has gotten the shaft, along comes Trump or every Republican since Nixon and asks them why they should be paying for the Welfare Queen (Regan ) . That Mexican (“rapist”) who is not only taking his job but forcing him to pay taxes for his children’s education and healthcare. Those racial dog whistles have been used to depict immigrants since the Irish were caricatured as monkeys. Or Italian immigrants hung in Louisiana by mobs.
So what does Obama do. As Dean Baker said the other day . He waved that red cape of TPP in-front of a raging bull. Promising to pass it in the Lame Duck . Just the corrupt politics that does not serve the working class. That tells them the system is rigged. That when enough legislators are not returning, they will vote for something their constituents don’t want . Then retire to a cushy lobbying firm .
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What is the Matter with Kansas, well Joe as I have said before Thomas Frank answers
his question in “Listen Liberal”
Years ago you abandoned the working class roots of the Democratic party . They paid lip service to Unions and working class people and then went on with policy that devastated your supporters . I do not have to tell Teachers about that . No group of workers more supportive of the Democrats. The policy they pursued was in the interest of the donor class.
You trivialized the pain of those workers, dismissing their concerns. What is the matter with you? Look how wonderful the economy is doing .unemployment is down to below 5%. You must be a loser, as Labor secretary Perez laughs it up with Bill Maher. The fact that two incomes were required to do the same for a family as one did a generation before ignored; stop your whining . Grandma is not watching the kids no more. When her pension disappeared she took a job at Walmart
Last night Lawrence O’Donnell who I generally agree with, played the latest narrative its not Trade its automation. Its the Robots.Those Carrier workers in Indian will be looking long and hard for that shiny new factory with all the robots . If they hope to find it they better get their passports. O’Donnell again, look how good Trade is. Look at all the foreign Auto companies in the South. Wrong again Larry, those are a shining examples of protectionism . The overwhelming modernization and automation of American Industry occurred before NAFTA and China’s entry into the WTO.
From 2000-2010 over 5million factory jobs were lost. That represents 15 million jobs with the multiplier effect. As whole towns closed down around those closed factories. Those voters in the Mid West know exactly where those jobs went . They trained their replacement workers . Yes the new factory that comes back employs robots . But that,s not where the jobs went . Those would represent new jobs. After the retooling of the seventies and eighties the population grew automation prevented job growth in manufacturing, but it remained stable . Neo liberal trade policy decimated these jobs .
So here is a worker that knows he has gotten the shaft, along comes Trump or every Republican since Nixon and asks them why they should be paying for the Welfare Queen (Regan ) . That Mexican (“rapist”) who is not only taking his job but forcing him to pay taxes for his children’s education and healthcare. Those racial dog whistles have been used to depict immigrants since the Irish were caricatured as monkeys. Or Italian immigrants hung in Louisiana by mobs.
So what does Obama do. As Dean Baker said the other day . He waved that red cape of TPP in-front of a raging bull. Promising to pass it in the Lame Duck . Just the corrupt politics that does not serve the working class. That tells them the system is rigged. That when enough legislators are not returning, they will vote for something their constituents don’t want . Then retire to a cushy lobbying firm .
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Reagan
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Joel, thank you for voting for Hillary.
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Vote on merit or vote strategically? Assuming the polls are trustworthy or should affect decision making in any way.
Perhaps Bill Clinton won due to Ross Perot. I think Eichenwald ought to better respect the personal sovereignty of each person’s thought process. In this respect, I would call his article an insult to the very foundation of democracy.
The U.S. could institute a top two primary. Or, the parties could have a popular vote on one night to pick their candidate. Seems like the primary system and electoral college are products owed to the speed of horse travel over the country.
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Yes, Bernie would have defeated Trump: https://medium.com/@mtracey/yes-bernie-sanders-would-have-defeated-trump-acc34636f96#.g3zvloy4c
Eichenwald is a disgraced Hillary partisan. He recently bragged on twitter about helping prepare the opposition research against Trump for Hillary’s campaign. Anyone involved in Hillary’s campaign should be resigning from public life in shame at this point…utterly disgraceful to have misjudged the election so dramatically, and to lose against Trump, a deranged clown.
If the lesson that Team Hillary learned from the election is that they were right to disparage Bernie supporters, and that blue-collar workers and progressives are an unnecessary part of a Democratic coalition, as seems to be the subtext of all of Eichenwald’s writing…the hubris and obstinateness are mind-blowing, given the election results. Rather than taking responsibility, Hillary insiders who lost the election are busy pointing fingers. Had they any honor they would have resigned on November 9th en masse.
CNN just reported that Michelle Rhee is being considered for Sec of Ed. https://twitter.com/NickMiller510/status/798347840518918144
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To concerned citizen:
Are you really a concerned citizen? Would you enjoy having your wife and daughters to be grabbed by the “?” publicly from the RICH bully?
Yes, you will deserve the choice you have made because of the universal law of cause and effect.
However, it is a brutal lesson to the world that leadership cannot ignore PUBLIC EDUCATION with a whole child education concept, because it is the bedrock of democracy.
The billions of illiterates in China and India will swamp the millions of believers in humanity with the emotion in gullibility in all manipulations in CON ARTIST’s leadership. (= evidently from this USA 2016 PRESIDENTIAL election result)
It is utterly, purely and horribly ignorant CONCERN from you! Back2basic
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I deserve to have my loved ones sexually assaulted because I supported Bernie in the Dem primary? I am utterly, purely, and horribly ignorant to point to Michael Tracey’s essay that includes election results, not just opinions, to bolster the argument that Bernie would have beaten Trump?
You and Kurt Eichenwald are doing a great job of unifying the Dem party. Bravo.
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A good article:
http://www.ibtimes.com/why-did-bernie-sanders-lose-vermont-senator-could-have-defeated-trump-landslide-2445655?utm_source=internal&utm_campaign=incontent&utm_medium=related2
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I think Eichenwald’s analysis of the role that super delegates played in the Democratic primary is inaccurate, as demonstrated here: “How Democratic Superdelegates Decided the 2016 Election”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/antonio-moore/how-super-delegates-decid_b_10098414.html
Conversely, I highly doubt Trump would have ever gotten the nomination if the Republican party also had super delegates, which they don’t. Funny how the Democrats added super delegates after Reagan was elected. Would love to now why and how. It means they were in place when the first Clinton gave us the center-right “New Democrats”.
Much like the Electoral College, super delegates seem to be a stop gap empowering politicians to overturn the popular vote if they don’t like the results since, in both cases, how their votes are apportioned is not written in stone. That’s why there is this “surprisingly realistic path to eliminating the electoral college by 2010,” the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which is sound BECAUSE states are permitted by the constitution to direct the allocation of electoral college votes. You can sign the petition here:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/11/9/1594792/-The-surprisingly-realistic-path-to-eliminating-the-Electoral-College-by-2020
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Sorry, about the typo above, that should have been by 2020, not 2010.
Also, you can sign this petition & try telling the Electoral College to respect the popular vote & make Hillary Clinton the next President:
https://www.dailykos.com/campaigns/petitions/sign-the-petition-to-the-electoral-college-elect-hillary-clinton-as-our-next-president
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I agree with Eichenwald’s idea that, “The problem this election season has been that liberal Democrats—just like too many Republicans—have been consumed by provably false conspiracy theories.” Absolutely. I am so tired of conspiracy theories, fake news, infotainment, blah, blah, blah…
But, you know, then I think about how so many Democratic politicians assaulted their own base -us- with their nutty, destructive Common Core, charter school, test ’em ’til they drop mentality. I mean we have years of living, breathing proof on this blog of how Arne and Andrew and John B. King tried to upend public education -hurting not just teachers but children.
So, yeah, I did vote for Hillary. And, I did try to help here out. And, I’m damn glad I did.
But I have to wonder..how many union, public school teachers actually pulled the lever for Trump? For many reasons. And, that thought really hurts.
BTW thanks for taking a chance and posting this piece Diane. It is provocative.
And, now I got rush to work…..LOL
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Spot on
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How many union, public school teachers have been pulling the lever for those right wing Governors (and Senators) in the midwest who have done great harm to them? This election and recent elections past? Even when they were running against Bernie approved candidates?
I suspect those right wing anti-union Republicans running for Gov. and Senator the last few elections won by bigger margins than Trump. That isn’t just solved by a purge of the DNC. That’s solved by a thoughtful discussion of why so many white voters vote against their self-interest and what the appeal of the union-breaking right wing Republican Governors and Senators really is.
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Bernie Sanders went to Standing Rock and stood with the most abused and courageous members of our society, people fighting for their lives and for the greater good for all. Hilary Clinton issued a press release of pablum calling for all side to respect each other. I voted for her, and encouraged others to do so, but this lack of courage (or inclination) on her part to stand up for the marginalized cost her—and all of us—on election day. The system—super delegates, closed primaries in large states like NY and Ohio—was established to stop someone like Sanders and help someone like Clinton. Sanders had the temerity to call out the Democratic establishment and was accused of all kinds of things as the truth typically riles those in power. No one can say for sure if he would have one, but at least a progressive vision would have had a further airing in our public discourse.
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And if HRC had picked Sanders for Veep, would she have run?
Yes.
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won, not run.
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She could have won by picking just about any clearly progressive Veep, reaching out to Sanders and his millions of supporters, being less arrogant, less dismissive, and realizing that the Rust Belt wasn’t a lock for her.
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Agree with both of you MPG & Hardy Boy.
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I love how these figures emerge that are such deities that we have to believe everything they say. After Obama’s election it was Nate Silver (how’s that working out?). Now it’s this Kurt Eichewald guy.
Bernie would have won every state Hillary did, plus he would have won Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, maybe Ohio and a few others. He was speaking to the same fears and anger as Trump, but he was doing it in a positive, uplifting way.
Anyway, if you really don’t want readers to get entangled in angry arguments, please stop stoking the fire.
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yup
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Frank Bruni’s column in the NYTimes suggested that if the race was Trump v. Sanders that we ‘d have Bloomberg in the White House measuring drapes…
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I didn’t know Bloomberg is an interior designer.
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I guess that massive write-in campaign for Mike Bloomberg was going to spontaneously erupt. Meanwhile, I’m not quite clear that Mr. Bloomberg, a billionaire NYC Jew, was about to sweep a nation that preferred a billionaire NYC non-Jew who openly courted the very base that Hillary not only mostly ignored but also openly insulted. I am reasonably sure that no one wins the presidency by mocking a major segment of the populace.
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I’m sure that the Clinton campaign thought that there opposition research on Trump was awesome and that their attack would be brutal. Didn’t work out that way. Might not have worked out that way with Republican attacks on Sanders.
The real questions are which states that Clinton won would Sanders have lost and which states that Clinton lost would Sanders have had a better chance of winning?
The election was lost in three Rust Belt states. Clinton performed as expected in the other states. Florida was close, and I never thought she would win North Carolina. Obama lost NC in 2012. Unlikely that Clinton would win. The state is moving even further to the right.
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One reason the election was lost in those states is that many voters didn’t come out to vote, period.
There was a concerted effort to suppress the democratic vote in those states. Fewer voting places. And non-stop attacks to convince voters that both candidates were equally bad. From both the left and right.
If all you have is a choice of bad and bad, why bother to vote? Especially if the Democrat running for Senator is being smeared just as much as Hillary.
Given how much went down the last 11 days of the campaign, it is hard to know. But here is my question:
If Hillary’s campaign was really losing anyway, why would the FBI be willing to risk its reputation in an unprecedented attempt to cast doubt on the Democrat just days before a Presidential election?
That’s a pretty giant step to take if you feel confident of your win. But if you feel your win slipping away, you might risk it all.
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Hillary received about 5 million votes less than Obama in 2012. Trump received about the same number of votes as Romney in 2012. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2012
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2016
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How about the same charges about voter suppression, fewer polling places, etc., during the Democratic primaries? Just curious if you think that had any impact on the results.
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MPG,
I admit I don’t know enough about it to have an opinion. But I do have one question for you:
Did the DNC change the rules of the primary from 2008 to 2016 because Hillary lost under the 2008 rules to an outsider, so that Bernie Sanders had to run under an entirely different competition than Obama did?
I am under the impression that the rules didn’t change. There were still super delegates pledged to Hillary at the beginning in 2008. There were even FEWER debates between the candidates. And as happens every year, the super delegates switched to the winner in 2008 because that candidate actually had the majority of votes.
I know that the Hillary-hating Bernie fans seem to be arguing that there should have been special new rules in which white votes in the midwest counted for more than African-American votes in the south. Sometimes I am shocked at the comments from the white Bernie supporters dismissing the southern primaries because “those people” (mostly non-white) were in states she would never win in a general election. So the DNC had some obligation to make sure that the states where mostly white Dems lived counted more. They don’t even know how they sound.
Look at Van Jones. He was extremely pro-Bernie. But he got it in a way that the folks who have been smearing Hillary for 3 months didn’t get. And I find it interesting that some of the worst Hillary smears on the left came from white entitled Bernie supporters.
Again, you spent weeks telling me that what we are experiencing under Trump is no worse than what would have happened had Hillary won. I know you believe it was all your heart, but maybe you should look at your own biases about why you just knew it to be true. We are no worse off under Trump. You must have posted 1,000 times.
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In southern states the Democratic vote tracks very heavily on the black vote so naturally Obama was able to win there and still manage to win the election. Hillary took the south and it allowed her to defeat Bernie even though those states are all GOP states..
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Trump’s campaign had been harmed by many sordid revelations and I believe Hillary would have won if it weren’t for the addition of Roger Ailes and Stephen Bannon in mid-August. Ten days later Facebook fired 27 editors and replace them with an algorithm that used clicks, likes, posts and shares to determine the news stores that would trend. That is, the stories that would appear at the top of the news feeds of 1.79 billion users. Facebook’s Trending Topics also drive reputable media coverage. Fake news stories now had a path to prominent position in a noisy, fast-paced campaign’s final push. Where were these fake news stories coming from? Veles, a small town Macedonia, where the Guardian found 150 domain names referring to conservative politics, the US and Trump. I believe Facebook’s firing of humans who took the time to verify whether a news story was fake or not before posting it definitely had an effect on the election. , Combined with the FBI’s perfectly timed letter to Congress, it created a very loud echo chamber that seemed to prove the Trump accusation that Hillary was crooked.
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It’s a shame that the only lesson that we want to learn is “blame Hillary”.
We will let the FBI get away with their actions, because it’s more important to blame Hillary. We won’t address any of the media or Facebook, or why over 60% of voters “knew” that Hillary was corrupt.
We won’t address why the Senators got fewer votes than Hillary.
It’s so much easier just to say “Bernie would have won” just because.
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So your theory is that absent those FBI stories, Hillary would have won. That in a period of 9 days between announcing the reopening of the investigation and the dropping of same, millions of voters across the land switched from Clinton to Trump?
That doesn’t fit my sense of how people vote in this country. I wonder if exit polls and post-election surveys would support such an analysis.
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MPG,
I posted an article that said Trump’s strategy was to suppress HRC vote. It was successful. You may think it was successful because people didn’t like her, and you won’t take my word that I have met Hillary many times over the years, and she is not the witch you imagine. I think I could have sat with her and she would have listened. She absorbs information. With Trump, there is no chance in the world that he will listen. He wants to blow up the public schools so that every poor kid can go to a religious school or charter school. He seems to think that anything public is damaged goods.
I will wait for the historians to review what happened in 2016, if I live long enough. But I strongly believe that Comey’s intervention 11 days before the election with a completely unfounded allegation burst her bubble and reinforced the alt-right view of Clinton.
So now we have a President-elect whose chief strategist is from the alt-right. Steve Bannon is a “bomb-thrower,” as an editorial in USA Today said. Having him at the right hand of the President in the White House is scary. USA Today, the newspaper of middle America, said:
The Bannon appointment is salt in the wound for the African Americans, Latinos, Muslims, Jews and other Americans who were Trump’s campaign punching bags and still feel wounded and bewildered as Trump transitions from campaigning to governing.
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One reason I agree with you about Comey and the FBI is that it is absolutely clear that neither the FBI nor the Republicans really care at all about Hillary’s “crimes” now. We are supposed to believe the nonsense that Comey “had” to investigate because the right wing would attack him if they learned about it after the election. But ONLY if she won. And they knew she was winning.
That’s the point — if Trump was really winning at that time, they would not have bothered with that smear letter right before the election. Why make the FBI look bad if Hillary was going to lose anyway? Trump just said Hillary was a good person! No more “crooked Hillary”. His fans don’t care about her crimes if he wins. The FBI isn’t being pressured to continue the investigation. No one would have cared whether Comey brought it up before or after the election once Trump won.
But they believed Trump was going to lose. That’s the only reason for the FBI’s late smear tactic against Hillary. Comey would only take a risk that big — basically violating the Hatch Act — to prevent a loss. Because none of it matters in a win. No one is calling for Hillary’s head any longer. No one would have cared what he investigated if Trump won. they obviously believed they needed to release the letter because Trump was losing. And Comey thought it was worth risking the FBI’s reputation to influence an election.
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NYCPP – but the point is, Comey DID it, despite its being almost certainly a breach of the Hatch Act– & he was an Obama appointee. The letter, and his July press conf w/its extraneous remarks, tho characterized as ‘unprecedented’, smack to me of various scenarios in the Nixon admin. The only thing that seems unprecedented is that the attack on the Dem candidate just prior to election should come from an appointee of the Dem admin. Granted, FBI Director has historically supposedly been a neutral player who outlasts Dem & Rep admins. Comey’s actions tell the lie: FBI is political. Perhaps Obama should have understood this when allowing this cuckoo egg into the nest? Or does it simply show– like the appointments of Geithner, Duncan, HRC– that Obama despite liberal rhetoric is a conservative/ neoliberal ‘Democrat’.
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Using Comey as an excuse for losing an election that she should have won by 10% demonstrates how far removed from reality the Clinton world has become. The Clintons need to spend a year back in Arkansas talking to real folks. Robert Kutcher seems to think Clintonism (Wall St speeches,NAFTA, Clinton Foundation, …) is dead.
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bethree5,
I don’t know what it is about the Dems appointing Republicans as FBI Directors. In the case of Obama, he did his usual bowing to the Republican Congress rather than fight for the liberal idea. I was incredibly frustrated when he did the same thing with the health insurance fight — he dropped the public option so fast the public didn’t even know any Democrats wanted anything but the ACA in its current form. And I have no doubt he would have happily done social security “reform” that was approved by the Republicans given more time.
The irony is that Hillary Clinton was neither Bill nor Obama. She pivoted LEFT after winning, not right. It is just as likely she would have governed to the left as well. No guarantees, but then there aren’t any guarantees for anyone. Who knew Obama would be more Republican than Bill Clinton? But the left characterized Hillary — even before she took office — in a way they never had with Obama. Not just neoconservative but corrupt. Instead of giving Hillary a chance — especially against someone as terrible as Trump — we just heard that she was dishonest and in the pockets of Wall Street. Ignoring her Bernie-modeled platform altogether because she was just lying.
How ironic that some progressives were so certain Hillary was a neoconservative that they helped elect Trump. Contributing to the crooked Hillary meme, and voters, hearing the disgust for Hillary from her fellow Democrats, just stayed home.
There was nothing wrong with fighting hard for Bernie but the primary process was the same as it has always been. If anything, more conciliatory to Bernie as the DNC agreed to have even more debates than planned to accommodate his candidacy. He didn’t have the votes. Even he knew he didn’t have the votes.
Van Jones is a good example – you can be a critic without destroying a candidate. You can recognize a candidate’s flaws AND her ability to do good. I would be interested to hear Mr. Jones perspective of Kurt Eichenwald’s article – it would not surprise me if he agreed with quite a lot of it.
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Agree, NYCPP. The whole ‘crooked Hillary’ thing– easy enough for me to discount the yellow journalism, plug my ears & focus on her accomplishments– is terribly dispiriting. It’s nothing new, fine candidates have ever been knocked off the pedestal by a few human tears or a made-up war story or an adulterous affair. Opponents had to work much harder in Hillary’s case, turning an opaque tech issue equally mishandled by Rep office-holders into high crime– could not have been mgd w/o inside players (Comey for one). Makes me feel like I felt ’68-’74. Personally, I’m glad to see folks hitting the streets to protest. It was the only thing that made gov take notice back then.
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In the future, I think, the term “Crooked Hillary” will enter the history books as a phony campaign slogan that was a useful strategy. After the election, Trump praised Hillary in glowing terms. He did what it took to win.
I believe his warning about a “rigged election” was intended to prepare himself and his followers for the defeat he expected.
Maybe the election was rigged. I wrote earlier about my concern that hackers could hack into the electronic voting machines. Who knows what the vote really was?
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Ailes and Bannon didn’t do this at the behest of the GOP, who had nearly all turned on Trump after the video emerged about grabbing women. Some say Wall Street changed its mind about Hillary, and saw bigger tax breaks, etc., going with Trump.
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Now the Democratic party has lost most governorships, the House, Senate and Presidency. Yet Obama and Clinton advise giving Trump a chance. That is crazy talk. The FBI and Facebook maneuvering shows just how easy it is to rig a US presidential election, once you’ve out in your time to purge voter polls and gerrymander districts.
Bernie is right about the Democratic Party leadership. They are hopeless.
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agreed
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To all who believe in the love for humanity:
Here are music to console our sufferance:
1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtwAjgeBEsc
THE MIRACLE OF LOVE – EURYTMICS
2) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6yUY7M9yfw
REM – Everybody Hurts.
3) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwUGSYDKUxU
In short, love will prevail in the end because it is not worth to kill over things that are beyond the reality of ignorance. Please remember that cruelty happens to awaken our heart and mind so that we pay more attention to the unfortunate = in all aspects of emotion like selfish desires = greed, ego and lust for fame, fortune and sexual fulfillment. Back2basic
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Only 2 days after Facebook fired the 27 editors, the first fake news story trended for 8 hours — 8 hours! — and got 200,000 likes. It said reporter Megyn Kelly had been fired from Fox and has decided to support Hillary.
Megyn Kelly has received a lot of praise for standing up to Trump in interviews and debates. And she stated that Ailes had also sexually harassed her.
Seems like it was payback time, doesn’t it?
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Oh, that my post may be the last in this thread!!!!!
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At Bernie’s age he should not be the candidate again but a Bernie type candidate should run in 2020. Possibly Warren. I would like to see a Biden Warren ticket. It says blue collar establishment + plus forward looking progressivism.
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A Biden ticket would say “Gung Ho” for continuing to privatize public education, since his brother has made his fortune from charter schools and Joe has no problem with that or with charter school expansion.
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Was the election rigged in the sense that the DNC cheated or altered the rules for Hillary? No. But the DNC was absolutely guilty of spinning a narrative that their chosen-from-the-beginning candidate was the only option for keeping the white house. Voters were routinely told that Bernie had no chance of winning. When the DNC should have been neutral during the primaries, they were not.
This election was lost because people hate Hillary Clinton. Whether that hatred is deserved or not, strategically she was a horrible choice for a candidate. The party should have recognized that after 20 years of people screaming bloody murder whenever her name was mentioned, that there was a large part of the country that would never vote for her.
No one is saying Sanders would have won hands down, but he always had a better chance than Clinton did.
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Bernie lost the primaries. Clinton won more votes. The DNC did not change anyone’s vote. Certainly not mine.
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They absolutely changed minds. There were plenty of people who preferred Sanders but were scared into voting for Clinton because they saw what the GOP choices were likely going to be and were told that only she could beat them. The simple fact that the party was even taking sides in the matter was troubling.
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Fiddlesticks. Plenty like me & my whole family voted Bernie in primary silly-hoping he’d win, but seriously-hoping a large showing would pull Hillary’s platform to left. Then voted HRC in general.
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bethree5,
And isn’t that exactly what happened?
Wasn’t Hillary’s platform pulled to the left?
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Yep. & that makes me proud of our votes. But D platform had a ways further to go left to get it out of neoliberal territory. & last-minute policy changes & sympathetic words are seen– thro the window of 8 yrs of lib-talking neolib-acting Obama– as lip-service.
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And the irony, of course, is that Hillary very likely would have governed to the left and was nothing like the Obama neoconservatives on economic policy. She never just “gave lip service” to the poor and working class. She become the object of evil to the right because they understood where she stood politically. And she was tough. In my opinion, she was LBJ tough. As a liberal who has waited 30 years for a Democrat to be another LBJ, I was so looking forward to seeing her in action. Especially after 8 long years of watching Obama. Again, that’s the irony! Obama completely gave lip service to any liberal ideas. He didn’t believe them. He would have “reformed” social security to the Republicans specifications given the chance.
Not so with Hillary. When her first attempt at real universal health care failed, what did she do? She got the Child Health Plus plan in place. I have so many friends who used that health insurance for their kids during periods of unemployment. That’s what Hillary did — she worked to get the best she could for the things she believed in. And contrary to the alt-right and Hillary-hating left, she does believe in the LBJ things. She is much closer to Bernie than to Obama on economic policy. The right knew that and destroyed her. They fooled the left, some of whom helped the right do it. and I am bummed because I am not convinced that Warren or even Bernie – should they win – have the LBJ fortitude to push legislation through. And I think Hillary did. It’s done, I know, and I will be happy to see the next progressive President prove me wrong. But I do think that President won’t even be elected until the Democrats do more than “blame Hillary” for their defeat. This defeat was orchestrated by the alt-right, the FBI, and the Hillary-hating left who enabled to the constant media drumbeat “even the Democrats” know how corrupt Hillary is. And the interviews with the Erie, PA voters show just how corrupt they believed Hillary to be. Next time, it will be the progressive candidate who gets smeared. Especially if the mainstream Democrats decide to help the alt right with their dirty work and insist that all the smears of the progressive candidate are true.
Imagine 2020 – The primary is Tim Kaine against Elizabeth Warren or whatever primary candidate the Hillary-haters find acceptable. The progressive candidate wins and that box of negatives that Steven Bannon had for Bernie is pulled out. It’s not just that the alt-right is saying Bernie shipped nuclear waste away from his white voters to poison poor Latino people in other states. It’s not just the alt-right saying that Bernie’s wife used Bernie’s political connections to enrich their family and drove a college in bankruptcy. It’s that the Tim Kaine voters are agreeing it is true that Bernie has been a fraud all this time. “Even the Democrats” know that these things about Bernie are true.
And when Bernie loses because of it (or another progressive candidate loses because of a different smear that Tim Kaine voters help to promote), I suspect his supporters won’t just accept the “I told you so” from the Tim Kaine supporters who spent the election helping the alt-right do their dirty work. I suspect his supporters won’t be so pleased when they hear from the Kaine supporters “let’s just move on now that we know how terrible Bernie was and find a better candidate next time.”
If we don’t have a real understanding about how the disaffected losing primary candidates supporters helped the alt-right smear the winning candidate, then it will happen again. Maybe the mainstream Dems aren’t as myopic as the anti-Hillary haters who only saw what they wanted to see and maybe the mainstream Dems would not have helped the alt right do their dirty work if Bernie had won the primary. But if they had, I would hope we could have an honest discussion of what happened and not just blame Bernie.
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Hillary was a disastrous ‘establishment’ candidate from the right wing DLC wing of her party. She racked up delegates early from black Democrats in the south in states that the Democrats were never going to win. Sanders however played much better in states like Michigan that the Dems had to retain.
The Democrats lost the election the day Clinton clinched the nomination.
Working class whites decided a vote for Hillary was a vote that says “you can continue to ignore me. ” As Michael Moore clearly understood, Trump was the Molotov cocktail that the working class threw at Washington.
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Doug,
Do you have any idea how racist your comment sounds? I don’t think you are racist, but you just dismissed the primary votes of people of color because they weren’t working class white folks in the midwest.
Are you American? It will surprise you to know that there are white working class people in NY. And California. And Massachusetts. And Vermont. Who weren’t quite as swayed by Trump as those white mid-western voters who apparently are far more admirable.
Maybe the white working class voters in NY, Mass, California, Vermont, etc. just aren’t as swayed by appeals to racism and xenophobia as the white working class voters of the midwest. After all, those are the same white working class voters that have been handily electing right wing Republicans to rule states like Wisconsin.
If the lesson is to pander to them instead of recognizing that there were white voters who weren’t quite as accepting of Trump’s scapegoating of the “other” for their problems, then we have learned the wrong lesson.
And if you think you are going to change the mind of the same voters who voted for Scott Walker and Ron Johnson? How?
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Wrong. Hillary won the primaries easily in states that were never going to be won by a Dem. Look at the map. Subtract t the southern states in the primary. Hillary has a hard time winning.
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Wisconsin has been a blue state for years. Counties that voted for Obama twice voted Trump. They would have voted Bernie.
They want to hear “manufacturing is coming back. You will all have great jobs. So will your kids. Bernie said it. Trump said it. Trump won.
They don’t want to hear certain words. One is retraining. The other is relocation.
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Doug,
Trump lied. He can’t bring back jobs lost to automation. Nor can American workers compete with those who work for a dollar an hour–or less. Congress is not going to let him engage in protectionism and a trade war. His promises will be as valid as his promise to bring back the jobs of coal miners. Who burns coal?
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Diane,
Of course he lied. And of course it will be very difficult to return the jobs but that is not how politics works.
I will kill NAFTA and return jobs = he cares about us and hears us.
If you say “retrain or relocate” voters walk away and say “she doesn’t get it. I want my old life back.”
Democrats must say -we will fill up the Midwest with factories full of highly paid union jobs for you and your children” or give up on those states meaning they simply cannot win.
Americans must build wind turbines solar collectors next generation electric cars and busses and the future economy.
America cannot survive on financial services in NY and Silicon Valley in CA.
Mexico was included in NAFTA for one reason- to destroy organized labor in the private sector. I never should have happened.
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But the early primaries, where Clinton won, were very close and this is where momentum is extremely important and this is also where the DNC was able to exercise significant influence. Also Sanders won many caucuses where votes are not tabulated as in primaries. Had Sanders won Iowa and Nevada at the beginning of the primary season Clinton would have ceased to be perceived as the inevitable and Sanders chances of getting nominated and getting more votes in later primaries would have increased dramatically.
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People hate Hillary and yet she has won the most popular votes after Obama. The vote count continues and she may have a 1.7 to 2 million lead in the popular vote which is worth a mess of pottage in this country. If we went by the popular vote, she would be president.
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People do hate Clinton. They’ve been screaming it for the last 20 years. For some reason, the party thought they could win them over or gather enough votes to counteract them but as a lot of post-election wrap ups have pointed out, the party was way out of touch with the general populace.
There were millions of voters who switched sides from the Dems to the GOP in this election. Or to put it another way, there were millions of voters who voted for our first African American president who went on to vote for most openly racist and sexist candidate we’ve had in at least the last 40 years.
Because they hate Clinton.
Also, the popular vote is really an irrelevant argument in this case. If we went by the popular vote, both candidates would have campaigned differently. We don’t really know what would have happened if the rules were different.
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Court,
Hillary was one of the most admired people in the world as Senator and as Secretary of State. It was when she dared to run for president that she became hated. Hated for what? I met her on several occasions over the years and thought she was warm, funny, kind, empathetic.
So we got a dumb male celebrity instead of a smart woman who had some good ideas about to solve problems. Now that Trump won, he wants to go home to Trump Tower and phone in.
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The people who hated HILLARY Clinton for the last 20 years – ever since she was First Lady – were the far right who knew she was a liberal socialist feminist. The Steven Bannon types. Are you really saying that the DNC should have said “well the far right hates Clinton, so we better not elect her?”
When I voted for Obama in the primaries in 2008, one reason was because I was concerned about those far right haters who believed Hillary was a leftist liberal. They had a visceral hatred for Hillary.
But in the ensuing years, those Hillary-hating voices of the alt right were being smacked down. Watching the Benghazi hearings #1, 2, 3, ….12 showed that the alt right’s hatred of Hillary was still there, but she stood up to it and it gained no traction.
What no one realized is the visceral dislike of Hillary that could be raised from the left. That isn’t 20 years old. That is recent. They were angry because the DNC rules — which had been in place for many primaries — were not changed to make it easier for Bernie to win. And — most of them being white, entitled and feeling as if the Bernie candidacy was their due — turned on Hillary and the DNC.
For the record — Bernie did have supporters like Van Jones who weren’t white and he was one of the voices giving a three-dimensional portrayal of Hillary. But the white Hillary-haters on the left ignored him. She wasn’t an okay second choice. She was just as bad as Trump.
That’s why the biggest joke is on the Hillary-haters. They got played by the alt right. Lucky for them, they aren’t the ones who will suffer the most under Trump because the real Hillary haters on the left during this election weren’t the immigrants or people of color — even though many of them had originally supported Bernie. The ones who got played by the alt right were white. And privileged. And could say that Hillary was hated for 20 years without recognizing that hate came from the alt-right who believed she was exactly the kind of candidate who would get the progressive agenda done. Ironic, isn’t it? But who will suffer because of their entitlement?
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So Hillary lost because of white intelligentsia who sat at home thumb in mouth on election day? Debatable. Can only judge from inside my bubble but any such here ran not walked to polls in the attempt to stop Trump. More salient to me are the reported 20% 2x Obama-voters in rust-belt states who voted for Trump.
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The voters in the Rust Belt wanted a change, but they are getting same old Do-Nothing Republicans in Congress, White House, and states. Trump wants to be a part-time president, living in his golden penthouse in Manhattan, much more luxurious than the White House, and you don’t have all those military people standing around, watching you. Just your own servants.
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“So Hillary lost because of white intelligentsia who sat at home thumb in mouth on election day?”
I NEVER said that. Those voters could have voted 3rd party. A few may have even pulled the lever for Hillary themselves after spending months bashing her.
Hillary lost because the Hillary-hating left helped the alt-right do their dirty work to smear her. Now it’s possible that they could have done it ONLY with the FBI’s help but given how close this election turned out, the FBI could not have gotten away with it without the Hillary-hating left’s constantly repeating the alt right memes of how corrupt and dishonest Hillary was. That’s what gives those memes traction. When “even the Democrats” agree she is dishonest.
Hillary lost because the “Hillary is dishonest and corrupt and only cares about Wall Street” meme that the left helped promote travelled to main street. Erie Pa, where voters just knew Hillary was corrupt.
I posted above but I will repeat it here. If Bernie were to run against Tim Kaine in the primary in 2020, that basket of negatives that Eichenwald mentioned gets pulled out. It’s all just nasty stuff to be ignored by the media. Unless the disaffected Democrats start repeating it! Then the media can offer it up. “Even the Democrats” know that Bernie shipped hazardous waste from his own white voters to Latino communities. “Even the Democrats” know that Bernie’s wife used his political connections to enrich their family and bankrupt a college educating lots of low-income students. “Even the Democrats” know that Bernie hobnobs with terrorists who say Death to America. Pretty soon those voters in Erie Pa start believing it.
An example: When Hillary lost to Obama in the primary, and Obama became the candidate, the same alt-right voices tried to destroy him. So we heard how Obama worshipped at the feet of America-hater Jeremiah Wright. How he was so out of touch saying PA voters cling to their guns and religion. How his wife hated America. Here is the difference: Hillary voters didn’t agree. You didn’t have the disaffected Hillary voters saying “yes, that Obama DOES agree with Jeremiah Wright that our country is terrible”. They didn’t say “yes, Obama IS out of touch and hates working class voters and keeps insulting them”. They didn’t say “don’t vote for Obama, he is no different than McCain”.
All those attempt to negatively characterize Obama had no traction because Hillary voters DEFENDED Obama. So they became ONLY the lies from the right. Not the truths that “even Democrats” agree on.
The Hillary-hating left helped the alt-right this election. All they had to do was model themselves after Van Jones — who was a big Bernie supporter — and recognize that those memes were lies instead of giving them traction. We have President Trump and simply blaming Hillary without recognizing how the haters on the left helped to destroy her is not a good thing. We need to acknowledge it so it doesn’t happen again. Unless the assumption is that moderate Democrats are better people than the Hillary-haters and their own ethical compass would never allow them to join the alt-right in their smears lot the next progressive candidate who defeats Kaine. Just like the Hillary voters didn’t do that to Obama. Is it just that the angry left doesn’t care? Or did they just get played? And if they got played, so can the moderates when their candidate loses. Let’s stop giving the alt right the satisfaction of winning.
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I do agree that once we were down to HRC versus DT, that people should have had the common sense to vote for Hillary. Trump is such an obvious demagogue bomb thrower who is backed by a far right wing party that’s chomping at the bit to dismantle what’s left of the New Deal and will definitely go on another deregulation spree. Hillary would have done none of those things. I don’t want to punch anyone in the face as Kurt E. does. But on the other hand, he has received death threats.
Maybe the answer to why Trump won is something as simple as his star value. He is a big TV star who’s been in the public eye for decades. Hillary also has been in the public arena for decades but is not as much of a star as Trump. Bernie is a relative unknown nationally and would have had to overcome that recognizability gap. What does it say about us that we have someone as despicable as Trump as our president? Michelle Rhee as secretary of education?!? Oy!
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I follow Kurt Eichenwald on Twitter. He was bombarded with anti-Semitic slurs, even after he said that he was not Jewish.
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Thanks Diane. I haven’t got involved in Twitter yet. I’m kind of paranoid about hacking, spamming, identity theft, phishing, spoofing, etc., ad nauseam.
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Michelle Rhee is very bad news indeed.
Diane, I know it’s an ugly thought, but would you consider reaching out to Trump to see if you can educate him a bit on Education? It sounds like Obama was able to get him to see the stakes associated with repealing the ACA in just one meeting. He said Trump seems more pragmatic than ideological, so going against Republicans on this may not be a problem for him.
You could mention the role you played in a Republican administration and how your views were transformed. It also wouldn’t hurt to mention your efforts to fight against Obama’s Dept. of Ed.
Trump has railed against Common Core many times, not even knowing what it is, so perhaps it’s worth a shot.
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Joe who was Obama . Who was Bill Clinton, they burst on to the national scene without name recognition . Yes I did vote for Hillary .
Yes the people did as well. Just not enough where it counted and that is the fault of policy .
Even on immigration Trumps hidden message was economic. Through out the great recession Japan maintained unemployment rates lower than we have in this recovery . You can’t work in Japan as a non citizen for more than a few months. The narrative here is these are jobs Americans don’t want.
Like sheet rock installer (a carpenter) Union rate close to 50 an hour. + benefits in NY. Not too many Americans who didn’t want that wage.
In L.A. now these are now predominantly being done by the undocumented
. It looks like it is headed that way in NY as well. As not one residential tower to come out of the ground went all union in 2016.
God where do we go from here . How do you fight Trump-ism until we are ready to acknowledge he touched some raw nerves.
So to get yourselves thoroughly depressed watch this video. I showed it on a construction job site. it was met with cheers .Too late now
It should be re-posted
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“the narrative these are jobs Americans don’t want… Sheet-rock installer.. in LA now these are predominantly done by the undocumented.. It looks like it is headed that way in NY as well.”
That’s a lot to swallow at once. There is a category of jobs ‘Americans don’t want’ which is routinely performed by illegals: crop-picking. The thing we imported slaves to do 400 yrs ago.
But construction jobs are ‘wanted’ by Americans. The fact that a couple of generations are missing from the trades has much to do w/ cultural/ class mismessaging & misguided [/cynical anti-union] ‘all must have tech degrees or go jobless’ govt/corp mantra since 1979. Our gov’s spineless response to global trade challenge (accompanied by the race to deregulate de-unionize outsource etc in the rush to make sure biggest pieces of shrinking pie would go to top dogs, devil take the hindmost). With predictable immediate defunding of hs auto et al career-oriented training in hisch: 35 yrs later such programs are regional at best & hanging by a thread.
Here in metro-NY/NJ suburbs there are some construction jobs reqg concentrated low-skill labor for a short period (notably roofing, to a lesser degree painting) which undoubtedly round up undocumented into the labor pool. And we have seen that 2-career suburban families can’t handle their own lawn maintenance, hence 30 yrs of small lawn-mnt cos employing illegals– tho I’ve noted in the last decade many ilegals in that trade being replaced by laid-off/ downsized Americans. But in many more higher-skilled trades includinge carpentry, boilermaker, et al are well into the second generation of skilled immigrant labor which responded to the vacuum, long since become citizens.
Despite that trend, in my metro-NY/NJ suburban area, I note an increase in the last decade of successful entrepreneurs in construction trades who are home-grown: most are small self-employed or businesses led by college-educated engrs or BS/Ba’s w/trade experience, who hire teams of legal immigrants.
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“But if you didn’t vote for the only person who could defeat him and are now protesting a Trump presidency, may I suggest you shut up and go home.”
Sigh. Eichenwald is part of the problem, not the solution. I, in fact, didn’t vote for the only person who could have defeated Trump, I voted for Hillary. More likely Biden or Warren would have done better, less likely Bernie. Clinton was a weak candidate from the start. It looked like the Democratic party was repeating at the national level what Ohio Democrats did in 2010 and 2014. Now we’re stuck with alt-righters in Ohio and Washington. Eichenwald shows the same tone deafness, hubris, and self-destructive reactions we saw in Ohio that are splitting and destroying the national Democratic Party.
Start looking forward. Politely show the Clinton Coalition the door. They lost. Start focusing on working Middle America as a labor party and less as a Wall Street party. Gender, race, and orientation issue focus is important, but is not going to win elections. Democrats need to capture those Rust Belt non-deplorables. Most of us are hurting in the Rust Belt. These voters are looking for someone to trust and lead. They are giving Trump and the Republicans only a short time to fix the economy. Modern Republicans have never been good at governing. When they fail, Democrats must be ready to step in with an authentic message.
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Amen
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I agree. Keep saying this. In a few months, people might listen.
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Best post yet.
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Vale Math, you are mischaracterizing Eichenwald’s quote:
“But if you didn’t vote for the only person who could defeat him and are now protesting a Trump presidency, may I suggest you shut up and go home.”
He is referring to the GENERAL election. I don’t see him attacking anyone for voting for whoever they wanted in the primary. That is not his argument.
In the GENERAL election, the only person who could have defeated Trump was Hillary. In fact, she did get 1 million more votes, just not in the right states.
We’re “stuck with alt-righters” for a lot of reasons. And one of them is the Hillary-haters on the left helping the alt-right do their dirty work on Hillary. Not just voting for a 3rd party candidate, but for legitimizing the “crooked Hillary” meme that led other voters to stay home or vote for Trump. And legitimizing Trump by saying that he is no worse than Hillary.
“Democrats need to capture those Rust Belt non-deplorables. Most of us are hurting in the Rust Belt.” That’s exactly what Hillary said in the speech that she got so much flack for. Maybe if it hadn’t been mischaracterized, she would have won. And even done something for them, as she wanted to do.
Also, I grew up in the Rust Belt and I see the links and hear the comments of friends and relatives. There is far more racism than you think and just “voting for Obama” doesn’t make a person non-racist. Trump’s use of racist innuendo and xenophobia was intentional. He didn’t have to pander to the alt-right to get their votes against Hillary. He used that language to appeal to the working white folks who wanted to blame their economic woes on the other. Not he neoconservatives. The other. Trump let them. They handily re-elected the Republican Senators and Governors against Democrats who should have “appealed” to them. And they handily elected Trump. When working white folks reject Russ Feingold for a Senator who has done nothing at all for them and in fact, supported policies that hurt them, something else is going on that has nothing to do with appealing to them on economic grounds.
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The Democrats need to be thinking how do we connect the Roosevelt coalition to the Obama coalition. Dump Wall St and Silicon Valley in the process.
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watch the video i just posted
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The first thing Hillary says out of the gate after the election is that she lost because of James Comey.
Almost a billion dollars contributed to her campaign
She being supposedly the best, most experienced candidate ever
Every major news organization endorsing her
All the best A celebrities campaigning/endorsing her
World figures, former presidents, and other major political figures endorsing her
DNC working for her
All of that, and she loses to the worst, least organized, least funded, publicly reviled candidate ever.
But she accepts no blame.
The Clintons, and all of their minions, have to go. Their era is over. Neo-liberalism is over.
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I so agree. Hubby & I are boomer liberals, both almost-hippies [then], yet rule-followers [trying to work w/n the mil-indust complex to change it] who found lucrative work in those ’70’s corporations which welcomed & trained good thinkers/ communicators… late-child-bearers of millenials– music-techie 20-somethings who would easily have found corp-entry-level jobs in our day, but in today’s economy can only find 3/4 jobs w/no bennies, so live at home…
Meanwhile tho we followed all the rules, corp pensions disappeared in the ’90’s, replaced by 401k’s which lost 40% of their value in 2007/8 great recession (while we were paying for college ed so our kids wouldn’t start out in debt)…
And the steady drumbeat of lower health benefits which began to decline in the ’80’s w/HMO’s: you try to keep up w/promotions, but every yr you put in more $ & get fewer bennies & more OOP. We are still trying to figure out when we can retire…
The only good thing I’ve seen out of electing Dems (which we have always tried to do) was Obamacare, which covered the eldest at 26, at a price he can afford. Youngest is up in a few mos, & we’re facing an admin committed to dumping ACA.
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And I forgot to say– yeah. Neoliberals. How stupid were we, cheering Bill Clinton on in ’92? Wow, he balanced the budget! I belatedly realized he had merely stifled the defense budget to the point where huge investments would be required simply to restore the Navy (which was required thanks to the wars he got us into). And I thought, wow, what a great reform to welfare, requiring folks to work for their benefit! (Little realizing the work part of it had zero funding & would merely result in criminalization of applicants.) And then there’s NAFTA, cinching our move into job-outsourcing… Let’s not forget the 1994 re-authorization of the Elem & Sec Educ Act, which ushered in standards-based & AYP reform, but w/o consequence (paving the way for the ‘accountability’ movement, i.e., Bush’s NCLB)
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I agree with you but none of that was HILLARY’s platform.
It was Bill Clinton’s. And it was Obama’s. But somehow Obama never engendered the visceral dislike from the left — nor the ‘crooked Obama’ mischaracterization — that Hillary did. He would not have won if he had.
Hillary’s platform was Bernie’s. I’m not sure what you think was different about it. It wasn’t the platform– it was the belief that she was lying to us and so corrupt that she planned to throw all liberals under the bus after the election. Ironically, the reason the alt-right was so anti-Hillary is they were terrified of her. Because they knew she had the desire that Obama did not to move the country left.
I suspect they were correct. But because Hillary’s platform was ignored, not only won’t we ever know, but we get Trump instead.
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The difference is athenticity the #1 ingredient in poitics. When Bernie talks left it is genuine because he has always been there. When Hillary talks left it reminds people of Wall St speeches, TPP is gold standard, etc. Hillary shifts her positions too often and loses support in the process. People believe she will ” say anything” to win.
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Doug,
Yep, I agree with you. The alt-right had to make sure Hillary looked “inauthentic”. Not for any good reason. Because she made speeches for money? That never mattered about any candidate before but suddenly it’s some sign of “inauthenticity” when it comes to Hillary?
TPP is “gold standard”? She explained that and while I know that small-minded people only like to hear a quick slogan, it was based in a real understanding of the issues but taken out of context to act as if she was more free trade than the right wing Republicans who the working class whites handily re-elected for Congress and Senate. Let’s repeat that — those white working class voters handily re-elected the Republicans who had DONE far worse things that any meme about what Hillary “wanted” to do. Against Dem’s offering the same message you absolutely know Bernie would have won with.
Hillary adopted Bernie’s platform because it really wasn’t significantly different than her own beliefs – the ones she had worked all her life for. That’s far more “authentic” than a meme that the Hillary-haters on both the right and the left love to promote.
I understand why Bernie would be the first choice of many voters. But I don’t understand why Hillary wasn’t a perfectly okay — not ideal but okay — 2nd choice for people who call themselves liberals. She should have been. The left should not have helped the alt right do their dirty work. They could have treated Hillary Clinton as Van Jones did. Instead, they treated her as Steven Bannon did. And IMO, allowed him to pull out a victory for his candidate.
You think that can’t happen again when you put up your next “inauthentic” candidate? You are so certain Bernie would have been immune from the attacks that the Republicans had to make him seen “inauthentic” or “authentically pro-terrorist”? Not when all the Hillary supporters upset at Bernie’s win started repeating it endlessly — even all those Democrats understand that Bernie is in bed with terrorists. Even all those Democrats know that Bernie stole electricity and his wife got rich from illegally taking federal funds for a college that she bankrupted. Even all those Democrats know that Bernie wanted to ship Vermont’s nuclear waste to poor Latino communities. That’s how you give the right wing lies traction. You get the left to go along and repeat them. But no doubt the Hillary Clinton voters would have seen beyond their own selfish entitlement and said “hey, let’s not help the alt right do their dirty work.” It’s a shame so many Bernie voters could not have treated Hillary AUTHENTICALLY themselves — like Van Jones — instead of helping the alt right.
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Predictable. Most vote w/ their gut, not by reading & buying into the letter of the platform. They observe Obama’s ‘change’ platform may have warded off another great depression, but admin married to Wall St resulting 8 yrs later in continued trickle-up & little in place to keep us from the next brink. Nothing in Hillary’s campaign clearly broke with that, & words of platform pale when contemplating the elephant in the room– Mr Neoliberal sharing the White House.
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Sorry, but that isn’t entirely true.
Look at what the voters who voted for Trump said: They didn’t even BELIEVE half of what he said.
They liked Obama.
They knew Hillary was corrupt so anything she was offering them was a lie.
And they handily re-elected the right wing Republicans who were far worse then neoliberal — the right wing Republicans who had spent every effort trying to decimate unions and promote free trade and every other policy that those voters supposedly didn’t like.
If this was just about change, the change would have been directed toward the Republican in the Senate and statehouse as well. North Carolina proved that voters would vote out Republicans they didn’t like and split the ticket. You can’t deny that the white voters preferred to re-elect right wing Republicans for Senate and Governor. And blaming that all on Hillary is ridiculous when those right wing Senators were getting more votes than Trump, and Democrats like Russ Feingold were getting fewer votes than Hillary.
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If Trump tapped into the economic concerns of the rust belt, what was that concern? Bernie identified the upper end of taxing the 1% more, which I think was generally well received. I don’t think too many people still put their faith in trickle down economics. But between Clinton and Trump, who would be a better friend to wall st? Both of them.
What about the economic concern of how benefits are distributed to the poor, lower middle, and middle class? Is that a fair system, or is that a rigged system?
Are Obama and Clinton tone deaf to this issue? If the democrats are perceived as a party of elite wealthy people, who tax the middle class and working people, then give it to the poor or unworking people, so that they all end up with about the same standard of living, they will lose.
Where the tax system is very graduated and very dialed in to be fair, health, food, and education benefits are much more binary. Low income qualifies, then past a threshold there is nothing. The affordable care act was not a nuanced distribution of health care funds to every American. It was random and lottery like for people in similar income brackets, due to the vagary of rules. People want graduated fair economic rules at the broad base as well as for wall street.
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Are Obama and Clinton tone deaf to this issue? If the democrats are perceived as a party of elite wealthy people, who tax the middle class and working people, then give it to the poor or unworking people, so that they all end up with about the same standard of living, they will lose.
Yes and they are perceived and portrayed
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The core of Clintonism is “the working class has nowhere else to go” while we court the professional class and Wall St. The white working class is 40% of the nation and the critical element of the Roosevelt coalition.
The have been ground down and characterized as Duck Dynasty and Honey Boo Boo.
White working class people are not just an element of the progressive coalition. It is the most important element. It is the rock on which the progressive coalition must be built.
Without advancement for workers there will be little advancement for women, Latinos, Blacks, LGBTQ, and other equity seeking groups.
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Doug
We used to make the distinction between a white collar managerial class (middle class) and the blue collar working class.. I think at this point we may have to go by income. The 83% for household income (I had to look it up. ) is 75,000 . That is family income. That can no longer be called middle class no matter what color the collar, or level of education. Especially when pensions are gone and health insurance (unless you had an employer provided Cadillac plan ) are taken into account . If you had a Cadillac plan chances are you made a hell of a lot more.
I agree with everything you say except that 40,000 I think this is affecting a far broader segment of the work force. You are not renting a 2 bedroom apartment in NYC on that income.
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In Canada Joel we take a slightly European view of “class” somewhat detached from income. We relate it more to the job. A plumber is working class no matter how much money he or she makes. A teacher is middle class no matter how little they earn. We notice Americans now using educational attainment as a substitute or stand in for class.
The American Dream makes it difficult to see class as a semi-permanent condition.
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correction 70th percentile . 75+-
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TC & Joel, your discussion seems to me a mere parsing of the overall situation, which is a lack of healthy US [middle-/ working-class driven] economy.
Neoliberalism has been, since 1979 (when US was first confronted w/ the spector of global trade challenge) our govt’s attempt to counter the results of economic policies up to that point.
For much of 20thC we propped up lesser economies so as to ensure a market for our products. Predictably, those economies became stronger– & as predictably [given our capitalistic incentives], we sold them the means to become our rivals as producers.
Neoliberalism seems to me to be a non-answer: it is simply recognition that our capitalistic system has come to this pass, in the global conext– which diminishes the pie considerably– & responds w/a hasty re-alignment by which those w/the most cash will grab the biggest pieces of that shrinking pie.
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Betree5
Suprise this post is still up
My point was that these are jobs that Americans want and will do at decent wages .
Undocumented labor has been used as a wage wedge by employers in many industries to break unions and lower wages . This is a labor law issue not a an immigration issue .Worker IDs would solve much of the problem.
The residential construction I was referring to ,was high rise (over 6 story) multi family dwellings. 15 to 25 % (as the NYT article illustrates these employees are so in the shadows itis difficult to get an accurate # ) of that work in NYC is being performed by undocumented immigrants. That is a tremendous wage wedge . Even in the skilled trades much of the work performed requires little skill or training much of it is redundant . Many of those skilled union trades are increasingly minority as each year goes by and new classes of apprentices come in. As for training apprentice programs combine work site training with class room training in several trades some even offering an associates degree at the end of the program .
http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/19634/stop_blaming_immigrants_and_start_punishing_the_employers_who_exploit_them
https://newrepublic.com/article/120500/obamas-immigration-plan-will-help-undocumented-construction-workers
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I sure hope some of you have been watching Rachel Maddow tonight (Tues 11/15). We are MOVING ON (past Kurt Eichenwald’s election post-mortem) into the reality of Trump’s transition to the presidency. REALITY: Trump’s comfort zone lifelong has been surrounding himself w/ those most loyal to him– hence Giuliano, Bannon, Sessions- but more importantly: FAMILY.
Hence– despite the trope that relatives will run Trump enterprises in a wholly separate sphere– Trump’s request that family members be given security clearances for his children (because he is accustomed to discussing all decisions w/ them)– despite the obvious problem that they could glean secret info they could then parlay into profit.
Shall we here note that both Ivanka-designed gold bracelet & Trump’s hotels have already been advertised on gov.com paid-by-taxpayer sites?
Meanwhile,re FAMILY: Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner– a govt actor sans portfolio, participating in the Trump transition team purely by nepotism– has already envoked kharma, by disappearing Christie [& every one of his several Trump-transition-team followers] from the scene, thus revenging Christie’s particularly humiliating prosecution & jailing of Kushner’s dad…
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To bethree5:
I really admire your analysis. This is what education should educate high school before they enter to workforce.
Regardless of how much learners can absorb theory, they will understand sooner or later in reality.
Time management and money management should be instilled to young learners’ mind as soon as they enter middle school. This will give them enough time to practice during high school and post secondary education.
As veteran educator Susan Lee Schwartz has mentioned in this website that all phrases without substance or empty meaning poison learners’ mind like “take a risk” without knowledge, critical analysis, and experience.
Most of all, the sound bite in “to be ready for college and career” DOES NOT emphasize the goal in education is all about humanity, civility and self-control of our own destination which suits our talent, skills and interest without the need of cheating for a decent earning or a decent living.
All political consultants and analysts love to beat around the bush and go nowhere to strengthen people’s needs for their decent living.
Whenever conscientious educators can unite in thought and in action in order to provide young learners’ strong belief in their own strength to respect and to defend for humanity, civility, and other cultures, educators can transform the future leaders for a harmonious and moral society to live in peace for all. Back2basic
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As a Democrat, I am tired of being painted into a corner by the parties and then being told I must choose. I wrote Bernie in. I am not happy about a Trump presidency, but it is the logical consequence of a Democratic Party that lost its moorings long ago. This election was a disaster. Voter turnout hit a 20 year low. Hillary won the majority vote–big deal! The parties turned off record numbers of voters this year. The Democratic Party’s rules regarding primaries are designed to prevent an outsider from EVER winning the nomination. If that’s not rigged, I don’t know what is. Voters are not required to engaged in political trading and calculation, they have the right to ask for what they want. The DNC refused to ever consider what voters might want–it put its own internal priorities first. What kind of a masochist can get behind that?
I, for one, am more conservative than Sanders, but he was an honest candidate who cared, unlike Trump. Social issues are not going to dominate the agenda going forward–populist ones will. Populist issues are primarily economic issues, not the “isms.” The latter are viewed as a distraction and detraction from economic issues, which have the potential to benefit all. Unions, public education are economic issues. I think populism is on the side of unions, but only if the educational establishment acts like it. Its a bit late, but there is no choice–better late than never.
Lastly, as a Nuyorican (a Puerto Rican born and living in New York), I deplore Trump’s comments with respect to women, Mexicans, etc., but my main concern is how do I live everyday as an American? Newsflash! If times are tough for working class whites, where do you think that leaves minorities? Latinos who are citizens and voting, must feel similarly. I would not vote against the immigrant, but I must vote my own interests first. Can you see why the Clinton approach was so flawed? One could argue that her response (basing a campaign on what a boor Donald Trump is) to his ugly comments sparked a race/culture war that could not be won–hello, definition of minority. If there is not a serious re-assessment, the Democratic Party will collapse.
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I’m confused — are you saying that Obama was an “insider” when he ran in 2008? Since he was able to win despite DNC rules?
The Clinton campaign was not based on Trump. You could have read her platform or listened to her speeches or listened to everything she answered in the debate. You could have listened to Bernie who told you that over and over again in the campaign but apparently you didn’t actually believe him.
The way to vote your own interests is to figure out what your interests are and see what the candidate is saying and how they relate to those interests.
If you didn’t like the Clinton platform, then not voting for her is very reasonable. But it’s hard to understand how you could like Bernie’s platform and not Clinton’s. Again, it seems more about personality and that’s where many voters were fooled. Hillary wasn’t perfect, so now we have Trump. It’s a valid choice to say I dislike Hillary so much that I am fine with Trump being elected. I respect that choice. And that’s the choice you made. Eichenwald’s article is about his strong disagreement with that.
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The problem is that Clinton’s people only adopted major parts of Sanders platform to avoid a floor fight at the convention. They had no intention of ever implimenting it and people could smell that off her campaign.
It was great for black America to elect Obama just to show it was possible but the ACA without at least a public option is less than half of what every other democracy provides and this from an overall much richer nation.
The Democrats need to campaign on an all or nothing “medicare for all” platform which tells the population -either vote for us or you get nothing.
They need to say “free tuition for all in public colleges” WITHOUT QUALIFICATION. No means test .
These items are easily paid for by tiny taxes on the purchase of financial products and currency exchanges.
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Doug, did you say earlier you were Canadian?
You say: “Clinton’s people only adopted major parts of Sanders platform to avoid a floor fight at the convention. They had no intention of ever implementing it…”
That could be a meme out of the Steven Bannon playbook. In fact, I believe it was! After all, “crooked Hillary, lying Hillary, dishonest Hillary”. As I have said before, those memes don’t work unless the disaffected primary losers agree so that Bannon can say “even the Democrats” know she is corrupt/lying/crooked.
Just like the Bannon memes against Bernie would have worked IF the Hillary voters decided to jump on the bandwagon. “Even the Democrats” know that Bernie shipped Vermont nuclear waste to poor Latino communities because he hates minorities. “Even the Democrats” know that Bernie hobnobs with terrorists who hate America. You need the “Even the Democrats” line to give those alt-right memes traction. That’s why the Bernie supporting Hillary-haters were necessary for Trump’s win. Bannon thanks them because he could not have succeeded without them.
See how much worse it sounds when “Even the Democrats” know that Bernie intentionally shipped hazardous waste away from his own white citizens to poison the Latino people elsewhere? See how much easier it is for the press to ignore it when “Even Hillary supporters know the alt-right is lying through its teeth” to smear Bernie.
If only it would have been “Even Bernie supporters know the alt-right is lying through its teeth to smear Hillary as crooked” voters would not have so quick to believe it. But thanks to disaffected Hillary haters, what they got instead is “Even Bernie supporters know how corrupt and crooked Hillary is”. And we get Trump. Who, according to those very same Bernie supporting Hillary-haters, is absolutely no worse than Hillary would have been. They’ve been telling us that for 2 months on here. So remember, no matter what Trump does, those voters are very content knowing that it would have been just as bad if Hillary had won and whatever suffering happens could never have been avoided.
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Obama got a speaking slot at the John Kerry Democratic Convention! Of course he was an insider, just not as inside as Clinton at the time.
You lost! The media and all the “establishment” were behind you, yet states that were not even on the radar to go to Trump, went! You start the rebuilding process by realizing you were wrong! Take it from there.
I am the voter. I am the consumer. I want things on my terms, not the party’s.
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Isaac Rodriguez says “you lost”.
I didn’t lose. The American people lost. This country lost.
Of course, YOU didn’t lose because you got a good outcome. You prevented corrupt Hillary from winning. You “showed” the DNC and since we are no worse off than we’d be if Hillary has won, you can feel good. From your perspective, the only “losers” were those of us foolish enough to vote for Hillary. And you are proud not to be one of us.
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To NYC public school parent and people who treasure democracy:
It is the reality that we must recognize the value of a thorough research about voters’ desire and their priority in education, working condition and living condition.
Please find time to compare the strategy between two parties’ Chairmans of DNC and RNC.
Today, I just read the IMPRESSIVE and THOROUGH work of RNC Chairman, Reinhold Richard “Reince” Priebus. I hope that Priebus will apply the same strategy in uniting and in healing his party’major donors and his party’s members into STRENGTHENING of AMERICAN ECONOMY, SECURITY, EDUCATION and DEFENSE.
Mr.Priebus does not have doctorate degree in any discipline, but to me, I would call him “Dr. strategist” with his SHARP recognition of the DIFFERENCE between the electoral and popular VOTES.
In short, I hope that he will continue on working toward sustaining the world “renowned” American Kindness and Democracy in Trump’s Presidency among the pack of bullied Republican colleagues. I would give Mr. Priebus a chance more than Steve Bannon. Back2basic.
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