Re: [blind-democracy] Trump Didn't Win the Election, Hillary Lost It

In fact, it was WE, the Left Wing, that allowed Trump to win. We
allowed the Democratic Party to drag our middle off to the Right. We
allowed folks like Hillary Clinton to schmooze Wall Street , which led
to our being sold out.
Blaming Hillary will only prevent us from assessing the situation, and
beginning the process of reestablishing our Progressive Platform.

Carl Jarvis


On 11/13/16, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
>
> Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
> Home > Trump Didn't Win the Election, Hillary Lost It
> ________________________________________
> Trump Didn't Win the Election, Hillary Lost It
> By Guy T. Saperstein [1] / AlterNet [2]
> November 12, 2016
> Hillary was always going to be a weak candidate and the evidence was there
> for anyone willing to see it. The only surprise was how hard many people
> worked not to see the obvious. For one, she was exactly the wrong candidate
> for 2016. Indeed, in May 2014---two and a half years ago---I wrote on these
> pages:
> By every metric, voters are in a surly mood and they are not going to be
> happy campers in 2016, either. Why should they be? The economy is still in
> the toilet, not enough jobs are being created even to keep up with
> population growth, personal debt and student debt are rising, college
> graduates can't find jobs, retirement benefits are shrinking,
> infrastructure
> is deteriorating, banksters never were held accountable for melting down
> the
> economy, inequality is exploding - and neither party is addressing the
> depth
> of the problems America faces. As a result, voters in 2016 will be seeking
> change and there is no way Clinton can run as a "change" candidate -
> indeed,
> having been in power in Washington for 20-plus years as First Lady, U.S.
> Senator and Secretary of State, she is the poster child for the Washington
> political establishment, an establishment that will not be popular in 2016.
> http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/seven-things-about-inevitability-h
> illary-you-probably-havent-thought-about [3]
> This, of course, is exactly what happened, which is why the Washington
> Post's chief political writer Chris Cilliza could write today:
> This was a change election. And Trump was the change candidate. To me, this
> is the single most important number in the exit poll in understanding what
> voters were thinking when they chose Trump. Provided with four candidate
> qualities and asked which mattered most to their vote, almost 4 in 10 (39
> percent) said a candidate who "can bring needed change." (A candidate who
> "has the right experience" was the second most important character trait.)
> Among those change voters, Trump took 83 percent of the vote to just 14
> percent for Clinton.
> http://www.jewishworldreview.com/1116/cillizza111116.php3 [4]
> On top of this problem---which to be fair to Clinton was not a problem of
> her making---she was extremely unpopular and had a long history dating back
> to 2007 of polling badly against Republicans. In December 2007, while
> leading national polls among Democrats by 26 points, in head-to-head polls
> against Republicans, she polled weaker against Republican presidential
> candidates than John Edwards and a relatively unknown new black Senator
> from
> Illinois. In fact, when matched up against Republicans---who had a very
> weak field themselves in 2008---she even polled behind an unnamed generic
> Democratic candidate. We saw this inherent weakness repeated in 2016, when
> she was challenged by a 74-year old Senator from a small state who wasn't
> even a Democrat, who had virtually no financial base, but went from 3% in
> national polls to winning 22 contested primaries and 47% of the votes in
> those primaries, in the process regularly pulling 20,000+ enthusiastic
> people to his rallies, while Hillary spoke in small gatherings to large
> donors and never attracted more than 800 people to an event.
> What this obvious lack of enthusiasm for Hillary translated to in this
> election is the single most appalling---and definitive---statistic of this
> campaign: Hillary got almost TEN MILLION fewer votes than Obama got in
> 2008,
> despite the fact there are millions more registered voters now and six
> million less votes than Obama got in 2012. Trump did not win this
> election.
> Hillary lost it. In fact, Trump got fewer votes than Mitt Romney in 2012!
> We are not surrounded by more Republicans. We are surrounded by Democrats
> who were not inspired by the Wall Street-friendly candidate their party
> pushed on them.
> Hillary's utter tone-deafness about her connections to Wall Street was
> another huge liability. In November 2014, I wrote:
> On nearly every important issue, except women's issues, Clinton stands to
> the right of her Democratic base. Overwhelmingly, Democrats believe that
> Wall Street played a substantial role in gaming the system for their
> benefit
> while melting down the economy, but Clinton continues to give speeches to
> Goldman Sachs at $200,000 a pop, assuring them that, "We all got into this
> mess together and we're all going to have to work together to get out of
> it." In her world - a world full of friends and donors from Wall Street -
> the financial industry does not bear any special culpability in the
> financial meltdown of 2007-'08. The mood of the Democratic base is populist
> and angry, but Clinton is preaching lack of accountability.
> She got hammered by Sanders, and later Trump, for her reliance on Wall
> Street money, and then added to her problems by not releasing transcripts
> of
> her speeches to Wall Street banks to the public, which exacerbated the
> perception that she was not transparent and was rigging the system with the
> financial industry in ways that did not serve the public. So when her email
> problems arose, it all seemed part of the same pattern of duplicity. Polls
> with voters rating her 65% "untrustworthy" soon followed.
> She also never explained why she had supported the deregulation of Wall
> Street, never explained why she had promoted NAFTA, why she had called the
> NAFTA-like Trans Pacific Partnership the "gold standard" of trade deals,
> despite the damage NAFTA had caused to America's manufacturing base and the
> millions of jobs that had been exported to lower-paying countries. And the
> DNC Democrats who fixed the primaries to nominate her have never explained
> how they expected to win the industrial mid-west with a candidate who had
> contributed to their economic demise or why they favored Clinton over a
> candidate who ran ten points stronger against every Republican presidential
> candidate, including Trump, in match-up polls.
> This election was always going to be a plebiscite on the status quo and the
> status quo candidate, Hillary Clinton. For awhile many thought Hillary
> could pass it because she was matched against the weakest candidate
> imaginable. In the end, she could not overcome her many liabilities, the
> fact that her party had forgotten they needed to deliver results to the
> working class, nor the surly mood of voters who had figured out what a
> rigged system looked like and were willing to try a long-shot who might
> just
> bust up the system.
>
> Guy T. Saperstein is a past president of the Sierra Club Foundation;
> previously, he was one of the National Law Journal's "100 Most Influential
> Lawyers in America."
> Share on Facebook Share
> Share on Twitter Tweet
>
>
> Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@alternet.org'. [5]
> [6]
>
> Stay Ahead of the Rest
> Sign Up for AlterNet's Daily Newsletter
> EMAIL:
> + sign up for additional lists
> [x]
> Select additional lists by selecting the checkboxes below before clicking
> Subscribe:
> Rights & Liberties
> Education
> Drugs
> Economy
> Environment
> Labor
> Food
> World
> Politics
> Investigation
> Personal Health
> Water
> Media
> ________________________________________
> Source URL:
> http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/trump-didnt-win-election-hillary-lost-
> it
> Links:
> [1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/guy-t-saperstein
> [2] http://alternet.org
> [3]
> http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/seven-things-about-inevitability-h
> illary-you-probably-havent-thought-about
> [4] http://www.jewishworldreview.com/1116/cillizza111116.php3
> [5] mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on Trump Didn&#039;t Win
> the Election, Hillary Lost It
> [6] http://www.alternet.org/
> [7] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
>
> Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
> Home > Trump Didn't Win the Election, Hillary Lost It
>
> Trump Didn't Win the Election, Hillary Lost It
> By Guy T. Saperstein [1] / AlterNet [2]
> November 12, 2016
> AddThis Sharing Buttons
> Share to FacebookShare to TwitterShare to Google+Share to More4Share to
> Email
> Hillary was always going to be a weak candidate and the evidence was there
> for anyone willing to see it. The only surprise was how hard many people
> worked not to see the obvious. For one, she was exactly the wrong candidate
> for 2016. Indeed, in May 2014---two and a half years ago---I wrote on these
> pages:
> By every metric, voters are in a surly mood and they are not going to be
> happy campers in 2016, either. Why should they be? The economy is still in
> the toilet, not enough jobs are being created even to keep up with
> population growth, personal debt and student debt are rising, college
> graduates can't find jobs, retirement benefits are shrinking,
> infrastructure
> is deteriorating, banksters never were held accountable for melting down
> the
> economy, inequality is exploding - and neither party is addressing the
> depth
> of the problems America faces. As a result, voters in 2016 will be seeking
> change and there is no way Clinton can run as a "change" candidate -
> indeed,
> having been in power in Washington for 20-plus years as First Lady, U.S.
> Senator and Secretary of State, she is the poster child for the Washington
> political establishment, an establishment that will not be popular in 2016.
> http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/seven-things-about-inevitability-h
> illary-you-probably-havent-thought-about [3]
> This, of course, is exactly what happened, which is why the Washington
> Post's chief political writer Chris Cilliza could write today:
> This was a change election. And Trump was the change candidate. To me, this
> is the single most important number in the exit poll in understanding what
> voters were thinking when they chose Trump. Provided with four candidate
> qualities and asked which mattered most to their vote, almost 4 in 10 (39
> percent) said a candidate who "can bring needed change." (A candidate who
> "has the right experience" was the second most important character trait.)
> Among those change voters, Trump took 83 percent of the vote to just 14
> percent for Clinton.
> http://www.jewishworldreview.com/1116/cillizza111116.php3 [4]
> On top of this problem---which to be fair to Clinton was not a problem of
> her making---she was extremely unpopular and had a long history dating back
> to 2007 of polling badly against Republicans. In December 2007, while
> leading national polls among Democrats by 26 points, in head-to-head polls
> against Republicans, she polled weaker against Republican presidential
> candidates than John Edwards and a relatively unknown new black Senator
> from
> Illinois. In fact, when matched up against Republicans---who had a very
> weak
> field themselves in 2008---she even polled behind an unnamed generic
> Democratic candidate. We saw this inherent weakness repeated in 2016, when
> she was challenged by a 74-year old Senator from a small state who wasn't
> even a Democrat, who had virtually no financial base, but went from 3% in
> national polls to winning 22 contested primaries and 47% of the votes in
> those primaries, in the process regularly pulling 20,000+ enthusiastic
> people to his rallies, while Hillary spoke in small gatherings to large
> donors and never attracted more than 800 people to an event.
> What this obvious lack of enthusiasm for Hillary translated to in this
> election is the single most appalling---and definitive---statistic of this
> campaign: Hillary got almost TEN MILLION fewer votes than Obama got in
> 2008,
> despite the fact there are millions more registered voters now and six
> million less votes than Obama got in 2012. Trump did not win this election.
> Hillary lost it. In fact, Trump got fewer votes than Mitt Romney in 2012!
> We
> are not surrounded by more Republicans. We are surrounded by Democrats who
> were not inspired by the Wall Street-friendly candidate their party pushed
> on them.
> Hillary's utter tone-deafness about her connections to Wall Street was
> another huge liability. In November 2014, I wrote:
> On nearly every important issue, except women's issues, Clinton stands to
> the right of her Democratic base. Overwhelmingly, Democrats believe that
> Wall Street played a substantial role in gaming the system for their
> benefit
> while melting down the economy, but Clinton continues to give speeches to
> Goldman Sachs at $200,000 a pop, assuring them that, "We all got into this
> mess together and we're all going to have to work together to get out of
> it." In her world - a world full of friends and donors from Wall Street -
> the financial industry does not bear any special culpability in the
> financial meltdown of 2007-'08. The mood of the Democratic base is populist
> and angry, but Clinton is preaching lack of accountability.
> She got hammered by Sanders, and later Trump, for her reliance on Wall
> Street money, and then added to her problems by not releasing transcripts
> of
> her speeches to Wall Street banks to the public, which exacerbated the
> perception that she was not transparent and was rigging the system with the
> financial industry in ways that did not serve the public. So when her email
> problems arose, it all seemed part of the same pattern of duplicity. Polls
> with voters rating her 65% "untrustworthy" soon followed.
> She also never explained why she had supported the deregulation of Wall
> Street, never explained why she had promoted NAFTA, why she had called the
> NAFTA-like Trans Pacific Partnership the "gold standard" of trade deals,
> despite the damage NAFTA had caused to America's manufacturing base and the
> millions of jobs that had been exported to lower-paying countries. And the
> DNC Democrats who fixed the primaries to nominate her have never explained
> how they expected to win the industrial mid-west with a candidate who had
> contributed to their economic demise or why they favored Clinton over a
> candidate who ran ten points stronger against every Republican presidential
> candidate, including Trump, in match-up polls.
> This election was always going to be a plebiscite on the status quo and the
> status quo candidate, Hillary Clinton. For awhile many thought Hillary
> could
> pass it because she was matched against the weakest candidate imaginable.
> In
> the end, she could not overcome her many liabilities, the fact that her
> party had forgotten they needed to deliver results to the working class,
> nor
> the surly mood of voters who had figured out what a rigged system looked
> like and were willing to try a long-shot who might just bust up the system.
>
> Guy T. Saperstein is a past president of the Sierra Club Foundation;
> previously, he was one of the National Law Journal's "100 Most Influential
> Lawyers in America."
> Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
> Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
> Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@alternet.org'. [5]
> Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.[6]
>
> Stay Ahead of the Rest
> Sign Up for AlterNet's Daily Newsletter
> EMAIL:
> + sign up for additional lists
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Source URL:
> http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/trump-didnt-win-election-hillary-lost-
> it
> Links:
> [1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/guy-t-saperstein
> [2] http://alternet.org
> [3]
> http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/seven-things-about-inevitability-h
> illary-you-probably-havent-thought-about
> [4] http://www.jewishworldreview.com/1116/cillizza111116.php3
> [5] mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on Trump Didn&#039;t Win
> the Election, Hillary Lost It
> [6] http://www.alternet.org/
> [7] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
>
>
>