Trump Didn't Win, Clinton Lost - Part 2: The Lesson of Clinton
When I say "Trump didn't win", I don't mean that he's not the president elect, I mean that he did very poorly as a candidate. In fact, by almost any measure he was the worst candidate the Republicans have fielded since, well, ever. Even Bob Dole was a better candidate, and he was an awful candidate. Even George HW Bush was a better candidate, and he was an awful candidate.
Trump had no campaign, no strategy, no ground game, no organization, he was a disaster at the debates, a walking gaffe, and by any and all measures should have been soundly trounced by virtually any Democrat.
And, by many measures he was soundly trounced.
He got fewer votes than Romney did in 2012, he got fewer votes than Bush did in 2004. He was, objectively, a bad candidate.
Except....
Clinton was worse.
That's what I mean when I say Clinton lost, the election was her's to lose. Her opponent was an ongoing disaster, the polls showed her beating him easily.
But she lost. She lost because while Trump pulled in around a million fewer votes than prior Republican candidates did, she pulled in 5.9 million fewer votes than Obama did in 2012 and 9 million fewer than he did in 2008.
Somewhere between six and ten million people who had voted for a Democrat in the past two elections decided to sit this one out, and so she lost.
The question then, is not "how did Donald Trump win", but rather "how did Hillary Clinton lose"? By almost every measure she was an excellent candidate. She spoke well, she took his attacks calmly and turned them against him, she had a political campaign that was incredibly well organized and efficient, she had a ground game that was worlds ahead of Trump.
How could someone so clearly professional and qualified lose so badly?
Because she was an excellent candidate by almost every measure. The exception was her unfavorability ratings. Here's the link to Real Clear Politics' poll tracker on candidate favorability, you'll note that at no point during the entire campaign did over 50% of those polled have a favorable view of Clinton.
Now you can say that Trump was worse, and he was. People hated Trump more than they hated Clinton.
But. But. But...
They hated Clinton.
A solid majority of the American voters, for whatever reason, had a bad opinion of Hillary Clinton and that never changed.
With a large number of voters, a large percentage of Americans, despising her, it was easy for them to declare that she and Trump were equally bad, that "I don't like either of them", and so they stayed home. Somewhere between six and ten million formerly Democratic voters chose not to vote this year, and the only possible reason is that they just plain didn't like her.
Why?
I don't think there's a single answer to that question.
Misogyny clearly played a large role, but seems insufficient by itself to explain the widespread dislike of Clinton. One thing worth noting is that per the exit polls women overwhelmingly voted for Clinton, except for white women who mostly voted for Trump. Internalized misogyny can explain some of that, but not all of it.
Which brings us to the vast right wing conspiracy. For the past 35 years the Clintons have been dogged by an endless, vicious, witch hunt and smear campaign. Even when he was governor of Arkansas, the Republicans loathed Bill Clinton more than they hated most other Democrats. That Hillary kept her name and went by Hillary Rodham for several years after marrying Bill didn't help, and later when she did take his surname they kept hearkening back to her evil, feminist, past by referring to her as "Hillary RODHAM Clinton". Anyone who was politically aware back in the 1990's will remember that peculiar pattern of emphasis and that in some media she was almost invariably referred to by those three names rather than just her first and last name.
Many of the modern right wing commentators of today got their start as anti-Clinton liars in the 1990's. The smear campaign against the Clintons launched several successful careers, begat dozens of bestselling books and scores if not hundreds of less well selling books, fueled the early days of right wing hate radio, and included, among other absurdities, the claim that the Clintons have murdered over one hundred politically inconvenient people (Vince Foster is just the tip of the conspiracy nonsense spewed about the Clintons), and went so far as to involve a full scale Congressional investigation of their Christmas card list for reasons that were never anything but the rantings of the most detached from reality conspiracy theories.
The smear campaign didn't end when they left the White House. If you can recall back to Jan 21, 2001, you will remember that anonymous sources in the incoming Bush administration claimed that the outgoing Clinton administration had trashed the White House, gouging holes in walls, smearing feces on the floors and walls, snipping phone and electric lines, and even laying non-deadly but painful booby traps (mousetraps in drawers and so forth). All lies, but spread unquestioned by a media eager for a controversy to boost ratings.
The hate campaign never let up through Clinton's Senate term and her time as Secretary of State.
I don't think the decades long smear campaign against Clinton is "the" explanation for her high negatives anymore than I think misogyny or any of the other explanations might be. I think they all worked together to drag her down.
And that is the Lesson of Clinton. A perfectly capable candidate, one who is in all other ways more than qualified for the post, who has high negatives should not be nominated.
That's horrible to say.
Among other things it means that, by dint of decades of effort, the Republicans can force us to abandon otherwise excellent candidates simply by lying about them. I don't think, in practical terms, they really can destroy many of us. The effort required, and the time required, seems too high to make it a really workable strategy, mostly they lucked out in that a woman they'd spent decades destroying just happened to be the first woman to have a serious shot at the Democratic nomination. It was chance more than planning that gave the Republicans her loss.
But we must swallow this bitter pill. Ultimately elections are popularity contests. If our candidate is widely hated, they probably can't win.
As we move forward we must remember the Lesson of Clinton, and however vile it is, however it galls us, we must cut out candidates we like, candidates who are good candidates in every measure but their unfavorability rating.
ここには何もないようです