haaa haaa haaa you're 100% right, there

part of the problem is that hillary had very little positive to offer in her campaign. fear of trump mobilized certain people (me for sure), but it didn't mobilize the white working class voters who used to vote democrat.

in fact, the fearmongering (justified or not) backfired for many. hillary's campaign misunderstood the mood of the country and fucked up. she could have been speaking about fixing the ACA which just had announced a 25% average price increase but didn't. she could have been talking about debt-free college education but would barely mention it in passing. she was supposed to be the democrat that connected with middle america but ran her campaign from brooklyn (lol hipsters).

trump had "make america great again". or "#MAGA"

clinton had... hm... what was the big theme of her campaign? she's not trump/ i'm with her/ first woman president / she's competent and ready / er... no identifiable theme

see more here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...mepage%2Fstory

oh and funny thing, after speaking with obama now trump is talking about fixing not repealing obamacare haaa haa haa haa. look how well-behaved he is now.

this shitshow's hilarious. might not always be but it is right now. laugh while you can, before we're all dead:

http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/don...-do-1788862854

Re: Fixing the ACA. (Symbols)

Yeah, I wrote damn dear a full board page about this a couple pages back. I think I went a bit overboard. But yes, you're right. Wasted opportunity by HRC. People depend on ACA but suddenly became even MORE wary of it than they already were.

I should have said "fear" or "resentment." Sorry, was writing quickly.

right. hillary was a shit candidate, let's face it. i was against her vs. obama. this time i supported her because it was she or bernie and i think bernie was too pie in the sky to win (he'd have been branded a red) and hillary had presumed appeal to the working class-- but she didn't. she gored herself. liberal elite bla bla bla. had to keep speaking in long complex sentences for fucks sakes.

anyway look at this--- haaa ahaaa haaaahaaaaa

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...mepage%2Fstory

basically obamacare can't be thrown out (i did read your extensive thing about medical billing changes btw) but perhaps the repukes can fix it since they have all branches of government at their disposal

a few things i wouldn't mind seeing:

--competition across state lines. i can't get freelancers union in NM. stupid. destroy the cartels.

--expanded medicaid and guaranteed for the year for those who get it

--option for catastrophic health insurance + HSAs for healthy people (yours truly). after obamacare those became unavailable to me

--some other way to lower costs. don't know what this could be.

I disagree that she was a shit candidate. I think she was a prime hunk of candidate rib, but she allowed herself to be exposed to air for too long and started to color. She didn't run a very good campaign at any point, I'll say that. But I've already made it clear that I've been supportive of HRC since the '90s, and I've voted for her thrice now. I think she's an excellent and competent leader, but she didn't make the right choices and she underestimated within-group class resentment.

In many ways, I think Hillary was the candidate all along, in many people's minds. Where do you go from having a black male president? "Pie-in-the-Sky" logic dictates that you go one step further, to a female president. Many MANY people wanted to see this happen (or at least claimed to), and over the past 8 years I've asked a number of folks who they thought was a logical choice to fill this role. Hillary Clinton was the only name I heard in response until recently (couple mentioned Warren).

What could she have done differently? Aside from what I've outline already?
She and Bernie both could have handled the primaries differently. I was worried a year ago at the level of animosity between Democrat factions in the early days. It presented us as a fractured, weak party. It also made vying for the presidency look like a power grab, turned attention away from the voters and what they wanted. Made Dems look Republican. Bernie didn't help this. Not a bit.

If either one of them had stopped to look at the big picture and consider what was best for the party, they would have been in this together right out of the gate. Bernie as a VP pick sounded silly to so many, but it actually would have made the most sense from a demographic perspective. Would have perhaps resored a bit of legitimacy to the DNC process.

But ultimately, the odds were always against the Dems. Statistically, historically, and nobody--NOBODY should have ever assumed that Hillary would win, and acted based on that assumption.

by "she wasn't a good candidate" i didn't mean that she wasn't a good potential president.

i mean that she wasn't a good candidate. she never won the love of the people the way that obama or bernie sanders did.

and she was a terrible communicator. TERRIBLE. listen to her with the ears of your average TV audience. forget for a moment your egghead self and pretend you drive a dump truck for a living and listen to any of her speeches. it's like hearing the adults in charlie brown speak.

and she rarely spoke frankly and directly or from the heart.

e.g., whenever she was confronted with the emails, for example, she'd break into cautious legalistic sentences instead of saying "im sorry if fucked up, i'll do better" or something.

sure she's a smart person, but not smart enough i guess to realize she had to come across as less cerebral, more passionate and decisive, not a hedger.

voters wanted change and she offered a lot of dependent clauses.

could have said something like:

"i will fix obamacare"

but instead said stuff like "the ACA has been a good policy that has brought many people to the ranks of the insured and has made possible the expansion of health care..." etc etc

"i will fix obamacare. more competition to drive the price down." but jeez, it's like, competition is a dirty word for some democrats.

also could have said:

"i will make college debt-free for the middle class"

but instead she'd say "many students today are struggling with student debt while lenders charge 10%, 12%, 14%.... " and eventually "no debt for anybody making under $250,000 a year"

that's shit that you put on a website not stuff that gets people on fire

like her campaign could have been... i don;t know. something

remember obama? "help is on the way" he'd do a call and response. "help is on the way".

what was hillary's mantra? nobody can tell you. forget the primaries, she could have launched a labor revolution if she had so chosen. instead all she offered were attacks-- attacks on wall street, attacks on trump, attacks on millionaires.

suchfriends for all his stubborn self-assurance was right in that she wasn't presenting a positive reason to vote for her. and we did the same here-- not "hillary is great" but "oh no how can you vote for a racist egomaniac"

--

anyway here more eye-openers. including the mexican immigrant truck driver who voted for trump to save his job:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local...2d1_story.html

at the debate, instead of saying "you're lying" and say why she'd say

"go to hillaryclinton.com where fact checkers are working to debunk..."

see, "hillaryclinton.com" is not as powerful as saying "you're lying, this is why"

too cerebral and too negative at the same time. sorry. what was most exciting about her was that she wasn't trump. i said it way early here and i'm still saying it today.

lastly-- launching on a tirade against guns is preaching to the choir. every time democrats go after guns they fucking lose.

instead of saying "ban on assault weapons" which is a) bullshit, because assault weapons is a fake label for varmint rifles, and b) sounds like an excuse to ban all weapons.

democrats should be saying

"let's keep guns off the hands of terrorists and the mentally ill"

"we have to keep guns off the hands of terrorists and the mentally ill"

with that, you pass universal background checks and close the "gun show loophole". score a solid victory, worry about fakely named guns later.

why do democrats have to be such ineffectual eggheads. yes, you have the liberal elites already, you have to go after everyone else, and speak in SIMPLE AND COMPELLING TERMS. and preferrably with the truth so that shit doesn't have to blow back in your face.

I agree with pretty much everything you're putting down here, but I think your underestimating how quickly ANY gun talk that isn't overtly pro-gun gets muddied in the minds of people from, oh, say... Wisconsin and Michigan. There are as many single issue gun voters as single issue abortion voters, and like the pro-lifers, any opinion that isn't very clearly in agreement is considered direct opposition.

But yes about the eggheads.

Hillary's mantra was "Stronger, together" ... or at least that was her slogan. Not sure anyone actually knows what it specifically means, but hey... "Forward" worked in '12. *shrug*

Speaking of that, though... did anyone else read the myriad articles implying or stating outright that Obama was Hillary's "secret weapon?"

Really, there was a great deal of "Don't worry, HRC has the Obama army behind her!"

And she piggy-backed off of his reputation all the way. Even down to the design of her campaign fliers and graphics. Problem is, the Obama "army" -- that teaming mass of people who were crying (good tears!) for Obama in '08 -- is functionally non-existent at this point. Obama spent his White House tenure playing it safe the first time around, and attempting to govern like a guy who was going to be indisputably replaced by a Republican the second time around. He alienated millions and millions of people.

But Jesus Christ. As a PART of that throng of weepy idealists in '08, I was SO full of hope about the future. I do think the last 8 years brought about a renewed emphasis on "Black excellence" and pride, even though Obama "failed" in a number of ways. Now... to see all those people flipping out and LITERALLY DEFECTING ON TRUMP SIGNS is utterly disturbing.

My grandmother died shortly after Obama took office. About 18 months I guess. She said she would die happy if she could see a Democrat in the White House (man she hated Bush, and Bush and Reagan). Seeing a black man take the presidency brought her to tears. When I received my commemorative Obama plate (yes, plate.. I have a commemorative Obama plate.. ha ha) for my donations, I had it mounted for her, next to a framed "Yes We Did" card. She loved it and she was not a sentimental woman.

I think about that stuff now and it makes me crazy. I know it's absurd to get so emotionally attached to a political event, but my grandmother was, and she lived just long enough to see it happen, and she died with a smile.

I feel like Trump has pissed on her grave, as insane as that sounds.

And now that I've said that, I'm going to write myself a note to make an appointment with a therapist first thing Monday morning because I'm clearly losing it.

just got some quick replies cuz i gotta get off the internet for the night (its saturday ffksakes)

i'm sure your grandmother was a fine person and you're rightly proud of her but i don't think she'd want you to go bananas in her name. i'm pretty sure she was a lot wiser than that.

best luck with the therapist. and to reiterate that defense mechanisms can be good and healthy. level IV or "mature" defense mechanisms are things such as: acceptance, courage, tolerance, sublimation, altruism, supression, humor, etc. aka coping skills. then there's the crazy/maladaptive ones levels I-III which you can discard. denial, etc-- toss.

the rest of this chat ("stronger together" etc) we can pick up in the morning or some other day because it's not really the important stuff.

the important stuff right now is coping/learning to cope. defense mechanisms level IV activate. be well.

--
ETA: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defe...evel_4:_Mature

Thanks for the reading and advice. I appreciate it. Wish I'd taken more clinical psych classes now. Oh well. Onward.

I stupidly await apologies from people who blame the election on my 3rd party voting when you have a butt-fuck ton of others who didn't vote at all, butthurt Bernies voting 3rd party in protest of Clinton despite having nothing in common with 3rd party candidates, or wrote in that dead gorilla, Deez Nuts, or anyone else not legitimately on the ballot. They deserve a lot more credit for the ton of shit we're in than I do.

the fact that she even ran tells you a lot about how seriously she takes democracy. words like dynasty and oligarchy mean little to her.

and now shes blaming coney

hasnt learned a fucking thing

bye bye hilary! they came they saw and you...

but you're in deep-red south dakota, which was never gonna go for clinton. why are you to blame? it makes no sense.


i felt the dynasty argument on her first run, and used it against her here, but after her stint as sec. of state i felt that she had proven her merits. she left the post well respected, admired, beloved even--- but while women are often admired for their service they are also often punished for their ambition--unlike men who are applauded for it. so she was punished for it. severian is right that the primaries were damaging to her--she emerged from them as lady macbeth, for many. and comey absolutely took the wind from her sails.

she lost the narrative and the voters long before the coney thing

she has yet to acknowledge her betrayal of sanders, of the dem base, and of the prog media. she refused to appear on tyt. shes done and unless lessons are learned, the dems are largely done.

we passed through a very important moment here. noone believes in the liberal establishment anymore. it can no longer defeat the left electorally in the name of centrist realism. happened in the uk too.

it was a very long slog and you win or lose on points. the thing about sanders wasn't necessarily a betrayal. it was damaging to her, but if sanders position is that the dems had betrayed the working class that was where his loyalty was due first--not to a person but to a cause. he did support her in the general though.

comey definitely deflated her budding popularity post-debates as she was picking up steam. she was suddenly likeable next to that bully. but like a soufflée, timing was everything. comey shot her at a decisive moment. that shit was malicious.

the thing is like ive been saying all along (often to suchfriedns, or to berniebros) the democratic party is not a monolith. it has wings, factions, caucuses, etc. the defeat of hillary is not the end of the democratic party--only of its establishment. for now.

but i wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the liberal establishment or centrism. right now people are riled up, sure, but in 2 or 4 years we might be very well yearning for a return to it, suffering from populist fatigue. right now, sure, it's the time for populists. but these currents never totally go away. the neocons for example, who took over us foreign policy under reagan, waited 12 years in the wilderness for dubya.

there really is no future in isolationism. this is just a temporary intifada. the world will integrate by the laws of physics though, not by the elders of zion or any other nonsense. can't put the cat back in the bag. i do see a future with open borders.

yep, the one thing the neo right cant stop is globalization, they can only whine, kick, murder, self sabotage and fight in endless futility against it, like the morons they are.

You must spread some reputation around before giving it to !@#$%! again.

I disagree. She communicated clearly and and was rejected. Quite a number of americans don't want to pay for more and more immigrants.

I believe it was the Trannie First agenda that did it. Trannies are just too strange for many americans. "They" went too far trying to bully everyone into their transexual agenda. Most americans aren't too worried about gays, they may be prejudiced but they will not get too upset about it, but having the trannies forced on them pushed them over the edge.