In the days after her shocking loss, Democrats complained that Clinton had no jobs agenda. A widely shared essay in The Nation blamed Clinton's "neoliberalism" for abandoning the voters who swung the election. “I come from the white working class,” Bernie Sanders said on CBS This Morning, “and I am deeply humiliated that the Democratic Party cannot talk to where I came from.”
But here is the troubling reality for civically minded liberals looking to justify their preferred strategies: Hillary Clinton talked about the working class, middle class jobs, and the dignity of work constantly. And she still lost.
She detailed plans to help coal miners and steel workers. She had decades of ideas to help parents, particularly working moms, and their children. She had plans to help young men who were getting out of prison and old men who were getting into new careers. She talked about the dignity of manufacturing jobs, the promise of clean-energy jobs, and the Obama administration’s record of creating private-sector jobs for a record-breaking number of consecutive months. She said the word “job” more in the Democratic National Convention speech than Trump did in the RNC acceptance speech; she mentioned the word “jobs” more during the first presidential debate than Trump did. She offered the most comprehensively progressive economic platform of any presidential candidate in history—one specifically tailored to an economy powered by an educated workforce.
What’s more, the evidence that Clinton lost because of the nation’s economic disenchantment is extremely mixed. Some economists found that Trump won in counties affected by trade with China. But among the 52 percent of voters who said economics was the most important issue in the election, Clinton beat Trump by double digits. In the vast majority of swing states, voters said they preferred Clinton on the economy. If the 2016 election had come down to economics exclusively, the working class—which, by any reasonable definition, includes the black, Hispanic, and Asian working classes, too—would have elected Hillary Clinton president.
The Atlantic goes on to report that it appears the reason that Trump did as well as he did is because he essentially promised people whatever they wanted to hear.
Rather than talking about the economy and jobs in a broad sense, Donald Trump promised that he would protect the jobs of each and every person who came to his rallies. A promise that there is no way in hell he could ever keep.
If Hillary Clinton made a mistake it was by telling the truth, while many much preferred the lies spilling from the orange anus shaped mouth of Donald Trump.
Hillary Clinton did not fail to make her argument to the Middle Class, it's just that many in the Middle Class failed to understand the truth in what she was saying.
Of course we have to add that fact to the fake news stories, the Russian hackers, and the FBI sabotage as well.
Max Weiss over at HuffPo listed all of the things he blames for Hillary's "defeat" including misogyny, fake news, and Bernie Sanders but does NOT include Hillary Clinton in that list:
She won every debate. She came up with well thought out, concrete plans to govern. She carried herself with dignity and grace, despite all the endless, misogynist shit that was hurled at her. She was nothing short of heroic.
Exactly.
At the start of this election cycle way back in 2015 I was a lukewarm supporter of Hillary's. But by the time we reached election day I was an honorary "nasty woman" doing everything I could to spread the news that she was uniquely qualified for the job of leading this nation.
I did not come to that conclusion based solely on my disgust with her opponent, I came to that conclusion based on what a bad ass she turned out to be.
I make this point because it is important historically for us to remember that we did not run a deeply flawed candidate in 2016, but rather that the campaign against her was unprecedented in the fact that it used the illegal activities of a foreign government, the intrusion of the FBI, very likely some vote tampering, and the ignorance of a large segment of the American population to beat her.
And yet, despite all that, Hillary still won the popular vote by over 2.5 million.
Source http://ift.tt/2heMLfX
