For worthy targets, I use my whole ass.

Lol. Ain't that the truth.

It will go down as one of the biggest own goals of all time. The sheer arrogance and incompetence by the DNC that allowed it to happen is breathtaking.

I hear this a lot -- what do you think they should have done differently?

Personally, I'm not sure it was arrogance as much as being out of touch, which many of us discovered we were after Nov 8. After watching this joker bully, lie and hate his way through literally every public appearance, I was sure there was no way Trump could win against a ham sandwich.

A lot of us discovered we have no idea just who our fellow Americans are, despite having lived here our whole lives.

Hillary's campaign assumed we did, and that all of us shared a common understanding: "This man isn't us."

Half of those who cast a vote:"Wrong!"

So did 16 of the DEEPEST BENCH of Republican competitors in history or something. What of Jeb and Cruz and Rubio? Also WOAT? I mean, probably, but when the net extends out to include everyone Donald Trump beat besides Clinton, and that includes like tons of establishment interests beyond the candidates themselves in both parties -- the criticism loses some of its bite.

I take your point on some level at face value; the election was winnable and Donald Trump was not an objectively strong candidate and Hillary Clinton made plenty of mistakes.

OTOH he does have a limited set of political skills that are unorthodox and hard to combat. We're all ostensibly poker players here, I think we know of some non-thinking, incurious poker players who don't study much and who aren't great all-around players, and might get dominated in mixed games, or might get dominated over the long-term by good players who play with them for a lot of hands -- but if you sit that non-thinking player at a specific NL table or a tournament and they can do a few things particularly well like read players or plays a specific aggro style that is difficult to play against. There's a skill in that and we should give Trump due 'credit' for it, or at least acknowledge it. These especially binary judgments of Trump's political acumen ("total bozo! Donald ****ing Trump!" versus "3 sigma MASTERMIND") aren't helpful. I slip into it too, but on examination I think we can look at his hand history and give him some credit for doing a few things very, very well. That doesn't excuse Clinton's mistakes, failure to adjust, etc. but I don't think these over-the-top proclamations frankly give Trump enough credit. Underlying that is actually some measure of danger and risk if you really dislike where Trump is headed imo.

In the end I think history will show that Clinton's mistakes were not excusable because of the stakes and the resources at her disposal, etc. but I would also argue they were understandable in context AND that a vast majority of people, up to and including political professionals and other people who are either data savvy or skilled at political persuasion or both, or a a team of those people you might assemble for a Presidential campaign -- they would have failed in the same way. I think the best evidence we have for this is imply to look at betting markets and exchange markets leading up to the election where Clinton was a huge favorite. I think it suggests the mistakes and problems of the Clinton campaign were subtle and lots of people missed it, including people so interested as to wager their money on the outcome. There were definitely some savvy people raising the alarm, so to speak (e.g, notably guys like Nate Silver, maybe you give people like Michael Moore credit, ****ing AWice, I dunno) -- but they were in the stark minority. If you were a space alien and had to adjudicate the situation on November 1st or whatever, I think you have been hard-pressed to declare Hillary Clinton's campaign a terrible obvious failure. Post-hoc I am sure the internet is full of people who knew better but at the time I really dispute the fact it was obvious.

Nope.

Or to be more accurate since there were several points above so naturally there is some degree of truth to some of them, "Na, for the most part, not really."

Putin/Russian hacking, Putin/Russian propaganda campaign, illegal FBI interference, documented media bias, complete failure of most news outlets to properly interpret polls, voter suppression, decades of increasingly unfavorable gerrymandering, faced an essentially rogue candidate held to unprecedentedly low standards by his party and the media, etc. Still won 3 million more votes. Worst of all time? Yeah sure, whatever.

This is an interesting conjecture, but it seems overly focused on the effects of the "alt-right," i.e. those most incensed by the deplorables comment. Presumably this demo was voting Trump regardless. Do you have any evidence suggesting that moderates leaning Clinton were especially likely to run to Trump in the wake of these remarks? If so, what do you make of Clinton's subsequent apology for the comment?

I'll bite: It became clear to me that Trump was likely to win after watching the third debate. Clinton's rhetoric was so far off the concerns of the constituencies she needed to reach + Trump seemed (unshockingly) to succeed in fading the "grab 'em by the pussy" tape + a Fox News framing + most of all Trump's dangerous "I'll accept the results IF I win" taunts (hauntingly echoing the much-repeated "WHEN she wins" meme common among Clinton supporters high on Nate Tha Great percentages) = I knew it was trouble when he walked innn!

Trump was like Andre the Giant from Princess Bride: his fighting style is optimized for fighting lots of little guys, once Hillary had him one-on-one it should have been an easy win.

The fact that so many Republicans ran was the biggest thing that helped Trump win the nomination. Early on there were too many people for any real message to get out, so being loud and obnoxious got him way more coverage. Later, the establishment support/vote was being split multiple ways but the molotov cocktail through the establishment window vote was all his.

Once Clinton had him head to head it should have been an easy win, and the fact that it was so close makes it possible to argue a lot of causes. Sure, if not for Comey or Russian influence or "basket of deplorables," or ignoring the blue wall of MI/WI or whatever, she would have won.

However, the real issue is why it was even close against Trump (or why she would have been trounced by Cruz, Kasich, Rubio, Bush, etc)... It's simple: she's terrible at running for office.

What was her message? What were her three biggest issues? How many of them were hers as opposed to being co-opted from Sanders or Obama? If you can't boil it down to a few words or a sentence, and something you truly stand for, you're a bad candidate. It's the old easy but tricky question: "Why are you running for president?"

Everyone's first instinctive thought for Clinton was personal ambition, and she didn't do a very good job fixing that perception. Everyone views her as shifting on issues to benefit her odds of winning, and she played right into that by taking some of Bernies' key issues. People think of her as testing every phrase, every outfit, every little detail to make sure she's doing the perfect presidential thing, instead of being authentic...

It's the difference between this Hillary:



And this Hillary... which we only saw AFTER the election:



Some of that's unfair and it's latent sexism, but at the end of the day she wasn't relatable and people didn't think she stood for something or a few key things. She didn't give the impression that they were voting for a real person who was being authentic.

Obama was polished and used tons of data, but when he was on the stump, he was excellent at seeming like a real person and/or his authentic self. Some stories were out there about imperfections that were relatable - I remember hearing about him trying to quit smoking, and sneaking one here or there. You'd see pictures of him tossing a football around during a few minutes of downtime.

Trump wasn't polished and obviously wasn't being overly protective of his image. Dubya was relatable, as well. Not in what most on this board would consider a good way, but he was nonetheless.

Now Trump and Obama had a huge advantage in having less time in the public eye, at least politically, and thus having less of a history of issues to defend movement on. In Trump's case he gaslighted a lot of it, so that's a whole different matter.

But that was something that played into Clinton's image that she couldn't overcome...

Then to top it all off, she probably isn't very good at managing a campaign and its resources given that she blew it against Obama in '08 and against Trump in '16 and almost blew it against Bernie. She lost to an upstart candidate as a massive favorite in '08, everyone knew she was running in '16 for years but she stillalmost lost to a self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist (who might have beaten her if he called himself an American Progressive or something) at a major organizational/establishment/financial disadvantage coming in, and then lost to Trump. That's three horrible performances given her status coming in.

*ding* *ding* *ding*. We have a winner folks. This was a truly historic throw. And she did it with vastly more money than he had when the dominant story line since the founding of the republic has been that money is the single most important thing in political races.

The Republican primary is a Republican primary. Donald Trump won it by telling GOP primary voters exactly what they wanted to hear. Then instead of 'pivoting' to the middle he stuck with his guns straight through the general. He was supposed to get atomized but Hillary found a way to lose somehow.

EDIT: I don't think history is going to be kind to the Clinton campaign. Most of us thought she was a lock because we were told by the media (who are supposedly in the DNC's pocket) and the Clinton campaign that she was way ahead. Just look at how she answered the questions about what would happen if she lost. She just said she wouldn't and that it was pretty much inconceivable. The Obama campaign in 2012 had all of us convinced that Romney had a legit shot and that if people didn't turn out to vote they would lose. They did that while they actually were massively ahead and knew they were massively ahead. Just the messaging of 'we're way ahead' alone probably cost HRC enough votes to lose the election.

And then there's the execution of the advertising budget which was probably one of the biggest technical errors in American politics ever. I mean we can't expect GENIUS in advertising from our politicians, but one of the best ads of the 20th century was run by LBJ so maybe we can? Lord knows HRC had enough money to get the best advertising people on planet earth, but instead she got people she knew and liked... And she kept them even after their first batch of ads looked like promo's for a soon to be very popular wrestling heel.

Then there's her absolutely awful messaging skills. Dude this one wasn't supposed to be loseable. You seem like a pretty active DNC person. The most productive thing you can do right now is get INSANELY angry about the party letting this happen. Heads NEED to roll and careers need to end. Everyone who touched this particular dumpster fire needs to be out looking for a new line of work. This incompetence is not ok and if allowed to fester will allow the Republicans to put the Dems out of political contention.

Tolerance of incompetence ruins organizations. The Dems have a very advanced case of incompetence.

Trying to make excuses for them is precisely the wrong approach. It's hatchet time.

EDIT: Does anyone seriously think Obama wouldn't have beat Trump by 6+ points? Biden would have beat him by at least 3 and Kaine would have beaten him by some amount as well. **** I doubt Bernie could have managed to lose this thing if he'd stayed full socialist in the general.

In 2016 we learned cheating is effective too.

If you didn't cheat you didn't want it bad enough. Additionally I don't think HRC's flaw was that she didn't want it enough. This is the kind of excuse making is part of the problem. Being morally superior and losing is a form of incompetence. The Democrats need to be as good at gerrymandering and voter suppression as Republicans. If I were running the DNC I'd be trying to figure out how to disenfranchise GOP voters by doing as much damage to rural voting as possible.

EDIT: I'd also make the next 4 years trench warfare unless I was getting major concessions. I'd also probably raise several billion dollars to flood the midterms. Surely at this point there are enough rich Dems willing to write checks to put this thing back on course.

Yeah, sure. Luckboxing is pure competence. Enjoy your strut on the chessboard, pigeon.

He luckboxed in that he was against incredibly incompetent people. I am not touting Donald Trump as a great candidate. In fact his terribleness as a candidate is an indictment of HRC's campaign on a great many levels.

The Republicans have done a pretty good job of being politically relevant despite facing bad demographic trends and being on the wrong side of basically every issue. They are a VERY competent political machine. They routinely win the small ball stuff (which ends up mattering a LOT in the aggregate... How did HRC win the popular vote and the Dems didn't win the House of Reps? GOP political competence!). They also use procedure very efficiently to get what they want. They just stole a Supreme Court nominee ffs.

If all of the above isn't being filed in your brain as 'we got beat' there's not a ton I can do for you and you're definitely part of the problem. We are letting these people eat our ****ing lunch. It needs to stop right now.

EDIT: It sucks to say this but Mitch McConnell won the Obama administration. He's going to get everything he wanted while giving up nearly nothing. I wish our senators were 1/100 as effective as Mitch has been this last 8 years. We need to find candidates who live in the real world and get **** done. We need to promote people on the basis of them having a track record of being winners. No more academics (or teachers of any sort... Jesus) and way fewer lawyers. We need more business people, military people, political pros (with winning track records in campaigns), and yes celebrities. Actually narrow that down to super successful business people and celebrities. People who have provable operational ability or proven charisma only please.

That's the spirit! Take action to Stop it right now... by re-posting the same **** ad nauseum on 2+2. We will win!

Seriously **** off with the excuse making for hrc. The dnc fell for a phishing scam, a republican appointee turned out to be a polical hack, and Bernie was a meanie. We get it, it wasn't Hillary's fault. She perfectly executed a campaign in route to losing the presidency to an orange clown. If only Bernie didn't say mean things in the primary!!

Hey 2p2 has great search ranking and there a lot of smart people on this site. Nate Silver used to post here. There are worse places to make a good point intellectually.

But hey you think I'm wrong. You think that because the Republicans are 'cheating' it's ok to lose. You remind me of every loser ever. The fact that you'd rather be right and lose than wrong and win is the problem. Letting the other party have a monopoly on every kind of cynicism but virtue signaling is not a good plan.

Dear unserious poster, you conveniently missed every point I made.

I challenge you to fill in the missing logic to get your conclusions based on what I posted.

You haven't made a point. You've whined and cried about how unfair it all is. Like I said, **** off with that bull****.

quote it please. btw, you sound a bit whiney

This is your perspective. You think that we lost this elections because they cheated. I'm here to tell you that them cheating is one of probably thirty five major reasons we lost. You need to grow up and learn to accept reality when it contradicts your beliefs. In fact you should stop having beliefs completely. Believing things is having ideas that cannot be verified with data that you are very certain of. Sounds like a recipe for disaster to me.

I hold my positions because they are what makes sense to me. I also win at life. I win because I am very willing to change my positions as the world around me changes. This is an adaptation that I have developed to deal with the modern world, which is changing at an exponentially increasing rate it seems. Her willingness to change her mind based on current conditions was my favorite thing about HRC. If she'd ever said that clearly and concisely and stuck to it she might have had the beginnings of a message.

You're sure squawking a lot about me in your arguments about how bad Clinton is. I'm very pleased to hear you win at life. You can usually tell a person really wins at life by listening to them tell you they win at life.

The natural extension of the unhealthy preoccupation Americans have with meritocracy is to apply it to every last situation--even situations where there is clearly cheating/favoritism going on. You see this clearly in many reactions to the election, and more fundamentally, you see it in many Americans' reactions to not obtaining the American dream.