Clinton needs to go the fuck away, and that's all there is to it. Yes, she'd be doing a better job than Trump, but so would Brody Jenner. Oh: she's poison, and she lost. She. Is. DONE. Give up hope on her and hunt for a more qualified candidate with perhaps a soul for your next election.
My biggest hope is that Trump pushes the boundaries on unsavory existing policy and law and it backfires. Like the search and seizure change recently. It seems related to Jeff Sessions really wanting to push and use it more, and more abusively. Or are those things unrelated?
I feel like DT's win was just a miserable confirmation of how much people hate women and minorities. Is Hillary my #1 most favorite person? Obviously not. But if you can't see that a lot of the vitriol and hate for her comes from the fact that people don't like women, particularly powerful and successful ones, you're being willfully ignorant. (Tim - please read my use of you as the royal you, I agree with what you said and am not trying to direct this at you, specifically) Edit: I say this with the knowledge that this board can be misogynist AF and lots of you won't acknowledge the truth of this at all, but as far as I'm concerned, is evidenced by a number of posts on this thread.
Trump is bad. This is almost universally agreed upon. Compare Trump to any other Republican president, or any president of the modern era and it's comical. Hillary might have been better. Not a difficult assertion, given that she was the most qualified candidate running (Secretary of State, former First lady, Senior NY Senator...). We will never know. So, if I might humbly inquire....what is the point of making this a discussion now, 10 months after the Goddamned election? She wrote a book? That no one has read? The Democrats would do so much better by simply doing 3 things: 1. Shutting Hillary & Co, the fuck up. 2. Focus on the awful shit happening to people and how to stop it, not what gender/race/sexual orientation the people are. 3. Pointing out the Republican hypocrisy and advocating for simply enforcement of the existing laws.
I despise her, but I can't even get annoyed with her at this point. She blames sexism. She blames the media who did everything they could to get her elected. She blames Bernie. Then blames Obama and Biden. And it goes on. At this point it's just pathetic. I think it's funny some people are so desperate to believe people don't like her because she's a woman, but does it even matter at this point? She needs to crawl under a rock and die already. I know some people disagree, but I really don't think the democrats will have a hard time beating Trump next election. For one thing, the republicans have proven themselves so useless in accomplishing anything it looks like Trump might actually work with democrats on a somewhat regular basis. Secondly and more importantly, they'll be running against Trump. On the second point you're making --- yeah, they have to pay lip service to people obsessed with being victims(it is part of running as a democrat these days), but probably don't make it the central focus of all your speeches. And be a little less absurd on the terrorism and immigration issues, but again, I think they're going to have to work extra hard to manage to put forth another candidate as shitty as Hillary.
The bottom line is labor, and the party that courts labor most effectively will win. The Democrats are well-positioned to speak to it, but they get lost in the demographics and that's what killed them. I also think both parties are bereft of ideas for the key issues: economy, health and education (in that order). The Republicans have been focused on obstruction for so long, they don't have any thing they can really get done..they are just not geared for it. Health reform fell flat, the two hurricanes killed the notion of tax reform (no one wants to be seen voting for tax cuts when so much of the reconstruction is going to fall on the feds), and realistically the Republicans will have a better impact on the economy by reputation not action. And no one with any Goddamned sense trusts Devos to do anything reasonably positive on education (seriously, the DofEd is damn near mutiny mode). The Democrats need to push a lot further left to get any traction (think "New Deal" left...it's why Sanders is so fucking popular), and the current leadership just won't do that. I don't think Hillary was a bad candidate, I think it was just easy for the Trump/Republican machine to assassinate her character. From a pure qualifications standpoint, she was by far the most qualified. Unlikeable as a person, and nauseating from the "identity politics" standpoint, and with her career, it provided more than enough ammunition to discredit her stances (which baffled me a bit, why would it be a negative for her to change her mind on an issue she commented on in 1992? Shit changed, grow up). I don't think the Democrats will have a hard time in 2020. In 2018, they are on dangerous ground. Also, I think Texas is seeing the issues behind the "libertarian/no gubmint/no taxes/individual freedom" slant when it comes to the estimated $100bn+ recovery estimates. The biggest hurricane the Atlantic has ever seen is changing some minds around what people believe, and it sucks that's what it took.
I know I should probably ignore this, but is there some reason you think people dislike Hillary because she's a woman instead of the many, many reasons they've stated? Why is that so hard to believe? I get why some people wanted her to beat Trump. He sucks too, but how can you possibly look at all of the shit she's done/said and just claim people don't like her because they're misogynists? How intellectually lazy can you get? When some people didn't like Palin (who is an idiot, but not even a fraction as offensive as Hillary) did you think it was because she's a woman? I will never understand this mindset where people refuse to accept what people say and just insert their own bullshit to explain their reasoning. It's really fucking bizarre.
I've already stated my many reasons for thinking why Hillary sucked, and none of them had to do with her being a Vagino-American. I certainly resented the fact that the DNC forced her past Sanders because she is a woman, because there simply was no other reason. Sanders was her better on everything except economics. In fact, Tulsi Gabbard would be a top-three pick of mine for your President. I see few weaknesses in her as a politician or a person.
Besides her being pro-Assad, she's pretty cool. A veteran. Her visit to Syria on the DL is a huge black mark for me.
I like her too based on what I've seen, but then again she could be like Cory Booker who seems really great and then you look closer and think meh, not so much. She would be pretty young to run for president, but what does that stuff actually matter anymore? I don't think the Bernie philosophy is really the answer. He's a very likeable person, but he wants the government to do everything for people and it's just too much. Also, some of the stuff he wanted to tax (like the speculation tax) could have disastrous consequences and destroy people's 401k plans. Gabbard earned a lot of points to me for criticizing the way the DNC managed the primaries. One of the few democrats who was calling them on their bullshit. I like most of her policies, but if she actually runs I guess we'll get a better idea of where exactly she stands on all the issues.
I'm not claiming that the only reason people hate Hillary is because she is a woman. What I am saying is that being a woman plays a significant role in the way she is perceived and treated, and if she were a man with exactly the same platform and policies and track record I think she would have won. The amount of hate and vitriol towards her is absolutely intensified by her gender.
Do you have anything other than your belief in that to back you up? Personally, I can't stand her because too many times when she was asked for an opinion she crafted her response to be incredibly noncommittal and misdirecting, in a very "lawyer being very careful to not make a definitive statement on the record" kind of way. I just plain don't trust her, regardless of what squishy bits she has. I liked Bernie because he seems genuine, and actually gives a shit. Some of his policies might be off, but I think having someone who genuinely gives a shit about the people trumps his policies.
Don't mean to butt in here but there is no defending her. She lost to Obama in the primary.....were the voters there racist or misogynistic? Then Obama beat McCain....were they racist or misogynistic in that instance? These same people who voted for Obama, in some instances voted for Bernie or they voted for Trump. Identity politics and siloing people doesn't work and those of you still going on about it are doing a disservice to your party. Trump sucks, I get that but the reality for the purely democrat-voting populace needs to be accepted. It wasn't race. It wasn't gender. It was a shitty candidate with a poor win strategy.
And right now they are blaming everybody and everything other than themselves for their loss. That doesn't bode well.
There have been SO many studies done about gender bias and women in society. People literally get degrees in it. Recently there has been a lot of research about the perception of women in power vs. men in power and it turns out people react much more negatively towards women. No surprise there. I am also not arguing about Hillary Clinton v. any other particular candidate. The claim I am making is that her gender impacted the way she was treated and perceived, through the most recent campaign as well as throughout her entire career.
This is a meme I've been seeing from the right since the election, and it continues to bother me. Identity politics works incredibly well. The Democrats didn't lose because they played identity politics, they lost because they got so thoroughly outplayed at identity politics. The Republican platform in the age of Trump is almost nothing but identity politics. I can't even tell if the GOP favors free trade anymore, that's how little their actual stances on the issues matter to their electoral appeal.
I was really going to avoid responding again because I don't want to be an asshole, but now I can't help it. The people getting degrees in that field are complete idiots. I've read some of their papers and the stupidity is just utterly mind boggling. Just because someone has a degree next to their name doesn't make them smart or insightful. I know some big time morons who graduated college. Feminist research is the biggest farce in academia. Nearly all of the modern studies have been debunked by sources that are actually credible and do real research. Whether they're talking about white fragility, equal pay for equal work, only 1% of rape accusations are false, etc there is actual scientific research that refutes it for the bullshit that it is. The problem is if you actually want to understand something and do proper research you can't drag all of your baggage and bias into that research, and that is exactly what these people do. It's for good reason being a womens studies major is running joke, and it has nothing to do with people not liking women. Edit: This is a good example of how these people think. When they get the results they don't want their conclusion isn't to accept those results. It's to make up a new bullshit study that confirms their biases. Shit is absurd.
Ok, what basis do you have for this statement? What identity games are the Republicans playing? Part of MAGA was talking to working class people, you know, jobs? Let me help you: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blog...doesnt-need-white-men/?utm_term=.78883a0cec32 All she needed to do was go into Pennsylvania or Wisconsin or Ohio or Michigan and pander. She is fucking professional panderer. Go pretend for a minute that as a Democrat you care about working class people. That was too much for her. She wanted to play the identity game and racial math, her party wants to play the identity game and they got their just desserts.
Hillary won voters who listed the economy as their primary concern. As far as Republican identity games, there are numerous "I am a gun owner" instead of "I own a gun" Pro-life American Exceptionalism Coastal Elites/Real America Christian Victim Politics Immigration policies "Heritage not hate" etc They're not as straightforward as the Democrats focus on race/gender, but they are entirely built around how people identify themselves and define in-groups and out-groups. And it works incredibly well.