Again and again the media makes the claim that Hillary Clinton lost the easiest election ever.

By Damon Linker (twice).  By ostensibly professional Democratic partisan Jon Favreau. Chris Cillizza of course. They often do this because they assume her campaign was terrible and she did nothing right.  They often do not explain exactly what her campaign did that was so terrible except that she did not go to Wisconsin. After all, Cheato was the worst candidate in history therefore it must be her fault.

But this isn’t true.

The Fundamentals Were Against Her From the Start

When it comes to any given election, there are a group that will always vote Democratic and a group that will always vote Republican.  The rest of voters are what need to be persuaded.  In the 2016 election many of these were individuals who had voted for Obama but were ready for something new.

This is what is called third term fatigue.  Generally, a third termer can win when the opponent is one of two things: bland and boring, or simply bad at campaigning.  History gives us three examples.

Examples

In 1940, Republicans nominated as a surprise candidate when their convention deadlocked a former Democrat Wendell Willkie.  He was a tough campaigner, but he was indistinguishable from the Democrats based on what he was proposing.  He lost.

In 1948, Republicans nominated a very bland but popular governor of New York who was an extremely lazy campaigner who did not even endorse his party’s platform.  But he was beloved by the media (sounds familiar) and they gave him all sorts of advantages in the press.  Meanwhile Truman was barnstorming the country and giving rip-roaring speeches.  In the days before real mass media like TV, he was a good in-person entertainer.  He also was the current president who in a masterful stroke, called the majority Republican Congress back into session to pass their priorities as listed in the platform.  They failed.

In 1988, Democrats nominated Michael Dukakis.  He was a passionless fellow who had a couple of problems. First, he had no passion. Second, he was governor of a state where a black guy was given a furlough and killed a woman.  George HW Bush seems like a sad old man now but he okayed using a racist ad against Dukakis and it won him the election. (Racism will return again and again in this story.)

Donald Trump Was A Formidable Candidate

Next, the fallacy that Cheato was somehow a terrible candidate.  He didn’t do what he needed to do of course. He didn’t fundraise. He only did one event a day. Trump was also extremely stupid. And he had to fire two campaign managers mid-campaign. (Lewandowski and Manafort)

Trump Was Tough — For Other Reasons

He was a formidable candidate for other reasons-he was entertaining as a clown often is. Because of that, he got almost 5 billion dollars in free advertising. Much of it was negative but all of it was free.  Hell, his podium got more airtime than Clinton even when she was making major speeches.

He had the clear assistance of Russia. From direct help in the form of stolen information, active interference on social media, and of course indirect assistance by way of pouring money into the NRA, the entity that spent 30 million dollars for Cheato’s win.

Russia is also the group that handed Wikileaks most of the non-Clinton email messages to be dropped for the media to blather relentlessly and pointlessly over.

The Primary

He was not a normal politician so didn’t care about the general election.  Remember, before the general, Cheato had to face 15 Republicans, some of whom were extremely good politicians.  Despite Rubio’s whining, he has been elected numerous times in Florida.  He even won re-election in 2016 while complaining about how much he hated being a senator.

John Kasich was no joke when he ran. Kasich is one of those smiling Republicans who gut you while you are complimenting them on how nice they seem. He won re-election in 2014 by thirty points. Even now he is above 50% as governor despite Ohio’s economy not being that great.

Ted Cruz was another major contender who had no reason to suspect he would lose.  He had, after all, been the guy who gave one of history’s biggest political upsets with his surprise win in 2012 in the Texas Republican primary. David Dewhurst, his then opponent, had what appeared to be an insurmountable lead after the initial primary in May when he got 10 points over Cruz but was flipped by the runoff election in July. That is a shift of over 10 points in two months.

Jeb Bush was always going to suck.

But with those three other opponents, it should have been simple for them to beat Cheato.  Why didn’t they?

Trump’s Lack of Care

I believe a large part of it was Cheato simply didn’t care enough to moderate his tone for the general.  Republicans had been playing with fire since 1972 and the invention of the Southern Strategy. They use racist policies that they paper over so those who have zero interest in dealing with it can pretend that no, the Republicans are not the home of white supremacy.  Their news organizations (Fox, Sinclair, and others) go to a great deal of effort to magnify racial tensions by overreacting to the slightest expansion of rights of non-whites while steeply underreacting to real world racist results.  In addition, Republican state legislatures have been openly racist for years with the North Carolina legislature being so racist a court took extreme measures to point this out.

The national politicians (including Kasich, Cruz, Rubio, and Bush) had long been playing cute, so they usually were using dog whistles to hide the racism.  2016 and Cheato blew past the dog whistles and gave the Republican base what they wanted — a racist candidate who was happy to play up all the same conspiracies that they had been fed for years by Fox News.

But wait! What about the fact that many voters voted for Obama before they voted for Cheato?  Racial resentment plays a large part in this. It is dressed up as “cultural anxiety” but it is plain ol’ racism.

“I voted for Obama but black people didn’t stop demanding things.”

A co-worker said that to me.  I don’t know why it is weird that they would demand to not be shot but then I try to actively work on my privilege.

Let’s Talk Sexism

The 2016 election was one of the ones where cultural issues hold great sway.  Why?  The economy was humming along okay, the world was mostly at peace, and there wasn’t a sense of urgency like there had been in 1992 and 2008.  Both of those years had pick ups by Democrats because the US was worried about the economy. 2008 was bad enough that a guy named Barack Hussein Obama won in a landslide.

The 800 lb gorilla in the room that is rarely spoken about except by Hillary Clinton fans like myself is the sexism.

Many People Don’t See Women as Presidents

It is extremely hard for a woman to run for President of the United States.  Here is a table of only the national party candidates who got at least on the nominating ballot at the convention.

Of the 10 women who have run for the national parties, only Margaret Chase Smith, Shirley Chisholm, Hillary Clinton, and Carly Fiorina have been taken seriously enough to win delegates. And of those four, only one has made it to the general election.  Every other woman has been a third-party candidate who was there mostly for symbolic reasons.

Gee, looking at it like that shows it is kind of hard does it not?

Further, we have numbers to back up the fact it was sexism and not simply Hillary Clinton being somehow uniquely unlikable. We also have confessions from Republicans.

Let us look at the numbers for Hillary Clinton and her “likability”:

If she was not running for anything and was a subordinate to another person, Clinton was popular for a politician.  She hit a peak of 60% in 2011.  But then Benghazi happened, and she decided to leave office, which the media assumed was so she could run for the White House.  The Republicans, as confessed here by Kevin McCarthy, decided to abuse their power once again to try to stop her.

Note that word in there: untrustworthy.

Lies, Damn Lies, and the Truth

Clinton is not much of a liar.  She has had very few outright lies — 31 in ten years.  (I disagree with some of Politifact’s characterizations of her statements since obviously some of them were hyperbole that all politicians fall prey to but whatever.)

Barack Obama had 71 in that time frame.  Donald Trump set the webpage on fire. Mitt Romney (they stopped tracking him after 2012) had 32.

In fact, if you want honesty out of a politician, go ask a Democrat.  They usually will tell you the truth.

Why Is Hillary Seen as a Liar?

Yet she is assumed to be lying all the time.  Why?  Women tend to be more honest than men but Clinton has been called a liar since William Safire’s column on her being a congenital liar in 1996 despite her generally being honest.

Which means it isn’t about Clinton’s actual honesty.  It is about the people who lie about her.

Republicans have been doing that since she showed up on the national scene as Bill Clinton’s wife (prior to that, she was her own person but when Bill ran for the presidency, things changed a wee bit.)  The media has usually and gleefully joined in.  This has happened again, and again, and again, and again.

(A good example of this is Judicial Watch who were the ones who sought her emails from her time at State and repeatedly made up claims about them that the media swallowed whole scale. Judicial Watch is not a clean actor.  They have a vendetta against Clinton and the media has never particularly cared.)

Hillary Fought This False Narrative

Because of this, Clinton spent most of 2015 and 2016 being as precise as possible in her speaking.  She obviously failed since multiple times she had to go back and explain something when it was distorted by the press (who then distorted what she explained.)  She is still having to do that when the brouhaha flared up over her accurate statement in India about where she won and where Cheato won and why.

Yet even though she is no more of a liar then say Obama, she is treated much worse by the press. Even her husband isn’t treated as badly as she is. It is why he is at 45% and she is at 36%. Part of the reason is of course that Fox News has been acting like she is currently President despite her repeated attempts to resign as their President in Fake.

There is also some other data that show it was about sexism that is little looked at.

I have used this before to explain why Clinton lost and I think it is important to look at. Firefighters are one of the last main bastions of white masculinity. The group is mostly white, mostly male.

They voted for Obama at barely more than 50% in 2008 and less than 50% in 2012.  But they dropped to 27% for Clinton. The only thing that really explains both (since they voted for Bill Clinton at a much higher rate) is racism for Obama and sexism for Clinton.

They don’t even hide it. The president of the Firefighters Union flatly stated that they didn’t like Clinton or Democrats being focused on minorities and college educated whites instead of them.

James Comey

And finally, the last part about sexism is James Comey.  He of the impeccable reputation that somehow viewed his women bosses as less than reasonable.  First up is Loretta Lynch.  He thought she had a credibility gap.  Why? There was no reason to assume it this time. He had to use a doctored email that was thoroughly debunked by his own team to assume she was going to be discredited by the partisan press.

Yet the entire time he could have gone to Sally Yates about his concerns because he may have thought that Lynch was not impartial enough. Never went to her. Didn’t go to her again when he found out about the email messages that were on Anthony Weiner’s laptop. Didn’t go to her when she was acting AG with Cheato’s behavior after the election.

(This probably should not be a surprise since the mostly male FBI has a bit of an issue with the sexism against Hillary Clinton being as obvious as the ones against Lynch and Yates:

“Besides, as one bureau official after another has made clear to me in recent months, Comey never expected Clinton to lose. He saw The Letter as the politically expedient thing to do to help bolster the legitimacy of her victory – and preserve the FBI’s apolitical reputation. “The worst-case scenario [in his mind] was she was going to be really pissed [at him],” one executive told me. “But then we’d sit her down and tell her it was her fault we were in this position.”)

Summary

The 2016 election is one that still rankles for so many reasons that we aren’t going to finish grappling with them any time soon.  There are many actors who refuse to take a hard look at their behavior. From the media refusing, almost to a person, to look at what they obviously did wrong;  to average Americans who do not want to admit they were acting in sexist and racist ways; to the lack of caring by Republicans as they have been turned into traitors for Russian money.

Even I have not admitted my errors.  While I was active online campaigning I did little in-person and even less phonebanking.  I had reasons. My loss in 2014 made physical campaigning extremely painful, but I should have done more.  That is on me.

Clinton looked at her behavior in What Happened which was a bit self-serving as all memoirs are, but she did look at what she did wrong. She admitted she screwed up.  As far as I can tell, she is the only one who has admitted their screw-ups. Amy Chozick comes somewhat close in her memoir Chasing Hillary: Ten Years, Two Presidential Campaigns, And One Intact Glass Ceiling however the excerpts posted online are extremely clueless and self-serving.

There is a great deal to be learned from the 2016 election.  Some has been with Eric Holder’s group to combat gerrymandering. DNC’s efforts to quietly help campaigns get the vote out. But the problems of racism, sexism, Russia, and the media’s right wing behavior have not gone away and will not any time soon.

Another special election has occurred that, more than anything, shows what is building for the upcoming November election.

In the soon to be redistricted out Pennsylvania 18 th district, Conor Lamb won the seat as a Democrat for the first time since 2002. Representative-elect Lamb (results are not certified yet) showed that if you match the district to the candidate, you can win. But he needed help along the way.

Republicans gave him that help. Repeatedly.

Republican Help

First by having the former Congressman have to resign due to not simply having had an affair (practically de rigueur [foreign words and phrases should be italicized] for Republicans these days) but
pressuring the woman to have an abortion. As is the norm with anti-choicers, only abortions that don’t affect them are bad. So his pressuring her caused him to have to resign because her abortion didn’t affect the rest of the Republican caucus. That leaves voters distasteful of Republicans to start.

Then they nominated a fairly boring uninspiring candidate which would normally have won the race because he followed the party line to a T(ea party, yes he was a tea partier first running in 2010 where he barely beat his Democrat opponent twice). When your opponent comes off looking like a dynamic, fresh, and talented guy you would like to see marry your daughter, well, it doesn’t help.

The Pelosi Boogeyman

They tried to tie Lamb to Nancy Pelosi. Lamb said he wouldn’t vote for her as the leader (most likely with the party’s blessing). Pelosi’s no fool; she knows Republicans use her as a boogeyman like they have anytime there isn’t an equally competent woman *cough* Hillary *cough* around to bash.

Then the Republicans in the House passed the ACA repeal. Among the many things it did was show how precarious the state of health insurance for people was. Lots of voters didn’t like that.

“Hey! We Lowered Rich People’s Taxes!”

Then the Republicans passed a giant tax giveaway — The Great Tax Scam Bill of 2017 — to corporations and the rich that took money from the middle class in the form of higher health care premiums.

The Great Tax Scam Bill was designed to be signed in 2018 so it would make it politically unfeasible for the Democrats to reverse anything. Instead, the mentally failing Cheato signed the bill right away — in 2017. This caused automatic cuts in popular spending programs like Medicare, which (unsurprisingly) ticked off all the old people.

The House Says Trump Is Honest

Finally, in the days leading up to the final vote, the Republicans in the House released the “final” report on the TrumpRussia issue. To no one’s surprise, they freely admitted they are trying to cover up what happened by saying nothing occurred between Russia and Trump’s campaign. Democrats then released a comprehensive list of what the Republicans refused to do. (Now many of the Republicans on the committee are backtracking.)

You could say that the final factor was actually Cheato himself. But he’s an eternal problem that was there back in the early days of special elections.

Democratic Help

Additionally, Lamb benefited from the rage that is still in many Democratic voters who realized that they were too complacent in 2016. We know, now, that the election was likely stolen. The party has started instituting quiet reforms. And there is a great deal of effort to register, ID,verify, and vote among Democratic activists. All of the Democratic committees and subcommittees are working to get our likely voters registered and verified to vote.

We also are donating in small but consistent amounts. While Lamb had plenty of large contributions, 50% of his financial support came from small donors of $200 or less. There are over a thousand candidates generating excitement (in the case of California, too many candidates because of its “top two” voting system) in the congressional races.

The Takeaway

It’s hard not to see Lamb being helped more by the Republicans than the Democrats. Lamb’s opponent, Republican State Representative Rick Saccone, ran as “Trump before TrumTrump before Trump was Trump.” This might seem like a stupid move, but Sacone didn’t have much choice.

The Republicans have put themselves in a bad situation. Trump is extremely unpopular. But in the Republican Party, he’s very popular. So if Saccone had abandoned Trump, a bit chunk of his Republican voters would have abandoned him. That’s especially true in a special election where it is very easy to decide to stay home.

But this is a problem that Republicans face everywhere. And it will be just as true November 6, 2018. And the Republican Party is freaking out.

This article is cross-posted at Humorless Rants.

On 14 Janary 2017, the DNC hosted the first of four announced candidate forums for the DNC chair as well as the vice chairs, treasurer, and secretary. It started more or less on time at 9:00 am with remarks from the current interim chair, Donna Brazile. She spoke about Phoenix being a deliberate choice for the location — referring to the mythical phoenix rising from the ashes of its previous form. She is expecting the Democrats to do the same thing.

The Party just went through a bruising year. From the fairly rancor-filled presidential primary to the unrelenting attacks by a foreign government to the final heartbreaking loss of the presidential race, much has been made of what the Democratic Party is going through. Yet there were successes last year as well. Unfortunately they were drowned out by the loss at the top of the ticket.

The Party is dealing with the aftermath by having some internal struggles for what it is going to be. This is why there are so many candidates for DNC Chair. All of them have very good ideas, agree on almost everything, and are willing to stand up for what party-members care about most. This is one of those elections where the DNC committee-members are absolutely spoiled for choice.

Morning Session

For the morning session, it was mainly speeches from various party people and elected officials. Arizona Democratic Party Chair Alexis Tameron spoke briefly before introducing Phoenix’s Mayor, Greg Stanton. I had a chance to speak with her a couple of times during breaks in the forum. She told me some interesting things. In particular, the future of the Party is definitely in the southwest. Arizona was not given much assistance from the national party last election ($100,000). Yet the Democrats lost the state by only 3% for the president’s race, a better result than North Carolina. I heard similar sentiments from the Texas Democratic State Party Chair, Gilbert Hinojosa. Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, and possibly even Utah have a good shot to flip.

Speaking of things from a state party chair, Hinojosa noted something extremely important: there has to be better fundraising coordination between the national and state party leadership. If the federal party is holding a fundraiser for, say, Barack Obama, don’t hold it the same night the state party is holding its main fundraiser! It’s counterproductive.

Lunch Break

After the morning session, they threw us out of the main ballroom to go mingle with each other. There was a minor shouting war as the Ellison and Perez sides yelled out the names of their candidates. It wasn’t like the problems that plagued the Nevada State Caucus, but there was some push back between the sides.

I spent the time chatting with the various different staff members of the candidates and talking to people such as Chairman Hinojosa about how they picked their candidates to support. The Chairman explained that the DNC chair needed to be ready to welcome all Americans into the Democratic Party tent. He also said that the chair needed to be reflective of the best that the Democrats are. So people know why they should join it.

Shortly after that, I was snagged by a person from the Nurses Union to talk to me about the same thing. Jean Ross is the vice-chair and she mentioned the good legislation that Representative Ellison has introduced to help all Americans. She also pointed out that he understood that healthcare isn’t merely doctors and nurses; it is things like having a decent basic income.

I also spoke with the staff members for Tom Perez, Pete Buttigieg, Ray Buckley, and Jahmu Greene. They were friendly, cheerful, and excited about the leaders they had decided to support. That was especially notable since they all traveled to Arizona on a chilly winter’s day. Of special note were the people in New Hampshire who had an especially long trip. I’m pretty sure it was on their own expense too. That takes a lot of dedication.

Afternoon session

This session started with the candidates giving a brief introduction about themselves. Surprisingly, everyone stayed in their two minutes. Good start.

The first question was pretty simple, “How will they unify the Party?” Based on the way that they talked about this question and other issues, they will unify by being friendly opposition. The mood of the room stayed upbeat throughout the discussion. In fact, there was lots of cheering.

Otherwise, the answers were along the lines of, “Oh, I have lots of experience putting up with warring factions.” And that’s true of them all to one extent or another, based on their positions and offices held.

The next question was about working to bring more people up through the leadership pipeline. I literally don’t remember anything anyone said because I was tweeting. [Lesson 03: Notebook discipline and record keeping. :-) -FM]

Audience Questions

The first question from the audience was about the perennial problem in politics: money. Should the party get rid of corporate donations? Do they support a resolution that states that? The moderator, the always amusing Jon Ralston, said that was a yes or no question so it should be quick. He was wrong.

The first candidate to respond, Sally Boynton Brown, said in a roundabout way she did support eventually getting rid of the corporate donations. So did Representative Keith Ellison, who added that we must not hamstring ourselves by not having a replacement ready for the money. Jehmu Greene stated that she agreed with Ellison.

Ralston broke in with another request for yes or no answers. Perez made the excellent point that this isn’t a simple question to answer. When Jaime Harrison had his opportunity to speak, he pushed back a bit on the original question since he recognizes that most candidates do not get the kind of response that Sanders and Obama did in terms of small donations.

Other Questions

Next was a question on effectively using our allies in other groups. As Secretary Perez put it: all of the candidates have experience with coalition building.

The final question was about voter suppression efforts. This is where there was the first actual visible disagreement between the candidates. Only as a minor point. This was when Greene proposed what is to most people a startling and revolutionary idea: there simply shouldn’t be voter registration. Other options include taking what Oregon has done (automatic registration, vote by mail) and exporting it nationwide. Ellison was alone in speaking about the restoration of civil rights to convicted felons.

All of the candidates gave excellent answers and would be great chairs. Each one brings something to the table and differ only in where their priorities lie for the Democratic Party going forward.

After the Official DNC Conference

After the candidates for chair portion, I and my friend Donna Gratehouse had a chance to speak briefly with two of the candidates.

Jaime Harrison

I asked Jaime Harrison if he would be willing to support an Arizona style Clean Elections law for each state’s legislative and statewide races. He said he would be willing to support that. I followed up, asking if he was also willing to have a legislative drafting team to help give candidates proposed legislation to run on — something concrete they could get right to work on if they win. He said unfortunately that isn’t something the DNC could do but he would support having an organization to do the drafting of said legislation. Then he had to rush off because CNN was waiting.

Jehmu Green

Donna and I ran right into Jehmu Greene after that and she was a delight. Donna asked her about the media’s pernicious influence on the people we are trying to win over. Greene said we need to stop being friends with those who wish us harm — and that would definitely include much of the media. She also said that she wants the party to return to being a lot more aggressive in how we manage our push-back. The Democrats need people who do not spend their entire lives working in the political process to be in charge of the party.

I followed up with a question about bringing back the kicking donkey from the current corporate logo that we have. She smiled and said that the donkey probably wasn’t coming back, but that definitely something with more pep will be looked at. I was impressed: there is a woman who knows how to get out of a question she doesn’t want to answer. The party may need more of that to thrash the Republicans.

Vice-Chair Discussion

I briefly paid some attention to the vice-chair discussion. The only answer that really stuck out for me was when Adam Parkhomenko gave a good answer to how the national party can help those who want to get locally involved. He said that if you do, calling the DNC should make it easy to find out what you need to do by being a one stop clearing house of answers and information on who to get a hold of locally.

Conclusions

The big take away from the Phoenix DNC forum is that people are extraordinarily hungry for something to do in the face of Trump and total Republican control of Washington. They are, for the first time in a long time, reaching out to the Democratic Party to get active. The party can harness this energy. The room was packed for something that really isn’t that big a deal overall. The fact a number of people stuck around for the lesser-known races was pretty high for something that is even less well known than the DNC chair race.

The final thing is that the people currently running the party, Donna Brazile and her team, are excellent organizers. It was smooth flowing, it didn’t get bogged down in fights between the factions, and it was actually fun. I will miss her when she retires from active politics.

Cross-posted at Crooks & Liars.

Now we will finish off our discussion of the House races and Senate races. As with the rest of the election, it is a mixed bag.

California Heart Break

All three Democratic candidates have lost as of right now. Here is the weird thing: California has an immense amount of voters and their vote tally takes forever to finish. That is why Hillary Clinton keeps getting more votes to be honest — the sheer number of votes out in California.

Which means if Trump ticks that state off enough, it could decide to Calexit and turn into the sixth largest economy country wise while trashing the entire US South.

Anyway on to the break down:

California 10

Despite his frosted tips, it appears that even with the 50,000 votes still outstanding, Michael Eggman is not going to manage to pull off an upset and beat Jeff Dunham. Right now it is a difference of a little over ten thousand between them so Eggman will have to get 60% of the outstanding vote total to beat Dunham. Could it happen? Sure. But as of now, probably not.

California 25

This one is trickier. While as of right now Bryan Caforio is down 17,851 votes, much of the district is in the Los Angeles County with almost a million votes still left to be processed and counted. It is a hugely steep climb though, so I don’t think that Caforio will be able to pull it off. What remains is to see how close it is It is a district that is winnable without the lack of baggage that Caforio had (he was a new comer and I think that probably hurt him).

California 49

This one is tight. While in Orange County (of course), Issa is winning massively by about forty points, San Diego is going in for Applegate, with him 14K votes ahead.

Orange County has about 71,000 ballots left and San Diego has about 164,000 ballots left. It is unclear where exactly those votes are for the two of them exactly but…

Issa only has a 3,234 vote lead which means that Applegate may still pull this off and be our seventh pick up.

Illinois 10

Here is a shocker: we didn’t just win, we won with enough points that this seat may not flip back. Robert Dold won with 3 points in 2014. And Brad Schneider won in 2012 with one point.

This time Schneider won with 5 points or 13,916. Which caused me to tweet that this might keep going…

2018: Dold with 7%

2020: Schneider with 9%

2022: Dold with 11%

Until one of them drops dead. But really, it might stay with us in 2018. We will see. I don’t know if Schneider is going to be one of the Democrats fighting Trump tooth and nail or not, and that can have an impact.

RNC Rundown?

I know I promised that I would write about the race for DNC chair but I am going to probably do that as a separate post because it requires some explaining. And I am going to be like Lucy and ‘splain in greater detail.