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Is it possible that Dems don't really need to rebuild? They are going to win the popular vote by over 2 million with a very unlikable candidate that ran a pretty poor campaign. Of course those extra 2 million votes don't matter in winning but if Hillary hadn't ignored the rust belt for nearly all of the election she probably would have won.

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Is it possible that Dems don't really need to rebuild? They are going to win the popular vote by over 2 million with a very unlikable candidate that ran a pretty poor campaign. Of course those extra 2 million votes don't matter in winning but if Hillary hadn't ignored the rust belt for nearly all of the election she probably would have won.

They don't hold either house and have very few governors and state legislatures. The republicans ran an absolute pathetic human being as a candidate and they couldn't beat him.

 

They won very very few counties compared to republicans meaning their message this campaign didn't resonate with anyone that lives outside major metro areas.

 

What do you think????

 

#headinsand

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Hillary lost because it was easy to paint her as a horrible and unlikable candidate, despite that she is an eminently capable one atop the most progressive Democrat platform, with no scandals of substance against her. Not all of this is gendered, but some of it is undeniably so. We do not live in a gender-blind reality, and one need only look to the go-to terms to describe her to see that.

 

(Ann Coulter has received no less. Her politics are quite disagreeable. But she also can't escape from gendered criticisms, and we'd be blind to not recognize those for what they are.)

 

The Democrats are in disarray, and the fight for influence is a scattershot. I've even seen suggestions that they should compromise on immigration.

 

I'm all for rebuilding. I'm skeptical that it's going to go in a positive direction, but I hope so.

 

As Whistle points out, Democrats are winning more votes -- not just in the presidential race. That shouldn't be taken for granted. Nor should those votes be lightly abandoned.

 

Sanders lost in part, in my opinion, because his politics was reductionist. In this way, he captures the spirit of socialism quite well, and the coalition of the Democratic Party quite limitedly. That he should emerge as their guiding voice now worries me. But no disintegration of any political party is not without opportunity for rebirth.

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Is it possible that Dems don't really need to rebuild? They are going to win the popular vote by over 2 million with a very unlikable candidate that ran a pretty poor campaign. Of course those extra 2 million votes don't matter in winning but if Hillary hadn't ignored the rust belt for nearly all of the election she probably would have won.

They don't hold either house and have very few governors and state legislatures. The republicans ran an absolute pathetic human being as a candidate and they couldn't beat him.

 

They won very very few counties compared to republicans meaning their message this campaign didn't resonate with anyone that lives outside major metro areas.

 

What do you think????

 

#headinsand

 

 

It's easy to win elections when you suppress votes and constantly gerrymander districts

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-power-that-gerrymandering-has-brought-to-republicans/2016/06/17/045264ae-2903-11e6-ae4a-3cdd5fe74204_story.html?utm_term=.26be82b1a8c9

 

https://www.thenation.com/article/there-are-868-fewer-places-to-vote-in-2016-because-the-supreme-court-gutted-the-voting-rights-act/

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Is it possible that Dems don't really need to rebuild? They are going to win the popular vote by over 2 million with a very unlikable candidate that ran a pretty poor campaign. Of course those extra 2 million votes don't matter in winning but if Hillary hadn't ignored the rust belt for nearly all of the election she probably would have won.

They don't hold either house and have very few governors and state legislatures. The republicans ran an absolute pathetic human being as a candidate and they couldn't beat him.

 

They won very very few counties compared to republicans meaning their message this campaign didn't resonate with anyone that lives outside major metro areas.

 

What do you think????

 

#headinsand

It's easy to win elections when you suppress votes and constantly gerrymander districts

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-power-that-gerrymandering-has-brought-to-republicans/2016/06/17/045264ae-2903-11e6-ae4a-3cdd5fe74204_story.html?utm_term=.26be82b1a8c9

 

https://www.thenation.com/article/there-are-868-fewer-places-to-vote-in-2016-because-the-supreme-court-gutted-the-voting-rights-act/

I'm not going to defend republicans on either of those.

 

But....those aren't why she lost.

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Hillary lost because it was easy to paint her as a horrible and unlikable candidate, despite that she is an eminently capable one atop the most progressive Democrat platform, with no scandals of substance against her. Not all of this is gendered, but some of it is undeniably so. We do not live in a gender-blind reality, and one need only look to the go-to terms to describe her to see that.

 

(Ann Coulter has received no less. Her politics are quite disagreeable. But she also can't escape from gendered criticisms, and we'd be blind to not recognize those for what they are.)

 

The Democrats are in disarray, and the fight for influence is a scattershot. I've even seen suggestions that they should compromise on immigration.

 

I'm all for rebuilding. I'm skeptical that it's going to go in a positive direction, but I hope so.

 

As Whistle points out, Democrats are winning more votes -- not just in the presidential race. That shouldn't be taken for granted. Nor should those votes be lightly abandoned.

 

Sanders lost in part, in my opinion, because his politics was reductionist. In this way, he captures the spirit of socialism quite well, and the coalition of the Democratic Party quite limitedly. That he should emerge as their guiding voice now worries me. But no disintegration of any political party is not without opportunity for rebirth.

Zoogs...

 

She was a pathetic candidate with enough baggage for a football team going to a bowl game.

 

If Dems want to keep blaming everyone else for their pathetic election....well then.....they can just keep on keeping on. But it doesn't change that she was the wrong person to nominate no matter how much it hurts you that she lost.

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I don't like diving so hard into these narratives.

 

We were a 1 percentage point swing in two late-breaking swing states away from a very, very different framing.

 

Hillary was quite capable of winning this thing. She nearly did. That she lost does not make your opinion of her, or your diagnosis of her baggage, the correct one now.

 

I agree she had political baggage. I disagree that it was substantive. The Republicans did a good job on her.

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Rebuild? I don't know. As a whole I think the party is pretty unified.

 

I think they just need to nominate better candidates. Hillary was an easily attackable candidate with a devastating amount of baggage. She was the Dems Jeb Bush.

Hillary was the single worst Presidential candidate the Dems have run (she lost twice after her husband won twice btw) since Humphrey. Carter's second run was a disaster but no Dem could have won that one after the disasterous first term Carter delivered.

 

The Democrat party needs a rebuild but it is NOT the names or faces at the top that is the fundamental problem of course. It is the radical leftist ideology that the party espouses which is just not supported by anything close to a majority of the American people. Even though Hillary may have received a few more popular votes than Trump, she only did so because Trump made the correct strategic decision NOT to campaign in California, Oregon and Washington. Had he made some efforts out there, he would easily have picked up 5 to 8% more of the popular vote. While not winning the electoral votes of those states, he would have swung several million votes and had a popular vote win of a couple million votes.

 

The Democrats have been losing steadily in popularity across the country for decades - this is a long term trend. Evidence is the domination of the Republicans in House, Senate, Presidency, Governorships, state legislative bodies, Mayors, etc. I would submit the Dems have fully lost touch with the great mass of American society that simply does not agree with the radical, socialist agendas being pushed so incredibly hard.

 

To 'rebuild' is not the correct term really. I would suggest perhaps more appropriate would be to 'redirect' and replace the radical agenda with something much more moderate and mainstream. The gap between the two major parties is as wide as it has ever been, despite the Republican party moving to left while the Democrats have moved far left. Today's Republican party is generally about as liberal/left leaning as the Democrat party of Kennedy/Johnson. Today's Tea Party/Conservatives are pretty much in line with the traditional Republican party of the 1960s through 1980s. The mistake the Republicans have made (if one were to consider such) is to veer left. America is more moderate/libertarian and middle of the road that it once was. But it is NOT 'progressive' or socialist and not communist despite the wishes of many of the party's leadership. Dems have been hijacked by the radicals of the 60s.

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She couldn't get that 1% against the most pathetic candidate ever to run for the GOP.

 

Just about any other republican candidate would have demolished her.

 

If you are so distraught that she lost that you can't see that then I hope the next four years will ease the pain enough to clear your mind.

I'd say you are still blind to Trump's strengths.

 

He captured a powerful national following not by accident. That you still think the Republican party belongs to establishment Republican candidates is amusing. I would like that to be true, also, but it's not reality.

 

I think there's a case to be made that Trump was in fact the only Republican candidate who could have won. We (all of us) simply refused to believe it. But with all due respect to Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio, none of them were cracking the blue firewall.

 

On the one hand, Hillary wasn't the strongest political candidate, of course. On the other, Trump turned out to be a pretty formidable one. He performed *very* well.

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Plenty of scientific studies have shown that gender bias is a real thing in the way people perceive actions/behavior/words from men and women, particularly in high-achieving roles, and also particularly towards women who act assertively. Women are judged more harshly when doing the same things as men, per good scientific data.

 

 

Part of the reason for this is just straight up biology/evolution. Women don't interrupt as much, and are interrupted much more, because outside of civilization, our brains look for height, shoulder width and depth of voice to assess strength (ie, if you interrupt that person you might die), and women generally lack those things. Unfortunately, that's been reinforced in our cultural contexts historically by rewarding and valuing women for being compliant and submissive and shunned if they're assertive.

 

Anyways, all of these things are implicit associations and biases that we don't really know we're actually believing.

 

Plenty of scientific studies have shown racial bias is a real thing, in every way you've just mentioned with gender, and we just had a two-term Black president.

 

Yes, those biases are real. No, those biases do not always affect things.

 

No, gender bias was not a deciding factor in this election.

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There's a big, big difference in these two assertions:

 

1. Gender bias did not affect things.

2. Gender bias was not the lone deciding factor.

 

I can agree with #2. I can't agree with #1. But I'm not sure you are arguing that, either.

 

That Barack Obama was able to overcome his own set of biases in 2008 especially should bear little relevance to this outcome. John McCain ran for a third George W. Bush term with Sarah Palin as his running mate, and Obama was and is a preternaturally skilled politician.

 

The first female President will likely also have to be so particularly exceptional, and benefit from favorable circumstances such as running as an outsider in an anti-establishment climate. The next white man after Trump certainly will not need to be. Look at Trump. Similarly, the next Black president will have less to overcome than the first one. The second female President, too. So it goes.

 

Biases are real. They play a role, all the time. They weren't the lone cause, and indeed, it seems folly to look for singular causes.

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Hillary failed to turn out the same vote Obama turned out, in the order of 6 million to 8 million fewer voters compared to Obama in 2008 & 2012. Those are Democrat voters, not the whole electorate.

 

 

I mean, you can make the argument that gender bias played a role here, but it's a stretch to believe that Democrat voters who would vote for a Black candidate just up and decided a female candidate was a bridge too far.

 

I'd like to see evidence showing that Hillary's gender was a tipping-point decision-making factor. In the absence of that, I'm sticking with unlikeability

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