I had the idea to write this post immediately after the election.
Here’s what I was thinking at the time: we do need to talk about what went wrong.
Hillary did not run a perfect campaign,
NO ONE IN THE HISTORY OF EVER HAS.
There’s was lots of pontificating about “economic insecurity,” despite the fact that 40% of union households that went for Trump, when we all know – including union members – that he is no friend to unions.
There was lots of pontificating, particularly from dudebros, about how race was the determining factor, despite the fact that, last I checked, Hillary’s white and we elected an African-American in 2008 and still haven’t manged to elect a woman.
Liberal white men have to accept that sexism played a huge part, and the rest of us have to accept that they weren’t the only problems.
But maybe, just maybe, we keep it in the family rather than in a public fucking interview for fucking CNN with David fucking Axelrod. You know, just hypothetically.
And then things kind of died down, and I figured I’d missed my window and moved on to other topics.
But no! I hadn’t missed my window!
St. Bernard of the Goddamn Snows is STILL out there talking shit about how he would’ve won, and if all us uppity wimmins and Negroes would just sit down (preferably at the back of the bus and/or on his lap, cantcha take a joke, honey?) and shut up, he’d be MORE THAN HAPPY to work with so-called President Trump on the class issues and economic anxieties of (white) working class people, which are the only things that REALLY matter, only all us “identity politics” people are just too dumb to figure that out.
First of all, “Bernie would’ve won” is a highly debatable assertion. Oppo research exists on EVERY candidate and potential candidate, only Bernie’s never came out. Hillary’s people didn’t use it because she didn’t want to divide the party, and the Republicans didn’t use it because they were DYING to run against St. Bernard, and those of you who are STILL feeling the Bern might want to ask yourselves why that was.
Secondly, since when is “white man” not an identity? Oh right – they’re the norm; the rest of us are all those icky “Others” who have “problematic” identities. I forgot.
Joe Biden’s now jumped on the “I would’ve won” train, too.
As the wise and witty Melissa McEwan writes at shakesville: “Joe Biden, What Are You Even Doing?” (and you should really go read the whole post)
Joe, I get that all the memes about you washing your Trans-Am on the White House driveway in your aviators and Wonkette’s referring to you as Old Handsome Joe Biden for eight years might’ve gone to your head, but let’s not forget that you actually voted for Bill Clinton’s 1994 crime bill, and ANITA HILL, YOU MOTHERFUCKER. No, some of us didn’t forget.
What’s worse is that they’re also both implicitly saying that the Democrats can only ever run a white man for president. Well, at least if they want to be successful and win.
Fuck that shit.
So I find myself back where I was in early December, after I’d climbed out of the rye whiskey bottle, I mean “post election slough of despond.”
Just like any time you ever run any kind of a campaign (marketing, fundraising, PRESIDENTIAL, whatever), you need to debrief after, to document what went well so you can do more of that next time, what went wrong so you can figure out why it went wrong and work on fixing it for next time, and record what you learned while it’s still fresh in your mind, again with an eye towards improvement.
But could we maybe keep it in the fam and STAY THE FUCK OFF OF CNN?
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Meanwhile, in my odd semi-rational moments, I wonder what kind of president St. BS would have made. Better than Trump by a long shot, for sure. Not nearly as good as Clinton, also for sure. At least for the first year or so he would have been weak. The guy doesn’t know how to get things done. He would’ve had to learn on the fly, and I’m not sure he’s capable of that, or of hiring and listening to the people who could teach him.
And at the first hint of (OMG) compromise!!! a significant portion of his followers would have turned on him, howling and baying for blood. At which point it would have become apparent to almost everyone, maybe even BS himself, just how conditional his support was.
There are so many issues with the way elections are run in the US. Media reports selectively create awareness about certain candidates while overpassing others, swaying voters’ opinions by raising the question of who “everyone else” is going to vote for. On election day NPR was broadcasting interviews of voters who specifically said they cast their ballots for Trump/Clinton because “everyone else” was going to and they didn’t want their vote to be “wasted” on a lesser-known candidate. Doesn’t seem like these people got to truly exercise their opinions as voters.
As for Hillary Clinton, I honestly don’t have enough faith in her integrity as a human being to picture her as a good president. Obviously she would have been better than Trump is, but I think she’s in the bottom half of that long, long list of people. There are just too many inexcusable Clinton scandals that have been so isochronous over the course of whole decades. Yes, we’re long overdue as a nation for female representation in the presidency, but I don’t think Hillary Clinton is the right representative. I also don’t like the idea of people focusing on her gender above her character and political aptitude when making a voting decision.
Also, as is mentioned in the introductory quote, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote even WITHOUT filtering out the illegitimate ballots that were cast. So the majority of voters were ready for the change, but apparently the electoral college system was not.