There were folks(on the right)who didn't support us because they didn't want a woman as president

[Ken Burch]

It would be foolish not to acknowledge that.

BUT...if we reduce our takeaway on the EC result to JUST that(plus racism), we don't give ourselves any chance of creating a better result in the 2018 midterms and the 2020 presidential contest.

I agree that Hillary was treated horribly by the right for years and years, and that THEIR attitude towards her was largely about bigotry.

AND I agree that everyone on the progressive side should have voted Clinton-Kaine on antifascist grounds.

But we need to take a harder look at the whole thing than assuming it was largely about bigotry.

If we assume that that was the MAIN cause...what the hell do we do to ever get out of this nightmare?

We need to keep fighting racism, sexism, homo-and-transphobia, religious bigotry and xenophobia.

And we DID have a more-than-qualified candidate who said some good things.

But there are practical things the campaign could have done better(the Huffington Post story about the field operations directors in the Upper Midwest warning that many more canvassers needed to be brought in is a valid point; so are the observations about the decision to have the candidate spend most of August NOT out on the stump(and this is probably a decision the campaign manager made)but fundraising(we should also ask where did all the funds that were raised go, because it didn't look like the ads that were produced would account for most of that).

And in discussing the tone some took in trying to persuade people to our left to vote Clinton, the point is NOT to say those people who didn't vote for her were RIGHT not to do so...it's simply to try to find better ways to get the message through to those people than the way a lot of us did...which was basically to DEMAND their votes. On a basic psychological level, that approach just doesn't work with a lot folks. Demanding that someone do what you tell them to do simply hardens an irrational refusal to do so. It perpetuates a bloody-minded reaction. Saying that doesn't mean defending their decision at the polls. A positive, persuasive tone, a tone that finds a way to convey the message "the party has been changed and you will empower yourself and others by giving it the support you withheld from it in other years".

The people who voted Stein or Johnson(or who wrote in Bernie when he begged them NOT to, over and over again) were WRONG to do that. But if we don't learn better ways to communicate with those folks, we aren't ever going to win again. There isn't any significant bloc of votes we can gain in any other part of the spectrum. The "centrists" voted for Trump and this proves they aren't really "centrists" at all. We would not have won any more of them over by going Sistah Souljah on Muslims and Mexican immigrants.

I wish Hillary had won in the EC(rather than simply winning a solid popular vote majority, which IS something we should emphasize in making the arguments against Trump proposals). I think that even the on this site who are people saying we should have nominated Bernie wish that as well.

But this is no longer about Hillary. She isn't going to run again. Pretending that nothing went wrong in the campaign won't help us elect anybody else in the future.

[lapfog_1]

1. First things first

We have to make sure (somehow) that there will BE a 2020 election and that it isn't a complete farce (voter suppression gone wild under AG Sessions and a new Scalia-like SCOTUS)

[Glassunion]

2. Not to mention majority (R) governors, and state houses.

These are folks who if they retain control past the mid-terms will be redrawing district lines after the next census.

[Ken Burch]

4. We need to make a major effort in the midterms.

And we can only do that if our party's strategists keep refusing to do-fire up the base.

[Glassunion]

41. These are going to be the most important mid terms

In a very long time.

[Ken Burch]

42. And we need to do them RIGHT, for a change.

Nationalize the campaign.

Massive voter registration/re-registration campaigns.

A program that fires up the base and turns the non-voters into part of the base by actually speaking to their issues.

[Glassunion]

43. Hopefully the energy we have right now will carry for two years.

[Ken Burch]

3. That is essential as well.

But it doesn't serve that objective when any effort to discuss and analyze the situation gets a "Don't criticize-Don't question-Don't suggest" response.

[boston bean]

5. but but but but but.... let's not focus on what those things I just admitted happened..

let's do something else...

Strange..

[Ken Burch]

6. I never didn't admit those things happened.

But they aren't all that mattered.

We can't ever gain votes in the future if our ONLY response is to say it was THOSE things.

Making it about nothing but that gives us no hope, gives us nothing to organize on or improve.

And it's not as though Hillary would ever run again.

[boston bean]

7. Listen, you can't change someone's mind to vote for a woman if they hate women.

You think all these people would have voted for someone else.

Give me a break. These people would not have.

[Ken Burch]

8. It was only people on the right who voted out of sexism, not people on the left.

While no one should have voted Green presidentially, the people who did so, whatever else you can say about them, voted for a woman.

And I think there would have been much larger support for Elizabeth Warren if she had been the nominee.

Reducing it all to "it was hatred of the idea of a woman being president that drove ALL votes against Hillary" doesn't give us any to move forward.

I'd still LIKE to see the Electoral College choose Hillary. But trying to shut down consideration of any other factors won't make that any more likely. And Hillary will never run for the presidency again.

[boston bean]

9. That is where your argument falls apart for me.

They were ok voting for one they are one.

That is a deal breaker for anyone on the left. Or should be. People who arent racist would never vote for one.

[Ken Burch]

11. I agree that they shouldn't have voted for Stein. I spent a lot of the fall

making the argument(which I sincerely believe) that the choice was Hillary or oppression

But it does us no good and gives us no way forward to reduce the entire takeaway to misogyny.

What's the point of ascribing the result almost entirely to something we may not have any ability to change?

[Uponthegears]

14. Correct

There is not one person on this board who denies that Hillary lost right-wing votes simply because she was a woman . . . NOT ONE!!!!!!

There is not one person on this board who denies that Hillary lost right-wing votes simply because FIRCs (F'n Ignorant Racist Cr******) saw this as a way to put some of us back in the fields . . . NOT ONE!!!!!!

There is not one person on this board who denies that Hillary lost right-wing votes simply because xenophobia and Islamophobia . . . NOT ONE!!!!!!

But this whitewashing of Hillary's (or the Party elite's) ill-conceived primary strategy of pitting oppressed groups against economic justice voters to try to fend off Bernie in Rust Belt and beat him soundly in the South THEN leave the pain of those oppressed groups behind (together with the economic justice voters the vilified in the primary) in the general election to try and attract not-traditionally Democratic voters (the ones the Third Way CLAIMS are ripe for the picking) by hammering Trump's vileness, and the destructiveness of that strategy to the Democratic Party itself is going to leave us with a decidedly narrower and less enthusiastic base.

[yallerdawg]

16. If the Democratic base has to include...

misogynistic, hateful, unaffiliated 'economic justice voters' who are going to insist that bashing Hillary, and spewing out fantasies and falsehoods, will serve some greater purpose going forward...then give me a "narrower and less enthusiastic base."

[Uponthegears]

19. Straw man alert

Try discussing what people actually said.

You are preaching a dystopia where economic and social justice liberals are at war. It's a dystopia YOU have created by refusing to acknowledge what those of us who have actually fought for civil rights for more than 4 decades have always known, i.e., there is MORE than enough wealth and power in the hands of the .1% to BOTH correct (to the extent it remains possible) inequality AND to raise the resulting unified masses.

It is only a war in your mind because YOU have put the .1% off limits.

[yallerdawg]

21. You completely lost me.

Here are the results from an average county in Pennsylvania, which made one of those remarkable flips Election Night.

It's quite obvious our "expanded" base went for Sanders in the primary.

It's also quite obvious where the Sander's voters went Election Day. Not misogynist? They voted for one.

http://cumberlink.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/election-results-show-political-shifts-within-cumberland-county/article_618944e6-c74a-5a8f-99cf-59e71051144e.html

[Uponthegears]

25. Could I get back to you

You bring up a real interesting point and I don't want you to think I just blew you off.

[yallerdawg]

26. Certainly!

[Uponthegears]

39. Thank you for your patience!

Pennsylvania is very troubling and very possibly for the very reason you stated.

First, I want to discourage relying on the Obama turnout vs. Hillary turnout is evidence that Obama voters switched over to Trump because that would suggest the even more divisive argument that women are more oppressed than black men, one not borne out by other data. However, I will pass along a little fact I was taught in another string that is equally supportive of your argument.

Republican turnout was not appreciably higher in other battleground states. Two, normally reliable Democratic constituencies, specifically we in urban communities and white working class families (the $50K through $100K group) just failed to turn out. If it was misogyny, a significant percentage of those voters would have voted for Trump and Republican turnout would have been up.

HOWEVER, and it's a big (allcaps) one because of Pennsylvania's importance, in Pennsylvania, it wasn't just low Democratic turnout, Republican voter turnout was up 10%. That is just flat out frightening. Were those misogynistic white liberals and people of color? You could well be right. That would piss me off to no end because I (although in the South) and a lot of other ideologically socialist people of color who worked for Bernie in the primary, worked equally hard for Hillary in the general and that means not only that we failed, but that there is a cancer in the Pennsylvania Democratic Party.

The alternative explanation is no more reassuring. It is that Steve Bannon is right . . . that there is a huge pool of FIRCs who have not been voting and that Trump was able to lure them from their bunkers in Pennsylvania in 2016 and will lure from bunkers all over the country in future elections. If that is the case, my advice to all oppressed groups may will be the same advice I followed (foolishly, I thought) as an 18 year old which is, it's a war.

I almost hope you are right about Pennsylvania. At least crossover misogynists have the potential to be educated through a unified party apparatus.

Thank you for your follow-up.

[LisaM]

28. Whoa, that is unsettling.

Thanks for digging that up.

[yallerdawg]

32. As usual...

"the devil is in the detail."

It's not just a feeling anymore...

A crude analogy: When we let a lifelong independent run as a "Democrat" in OUR party, it's what Negan said to Rick at the end of the last "Walking Dead" episode (*NSFW).

[LisaM]

33. Worse that it was in Pennsylvania.

I remember an argument that ensued here during the primaries where Hillary talked about coal jobs going away in West Virginia and of course everyone piled on her, and then someone asked, "is Bernie PRO-coal energy?" No one went beyond to her actual proposal of turning them into other jobs, it was just how she'd lost West Virginia....

[boston bean]

34. Thank you yallerdawg... the way they treated women and obama online should have been a major wake up

call.

But no, they were welcomed and then shit in our face.

[Ken Burch]

44. We're not even going to be talking about Hillary by 2018.

And the left opposition to her was based on disagreements on the issues. I agree they should all have joined us in voting for her in the fall, but it serves no purpose to pretend that left anti-Hillary votes were about bigotry.

Narrowing it down to that means we can't find any strategy to get the additional votes we need for 2018 and 2020.

We will never beat Trump or Trumpism by default.

Our vision has to be positive and transformative.

It has to be pragmatic AND visionary.

[duffyduff]

24. To him it is all about pleasing the dudes. But these guys can't be fixed.

We haven't had these types in the party for nearly fifty years.

They keep voting the wrong way, all the while bitching and moaning about how the minorities and women are "stealing" their jobs. Add the "illegals" to the mix, and it is the same damned thing.

They are entitled white dudes who think they deserve the best jobs simply because of their skin color and their dicks. A lot of these jackasses are "men's rights activitists," which means they are sexist jerks by definition.

They can all go to hell. If they haven't figured out who helped to destroy the social contract and why the past THIRTY-FIVE YEARS, they aren't going to figure it out now.

They are totally unreachable. We don't need them. We don't need to be mansplained about it, either.

[duffyduff]

27. "They would have voted for Bernie" which is a joke.

He'd have been slaughtered by Bloomberg and Trump.

[Uponthegears]

40. Of course your Bernie Bashing is nothing but sour grapes. however (again)

Loyal Democrats (which I assume you folks count yourself among seeing as how you are still whining about Bernie not being one) would have come out and voted for Bernie and Bernie would have peeled off a substantial number of WWC voters in the Rust Belt. Trump with is affinity for Putin and claimed antipathy for crony capitalism would have been hard-pressed to play the "socialist card."

Now for the HOWEVER

You are 100% correct because Bernie would never have been running against Trump. If Bernie had been the frontrunner during the primaries, the so-called "mainstream" Republicans would have painted Trump with the socialist brush, run against "Communism," and one of them would have been the GOP nominee. THAT candidate (Rubio, Bush, Cruz - maybe - whomever) would have punished Bernie.

We can talk forever about what Hillary could have done better. It doesn't matter now. But as much as I supported Bernie and what he stands for, this "Bernie would have won" or "Aren't you sorry now" talk does nothing.

[OrwellwasRight]

15. No, let's focus on the things we can change.

That's pretty basic.

[Pathwalker]

10. I got into it with a man waiting in line at the checkout at a local

grocery store, who was talking rather loudly about the "danger we would all be in when she was in her period". The words were out of my mouth before I thought better of it, and snapped at him:Admit it, you flunked grade school biology didn't you?" He didn't understand, so I pointed at his wife and asked him if his obviously older wife still got her periods. "Well no, she's been through the menopause," he answered, as his wife told him to shut up. And how much younger than Hillary is she? I asked.
The answer finally dawned on him, and he looked away. I don't think I changed his mind about who to vote for, but his mind boggling stupidity was just too much for me to remain silent. You can't fix this level of stupid, but you can embarrass them.

[Fla Dem]

12. There are anti women on the right, but on the left as well.

I know them, I've worked with them. There are men and women who do not want a woman in any type pf power. While it is expected that some men are like that, there are also women. They are jealous of women who excel. In high school girl clique are symbolic of that mind set. They pick on the smart girls, or the ones that may not be as attractive as they think women should be. They are envious of the girls who get a boyfriend.

In business where I saw it the most, they suck up to the male managers/execs and talk about the female managers as bossy and talk about their looks. They undermine them to their male peers.

I don't know if it's something in the female gene, to be anti female, or it's a learned trait fostered in a male dominated family. It was something I could never understand, women undercutting other women.

[LisaM]

29. I am curiuos about the breakdown between white working women and white non-working women

If anyone can point me to that stat, I'd be grateful.

[duffyduff]

31. They were brainwashed to identify with traditional sex roles with regard to women on the right.

Most of these women who voted for Trump did it over abortion and the USSC. They are against abortion because they see it as a way to give men permission to walk away from women. Women are heavily disadvantaged in the labor market, propaganda about "careers" nothwithstanding, and these women on the right are aware of it. Since they believe they can't make it without husbands, they think pregnancy, including unplanned pregnancy, binds them tighter to men so that they don't leave them as easily.

It isn't hard to figure out. They know men can be assholes. Pregnancy gives these women leverage with men. Legal abortion takes that power away. Ditto for birth control.

With the left, it has been this way forever, since at least the 1960s. Many left men in particular can be the biggest sexist jerks.

[OrwellwasRight]

13. infinity

Why do so many people on this board prefer demeaning voters instead of trying to improve our party?

[bettyellen]

17. Bigotry happens on the left too. Stop white washing it and damning HRC with feint praise....

"She said some good things".

Lame. Stop spamming the board w attempts to rewrite OUR experiences.

[Ken Burch]

18. I praised her sincerely there.

And I'm not spamming...just trying to communicate in good faith and help us get to a better result in the future.

What good does it do to say it was NOTHING but bigotry?

What good does it do to pretend our fall campaign was flawless?

[bettyellen]

20. Your OP absolves the left of the misogyny we all saw, and damns us for choosing Hillary

the bigotry was a big factor. And we need to accept some of the left embraced it too.

[duffyduff]

23. Men on the left can be much worse than those on the right regarding sexism.

That is because many of these guys don't care about women at all unless they get unlimited sexual access.

That is a result of them worshiping "sexual liberation" and to hell with what women think about it.

True in the 1960s and double and triple true today.

Yes, it is that crude.

Sexist attitudes by the New Left males in the 1960s were a direct cause of women splitting away from them and creating the second wave of feminism.

[bettyellen]

35. Yep, I'd been part of a few groups and have seen men wrestle al the attention and power and expect

The women to act solely in support roles. They can be bossy but when a woman pushes back and expects to be listened to, they act shocked and offended. My friend said her socialist group in Manhattan was the same shit.

[duffyduff]

22. More Democratic Party blaming. Please give it up.

You are willfully ignoring what really happened here, and that is with the shameless, treasonous promoting of Donald Trump endlessly by the media, specifically Jeff Zucker and CNN.

The rust belt sexist and racist dudes are not worth dealing with because they are too stupid to understand they are basically the reason they are having a rough time. They keep voting the wrong way. They keep voting for the same assholes who when elected continue to destroy the social contract.

I gave up feeling sorry for them years ago. I suggest you do the same.

[riversedge]

30. That fact that Hillary is female and some did not want a woman as President did play a

role. To what degree is unknown. Anecdotally, I did a lot of canvassing, and it did come more than I care to think about.

[bettyellen]

36. People blamed her for every single thing her husband ever did....

They would have never treated a man that way.

[democrattotheend]

45. Exactly

I had this argument with my boyfriend a few weeks ago. He said that Democrats cried sexism every time Hillary was criticized. But I explained to him that as an employment lawyer, I look at it the way courts look at an employment discrimination case: was she treated differently than a male in her shoes would have been? I think she was in the sense that she was judged for everything Bill did in a way that male candidates have not been judged for the actions of their wives.

You could argue that some of it was because Bill Clinton was a former president, but other women who have run for office have been treated the same way. I am too young to remember the 1984 election, but I recall reading that Geraldine Ferraro's husband's business dealings became an issue in the campaign.

Male politicians have had wives who worked as lobbyists or run charitable foundations and it has never been much of an issue.

[guillaumeb]

37. And the Democratic Party must find a way to motivate the 41% of non-voting but registered voters.

These low to average income voters are our natural allies, and they will be among those hurt in the Trump Presidency.

[WhiteTara]

38. Please just stop.

There were MANY on the left who didn't want a woman as president. Please stop spewing all this now. It is to me like venom in a deep wound.