I haven’t been here for a while. Work, kids and all the other things in life allowed for a lot of less time interacting online, but but following politics has still remained one of my guilty pleasures. As I’m looking to comes to terms with this outcome I just wanted to share why I was so certain this result was inevitable.
I will preface this by saying that Clinton would have likely been good president, possibly a great president. She very well could have been a better president than Sanders. I don’t think many could argue that anyone could be a worse president than Trump.
I write this from as much as an objective perspective a person can have. I did vote for Bernie, but not because I thought Hillary was evil, but because I thought I Bernie was the only chance for a Democratic victory as the campaign season unfolded.
Her campaign was setup to be an uphill battle before it even began. Before Obama was sworn in she was essentially anointed by the media and the party as the successor to Obama. The right was well of aware of this as much as we were and it gave them eight years to try to smear her every chance they got and manufacturer scandals and controversy to blight her name. The sad is fact is perception is reality, and if you throw enough stuff at the wall something will eventually start to stick.
That was a big part of what caused this outcome. There was a lot of ammunition based purely on perception, but since perception is reality it makes that baggage real.
Nonetheless, as the campaign gets going it looks like she is going to be uncontested for the most part so before we even have a chance to really vet the strength of her campaign for 2016 the party voters start to fall in line and get used to the idea. Even so, it was not with nearly the enthusiasm as Obama generated. Remember, Obama represented something different: change. Clinton represented the same era of politics everyone was tired of. The trend of desiring a serious shakeup in the political system has been continuing every year, so this Clinton is a counter-intuitive candidate for such a political climate.
All the sudden Bernie busts onto the scene, but well behind since he has virtually no mainstream name recognition. But what you see is as time goes on more and more people continuously gravitate to that campaign as they learn about his message, and with much more excitement and enthusiasm.
Just look at the chart from the primaries...
What I see is someone who if there was an extra month in the campaign would be well ahead of Hillary. I see someone who if they had the same name recognition and early publicity would be winning by a landslide.
Many I would talk to were begrudgingly supporting Clinton until Sanders arrived and lit a spark. That same apathy returned when Sanders was not nominated. The excitement and grass roots efforts were similar to those that helped propel Obama to the presidency while Clinton’s seemed to have more of the sterile, establishment machine at work.
I talked to a lot of people who normally voted republican who were attracted to Trump’s message of shaking up the system, but they were still leery of him as presidential material. When these same people started seeing Bernie stump on TV and the debates they would tell me they might be voting for him in the general. These people didn’t care about tax cuts, and military spending or religious ideals — they just thought DC was a cesspool and wanted something done about it and they felt like Bernie was passionate about that.
This was a populist election like no other. As the rich get richer and poor get poorer a large number of people on the left and right feel like the system is rigged in favor of those with money and power. In a nutshell they feel like politicians are corrupt and the system is a scam. It is not just poor, uneducated people that feel that way. A lot this sentiment also originates from people making a decent living and doing well for themselves. Cynicism has permeated the electorate, and there was no bigger target for cynicism that the Democrats could have propped than Clinton.
Bernie tapped into the frustration and so did Trump. How Trump was able to convince people that because he bribed politicians in the past that he was uniquely qualified to solve it is a whole different conversation. That, or because he sent jobs overseas he would bring them back, or while he ripped off small businesses and laborers that he would do well by them… the list goes on (a good salesman can be good a conman if they choose to be). I’m not saying immigration and xenophobic views didn’t come in to play for some Trump supporters, but this was a “Rage Against the Machine” type of election and Bernie and Trump were representing a similar possibility for revolt to voters while Clinton represented the machine itself.
From a rebellion standpoint the difference between Bernie and Trump was that Bernie was serious, had experience, intelligence, could articulate issues, and generally wasn’t a scumbag. There were so many people that when I tried to browbeat them into explaining why they could find it in themselves to vote for Trump after pointing out a whole slew of flaws they would generally concede to me that all of those things were true, and if they could vote for Bernie they would, but they wouldn’t vote for Clinton. The right, while reluctant to go all in on Trump had managed to taint Clinton in the eyes of a huge number of people after eight years of concerted effort to do so. Clinton was painted as the most corrupt boogeyman in DC. There was nothing on Bernie other than the “socialist” label, which people were finding out was quite sensible and was not synonymous with communism like they were told.
I think a lot of people probably saw this coming, or else felt it in there gut before the nomination was official. I thought Trump had shot himself in the foot just enough times for Hillary to win going into tonight, but it was clear it had less to do with the candidate than it had to do with a vote against the same system that Bernie was trying to defeat as well. Bernie would have clearly been the stronger candidate, that much I am certain of. I’m not saying that would translate to being a better president, but at least there would be a democrat in the office as opposed to a dangerous, unpredictable and unqualified con man.
I’m sure the party knew what I knew also, but the politics of it all just couldn’t ask Clinton to step aside again. It’s understandable to some extent, but also unfortunate because it put the person above the party and country by giving her the promotion she earned but didn’t deserve.
