Let’s say this, like Kos’s rant, is my story I should delete rather than post. But I’ve got some things to get off my chest too. And soon, maybe as soon as later today, I will feel purged and ready to work together with a man and a site with whom I have traveled for more than a decade.
Kos. You fucked up. You picked the wrong horse, you helped divide rather than heal the rift on this site, you drove allies like me off the site, and you and other Clinton supporters attacked principles, like the corrosiveness of money in politics and the need for transparency, that had been at the core of our previously shared values.
HILLARY WAS A BAD CANDIDATE. As you admitted, you were shocked that she ran a traditional campaign focused more on big-dollar, often closed-door fundraising than big get-out-the-vote rallies. But it’s not just that Hillary decided to run that way, it’s who she is. As she’s said, she’s not a natural at this politics thing but she’s a talented backroom player — which I don’t mean entirely negatively, it’s just the truth.
She is not, for most people, an inspiring speaker in front of a crowd. Smart, sharp, clever yes. Maybe even inspiring in who she is. But inspirational speaker, no. When you look at the Democrats who have been elected, on the whole they’ve been inspiring speakers: Kennedy, Bill Clinton, Obama. Look at the ones who haven’t and they’re not: Carter (vs Reagan), Dukakis, Kerry and now Hillary. Yes LBJ and Carter got elected against uninspiring opponents (Goldwater and Ford) under highly unusual circumstances (JFK’s assassination, Watergate). Inspiring speeches is a part of getting the job and should be considered a major factor in picking a candidate.
Then there’s the baggage. Let’s start with the paid speeches to the very forces we’ve been side-by-side fighting. How the hell am I, as someone who thinks that money in politics is the main underlying problem, supposed to ignore that? And it’s not just campaign money which some would say is a necessary evil for getting elected (although Bernie showed that may not be true). It’s personal money shoved into bank accounts already flush with more than $100 million of Bill’s seamy post-Presidential money grab. It was politically stupid and unnecessarily greedy. Of course there are strings attached to money from Goldman Sachs and pharmaceutical companies.
Speaking of baggage, Hillary’s email problem wasn’t nothing as Kos and others on this site insist. It was a bad idea that actually put her personal emails in play by co-mingling them with her work emails. Deleting and scrubbing 33,000 emails “about yoga classes” while under a Congressional subpoena is not something we would have taken lightly had a Republican done it. (Yes, on this very site, you can find railing about Bush-era deleted emails.) Her excuses about “all her predecessors” doing it was misleading and disingenuous. Only Colin Powell used email often as Secretary of State and he did not maintain a private server in his home. Was the email problem something that should have had us “lock her up”? No. But it wasn’t nothing. It was a self-inflicted, unforced error that showed bad judgment and an excessive need for privacy while running for the most public job in the world.
Like her or not, Hillary was a fatally flawed candidate for many reasons that were entirely foreseeable. Would Bernie have fared better? We’ll never know. But one thing is certain, Hillary, despite many advantages, could not beat the least popular major party candidate in history. We need to acknowledge and take the right lessons from that.
IT WAS A CHANGE ELECTION. Personally, I think this was the main problem. Hillary was more of the same but perhaps with a little incremental cherry on top. Her effective primary strategy of tying herself to Obama was her downfall in the general. I have lots of non-racist Independent and Republican friends and colleagues who said the bottom line was they felt we needed change and they knew they weren’t going to get that from Hillary. I am confident they will live to regret their vote (or non-vote for those who simply stood on the sideline).
By promising incremental tweaks to Obamacare, the Democratic Party now owns our for-profit, high deductible, expensive health care system. I would much rather have run on Medicare-for-all even if it would take years to turn it from a winning electoral strategy to policy. Instead, Hillary attacked Bernie for a major policy goal that most of us share.
So when Kos is still saying that incrementalism is a good thing, he is dead wrong especially in a change election. Yes, when you get in power you can’t get everything you want and you often have to take what you can get in increments, but it’s certainly not going to get you elected when most people still have yet to recover fully from the Great Recession and see their health care costs and deductibles going up.
KOS WIDENED THE RIFT. In his screed, Kos says that site traffic is at an all-time high but asks where was everyone before the election? Well, after more than 10 years spending close to an hour a day on this site I was not here. Why? Because Kos drove me the fuck away. For awhile after Kos’s declared STFU Day I would check in to see if I was ready to come back. It wouldn’t take long to see that the people whose writing I most admired were hard to find, that money in politics was no longer a problem, and that kicking Bernie supporters in the teeth was still rampant. So I consciously decided to stay away until after the election.
Despite polls on this site running close to 2 to 1 for Bernie over Hillary, Kos decided it was over in the fourth inning with Hillary holding a 3 run lead and Bernie coming on strong. He said if Bernie hadn’t taken the lead by the top of the 7th he was going to call the game and brook no dissent. WTF??!!?? I have rarely in life been so disappointed in someone I admire. Play the game, see who wins, and when Hillary has legitimately won then we will find a way to heal the wounds. Look, I was for Dean on this site and Kerry won and I accepted it. Most election cycles I’ve been disappointed in the choice of Democratic nominee but supported the winner with enthusiasm. But the combo of what felt like a knife in the back from Kos and other Democratic institutions (the DNC, MSNBC who covered Trump for hours a day but barely gave Bernie any serious consideration) left me feeling like it was rigged.
Kos’s impact in helping to seal the deal for Hillary should not be ignored and he should take his share of the blame. Yes, this place is just a blog, but it is the largest political blog on the net (or so I’ve been told on this site). It’s where many of the most active and involved Democrats gather. And Kos chose to piss off and drive away many of those people. That’s all on you, bud!
To reassure you, I held my nose for Hillary despite living in CA where I could have easily abstained. I couldn’t ask people in purple states to do what I would not do. But the feeling of betrayal, unfairness of the process, and poor judgment in those who felt that a deeply unpopular woman who was an uninspiring campaigner, tied to big money, a reliable hawk, and with more baggage than a 747 was such a shoe-in that the primary process should be short-circuited remain to this day.
WHERE WAS ELIZABETH? Now I’m going to go way too far in my rant: Where was Elizabeth Warren when we needed her? Watch Warren’s speeches before getting on the Hillary Express and those after (such as at the AFL-CIO days after the fateful election). They are virtual indictments of Hillary’s bank ties and incrementalism. She clearly was far more aligned with Bernie’s people-powered campaign. If Elizabeth had weighed in for Bernie before Massachusetts he likely would have won the state and quite possibly the nomination. How about a Sanders/Warren ticket? Think they could have won? But she stayed on the sidelines and hedged her bets. Elizabeth, I love and respect you. But you could have made a difference but took the path of least resistance.
Enough ranting. Glad Kos got things off his chest empowering me to do the same. Now let’s figure out how to turn this huge pile of short-term lemons into long-term lemonade!