Summations Only

Let's break this down a bit further. Hillary was unable to persuade folks who even now cannot articulate reasons why she was not worthy of their votes. The idea that voters are not responsible for their votes, or for doing their homework before voting is not a position I find acceptable. A good number of Trump can be criticized for their votes as can a number of others.Yes, you are free to vote however you want. Now own the consequences.

I'd like to add a sixth one to the list:6. The actions of the DNC working behind the scenes to railroad Bernie Sander's campaign caused a schism within the Democratic party that lost them key votes, especially among younger votersIn my opinion, this is not talked about enough as it should be. The email hacks revealed a DNC that was perfectly willing to undermine the democratic process in order to facilitate the nomination of Hillary Clinton. If one wants to talk about things that are 'deplorable', that is about as deplorable as it gets. The fixation on Hillary as the anointed 'chosen one' coupled with the idiotic (and undemocratic) super-delegate system basically made it obvious to left-leaning voters that the system was rigged and that their opinions didn't matter.What made matters worse was after Bernie lost the nomination, the Clinton campaign did little to woo Sander's supporters to their side. In fact, they did the worst possible thing and started playing the sexism card, calling Sander's supporters 'Bernie Bros'. Clinton even used this term herself in her recent book.I am no political expert, but I have a set of eyes and I could easily see in my own state of Florida how much Bernie had energized the youth vote. And this was completely lost due to the complacency, and quite frankly, arrogance and stupidity of the Hillary campaign staffers and Hillary herself.In my humble opinion, the aforementioned could have been mitigated if Hillary had just swallowed her pride and chosen Bernie as her VP pick. I am pretty confident that if that happened, it would have been enough to swing the electoral votes in the rust belt states in her favor. And she would be president right.So I concur with RAZD on this one. Hillary lost and the main person to blame for that loss is Hillary herself. This was her election to lose. Not Trump's to win. And she blew it.

Sadly many people rely on tv ads for their "research" and they'll pick candidates that fit their perception of reality without questioning it.But I don't think the numbers of people who regret their vote is large: if nothing else they will rationalize it to resolve cognitive dissonance. Okay. Reasons that Hillary did not appeal to some voters enough to gain their vote:1. Wall Street speeches and the appearance of coddling Wall Street. Saying the laws we now have are good enough instead of bringing back Glass-Steagall new and improved.
2. Promise to maintain the status quo (ie -- act like a 3rd Obama term) rather that do anything for working people.
3. Waffle on minimum wage (starting with $12/hr instead of $15/hr).
4. Waffle on healthcare for all, saying universal healthcare was impractical and we needed to settle for ACA.
5. Waffle on Native Rights regarding the NoDAPL issue.
6. Cared more about rich donors than working people.
etc etc etcShe had many opportunities to take a strong committed stand on these and didn't. It seemed like she was following rather than leading.EnjoyEdited by RAZD, : .

Well, that's an interesting response. Someone responds to a claim that something that was definitely an anomaly (the largest popular vote margin ever in an electoral college loss) was not an anomaly, and your reaction is that it's "irrelevant" (it's not, and it's even part of your first and last points in your list of points for why Clinton lost) and boring (it's not, but what's boring is highly individualistic, so if it's boring to you, so be it). Only Maine and Nebraska allocate electoral college votes by congressional district - given that only Maine split its districts (all two of them), this might not be an appropriate item for a list of reasons why Clinton lost. Or did you include this because you think there's a discouragement factor for minority party voters in gerrymandered districts? You've expressed this as if you were talking about the day of the vote, which is not the way I think you intended to say this, but I'll first respond to this exactly as written. This can never be true while the polls are still open, for obvious reasons.What I think you really mean is that excess votes beyond the number attained by the losing candidate have no additional beneficial effect. Calling them "irrelevant, wasted and unimportant" is to say things about votes that aren't true. I'm glad you changed the message subtitle, because for me that was just the original subtitle of that particular subdiscussion that I joined, not a position that I held. Plus the topic implied by that subtitle was not what's been discussed recently. The position I've been advocating is that this was the wrong election to be sending a message to the Democratic party by voting 3rd party - there was too much at stake. The policies advanced by a Trump administration would be antithetical to Stein or Sanders advocates. The truth of this was blatantly obvious before the election - it isn't as if Trump's, uh, unqualifications as a President weren't obvious before he took office. It isn't a question of accepting the results. Of course we accept the results. But one can't absolve Trump voters for voting for Trump. That he's a Republican should make no difference, and he's not even really a Republican. He's not an evangelical, either, but they voted for him, too.The real conundrum of the 2016 election is how one runs against a lying, scheming populist when half the voters are so stupid they think the sun revolves around the Earth. I think the voters deserve a large share of the blame. Too many voted for a charlatan. Many seem to realize that now, but Trump's character was as obvious before the election as now. It isn't as if they have any excuse beyond not paying close enough attention.One item you could add to your list of reasons why Clinton lost: people who voted for Trump not because they liked him or agreed with his policies but because they were unhappy with the status quo and thought he would shake things up in Washington.--Percy

For the sake of discussion let's just accept all the criticisms you just laid out. Clinton and the Democratic party treated Sanders abominably and so alienated so many voters that they didn't vote or voted third party. If that's the reason Clinton lost, that she's responsible for the fact that too many voters, in effect, threw a tantrum, picked up their votes and went home, then I think we have to blame the voters. There's a primary process every four years, and all the candidates but one lose in each party. This is obvious to everyone. How many Sanders supporters who didn't vote for Clinton do you think are now saying, "Yep, Trump's president now, and I'm happy with that, because I sure taught Clinton a lesson!"The answer has got to be, "Few, if any." No one in a position to recognize the dangers of Trump (which supposedly all Sander's supporters are intelligent enough to recognize) has any excuse for voting in a way that helped Trump get elected.--Percy

You've got that right.

Well that's one way of looking at it. But Clinton was not entitled to those votes. She had to earn them - even if she could rely on most Democrats voting for her. The voters voted the way felt they should. The politician's job is to persuade people that they should vote for them. If they can't do this, they're out of the job.We could also blame the system, looking at it another way. The idea that people vote for the presidential candidate the way they do {one vote, winner takes all simple majority style} is fraught with possible problems.Had they polled their party for who would people vote for if they stood they might have got a different picture in this election - you can vote 'yes' for as many candidates as you like. for example - if there were a million voters in the primaries:700,000 say they would vote for Clinton
but
900,000 say they would vote for Sandersvs600,000 have Clinton as their preferred Candidate
vs
400,000 have Sanders as their preferred Candidate.Or, by having a transferable vote - allow Clinton and Sanders to both run for President and have the actual election decide who is the nationwide preferred candidate. Even knowing the present outcome, I likely would not have voted Clinton. I reserve my votes for candidates that I want to win, not the lesser of the two evils most likely to win. I take responsibility for the actions of the candidates I vote for - and I would not be happy to take responsibility for Clinton.The end result is that Trump got 57% of the vote.So if he makes it 4 years and elects to run a second time, the Democrats had better field a candidate that appeals to more people than their last effort.If Trump getting 57% of the vote, while another candidate was preferred by more citizens - I can only suggest you kick up a fuss and hope to make Presidential electoral reform a key factor in the legislature elections.

Rrhain writes: excuse me...didn't you mean Electoral College votes?because from the wikipedia site we still have:Nominee Donald Trump Hillary Clinton
Party Republican Democratic
Home state New York New York
Running mate Mike Pence Tim Kaine
Electoral vote 304[a][2] 227[a][2]
States carried 30 + ME-02 20 + DC
Popular vote 62,984,825[3] 65,853,516[3]
Percentage 46.1% 48.2%305/538 does equal approximately 56.50558 % of the College.

I just went through this with Stile - we're going to do this again?This was not the right election for a protest vote. Clinton earned Democratic votes by winning the Democratic primaries. There must be extremely few, if any, Sanders or Stein voters (or vote withholders) out there who are satisfied with the result that Trump is president. They might have "voted the way they felt", but they got a result opposite to what they intended. If your vote contributes to a result opposite (Trump elected) to the one you intended (Clinton elected but clearly seeing the tally of a large number of protest votes), that's a pretty strong indication that you miscast your vote. Yeah, I'm familiar with the ideas for alternative systems of voting, but the odds of any of them being adopted in my lifetime are nil, so it isn't a topic that interests me. Well, purists always have their reasons, but when the barbarians are at the gates, one doesn't refuse to fight because one wanted a different general, not if one doesn't want to be quite correctly blamed if a barbarian victory results. Trump received 57% of the electoral vote and 46.1% of the popular vote. Well, two problems with this. First, you just finished emphasizing the electoral college vote while ignoring the popular vote, but here you properly put it in terms of appealing to "more people" not "more electors," (of course the latter isn't possible in any planned way). In the 2016 election Clinton appealed to nearly three million more people than Trump. Again, I think you've identified the wrong problem. It isn't that Clinton didn't appeal to enough people, it's the way their votes mapped onto the electoral college that caused the loss. You're also ignoring the Comey factor. And running against charismatic populists is fraught with peril, as the Italians discovered repeatedly with Silvio Berlisconi, and as the Austrians just discovered with Sebastian Kurz, though maybe not so much charisma for Mr. Kurz.And second, this just repeats Stile's position using different language, that Clinton wasn't "good enough," and that that's the lesson of the Democrat's 2016 loss. As I've argued at length in messages upthread, that's the wrong lesson.--Percy

I disagree. It was a prime election for a protest. A disagreeable 'lesser evil' candidate and a 'it would be awful if this person won' candidate. The perfect time to lodge a protest vote against the Democrats for putting forward candidates that one votes for merely to avoid the other person getting in. Nope. She earned the nomination by winning the Democratic primaries. She did not earn the votes of all Democrats by doing this. And likewise, there must very few Clinton voters who are satisfied with that outcome. Maybe next time, instead of getting being the candidate they prefer they will try and find a candidate that has a better chance of winning the current election. Probably not, but now the cost is not just a theoretical one so if they don't do better they'll have to feel the pain again until they do learn the lesson - if they ever do. It depends on what result they intended. If they intended to not vote for someone they don't like. They got the result they intended. Not everybody votes with the intention of keeping 'that guy' out. My reading of the situation, and my feeling if I was in the electorate is that I did not intend for Clinton to become President. Otherwise, I'd have voted for her. I'm not voting for a third party (or declining to vote) to send a message to the Democrats who I hope to win. I'm hoping the Democrats losing sends a message to the Democrats.The Democrats losing then, is stage 1 of what I intend (though it would be a bonus if somehow the third party I voted for won!). Whether the message gets through, remains to be seen. That's fine - but one can still lay blame at the feet of the system in any case - whether you anticipate it being changed and whether arguing for it to change interests you. Nobody is suggesting not fighting the Barbarians. One is suggesting we try to fight the Barbarians in the long term by sacrificing short term goals if winning those short term goals push us closer and closer to becoming the Barbarians. Only former actually matters. If you think differently, you are talking about electoral reform. I'm all for that, but it matters not a jot when it comes to decisions about prior elections. The electors decisions are very rarely based on appeal. They are also not based on popular votes across the nation.You have to appeal to the people more widely than your opponent to win more of the electors votes. Which was not sufficient. So as I said, the Democrats will have to field a candidate that has more appeal. I'd suggest they start by finding one that doesn't have people who agree generally with the party refusing to vote for the Democratic party's chosen candidate. If she appealed to more people, or more accurately, had she not turned as many people off as she did - it would have overcome this. Yes, it is. Maybe there are lessons to be learned... It's your funeral. To solve your problems as you see them, you need electoral reform.
To solve the problems as I see them you need electoral reform, and a candidate which more Democrats will vote for in the Presidential election rather than the first preferred candidate. If your first preferred candidate would get less votes than the second preferred candidate in the Presidential Election - you should be nominating the second preferred candidate. They might be less people's number one choice - but the people who put them at number two will still vote for them which is not true for the preferred candidate -- thus you get more votes in the main election.So we both agree - electoral reform. In yours, it's a case of replacing the electoral college with a popular vote. A difficult path requiring agreement all over the legislative houses as well as the President.Mine requires changing Party nomination procedures - the Primaries. Something they do every year in some way anyway. Instead of one person, one vote - you can vote once for as many candidates as you like. The aim being to vote for all the candidates you would, if nominated, vote for in the Presidential election.I'm not getting involved in a strange argument about being 'good enough' - I'm pointing out that if you want to win elections, picking the person who wins the most votes in Democratic primaries as it is currently structured is sub-optimal.It's not Clinton's fault for losing per se - ultimately it's the voting system of the Democratic Party's fault for picking Clinton. This is not a rewording of Stile's argument.I would be surprised if the Democrats had no potential candidate that could not defeat Trump in a categorical manner - regardless of statistical noise. Maybe, if statistical noise had tipped another way Clinton could have won - but she sat right there in that fuzzy area where traffic jams, weather, local news about her chances of success could have a real impact depending on how they went. So yes, likely there was a better Candidate out there - if there wasn't - then instead of the nomination system, it's the Democratic Party as a whole that is to blame.Unless we think Trump was simply an unbeatable political behemoth. At that point - it starts to really look bad for the voters. and given the numbers - the Trump voters are the only ones to blame, not the protesters.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Those *are* the votes. They are the only ones that matter. The States pick the President via the electoral college votes. How those electoral college votes are decided is up to the State. Trump won the most votes. He won 57% of them. Since there is only one election and one set of votes that picks the POTUS it seems redundant to say which votes.

The deja vu is strong in this one. I wouldn't ask you to go off and read a research paper or a website or a thread at some other forum or another thread at this forum or even this entire thread, but it does seem reasonable to request that you read the messages I just finished posting to Stile in just the past week. When you disagree and provide the exact same arguments as Stile, you should have continued with, "Now I know that your response to Stile when he raised this very same objection was such and so...", and then continue on from there. But you seem to want me to repeat with you the very same discussion I just had with Stile.You're as remarkably blas about Trump as Stile. The international community, including the UK, understands the disaster that is Trump. It remains a mystery why you and Stile think think four years of Trump is a reasonable tradeoff to get the message to the Democrats that Clinton wasn't a good enough candidate. It's not true and not the right message. Well if you want to be that way about it then in that case nominations earn no votes. The reality is that both parties run multiple candidates through the primaries, but once one is nominated the parties get behind their respective candidates. The differences between the parties and their respective nominees are far, far greater than the differences between the primary candidates of the respective parties.There were at least 12 Republican candidates in the primaries. There is a far clearer message for supporters of the losing Republican candidates to send to the Republican party by withholding their vote for Trump, that they were not going to stand for loathsome,, misogynistic, lying, ignorant, megalomaniacal, egotistical, insulting, jingoistic, immature, vindictive, impulsive, thin-skinned, inconstant, bullying candidates. If a message needed to be sent it was to the Republicans, not the Democrats.Calling Clinton the "lesser evil" candidate is to completely mischaracterize the two candidates. Clinton may not have been the first choice of some Democrats, but she *is* a Democrat with a successful record in both elected and appointed office, not a "lesser evil" or even any kind of evil at all, and definitely not a crazy person with a platform of hate and indifference toward suffering. "Not my first choice" and "lesser evil" are not synonyms. You're repeating old arguments. Clinton was the best candidate the Democrats had, and what is this nonsense of finding a candidate who had a better chance of winning? I hope you don't mean Sanders or Stein or some mythical candidate to emerge from the woodwork, because that's absurd. Plus Clinton won the popular vote and only lost because of the unpredictable way the votes cast sometimes map onto the electoral college. She had an excellent chance of winning the election. To argue that the Democrats could have found a candidate who had an even more excellent chance is to engage in fantasy. What's this rot that you and Stile are all about that the Democrats need to be taught a lesson? What exactly is it that they did wrong before the election that needs remediation? Well, now let's not be silly. Are you seriously arguing that significant numbers of those Democrats who either didn't vote for Clinton or withheld their vote preferred that Trump be elected? Those would be pretty unusual Democrats. People come in all flavors, so I suppose there must be some of Democrats who fit that description out there somewhere, but not in any meaningful numbers worth talking about. Eh, old boy? How does that make any sense? You're hypothetical scenario is that you're a Democrat who doesn't want Clinton to become President, even though the only alternative is Trump? So it's okay with you that Trump became President, because at least that awful Clinton didn't become President and now the Democratic party can learn from that? Can you or someone remind me what was so horrible about Clinton, the only candidate with both elected and appointed experience, and the only candidate who wasn't insane? You're making as little sense writing from the UK as Stile did writing from Canada. Upon what are you basing these strong negative feelings about the Democrats and these strong positive feelings for some unnamed third party.Your idea of teaching the Democrats a lesson by getting Trump elected moves me to paraphrase something a commander once said in Viet Nam: "We had to destroy the nation in order to save it." The electoral college system is the reality. Blame it if you like, but you may as well blame the air because it isn't going to change. Well, that certainly makes no sense. By what crazy logic would electing Clinton have pushed us closer to becoming Trumpists, who, if I haven't said it already, isn't really a Republican. He's a nut job with a collection of positions that gained him a coalition of unlikely bedfellows, like rednecks and evangelicals, and who was able to use his success in the primaries to take over a very reluctant Republican party.Returning to the barbarian analogy, the barbarians overrunning of Rome in 476 AD was not step 1 of a multistep lesson plan leading to greater good in the future. In the same way, Trump is not step 1 toward a greater America. We're going to have to find the will, the resolve and the resourcefulness to survive these four years of chaos and hope that there's enough left at the end to pick up the pieces and move forward. This ignores the fact that the final tally of the votes in the electoral college is just the final step of a long process that began with people casting votes at polling stations. It makes no sense to focus exclusively on the final electoral college tally and ignore the fact Clinton won the popular vote by the largest margin of a losing candidate in the country's history, or ignore the fact that the number of votes that carried Trump over the top in the electoral college was miniscule. Uh, yeah, that's what I just said. You must have been trying to say something else, because as written this looks just dead wrong. The way the vast majority of electors cast their votes is definitely based upon the way popular votes were cast. There were extremely few faithless electoral college votes, only seven. Yes, and very true, and pretty much what I've been telling you. Candidates for President campaign for popular votes, not electoral college votes, though the popular votes eventually map onto electoral college votes. You're just a faux-general planning his strategy based on the last war, always a mistake. Certainly the Democrats should try to win the next election by an even greater popular vote margin than in 2016, and certainly they should seek the strongest candidate, but making plans for 2020 based on how 2016 was lost would be a mistake, and they should also better allocate resources toward gaining popular votes where it will help the most with the electoral college. A lot that the Democrats do will depend upon the Republican candidate. The strategy will vary widely depending upon whether that candidate is Trump or someone else. There *is* the possibility that Trump could face significant challengers in 2020 - it isn't as if the Republicans wouldn't very much like to have their party back. Again, this was not the election to pick up your vote and go home. Too much was at stake, and there was never any doubt about this. Trump is the same person as President as he was as a candidate. Those Democrats who voted (or didn't vote) in a way that aided Trump's election obtained a result opposite to their intention, and as argued earlier in this message, their intention was not Trump. There are no reasonable people out there arguing as you are that Trump is the first step toward an improved Democratic party. There's not even any reason to believe that the Democrats are the answer. Why not the Republicans (again, Trump's not really a Republican). Well, I certainly hope that the lessons have nothing to do with better ways to sell snake oil, because that's what guys like Trump and Berlisconi do. That's actually not a bad analogy. How does one counter a snake oil salesman who's telling the crowd that his elixir will cure rheumatism and indigestion and the common cold? Everyone in the crowd wants to believe this is true, the the cost of a bottle of elixir is only a nickel (analogize to a vote), what's the harm? Let's give it a try, says the crowd. Then everyone who buys a bottle has the runs for a week.Of course the analogy breaks down, because while in the analogy only the people buying the elixir suffer, here in the real world where we're talking about an election result we all suffer. It's my funeral? Huh? Are you under some delusion that I'm a Democrat? I abhor both political parties. Ain't gonna happen. You're living in fantasy land. Something equally ignorant would be to tell you that the solution to Britain's problems is to replace your Parliamentary system. But it ain't gonna happen, is it. Well that's a silly thing to say. You not only don't seem to realize how ridiculous that possibility is, you even seem to think I agree with you about it. What are you smoking? Agreed, although I expressed it in different terms when I discussed this with Stile. I said first you select your nominee, then you strategize on how to win the popular vote in ways that wins the most electoral college votes. It's the fault of the Democratic Party's voting system? Maybe you shouldn't be writing posts after midnight. Says the person from the UK while being remarkably unspecific. Trump has a base of voters who look at what is going on in the White House and think everything's normal. They are mainly to blame, but they are not going away.--Percy

Of course they are going to go away. All those ex-coal miners in Penn are going to die off eventually. Whether they believe in coal being the best or not. Coal is just getting too expensive to be profitable. Other forms of energy are getting cheaper.And this comes from a coal geologist. My occupation is on it's way out. Better start training for something else...

Let's try another line altogether.Why do you think you get to decide what someone else's "best interests" are?In other words, do you think it's impossible for someone to exist that:1) Is not immediately negatively affected by Trump's positions and actions2) Is immediately negatively affected by Democratic positions and actions, but would very much like them to adjust their current way of doing things and get back to focusing on traditional Democratic positions and actions.In general, I'm arguing that such a person can exist.
And that if such a person exists, then their choice to vote 3rd party is valid.I understand you think the threat of global warming and nuclear war are very large.
I understand you think such things outweigh any possible "immediately negative affects" possibly caused by the Democratic position.And, personally, I agree with you (which is another reason I don't rebut your arguments along these lines).However, your opinion (and mine) that such things are weighed in the favour of voting for Clinton and not a 3rd party does not eliminate the possibility of someone weighing them another way.Do you think it's impossible for current Democratic positions and actions to cause any few number of people (and possibly therefore their families) to lose their income?I am basically defending the position that such a person could exist based on the practicality and real-world workings of politics.
There are always victims to political decisions. I'm calling this "corruption" because many times it is and I thought such a term would draw your attention to this possibility. But perhaps another word would be better as it wouldn't point in so many other directions.People lose their jobs.
Some recover just fine.
Others are not as lucky (or 'prepared' perhaps)I know that if the Democrats made some decisions (corruption-based or otherwise) that caused me to lose my job, and lose my financial ability to provide for my family that depends on me, and that Clinton wasn't doing anything to change such a direction, or possibly even supporting it... my plan would be to vote 3rd party.Because I couldn't vote for Trump (he's dumb).
And I couldn't vote for Clinton (she's supporting destroying my ability to provide for my family).I would consider a 3rd party vote in such a situation to be valid.
I don't think many would fall into this category (as part of the US population on the whole).
But I do think "some" would.How many voted 3rd party?
Obviously it was a significant number of people... significant in the sense that it could have swung the election.
But, in the sense of the US population on the whole, how many was it? Could it be labeled as "few" or some very minor amount of the US population on the whole?If so, I am fairly confident that a lot of those 3rd party voters did so for very good, very valid reasons. Likely something that would fall into the general description of possibility I've described above.

White, male, employed, privileged. Personal economics will always be more important to voters than general global issues. This is why a living minimum wage and universal healthcare are winners. Clinton's address to coal miners as case in point. She lost a lot of votes there.Enjoy