Hillary Clinton Explains Why She Really Lost to Trump

[yallerdawg]

And exactly what Hillary supporters thought!

NBC News, by Kendall Breitman

Almost four months after her stunning defeat, Hillary Clinton on Thursday primarily blamed her loss to President Donald Trump on four factors that were beyond her control.

The former Democratic presidential candidate cited Russian meddling in the election, FBI Director James Comey's involvement toward the end of the race, WikiLeaks theft of emails from her campaign chairman, and misogyny.

*****

She largely cited these factors for her defeat:

- Russia. "A foreign power meddled with our election," she said, labeling it "an act of aggression." She called for an independent, bipartisan investigation into the Kremlin's involvement and said the probe should examine whether there was collusion with the Trump campaign.

- Misogyny. "Certainly, misogyny played a role. That has to be admitted," she said. Clinton added that "some people — women included — had real problems" with the idea of a woman president.

- Comey. Clinton cited as damaging to her campaign his unusual decision to release of a letter on October 28, less than two weeks before Election Day, that said he was looking at additional emails related to the FBI probe of the former secretary of state's use of a private server.

- WikiLeaks. Weeks of disclosures of stolen emails from the personal account of then-Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, were particularly harmful, Clinton said, adding that it "played a much bigger role than I think many people yet understand."

*****
Read it all at: http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/hillary-clinton/hillary-clinton-explains-why-she-really-lost-trump-n743581

[SirBrockington]

1. Her surrogates really let her down as well

There was no counterbalancing equavent to Kellyanne Conway on the her side to push talking points on every show. Billions of dollars of free air time. 30 second adds can't compete with that.

[sharedvalues]

3. Yes! That's one way HRC's media operation failed. In 2016 you must use surrogates

And surrogate talking points need to be COORDINATED. Like GWB did. (Unethically in some cases as with the military analyst program.)

[still_one]

4. I agree with everything in the OP, and also your point is also right on

[herding cats]

21. I can agree with this.

We need surrogates who can coordinate to battle the GOP ones.

I'm not happy about it, but it's a modern reality. We're up against cable news and ratings on all outlets. We have to factor that in today.

Many people want sound bites they can feel, not in debth policy.

[Roy Rolling]

34. More precisely...

Surrogates, yes. But what do surrogates get? Billions in free airtime. That adds up over a campaign.

[OnDoutside]

37. I hope the DNC don't just copy the Trump strategy. Develop

Their own game that hits hard at the Reps and Trump, which gets the message through to the great unwashed that they are screwing you, to make the rich even more rich.

[JI7]

13. the Media plays a role in this also. in 2004 the swift boat assholes refused to go up against Max

Cleland and the media gave in. so they let the assholes come on and spew and lie and didn't allow Cleland on at the same time to call them out. Cleland was Kerry's more effective surrogate.

[Cha]

31. That's the corporatemedia m$m Shite.. they were determined to NORMALIZE

fucking trump while killing her with EMAILS. Her surrogates don't control the programming at the cable.

But her EMAILS!

How you like the fucking emaiis now? Just throwing that out there.

[KPN]

88. Yup. Seems like we don't know how to play the media.

[sharedvalues]

2. I like HRC, but she has to lay blame at her own media operation too

As explained in e.g. this NYT op/ed. HRC was running in 2016 with a 1960s media operation that wanted to hunker down on bad news. She let herself get swiftboated in several ways.

In 2016 you need to be proactive on social media and find new ways to get your message out. She didn't do that. It was one of 5 or so reasons she lost.


https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/14/opinion/campaign-stops/donald-trump-trolled-us-all-we-should-learn-from-it.html?_r=0

[Cha]

40. That's an opinion.. the corporate m$m was determined to NORMALIZE

trump and bring down Hillary with her EMAILS.. among all the other reasons Hillary gave.

Hillary was very pro-active on Social Media and there were tons of positive news.

[JCanete]

52. The corporate media should have been her number 1 reason. Why are we still skirting around this.

If Dems don't start addressing it, we can expect these results over and over.

[LisaM]

78. I agree. Things she did never got reported.

Remember the little girl who wanted to change her name to Lillary, and the great letter Hillary took time out from her campaign to answer? That story made the round of Hillary supporters, but I never once saw it on the MSM. And there were dozens, if not hundreds of stories like that - nice things she did - that sank like a stone with the press.

Do I hold the media complicit? You betcha. Look at Matt Lauer wasting over a third of his time in the CiC forum on emails, rather than letting her flex her foreign policy chops. Look at Anderson Cooper, never bringing up climate change or women's issues, both of which would have showcased her strong points.

Over and over and over. I will never lose my bitterness over this election. Never.

[sharedvalues]

86. Well I agree the for-profit media sunk HRC. But see that op-ed.

Also I have journo friends who described how infuriated they were that HRC was so standoffish with the press. That attitude, when the other candidate was feeding stories to the press, hurt her badly.

[SirBrockington]

7. She was up about 11-15 points 12 days before the election

[yallerdawg]

8. I find it interesting...

that Hillary's opinion on why she lost is categorically dismissed.

Let's see - would we file that under the "Misogyny" category?

[ProudLib72]

10. I was all set to post this

I want to rank misogyny as the number one reason she lost.

[KPN]

89. I don't know that you can rank any of them actually. They all add up to

the results -- but determining misogyny as number one is pretty hard in my book. Many people voted against her -- probably the majority who did so -- just because she was a Democrat.

The truth is the only reason she lost was the electoral college. We are STILL the majority ... and we need to remember and use that. We have real power in that.

[Cha]

28. Yeah, cause they think they know better than Hillary .. not true.

[Tatiana]

9. Hillary has a place and role within the Democratic Party.

Last edited Fri Apr 7, 2017, 07:23 PM - Edit history (1)

She wasn't the best Democratic candidate, but she was the best candidate for President on the ballot and I wish she (and we) had prevailed.

I think free from the constraints of running for office she can be a very effective member of the opposition. Hillary isn't a good politician. But she is a good leader, in many respects, and has great ideas about government. Obama took her plan for health care. Bernie is introducing an educational bill in Congress similar to one supported by Hillary. And, apparently even Trump agreed with her option for action against Syria.

I want us to continue to be the party of ideas, including those espoused by Hillary.

[Cha]

24. Hillary was most Definitely the Strongest BEST Candidate.

[Cha]

33. Oh.. fucking scary shite there you dug up there on our Democratic Candidate.

I know what she stood for.. Hillary is the smartest and we had the most Democratic progressive platform in our history and Hillary would have made the Best President.

[Cha]

39. Yeah, all you have are personal attacks.. not even worth it.. I'll leave you with this..

Hillary was the BEST and Strongest candidate in spite of her not being perfect.

[Skidmore]

80. Content you are responding to is gone, my friend,

so I have no context. I can probably fill in the blanks and concur with you. My best wishes.

[Cha]

84. Mahalo, Skidmore!

Thank you for the heads up on this.

Best Wishes to you

[synergie]

43. You do realize that the crazies on the right created quite a few lies

about HRC? If you scratch a bit on google, you'll uncover the phenomenon of astroturfing, where right wing sites and fake news sites went crazy for years feeding lots of guano to those seeking some reason to excuse their hatred for her. It's kind of one of those things that anyone who bothered to actually do their homework saw pretty clearly.

Facts don't seem to be the goal for some people, just confirmation bias, and they're quite happy to repeat debunked, and pure BS that the right wing created about her, all of which has been proven to be total nonsense.

Please, seek out some facts, it should bother you that "not digging" has shown you some things that are very much not fact based at all. Enough ranting, do some homework, look beyond right wing sites and those sites that pretend to be "left" but which do nothing more than echo right wing talking points or amplify them. The sheer amount of fiction that was created about this woman is shocking, yet despite it all, the media bias, the fake news, the Russian interference, the feral right wingers, the misogyny, the racism, the ignorance AND the vote suppression, she still managed to win a historic number of votes.

Facts don't bother Democrats/Progressives/liberals, we're very comfortable with them. It's why the fake news purveyors were complaining about the left in general and HRC supporters in particular, we didn't fall for the BS. (Bernie supporters IRL didn't either, it's just these people who frequented the online echo chambers). That's how the RWers and Russians and other forces were so successful online, people didn't bother looking for facts, they just listened to whatever they could find in the most shallow and lazy ways possible, they left the propaganda right where anyone who didn't know any better could find it, and they knew that these people would not possess the ability, curiosity or knowledge to dig deeper and seek facts. They knew their audience, they just didn't expect to be quite so successful, they overestimated the basic education and discernment of their online dupes.

[mr_lebowski]

50. Beautiful post ... kudos ...

[Cha]

85. Thank you for your awesome post, synergie!

He would do well to follow your sage advice.

[Ken Burch]

69. OK.

I can live with most of that.

(don't think we should be bombing Syria...there's no "good" side in that conflict, other than the secular leftist autonomous Kurds that no U.S. administration will ever support).

She should have a role in the party.

If we take the White House in 2020, she should be nominated to the first Supreme Court vacancy.

[quickesst]

12. Your reasons....

....for her loss are the same reasons echoed by the Hillary-hating Berniebros . If what you stated was true, and I don't believe that you believe what you said, she would not have become the Democratic nominee by an overwhelming margin. Wrong then....wrong now. Some things never change.

[TDale313]

20. One can win a primary and not be the strongest general election candidate.

I know people who supported her in the primaries like to pretend this isn't true, but sometimes it comes down to matchups and who votes in the general vs primaries.

I supported Hillary in the General, but this argument that the fact that she won the primaries means on its face that she automatically was a better matchup against Trump is just logically not the case.

[Cha]

25. Hillary was the Strongest Best Candidate We had.

[JudyM]

27. No question.

[quickesst]

55. This is what's logical

If one loses the semi-final, and loses badly at that, then logic dictates the winner of said semi-final is the clear choice to represent in the final. If you believe "crooked Hillary" was bad, then just imagine how "socialist commie Bernie" would have played.

[TDale313]

57. If you win the "semifinal", you move on.

But yeah, sometimes the loser of the semifinal is actually a better matchup against the other finalist. Have a game that would trouble the other side more for whatever reason. We'll never know in this case, but frankly Bernie wouldn't have lost any of the states Hillary won and might have done better in the tight rust belt states where we lost this thing. But gonna drop this now cause definitely treading on refighting the primaries territory here 😉

[quickesst]

87. I'm good with that...

[George II]

59. In her case she did and was the strongest candidate. This isn't a football game with "matchups".

We only have ONE candidate each four years, who as a whole is our best candidate. It wasn't bluster when Obama, Biden, etc. said she was the MOST qualified person ever to run for President.

The big problem is that she had the most obstacles to overcome than any other candidate - fake "Benghazi" from years earlier, "emails", Comey, sexism, an unethical opponent with billions behind him and Russian coordination, and even some on her own "side" who didn't fully and wholeheartedly support her but continued to criticize her.

This was the most unprecedented election in our history for a number of reasons, unfortunately mostly bad reasons.

"Nevertheless", when it came down to the vote, "she prevailed".

[BainsBane]

76. There is no way to know if she was the best

because we can't divine alternate reality. She did, however, win the primaries by 4 million more votes, and that made her THE candidate.
The rest is all supposition.

[spanone]

6. K&R...

[LittleBlue]

11. Shouldn't have even been close

Trump is a semi-literate buffoon who bragged about grabbing women in the crotch. Joe the Plumber would have beaten him.

[JI7]

14. and Reagan shouldn't have won huge either. and people like Gohmert, Bachmann etc should not win

either.

the country is what it is. wisconsin voting for scott walker multiple times.

[lunamagica]

16. 17 Republicans couldn't beat him

[Sun shadow]

44. Agree.

Not sure why hillary gets a pass. Trump should have been easy to beat. He won because he turned blue counties red. That's on the candidate and her campaign.

[R B Garr]

64. It's not just on the candidate when divisiveness was

openly embraced the way it was to smear her over basically nothing.

[NastyRiffraff]

83. Trump had a HELL of a lot of help

The corporate media, who ignored her smart policy positions and focused on emails
James Comey. Enough said.
Wikileaks
Russian interference
Voter supression
Ignoramuses who voted 3rd party or didn't vote at all to make a "statement." A stupid statement.

And of course:
Misogyny by people who should know better.

[StevieM]

47. If Joe the Plumber was a Democrat he would have also been under FBI investigation.

This was James Comey's election, from start to finish.

[synergie]

70. He appealed to the misogynists.

Also, she won millions more votes, despite the media bias, despite Comey, despite Wikileaks, despite Russia, despite the RW's talking points amplified by the supposed online "left", despite the lack of VRA protection, despite Crosscheck, despite voter suppression, despite failing to count ALL the votes, despite precincts favorable to her being "unable to be recounted".

Despite all that she did beat him. If only certain forces had not been leading earnest folks who didn't know any better to vote third party (not one they actually support) or write in invalid candidates, seems like in there were small, key groups that thought locker room talk was better than voting for the most qualified candidate who happened to be a woman, because they couldn't stand her "shrillness", reminded them of their mommy, and they heard some stuff about her online so it must be true.

[Hamlette]

15. I don't blame her surrogates but I do blame the GOP who spent 30 years tearing her down

making up false shit about her, Whitewater to the emails. That's fake news.

[synergie]

38. And those that parroted those talking points, and used them to encourage

people not to vote, or go 3rd party.

[Cha]

17. Mahalo, yallerdawg..

[yallerdawg]

18. Just like old times, Cha!

[Cha]

19. Yeah, only

a little different.

[TexasBushwhacker]

23. Yup. I've yet to hear her take ANY personal responsibility n/t

[Jonny Appleseed]

41. Because LITERALLY every other high up dem never addresses the elephants in the room

They don't want to come across as "sore losers" so they self-deprecate. Yeah Hillary could've run a perfect traditional campaign and won. Maybe she only reached 90% perfection. This wasn't a traditional election, so why are we doing this traditional "we could have done better if we did better in places where we didn't do better" hindsight? Can't you just lay off the woman? Did you ask John Kerry to take "personal responsibility" for coming across Parisian and wind-surfing? Al Gore for not giving 600 election day handjobs in Florida? Either we've all become a bunch of masochists or there's some serious reason 2 going on.

[StevieM]

48. We also haven't heard Al Gore or John Kerry or John McCain or Mitt Romney take any personal

responsibility. I have never heard a losing candidate talked about in these terms before.

Of course, Gore, Kerry, McCain and Romney didn't have the FBI rigging the election for the other party, from start to finish. Had it not been for Comey she would have won decisively.

[Sun shadow]

53. That's because Kerry and McCain

Didn't lose to a monkey. She had the best surrogates in history. Biden, Barack, Bill, Michelle... at some point look in the mirror.

[BainsBane]

62. The American people wanted that monkey

including the ones who voted third party.

[StevieM]

63. Nope. The best surrogate in history--hands down--was James Comey. And Donald Trump had him,

from start to finish.

[synergie]

68. Those would be people who ran in elections where the VRA was active?

Where there were not obvious foreign interference?

Where there wasn't a party that was actively suppressing votes?

Where the counts were not so close that manual recounts were necessary?

Where the FBI broke their rules and interfered with the election WHILE PEOPLE WERE VOTING?

Were those elections in which OBVIOUS tampering was found?

She also won more votes than either man, including the monkey.

At some point some mirror gazing is indeed necessary, as to why people keep blaming a woman who despite all that was stacked against her and won more votes by the millions.

Yeah, at some point look in the mirror and figure out that what she said was true, and the truth hurts a lot of people who lash out at her. That is kind of how misogyny works, reject all facts and blame a woman for literally everything.

[BainsBane]

61. She's not alone in that

Some people are still complaining about "rigged" elections.

[oasis]

72. "Personal responsibility"? No Democratic candidate ever worked harder. nt

[Cha]

26. Too bad.. write a letter.

[melman]

36. Write a letter?

What does that even mean?

[LanternWaste]

56. I think it means your narrative is more obvious than you may be aware of.

I think it means your narrative is more obvious than you may be aware of.

[melman]

82. Interesting

How is it 'my narrative' when the letter post was addressed to someone else? If you think that removed post was mine you can check my profile and see that it wasn't. I have no hides.

[synergie]

45. Which three states would those be?

Also, where do you get this thing about the African American companies?

I'm curious as to where you're getting these odd notions from.

[StevieM]

46. The spinners appear to have added Pennsylvania to the states that she supposedly ignored.

Along with Michigan, where she campaigned right before election day and Wisconsin, where Trump actually cancelled an appearance right before the election.

And HRC got better AA turnout than John Kerry did, even though turnout was down from 2004, when adjusted for population.

[synergie]

49. She was in MI twice. I lost an entire phone bank session cause people went

to go see her in Detroit. Sent some folks down with voter registrations, and they came back all excited, after talking to people who didn't realize that in MI they were eligible to vote if they were citizens, and were not in jail. Some people who thought they couldn't vote
Sadly it was in Detroit, the place where they had many broken machines and "couldn't" recount a shocking number of precincts.

[yardwork]

54. Your statement about African American owned companies is right wing fake news.

You are spreading a falsehood.

[Chevy]

29. Voter purge, voter suppression never mentioned N/T

[William769]

32. Agreed.

[betsuni]

42. K&R

[riversedge]

51. Excellant short video at site.

[rock]

58. The Electoral College

was left off her list. The antiquated and ineffective EC (especially for a hyper-partisan party like the repukes) is obviously non-democratic. Have you ever tried explaining how it works to someone?

[yallerdawg]

60. Multiple intelligence agencies are reporting...

the Russians were "microtargeting" particular voters through social media channels, influencing their attitudes and behaviors.

Particularly in closely contested states, including the three which cost Hillary the election.

From Wiki:

Microtargeting is the use by political parties and election campaigns of direct marketing datamining techniques that involve predictive market segmentation (aka cluster analysis). It is used by United States Republican and Democratic political parties and candidates to track individual voters and identify potential supporters.

The question we now have is did the Republican campaign collude with the Russians to influence these voters?

[jmg257]

65. Anyone figure out how many votes she got because she was a women vs. how many she lost?

Anyway - she must be very upset about all those (other) reasons she did not win.

[yallerdawg]

66. Misogyny may have played into many votes against her.

I don't think she is reflecting on why she won 2.9 million more votes than her opponent.

[TDale313]

67. If you don't think misogyny had an effect in this last election cycle

Then you're in some serious denial. I say that as a woman and feminist who did not support her in the Primaries. There was a lot of sexism and misogyny in both the General and Primaries- some in your face, some much more subtle. It was a factor.

[BainsBane]

74. Thank you

People tend to see statements about sexism in the election as insisting it is the only reason she lost or as a personal indictment on them for how they voted. It is neither.

[oasis]

71. Hillary is too kind. Comey is on the top of my list. Listed #1.

[yallerdawg]

75. Yes, Comey really shook it up - twice.

It perpetuated this nagging doubt, even rocking the most faithful supporters.

The time just before the election changed polling numbers, and demonstrably impacted the election.

[oasis]

79. Books will be written about Comey's sabotage of Hillary's campaign. nt

[TNLib]

73. I agree with her

These are the main reason's why she lost. I'd also add Russian and alt-right/right-wing propaganda in social media.

[librechik]

81. I concur n/t