Attacking (Trump) vs Attacking The Party (The Repugs).....
Please take a look at this link. I posted this back in August of this year. Follow the responses in the thread as well.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/12512383703
I believed then and still do now that the biggest tactical error that the Dem campaign made was not taking on the Repug Party and taking them to task during the campaign.
The Dems in Congress and the States - including the Hillary Campaign, the President, Michelle and Biden chose to attack Trump versus attacking the Repug Party as a whole.
The climate in the country was one of wanting change - because of the perception that nothing was being done to move this country forward. Trump was running and outsider campaign - saying - he and he alone can make change and we can't leave it up to the establishment in which he painted Hillary as the establishment candidate.
The Dems purposely stayed away from attacking the Repug Party because it was felt that the Dems could pick up votes from those Repugs that hated Trump.
However, it was the Repugs that put us in this situation - starting with the Bush Administration, the war, the recession, etc - and they doubled down on that with saying that they wanted to make President Obama a one term President and then proceeded to block most every effort he made to move this country forward. Then the Repugs blamed Obama for any lack of progress and all the negative repercussions because of THEIR sandbagging of Obama.
This reality didn't really form the basis of the Dem campaign to win in November. Instead - like the Repug Clown Car Candidates that went up against Trump and lost because they attacked him - the Dems fell prey to the same fate as these Clowns. They attacked Trump and Trump always found a way to move the discussion back to the Dems, the President and Hillary.
Many Americans didn't take time to really get to the bottom of this gridlocking/sandbagging and instead believed that it was President Obama and the Dems that were the cause of their misfortunes. They believed Trump's ramblings and the MSM didn't help much in pointing the blame to the Repug Party.
All along the campaign we heard things like the Repug Party was in demise and wouldn't survive this election because of the in-fighting amongst themselves. And lo and behold look what happened - the Repugs won the Trifecta and now are probably stronger than ever.
We needed to put the emphasis on how the Repug Party cocked up this country and not as much emphasis on the antics of Donald Trump.
As a Monday morning quarterback - it's more evident now than it was then. I believe this was the biggest tactical error committed by the Dems in this Presidential Campaign.
What is telling are some of the responses by our own DU people to my above post. (again check out that link)
We got drawn into attacking the 'Personality' vs attacking the 'Repug Party'. And guess what - it worked like a charm for the Repug Party.
Again - as a Postmortem - this is my opinion. I'm interested in others opinions regarding my analysis.
The election is history now - we need to put this election and the primary behind us now and come together as a Party ourselves.
