Official Obama's last Presser of 2016 thread! Please help record his statements for DUers...

[spin]

155. In my opinion a candidate with charisma can beat an extremely competent and ...

well qualified opponent. That's simply fact in today's world. It started back when JFK beat Richard Nixon. People who listened to the debate on radio felt Nixon won. People who watched the debate on TV gave the debate to the much more charismatic JFK. (In those days not everyone had a TV. If you had a TV you were lucky if you could get three channels. I remember those days well.)

While I don't agree that elections should be won by the most charismatic candidate, I can't argue that that is not the normal result.

There was no truly charismatic candidate in this recent election except perhaps Bernie. This election ended up as a race between two candidates who were strongly disliked by many voters. This poll took place just before the election:

Deep Unfavorability for Clinton, Trump Marks the Election's Sharp Divisions (POLL)
By GARY LANGER
Oct 31, 2016, 7:00 AM ET

Likely voters see Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump equally unfavorably, with a nearly complete partisan split in views of the two — testament to the unprecedented unpopularity of the candidates and the level of division between their opposing camps.

These divisions and the partisan predispositions that inform them help explain the close contest, unchanged in the latest ABC News/Washington Post tracking poll at 46 percent for Clinton and 45 percent for Trump, with 4 percent for Gary cJohnson and 2 percent for Jill Stein.

Clinton is seen unfavorably by 60 percent of likely voters in the latest results, a new high. Trump is seen unfavorably by essentially as many, 58 percent. Marking the depth of these views, 49 percent see Clinton "strongly" unfavorably, and 48 percent say the same about Trump — unusual levels of strong sentiment.

The extent of partisan antipathy in this poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates, is remarkable: 97 percent of Trump supporters see Clinton unfavorably, 90 percent strongly so; 95 percent of Clinton supporters see Trump unfavorably, 90 percent, again, strongly so.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/deep-unfavorability-clinton-trump-marks-elections-sharp-divisions/story?id=43177423

I don't believe charisma played any factor in this election. You either loved or hated Trump or Hillary or you intensely disliked both.

Still Hillary should have won based on her experience. Obviously Hillary's private server mess plus the hacking of the DNC and release of John Podesta's email damaged Hillary. Also Comey was way out of line.

I don't believe we will ever find just one reason for why Hillary lost. I explain the loss as saying that Hillary was the right candidate at the wrong time. Hillary could have beat McCain in 2008 but Obama had enough charisma to beat her in the primary race. History shows that it is extremely difficult for a Party to hold the Oval Office for more than eight years. Hillary faced an uphill battle no matter who she ran against this year.

Hillary Clinton's test: A third straight Democratic term
David Jackson, USA TODAY 6:48 p.m. EDT April 10, 2015

***snip***

In seeking to follow President Obama after his two terms in office, she will be trying to buck a historical trend — one recently cited by former president Bill Clinton.

"It's hard for any party to hang on to the White House for 12 years, and it's a long road," Bill Clinton said in an interview with Town & Country magazine. "A thousand things could happen."

Since 1948 — the year Harry Truman won a fifth straight election for the Democrats, following Franklin D. Roosevelt's four wins — a political party has won three straight elections only once.

It happened in 1988, the year the Republican nominee, Vice President George H.W. Bush, won the right to replace Ronald Reagan.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2015/04/10/hillary-clinton-third-democratic-term/25512195/