Maybe Clinton Wasn't to Blame for Trump's Victory

[GaryCnf]

52. I realize it's counterintuitive

But her high negatives do not mean she was a weak candidate, particularly against a candidate with even higher negatives. In a binary election, everything is relative.

As a strong Sanders supporter who continues to be a strong Sanders supporter, I would like to believe that Bernie's radically higher favorability rating would have propelled him to victory, but if favorability ratings were all there were to winning in 2016, Secretary Clinton would have won because her favorability ratings were higher than her opponent's.

From the standpoint of preparing for the next election, it is a mistake (not to mention denial) to believe that Clinton could not have won because she was simply not stronger than the forces aligned against her. This is true for two reasons. First, it is defeatism taken to the "n"th degree, because if she could not win, no Democrat can win. This appears to be the BS conclusion of the article. Second, it discourages any meaningful analysis of what we could have done differently to win.

We just came off of two presidential elections in 2008 and 2012 where our candidate didn't just win the popular vote by a plurality, he won it by a MAJORITY. To spew this tripe about Democrats being doomed because "Russia" or "voter suppression" or any of the other shit we are getting thrown at us (as the article appears to do) is counterproductive.