"I wish I had a dime for everyone I know who said they would have voted for Bernie if he had been our nominee."

They had their chance to vote. Over four million unenthusiastic people showed up for Clinton. That isn't the only questionable part of your op.

Unless you are saying it would get you a pack of gum.

Why do you guys keep fighting this fight?

Trump is the most embarrassing President-elect in modern history. A competent campaign should have crushed him by 10 million votes.

big picture, non emotional perspective: Republicans ran the candidate with the highest "strongly unfavorable" rating in history.
We chose the candidate with the second highest "strongly unfavorable" rating in history.

And they're still doing it.

not true. Just a poorly run campaign.

screamed "Never Hillary", whined and cried all the way to the convention and beyond, and then didn't show up to vote.

Own what you have done.

Hillary's campaign wanted Trump and they couldn't handle him in the GE

It was clear in the primary that Bernie polled better than Hillary against Trump.

Perhaps you and the DNC should "own what you have done".

majority of bernie voters went with hillary.

so you're wrong -

White young liberals are the reason we lost they did it out of spite and hate.

this, I'll be glad to admit i'm wrong. There's a lot of factors that added up to a loss, and i don't think young liberals sulking over the primary was one of them.

Peer pressure is a powerful tool and many IGNORED Sanders campaign message - because he became a sellout with many of them the moment he endorsed Hillary.

https://ww2.kqed.org/lowdown/2016/11/14/how-millennials-voted/

https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2016/12/it-wasnt-the-white-working-class-that-cost-hillary.html

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-09/what-this-election-taught-us-about-millennial-voters

I don't frequent JPR - don't know much about them.

It did not help that Trump was able to make hay off of what Hillary and the DNC did to Bernie and his campaign.

Bernie had every right to run and most thought it better for him to run as a Democrat to avoid a Nadar situation. He campaigned for Hillary in the General despite what was done to him in the Primary.

I agree we need to move on, but we need to objectively take a look at the problems in our Party. In my mind, the corporate influence by way of campaign donations, soft and dark money, Super PACS, and the revolving door need to go! Whether you like it or not, Hillary was too closely associated with thease things.

Democrats should not be aligning with these influences, it is counter to who we are and what we expect in our government. Bernie demonstrated that a populist approach can bring in enough money. People are tired of Wall Street owning our politicians and giving them free reign to rip us off with no repercussions. Trump will only reinforce the need to get the Plutocrat's out of the picture. We need to be ready for the next election and come to it with clean hands!

......designed to help the well known candidate, Hillary.

Not very effective I'd guess.

so it will be interesting to see his impact.

I used to look forward to listening to BwB - until his disdain for our party and our president became unbearable.

That says a lot.

A good man.

"Bernie Sanders is a socialist who is going to raise your taxes to give free stuff to people who didn't earn it."

That is the standard Republican attack against us. You know what the difference would have been with Bernie on the ticket? THAT WAS HIS PLATFORM! Instead of looking at a six-state GOP pickup, we'd be looking at a 49-state GOP sweep.

your scenario about Bernie is purely imaginary. Bernie would have made it a battle between the Oligarchs and the people and would have won the argument.

People trusted Bernie, and did not trust either Trump or Hillary.

That's exactly the same line they used non-stop against Obama for 8 years, it had lost it's ability to hurt as much due to constant repetition.

So, if you take away 12% of the US population, then you can say that tRump won the popular vote? Really?

I could take away another 12% of the US population and show that Clinton won what's left. Is there really any point to this?

they deserve what is about to be unleashed upon them - unfortunately, the rest of us do not.

not a popularity contest. The fact that a large number of Americans stayed home or pulled a protest vote and pouted over their "dislike" Hillary, I could care less. The pout vote put us in a bad position, beyond a bad position, we're in big trouble.

I'm 63 now - don't do rallies anymore - last one was 2008 when I was 55.


Your state had 4000 participate in the caucus.
Why is that?
I read on Twitter Sanders won Maine in a landslide - that's how clueless they are - they look at the percentage and think wow - never checking to see how few took part due to many legitimate reasons.

Same in Colorado - only 127,000 participated. Do you think that's right?

Hillary did a small rally here - and won the state by 3 pts. Had we had a primary she would have won - thank God no more caucuses will be held in CO - unfortunately it's going to be open.

They just wanted a fractured Democratic party

They acted as though there was something wrong with the idea of a candidate that encouraged her or his supporters to feel that change was possible or even desirable.

My question is, how the hell do you win an election if you DON'T create a real sense of excitement and possibility?

Especially among young voters whose loyalties haven't really been established yet?

Other than the capacity to generate enthusiasm, to make people feel that it's worth it to vote FOR us rather than just against the ReThugs, what else have we GOT?

When have we, as a party, ever done well by DAMPENING enthusiasm and quelling passion?

And why did the HRC campaign choose not to try to build enthusiasm by running ads where she mentioned the Sanders proposals that were added to the platform, or which encouraged the young to get involved with THIS party and work for what they cared about within it?

I assume HRC supporters felt enthusiasm for their candidate...if they did, who were they to belittle anyone for feeling it about other candidates?

Barack Obama generated enthusiasm. He won(twice).

If Michelle Obama ever runs, she will as well. And she will win.

So did Bill Clinton(his victory was largely about personal charisma-he'd have won on ANY platform). He won.

So did JFK(he won narrowly, but mainly as a result of a MASSIVE increase in voter turnout from the previous election). He won.

Humphrey failed to in '68. He lost.

Jimmy Carter failed to in '80. He lost.

Mondale failed to in '84. He lost.

Dukakis failed to in '88. He lost.

Gore failed to in '00. He lost in the EC.

Kerry failed to in '04. He lost.

Humphrey was bucking the Vietnam War and a very moderate (almost "liberal&quot Nixon who previously lost to "charismatic" Kennedy. Carter won in 1976, so his lack of "charisma" wasn't entirely debilitating, the Iran hostage crisis was instrumental in defeating him. Mondale was running against a popular incumbent (whether you agreed with him or not).
Dukakis lost to a very popular incumbent VP.
We can argue about whether or not Gore lost in 2000, just as we can argue about whether or not Clinton lost this year.

If one looked at the issues in play in most of those elections, those are what defeated your examples.

That's why I didn't address it.

And I made the distinction that Gore lost in the EC.

1976 was extremely close from start to finish.

If it hadn't been for a pair of gaffes for which the liberal wing of the party bore no responsibility at all-the "ethnic purity" speech, with its attempts to pander to racist Northern whites with the implication the he'd be fine with keeping blacks out of their neighborhoods, and the much sillier "lusted after women in my heart" thing in the Playboy interview(everyone only bought that issue for the articles, of course-Ford would not have come anywhere close to pulling that out.

I suspect we'd have won by a much more comfortable margin with Jerry Brown, Frank Church or "Mo" Udall as the nominee.

With Ford leading late in the month.

It was also tied in March.

and Romney.

Thanks for starting what should be obvious.

In the primaries, polling found Clinton supporters to be more highly enthusiastic than Sanders supporters.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/190343/trump-clinton-supporters-lead-enthusiasm.aspx

By almost 3,000,000 votes?

I'd say, yes, the election WAS rigged.

No idea where you got that.

My question was directed towards who they predicted to win the election.

538 doesn't actually poll, but they still do predictions, and yes Gallup did have a prediction.

been the biggest landslide in history...

There are a lot of people who support shit types.

Look at west virgina racist getting her job back because people there didn't think it was fair for a white person to lose their job over something like that.

than we thought...

Remember when reagan (shudder) beat mondale by around 18 million votes? THAT'S what we should have been looking at.

We should have beaten him by reagan marguns, bith popular vote AND electoral college. Our victory should have been as yuge as trumps lirs, and you know it.

Against Assange...things aren't so simple as you want to paint them

so easily swayed by wikileaks dumping podesta emails (add that in the same category as the email server: unnecessary mistakes and or shit we just didn't need) and the other stuff you mentioned, it means her support was wide but not deep. Look at the shit exposed about trump, it showed him to be a creeper amd shitbag, but it didn't drive his support away.

How can it be a bumch of ahit we consider trifling is enougj to drive hillary voters aeay and that's a reasonable excuse for losing votes, whereas worse shit is exposed about trump and he retains his support.

Are we saying trumps supporters were more loyal, whereas hillary's support was weaker?

I stand by my statement: trump should have got smoked as bad as mondale did.

43% of the primary vote isn't nothing.

(Had it not been for the perception that the early superdelegate endorsements had ended the contest before it started, it's likely that the Sanders vote share would have been higher).

....30 million people who voted even knew what superdelegates were when they voted?

The support pledges of the supers were largely announced before the primaries.

You don't think one candidate being essentially gifted 300 delegates prior to the voting had an effect on voter perceptions about the state of the race?

Hillary might have won without them, but it would have been a much closer contest.

Under the circumstances, 43% of the primary vote was an exemplary performance.

There's really no good reason for anyone to STILL be arguing that Bernie should never have run(any MORE than anyone should still be arguing that Bernie should have been nominated instead of Hillary).

...in the primaries knew what superdelegates are.

I may have missed it, but I haven't seen anyone recently who was arguing that Sanders should never have run. The fact is he did become a candidate and Clinton won the nomination, very handily.

This is an interesting graphic (yellow is Clinton, green is Sanders):

She won CO easily in the GE even though Bernie won it in the primary but them we had damn good reasons to vote.

if we triangulate more we can swoop up angey republicans, who cares if we flush liberal votes down the toilet!

Look at the solid yellow region across the southeast. Our party is heavily black in those states, although black voters do not make up such a large fraction of overall voters. The result is primaries where black voters have a big influence on our party, and general elections where white voters dominate. This is significant in the southeast because blacks and whites don't like each other, meaning our southern strategy tends to favor candidates who will have trouble in the general election. We have to live with this because we are not willing to cozy up to southern white voters by ignoring concerns of black voters.

The big question comes when you look at that swath of Bernie primary wins across the north. Those states should have gone to Hillary, and several of them almost did. The fact they didn't suggests our appeal is narrowing, concentrating more on minority voters particularly black voters. This might be a result of racism, or white resentment, or white backlash, or something like that. It could also be attributed to our failure to remind white working class voters that we are doing positive things for them, that we represent their interests and concerns far better than the other party. If you want to blame it on Bernie, it's true he got those states whipped up about his economic justice ideas, only to leave them flat when he couldn't win the nomination.

Being Democrats, I suppose we will never figure out what happened, let alone what to do about it. It's easier and more fun to blame each other and debate which segment of the electorate we should write off. We do the circular firing squad thing so well.

Too progressive for some, and not progressive enough for others. That's an issue that bears only a little on our larger problem, but it is worth considering where we should land on certain issues.

into votes? Why did Hillary's message get 3 3/4 Million more votes than BS?

Because they liked what she had to say and knew she was actually qualified to be POTUS.

Those "stadiums" are over rated.

And Enthusiasm sounds awfully like: "Let me tell voters a whole bunch of BS to get them to vote for me"

I'm tired of it but most people like it I guess.

I'm fine with criticisms of strategy but all this nonsense falls into the "Hillary is unlikeable" canard - and guess why she is seen as unlikable?

Seems I need to draw a damn map for some democrats so they see the point of sustained GOP smear campaigns.

new voters into politics, that she would have smomed teump, like she was supposed to... if we make excuses for our mistakes, or refuse to even acknowledge them, we're going to lose again and again.

Trump, shit bag thay he is, did one huge thing hillary didn't; he got disaffected voters excited and grew his base. She excited the base, and that was it.

and the MSM would have had any trouble painting a 70+ year old man whose only steady career has been running for office or being in office as an insider when compared to Trump? You don't spend over 2 decades in Washington and get to be an outsider.


And that's after getting over the hurdle that was winning the primary, which despite having crowds, he was unable to do. I mean, hell if Clinton couldn't get to Obama levels with AA voters, the guy who lost them state by state in the primary wouldn't have as well.

My advice is to stop tapping these dull-ass east coast baby boomer beltway types and find some leadership that is preferably Gen X or younger, represents the forgotten West Coast wing of the Democratic Party, and strongly supports things like marijuana legalization.

He stuck his neck out on gay marriage and the party did not treat him well. Nobody wanted to be seen with him for a while over that, but he was right. I saw him give a talk about the issues and his viewpoint not too long after he did it,, on the UC channel. I think the talk was at UC Davis. I liked him, a lot.

I fully admit that back in the day when he was running for SF mayor against.. Matt Gonzales, I think, for the Greens? I had Newsom down as an overly-slick, blow dried Marina Yuppie. Just goes to show, judging books and covers and all that.

How many other stadiums did he "fill" like this one, which I photographed while Sanders was actually speaking in a modest hall elsewhere on site?

college kids back.

You know who was even more exciting than Sanders? Trump.

This infighting is doing nothing to combat Comrade Donald.

eternally grateful. Stadiums full of people didn't translate into votes for Sanders, and neither will re-writing history.

For all the talk of what a Socialist he is, he sure didn't seem like one to me. It's not inclusive at all, and whenever it's pointed out, you're beat up about how inclusive it it is so you can feel nice and included, too. We should be pressing for economic equality for all. His messaging has really become off since the election.

was designed to have voters listen to promises.

...interesting memory you have there...

Hillary had the dry, "here's how we pay for our proposals" approach.

Many of us have been around the block a time or two.

to people. Bernie didn't bring out voters. He told the ones following him around like groupies incorrect things, and told them their vote didn't matter. They listened. There is literally nothing but false beliefs and fantasies to pretend that Bernie, who couldn't even win a primary and had no ability to persuade his voters to actually come out and vote against the Orange one, or even himself would have won "more votes" than Hillary, who literally pulled in a historic number of actual votes.

I guess you missed what Hillary's actual policy speeches were, since she had actual plans to bring about jobs for everyone, even the stupid people who bought Donnie's BS about bringing back coal and manufacturing jobs.

I'm sorry but that's a load of BS. We are in an era of rewarding the stupid who don't like facts, but adore foreign propaganda, fed to them by RT.

Hillary won actual votes, had actual plans,and despite the toxic amount of hate, lies and propaganda used against her by RWers and those who unthinkingly spewed out literally the same talking points from the supposed left SHE STILL WON VOTES.

Please stop with this Bernie could have done something, he's still not doing anything, he's been in congress and in power longer than she has, he's just achieved less. Donnie is also an "insider" he's just a moron who wasn't expecting to win, til it was handed to him by people who don't want effective leadership in the US. The same group pushing Bernie. This was RW and Russian ratfucking, let's not pretend otherwise. The ACTUAL polls, where voters voted prove that your understanding of what went on here is not correct.

... to get into those "events"

A lot of those events were fundraisers. You get raise a lot more money in California than the rust belt.

m'kay... this isn't how Democrats do analysis. Sad.

Bernie had more bumperstickers and yard signs.

Bernie had a cooler logo, and a snappier slogan.

A little bird even landed on his podium once, like a sign from the universe.

And Bernie lost.

By a lot.

In the end, the only voters who count are the ones that show their enthusiasm by going to the polls.

Too bad our message of "for and against NAFTA" and "for and against TPP" didn't generate enough enthusiasm where it really mattered.

... too bad people who saw the Outsourcer-in-Chief as the champion of those who had their jobs outsourced.

Stupid is as stupid votes.

And let's just ignore Russian intervention, voter supression, and Comey's pronouncement that HRC was still under investigation as being non influential.

Too bad THOSE things are completely ignored - especially by those who insist that HRC was the "wrong candidate" with the "wrong message", who still managed to win the popular vote.

Last edited Sat Dec 17, 2016, 02:23 AM - Edit history (1)

Enough of the Hillary bashing. That's ridiculous. She filled voting booths with Democrats young and old, poor and middle class, AND SHE WON THE GE BY THREE MILLION VOTES with a CLEAR and COMPELLING MESSAGE.

Will you please just stop this? Itis inaccurate and is getting very very old.

I loved Sanders' agenda, and voted for it, but that doesn't mean I'm sure he would have been a "better" candidate. We don't get to find out the answer to that question, and will probably never agree on measuring sticks.

Clinton, despite the alleged excitement gap, was terrifically popular with more people, and was decades networked into the Democratic machine. She was ready to run it and run it well, even if her ideas were more old-fashioned and less progressive. She was a great candidate, but one with some convenient carrying handles for the wingnut-wranglers in the media.

Modern Dems are always out-shouted. Sanders wasn't as charismatic, and looked like a Larry David impersonation. His quiet socialism had not, over decades, peeled away the support of people of color from the powerful Clinton branding. Yet he was Benghazi-free, and had not signed onto the AUMF. His message had a window of opportunity that we chose not to use in 2016, so whatever unique hope he offered for the next presidency is gone.

People will argue forever about who would have won if this or that hadn't happened, but they're all grinding favorite axes. None of us knows.

At least they seemed to know that none of them had any business running for Prime Minister.

And he was real. Give him 2000 years, and he would have built up a songlist that would have made the psalms seem like a Mother Goose anthology.