2016 Postmortem

Everyone knows that third party candidates can't win in the current system. The question then becomes what made Clinton so repellent to voters that they couldn't vote for her.

1990's moneyball politics. It arguably got Bill elected - but after three terms of Republicans, the country was ready for a change. After 30+ years, we voters get it. "Go left in the primaries, center-right in the general election, and govern according to the whims of the Republicans and the Wisdom of Inside-the-Beltway thinknig". Democrats talk up hope and change, then bring in Wall Street, Big business and collaborate with the GOP on privatizing government at the expense of the other 75 to 85 percent of the rest of us. The part of the party that wants to help the majority of us have to sit down and shut up if they want to stay in the party. The moneyball Democrats know that the party that raises the most cash always wins, and that liberal populism crap scares the big donors. Let the GOP make the huge mistake of appealing to populism say our Party leadership.

The other problem with moneyball politics as currently practiced is that they have no messaging, and no ideas - usually just GOP hand-me-downs like the Heritage Foundation's Affordable Care Act. Be slightly less horrible than the GOP (the last two Democratic Presidents have really governed more like moderate Republicans), so you can appeal to moderate Republicans in the suburbs, instead of being <gasp> liberal. Adapting Republican ideas just makes the GOP ideas justified in the eyes of the voting public, that's why Clinton didn't get those crossover votes she was counting on when her surrogates dismissed Sanders supporters.


Why didn't "we pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia" and "in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin”?

If Third-Way Triangulation is so effective, why does the Democratic Party keep losing?

Moneyball politics has cost the Democratic Party majorities everywhere except solid blue States.

Looking for blame beyond the Democratic Party is pointless - she lost to "Tiny Hands" Trump! That should be proof enough to the party that the 90's are over.