Hillary Clinton Really Shouldn’t Have Told Voters That Trump Wasn’t a Normal Rep

[uti2]

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/12/clinton-really-shouldnt-have-distanced-trump-from-the-gop.html

People dislike standard GOP policies. Bush in 2000 ran as a moderate medicare expanding anti-interventionist centrist too, don't forget.

Hillary hurt herself with her base and hurt downballot dems with her singular focus on Trump's personality, she ignored the economic message:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/for-down-ballot-republicans-trump-is-too-much-of-a-wacko-bird-to-be-an-albatross/2016/09/27/ede5579e-84e7-11e6-92c2-14b64f3d453f_story.html

Downballot dems did the same strategy and failed. This is the consequence of Hillary praising Paul Ryan and 'moderate' republicans.

So for those who say a generic republican could've won, think twice. Hillary would've run a populist campaign and tied the nominee to Romney for repeating the exact same policies as Romney.

The 'Obama coalition' was about economics. He would've won with 2004 demographics.

[anthonyjg]

According to the RCP average Trump's favorability rating on election day was 21 points underwater. I don't think Clinton needed to make Trump look any worse in the eyes of voters, she needed to make herself look better.

[uti2]

According to the RCP average Trump's favorability rating on election day was 21 points underwater. I don't think Clinton needed to make Trump look any worse in the eyes of voters, she needed to make herself look better.

The dems based their campaign strategy on the courtship of suburban republican women. 'Donald would be such a bad role model for your children, vote for Hillary!'.

Cruz and Jeb had similar unfavorables as Hillary (and they were the 2 most well known candidates besides Trump), she wouldn't have run this type of campaign against them. A lot of that is simply due to political polarization.

[Pericles]

Given her own unpopularity it was good to drive Trump down even further. A normal Republican would have done better with college-educated whites and she would likely have lost worse. She couldn't allow Trump to revive  himself and be passive against him, she had to make clear how dangerous and unfit Trump was. His  poor favorability ratings show she was successful in that regard, and 63% of Americans thought him unfit for office. She  neglected other aspects and did make mistakes, but just because she lost doesn't mean everything she did was a mistake. She was also correct, and she did get more votes than Trump.

[anthonyjg]

According to the RCP average Trump's favorability rating on election day was 21 points underwater. I don't think Clinton needed to make Trump look any worse in the eyes of voters, she needed to make herself look better.

The dems based their campaign strategy on the courtship of suburban republican women. 'Donald would be such a bad role model for your children, vote for Hillary!'.

Cruz and Jeb had similar unfavorables as Hillary (and they were the 2 most well known candidates besides Trump), she wouldn't have run this type of campaign against them. A lot of that is simply due to political polarization.

Agreed. To me, the most frustrating part about this is that it was all in her platform, she just didn't place enough emphasis on economic populism.

[Bismarck]

I'm not sure about that. The GOP ran well ahead of Trump in the congressional races.

[uti2]

I'm not sure about that. The GOP ran well ahead of Trump in the congressional races.

As I mentioned in the OP, Hillary went out of her way to court republicans, praising Paul Ryan, etc. and the Dems used the political strategy of attempting to argue about Trump's personal characteristics rather than economics (their normal strategy) which polled better.

[Xing]

I think the argument should've been that Trump isn't that different from many politicians in a key way (promising things he can't deliver). Not sure how well that would've worked if Clinton was the one making the argument, but it's clear that arguing Trump was completely different from any other politician helped him enormously.

[uti2]

I think the argument should've been that Trump isn't that different from many politicians in a key way (promising things he can't deliver). Not sure how well that would've worked if Clinton was the one making the argument, but it's clear that arguing Trump was completely different from any other politician helped him enormously.

Hillary's courtship of republicans was against the advice of the DNC which had warned her not to do it. The DNC told her campaign that it was hurting Democratic downballot performance.

https://newrepublic.com/minutes/137093/clinton-campaign-decision-made-may-doom-down-ballot-democrats

Now of course, the leaks themselves are another factor, with Putin slamming the democrats, and praising Trump, would he have even released the emails to help a generic republican candidate even more anti-russian than Hillary? Of course not. So, no DNC leaks, which would've helped dems with their turnout.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

I think the argument should've been that Trump isn't that different from many politicians in a key way (promising things he can't deliver). Not sure how well that would've worked if Clinton was the one making the argument, but it's clear that arguing Trump was completely different from any other politician helped him enormously.

Hillary's courtship of republicans was against the advice of the DNC which had warned her not to do it. The DNC told her campaign that it was hurting Democratic downballot performance.

https://newrepublic.com/minutes/137093/clinton-campaign-decision-made-may-doom-down-ballot-democrats

Now of course, the leaks themselves are another factor, with Putin slamming the democrats, and praising Trump, would he have even released the emails to help a generic republican candidate even more anti-russian than Hillary? Of course not. So, no DNC leaks, which would've helped dems with their turnout.

The Clintons are selfish and don't actually care about electing down ticket Democrats. Before Bill won, the House had been Democratic for 38 years.

[Fuzzy Bear]

I think the argument should've been that Trump isn't that different from many politicians in a key way (promising things he can't deliver). Not sure how well that would've worked if Clinton was the one making the argument, but it's clear that arguing Trump was completely different from any other politician helped him enormously.

Hillary's courtship of republicans was against the advice of the DNC which had warned her not to do it. The DNC told her campaign that it was hurting Democratic downballot performance.

https://newrepublic.com/minutes/137093/clinton-campaign-decision-made-may-doom-down-ballot-democrats

Now of course, the leaks themselves are another factor, with Putin slamming the democrats, and praising Trump, would he have even released the emails to help a generic republican candidate even more anti-russian than Hillary? Of course not. So, no DNC leaks, which would've helped dems with their turnout.

The Clintons are selfish and don't actually care about electing down ticket Democrats. Before Bill won, the House had been Democratic for 38 years.

This is somewhat unfair to Bill Clinton, and even Hillary; they have done much for downballot Democrats over the years.  If they had not done so, they would not have had the kind of structural advantages over Sanders Hillary enjoyed in the primaries.  The going in the tank for Hillary by the DNC was a pretty big "Thank you!" for years of service.

The house shifted to the GOP in 1994 in no small part due to reapportionment in the South, where blacks were consolidated into "black districts" and white Democrats were unable to prevail without the infusion of black support that had previously put them over the top.  Liberals were all for this when they thought the South would continue to elect Democrats to Congress, but when the end of the process was a dominant GOP and a Democratic Party that was mostly black, they weren't so fond of the idea.

[Fuzzy Bear]

What Hillary was doing was a redux of Richard Nixon's 1972 campaign, where he campaigned actively to Democrats, telling them that McGovern was an aberration, running most of his campaign as "Democrats for Nixon" with non-Southern Democrats (for the most part) coming out for Nixon, while benefitting from the Southern Democrats' distaste for McGovern and their appreciation for Nixon's support on social issues.

The difference was that Southern Democrats came to like Nixon, and Northern Democrats For Nixon came to, indeed, view McGovern as an aberration.  Republicans, however, could not bring themselves to endorse Hillary; most of them were #NeverTrump, and many of them came around to the point of grudgingly voting for Trump.  Whatever their feelings for Trump were/are, they didn't want to be blamed for Hillary's triumph, and a number of them saw that they'd be toast if they caused Hillary to win.