what is this trash lol
Lets stop and think critically about these two sentences.
Campaigns do not work like this. Opposition research is done on every candidate individually. Neither the DNC or Clinton camp just went "OK, Bush, Walker, and Rubio are all run-of-the-mill Republicans so we can basically just have one gameplan." I guarantee you that EVERY Republican candidate was thoroughly investigated for potential weaknesses specific to them.
If the author's point is that it was not widely expected amongst Democratic strategists that Trump would win the nomination, I find that believable (although I do not find it believable that they didn't prepare for the possibility at all -- the DNC oppo research division is not one intern or something; they have files on all the candidates.)
Having read it several times, I feel confident saying the first clause of this sentence is complete gibberish. According to this guy, Democratic "insiders" presumed the Republican party was going to nominate a "generic Republican" (again, a bizarre, ill-defined term, but whatever) so that somehow compelled the entire Democratic establishment to throw their support behind Hillary Clinton (apparently implying they wouldn't have if the opposition wasn't a "generic Republican," even though the establishment has remained unwavering in their support of Clinton even after the rise of Trump) because they somehow saw her as the Democratic analogue of Jeb Bush (which is just, again, utterly bizarre and makes no sense. Both the comparison itself, which is extremely specious to say the least and also why Democratic "insiders" would find running a Jeb Bush analogue desirable for some reason given his extremely incompetent campaign.)
The latter half of the sentence is equally absurd, and, again, shows a startling ignorance of basic knowledge about how campaigns work. It apparently presumes that as the vast Clinton machine geared up for 2016 and legions of cutthroat Democratic strategists began outlining their plans someone went "I know! She's a woman! Book it! Everyone go home early." and then everyone went on vacation for the next eight months. *eyeroll*
I can't even begin to grasp how anyone could think that's what happened or that's how campaigns work.
I do love how certain types of people, of which the author is a stellar example, like to base their world view on the assumption that everyone agrees with them about everything. In this case, the author seems to think that "rank-and-file Democrats" have concerns about Clinton's "hawkish" foreign policy views. This, of course, ignores the fact that Clinton received a primary challenge from an extremely dovish candidate who she proceeded to absolutely annihilate, performing strongest amongst rank-and-file (registered) Democrats in the process.
Moving on, I won't even bother to address the completely gibberish throwaway line about Clinton's advisers apparently "pounding the drums for even more wars" because it's so manifestly stupid, and the author so lazily declined to back it up, that it's even less worthy of a response than the rest of this drivel.
Instead, lets take a look at the final sentence in paragraph two.
Again, what complete garbage. There's not some conspiracy by "insiders" to somehow force a "hawk" on Democrats. There was a primary. There was an extremely dovish candidate running against Clinton. He lost. Get over it. Christ.
Also, I'm literally two paragraphs into this and I've lost enough brain cells. x'd out of the tab.
