Why did Hillary perform worse among rural Whites in the 2016 primaries vs. 2008?

[Wolf]

Why exactly did Hillary perform worse among rural Whites--especially in the Northern U.S.--in the 2016 Democratic primaries in comparison to the 2008 Democratic primaries?

Also, I'd post a map here if I could but I can't because I don't have 20 posts yet. Thus, just type in "Hillary Clinton 2008 2016 map" on Google Images to see what I mean.

[OSR stands with Israel]

Because in 2008 she ran as the WWC candidate and Bill Clinton’s third term


In 2016 she ran fully on being Obama’s third term

[Wolf]

Because in 2008 she ran as the WWC candidate and Bill Clinton’s third term


In 2016 she ran fully on being Obama’s third term

WWC = White working class?

Also, in terms of her policy proposals, what specifically was different in the 2008 Dem primaries in comparison to the 2016 Dem primaries?

[Wolf]

[IceSpear]

Racist hicks

[uti2]

Because in 2008 she ran as the WWC candidate and Bill Clinton’s third term


In 2016 she ran fully on being Obama’s third term

[Blair]

Because in 2008 she ran as the WWC candidate and Bill Clinton’s third term


In 2016 she ran fully on being Obama’s third term

Well to be fair in 2008 she was running as a second term for Bill Clintons 1992-1994 time.

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

Ever been to White rural America?  Ever been to White rural America in 1991 and compared it to White rural America in 2016?  I have.  I lived in rural Wisconsin from 1989 to 2007, and still have family there.

So much of this country has been left to rot.  In 2008 they had W to blame, and saw the 90s with rose-tinted glasses.  In 2016 they blamed Obama, and tied Clinton to his regime.

[BaldEagle1991]

In 2008 all she had was Bill Clinton as association.

In 2016 she already had been Sec of State under Obama and she has been tied to that regime.

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

In 2008 all she had was Bill Clinton as association.

In 2016 she already had been Sec of State under Obama and she has been tied to that regime.

More than that, being tied to Bill Clinton was an asset in 2008. It was a liability in 2016.

After eight years of Bush, being tied to Bill Clinton associated you with a stock market boom, low unemployment, and no major wars.

After eight more years of hindsight, being tied to Bill Clinton associated you with NAFTA, RFRA, DOMA, the Crime Bill, welfare "reform," and tacit approval of sexual misconduct.

Let's face it, Bill Clinton's presidency did not age well.

[darklordoftech]

Ever been to White rural America?  Ever been to White rural America in 1991 and compared it to White rural America in 2016?  I have.  I lived in rural Wisconsin from 1989 to 2007, and still have family there.

So much of this country has been left to rot.  In 2008 they had W to blame, and saw the 90s with rose-tinted glasses.  In 2016 they blamed Obama, and tied Clinton to his regime.

In 2008 all she had was Bill Clinton as association.

In 2016 she already had been Sec of State under Obama and she has been tied to that regime.

More than that, being tied to Bill Clinton was an asset in 2008. It was a liability in 2016.

After eight years of Bush, being tied to Bill Clinton associated you with a stock market boom, low unemployment, and no major wars.

After eight more years of hindsight, being tied to Bill Clinton associated you with NAFTA, RFRA, DOMA, the Crime Bill, welfare "reform," and tacit approval of sexual misconduct.

Let's face it, Bill Clinton's presidency did not age well.

In both 2008 (among Obama's supporters) and in 2016 (among Bernie's supporters), I noticed a tendency to claim that Hillary was blaming W for things that she and Bill were equally complicit in.

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

Ever been to White rural America?  Ever been to White rural America in 1991 and compared it to White rural America in 2016?  I have.  I lived in rural Wisconsin from 1989 to 2007, and still have family there.

So much of this country has been left to rot.  In 2008 they had W to blame, and saw the 90s with rose-tinted glasses.  In 2016 they blamed Obama, and tied Clinton to his regime.

In 2008 all she had was Bill Clinton as association.

In 2016 she already had been Sec of State under Obama and she has been tied to that regime.

More than that, being tied to Bill Clinton was an asset in 2008. It was a liability in 2016.

After eight years of Bush, being tied to Bill Clinton associated you with a stock market boom, low unemployment, and no major wars.

After eight more years of hindsight, being tied to Bill Clinton associated you with NAFTA, RFRA, DOMA, the Crime Bill, welfare "reform," and tacit approval of sexual misconduct.

Let's face it, Bill Clinton's presidency did not age well.

In both 2008 (among Obama's supporters) and in 2016 (among Bernie's supporters), I noticed a tendency to claim that Hillary was blaming W for things that she and Bill were equally complicit in.

Bill Clinton presided over the intelligence clusterfork that led to 9/11, and the pursuit of a foreign policy agenda that basically made an Iraq invasion a historical inevitability. He also presided over the tech bubble that would lead to the early-2000s recession, and a lot of the financial deregulation and encouragement of bad lending that would lead to the 2008 financial crisis and Great Recession - though no reasonable person had any clue at the time that the seeds for the latter were being sown in the 1990s.

Which is not to say there aren't things W is to blame for. W p*ssed away our budget surplus and created the toxic, ultra-militarized, quasi-fascist culture where athletes are blacklisted for not standing during the national anthem.

[Averroës Nix]

1. A large chunk of her 2008 supporters had died or left the party.

This is the single most important reason - the following are listed in descending order of importance:


2. The Democratic Party had much weaker organization in most of these areas than it did in 2008, reflected in lower turnout - especially of the kind of voters who are likely to cast their vote with the preference of their union, local party, or whatever other institution in mind.


4. The Obama presidency wasn't particularly kind to these areas. Between hospital closures, opioid overdoses, suicides, unemployment, poverty, rising crime, college costs, health care costs, the availability of decent primary and secondary education, the list of ills goes on. There are a lot of recent policy failures that disproportionately harm rural areas and smaller cities.

Regions like Upstate New York and Michigan's Upper Peninsula have been drifting into various social pathologies for decades, but this accelerated during and after the Great Recession. All of this combined to make a pro-incumbent candidate like Clinton less appealing, especially against a candidate who campaigned on strong policy changes.

Sanders' experience representing Vermont also helped. It's not all craft beers and ice cream over there, you know. Part of me wonders whether a HRC who had spent the past eight years representing New York State would have been more suited to a presidential campaign than one who split her time between the Obama Cabinet and working the out-of-sight rich speaking circuit.

I don't think her tenure as Secretary of State was helpful to her campaign - there were moments, like when she invoked Henry Kissinger in her defense at a primary debate, when this felt particularly apparent.


5. In 2008, Hillary Clinton was running as a vehement critic of Obama. In 2016, she did her best to run as his avatar.

Democrats in 2008 who preferred Clinton to Obama usually did so for two reasons that tended to reinforce each other: (1) Racism, which the Clinton campaign didn't shy away from exploiting, and (2) skepticism about a young Senator with few policy accomplishments and unclear loyalties running on platitudinous rhetoric and vague promises.

Needless to say, almost everyone here recognizes this as a fraught discussion in which there little left to say aside from whatever profanities make you feel better. However, when you look at general election results, there are some patterns that you need much more discussion to explain: Obama did much worse than Kerry in some extremely white rural and small metro counties, but in others he did much better. On top of that, Clinton almost uniformly performed worse compared to Obama in these areas, in both the 2016 primaries and the general election. This is especially true when you look at raw vote totals or the Democratic percentage of the vote rather than Clinton-Trump margins.

Anyway, people opposing Obama "from the left" wasn't really a thing in 2008 - especially not within the party - and to the extent that they existed, they strongly preferred him to Clinton.

One last observation: Remember Clinton's mocking "the skies will open, angels will sing" bit? In 2016 she could have delivered the same words about Obama, unchanged, but with complete sincerity. (She could have used them to mock Sanders, though, albeit for slightly different reasons.)

[IceSpear]

One last observation: Remember Clinton's mocking "the skies will open, angels will sing" bit? In 2016 she could have delivered the same words about Obama, unchanged, but with complete sincerity. (She could have used them to mock Sanders, though, albeit for slightly different reasons.)

I love(d) that clip.

Some people act like Hillary did a total 180 from 2008 to 2016, but being the "realism candidate" is one of the factors that was completely identical. I trusted her to handle Republican BS far more than I trusted Obama, which sadly turned out to be an accurate assessment. His naivete got him played by McConnell and the rest of the Senate Republicans countless times throughout his first term. By the time he realized their true nature it was already far too late.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

One last observation: Remember Clinton's mocking "the skies will open, angels will sing" bit? In 2016 she could have delivered the same words about Obama, unchanged, but with complete sincerity. (She could have used them to mock Sanders, though, albeit for slightly different reasons.)

I love(d) that clip.

Some people act like Hillary did a total 180 from 2008 to 2016, but being the "realism candidate" is one of the factors that was completely identical. I trusted her to handle Republican BS far more than I trusted Obama, which sadly turned out to be an accurate assessment. His naivete got him played by McConnell and the rest of the Senate Republicans countless times throughout his first term. By the time he realized their true nature it was already far too late.

Hillary would have been more competent at f**king us over than Obama. Thankfully, Obama was too incompetent to get his "grand bargain" through.

[Beet]

One last observation: Remember Clinton's mocking "the skies will open, angels will sing" bit? In 2016 she could have delivered the same words about Obama, unchanged, but with complete sincerity. (She could have used them to mock Sanders, though, albeit for slightly different reasons.)

I love(d) that clip.

Some people act like Hillary did a total 180 from 2008 to 2016, but being the "realism candidate" is one of the factors that was completely identical. I trusted her to handle Republican BS far more than I trusted Obama, which sadly turned out to be an accurate assessment. His naivete got him played by McConnell and the rest of the Senate Republicans countless times throughout his first term. By the time he realized their true nature it was already far too late.

Hillary would have been more competent at f**king us over than Obama. Thankfully, Obama was too incompetent to get his "grand bargain" through.

Wrong. Your buddies on the left would have been far less shy about holding Hillary accountable, or turning on her, for the slightest deviance from far left orthodoxy. With Obama they felt they had to cut him slack because he was likeable or something.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

One last observation: Remember Clinton's mocking "the skies will open, angels will sing" bit? In 2016 she could have delivered the same words about Obama, unchanged, but with complete sincerity. (She could have used them to mock Sanders, though, albeit for slightly different reasons.)

I love(d) that clip.

Some people act like Hillary did a total 180 from 2008 to 2016, but being the "realism candidate" is one of the factors that was completely identical. I trusted her to handle Republican BS far more than I trusted Obama, which sadly turned out to be an accurate assessment. His naivete got him played by McConnell and the rest of the Senate Republicans countless times throughout his first term. By the time he realized their true nature it was already far too late.

Hillary would have been more competent at f**king us over than Obama. Thankfully, Obama was too incompetent to get his "grand bargain" through.

Wrong. Your buddies on the left would have been far less shy about holding Hillary accountable, or turning on her, for the slightest deviance from far left orthodoxy. With Obama they felt they had to cut him slack because he was likeable or something.

LOL, no one expected far left orthodoxy from either of them. We did expect that Obama wouldn't be a total neoliberal warmonger. Whoops.

[J. J.]

I pointed this out on another thread. There was a sense of contempt to the electorate, some of which was from Clinton, e.g. the "basket of deplorables," comment.   It was almost, "We know better than you do, and only need you to follow."  That turned off a number of voters.

That happened in the GOP primaries, where it directed against Trump. Trump, for all of his foibles,  didn't do that.  Yes, he attacked illegal aliens, but they are not part of the electorate.

Clinton also moved very far to the left, compared to where she was in 2008.  As I've said, I liked the Hillary Clinton I saw in 2008; I wish she had turned up in 2016, because I would have voted for her.

[Rules for me, but not for thee]

Interesting Kentucky turned hard against Hillary. Meanwhile Hillary running as an extension of Obama instead of against him gave her a lot of support in the "black belt".

[Rules for me, but not for thee]

I pointed this out on another thread. There was a sense of contempt to the electorate, some of which was from Clinton, e.g. the "basket of deplorables," comment.   It was almost, "We know better than you do, and only need you to follow."  That turned off a number of voters.

That happened in the GOP primaries, where it directed against Trump. Trump, for all of his foibles,  didn't do that.  Yes, he attacked illegal aliens, but they are not part of the electorate.

Clinton also moved very far to the left, compared to where she was in 2008.  As I've said, I liked the Hillary Clinton I saw in 2008; I wish she had turned up in 2016, because I would have voted for her.

That and the identity politics as well "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic Nazis", people were tired of being berated by an old, corrupt bitty.

[Frozen Sky Ever Why]

The 2008 rural Hillary voter:

https://www.hillaryis44.org/