Any other questions?

Of course in my state of Oklahoma, it did not matter

to swing three states towards Hillary Clinton.

We win after all!

No honest introspection required.

Just another echo chamber. A lovely little safe space.

Which does absolutely no good.

Why don't you list them?

But what the hell.

Yes, the FBI and Wikileaks had some impacts I'm sure. But here are my thoughts on what pushed it over the top:

1) Complete bias by the DNC in the primaries, which alienated huge numbers of Sanders supporters.

2) Aggressive demonization of conservative voters...or essentially going negative on half of the country instead of a candidate. Why do you think the polls got it so wrong? People were intimidated into not stating their opinions.

3) Clinton's inability to connect with the middle class and the rural populations. They didn't trust or like her and that's ultimately why she lost. Large numbers of voters in those areas that voted for Obama went to Trump.

There are others, but I see those as the top 3.

The sooner folks look hard at those reasons and seek different ways to address them the better off the party will be.

There you have it. I watched it happening right here on DU.

Bias?

The DNC gave a lifelong independent a national forum, credibility and a structured fifty state platform.

Since Corrupt Trump echoed Bernie, maybe we should have regrets?

... last week.

Sanders is more Democratic than half the Democratic Party. Get over it.

a Democrat.

The Democratic Party is a coalition of factions that don't always have the exact same agendas, but all work in the general direction.

"WE strive for progress, not perfection."

So you should be happy.

Last time, and every time I checked, he campaigns, donates, caucuses, AND VOTES with Democrats. He's a more reliable vote than any conservadem or middle-of-the-road-a-dem.

they need his vote in the Senate

Many times we were told we were not wanted or needed.

in the primaries by Debbie Wasserman Schultz. It's certainly no secret the DNC had an agenda. I then became an unaffiliated voter because they didn't need me, but certainly did vote for Hillary.

That many Bernie supporters stayed home. I did not, I always vote.

mess of a president. I was stunned by how the DNC handled the primaries. 2016 should have been an easy democratic victory for president.

The national polls showed Clinton with around a 3% lead. She won the popular vote by about 1.5 to 2%. That's effectively spot on.

You know, the states she lost.

They were wrong.

But you're right about the echo chamber and people not wanting to hear it. All they want to do is place blame elsewhere.

the black vote was down 11% from 2012. Economics and health care are much more powerful incentives to vote than race relations, even to black voters.

I tried making a thread about how the lies killed us in the general. It was locked immediately. So yeah, the echo chamber will continue. Probably until we're wiped out in 2018.

From I heard, black voters love Hillary, the Clintons have been great advocates for decades, they attended the requisite number of fish frys, etc.

Eleven per cent is a pretty big damn number.

said she ran into young black people who didn't vote. They told her "Obama hasn't changed anything, why would Hillary?" Granted these were just a couple of people. But heck, why leave it so the Orange Toxin can make it even worse? Sometimes you do have to vote for the lesser of two evils - what's wrong with that when one evil is worse.

I don't buy the first one. Bernie lost all on his own. He could not have won the general election. The same M$M bias would have happened. It wouldn't be emails, but something.

What demonization? We do that, but Hillary did not.

for 3, you can thank the M$M.

Anybody who went from Obama to Orange Toxin must be a misogynist or an idiot. Yeah that's demonizing them. They are at fault for what we will be suffering.

Let's be honest, no candidate is perfect. Some are just less imperfect than others.

1. Hillary surrounded herself with many of the same top advisors from her 2008 run. In 2008 she lost because they couldn't read the DNC electoral primary map. In 2016 she lost because they couldn't read the General Election Electoral map.

2. The same advisors can't read polls. People keep crying "how could the polls be so wrong?" The polls weren't wrong, the people reading them didn't know what they were looking at. If you look at the questions if many of the polls, and focus on the ones that really matter, this loss was predicted about three to six weeks before the election.

3. When she speaks to the masses she comes off as a person speaking at people, not with people. In more intimate settings she is much more personable. The problem with running for president is that you have to be able to address 10,000 people just as easily as you can address 10 people. Too many of her sentences started with "I know" and "Listen, we have to", which would often be followed by what could be categorized as a lecture. If a candidate starts a sentence with "I know", then the only words that come out of your mouth next is "that you know".

4. She doesn't know how to deflect criticism, or pivot at the right moments. She allowed herself to be bogged down with the FBI and email issues. After Bill Clinton's impeachment, anyone named Clinton should know how to deal with those kind of issues. She doesn't have the natural political instincts that Bill or Obama do.

5, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz was a small part of this problem. She was an inept DNC leader and did little to prepare the electoral map for a candidate like Hillary.

These are justifiable criticisms, and if we do not address them, then we are bound to keep making the same mistakes.

Many mistakes and as someone who loves Hillary Clinton I admit she and her campaign clearly made mistakes. I respect Sanders but the primary hurt her and it hurt her among young people.

The Russians, wikileaks, Comey, and the NY FBI office certainly played their part and I hope they all get punished in some way but I doubt it.

I would love to see Massage in jail and Comey fired and the NY FBI office cleaned out.

assuredly be far far worse.

that people don't want to do any kind of deep dive into the reasons we lost so that we can at least attempt to defend Senate seats in 2018.

It's the same type of echo chamber that had anyone who voiced concern prior to the election tagged as "concern trolls".

What is preventing people from posting what the mistakes were?

You're absolutely right. But many, if not most of the responses to those threads go back to one of the three things listed in this OP.

Too many people are focused on "OMG, it was STOLEN!!!", and thus unwilling to even consider that we (not just Hillary, we as a party) made mistakes that led to this loss.

And when the recount(s) are done, it will become "The states were paid off", "The recount was invalid", and "No need to make any changes for 2018/2020, because the elections will just be stolen like this one was"

And it's even more laughable when Obama made like 10 speeches instructing everyone on how impossible it was to steal/rig an election.

And as we all know Trump is a master of projection.

Trump beat Hillary and President Obama in a game of ten-dimensional chess by bringing up that the election was rigged so that they would say "No, there is no way to rig an election in the U.S." so that they would effectively be silenced once he (Trump) rigged the election.

Please try to keep up.

So maybe he deserves more credit for chess playing than he was given.

impossible.

is far different than hacking voting machines and tabulators.

But there is no evidence whatsoever that this election was hacked. Even the professor that everyone is quoting says he doesn't believe it was hacked.

But people are gonna believe what they wanna believe.

Not that I really believe it but I understand why it's not unbelievable (considering all the hacking that went on).

And I can't answer for anyone else, credible evidence that would merit investigation would include:

Significant vote swings in areas that can't be statistically explained by demographics or that don't match similar swings in similar demographics

Changes between unofficial results and official results that show a pattern of changing the results in precincts/counties predominately from one candidate to another

Official results that show significant increases/decreases in turnout that can't be statistically explained by demographics or that don't match similar increases/decreases in similar demographics

And of course, any indication from local, state or federal electoral or intel that there were any type of intrusions into electoral systems (voting, counting, registration, etc.) on election day.

The machine hacking was the same crap that had been done for years with the Diebolt machine. You don't need Russia to do that, just corrupt republicans as usual. Imagining or trying to build up some big Russian superhacker (who would actually have to be on site to deliver the patches) is ridiculous. The voting machines are not hooked up to the internet.


The same thing with the voter rolls. Greg Palast pointed out how some Republican led States shared a program that knocked people off with similar black sounding names by claiming they were voting in different states. They were de-registered to vote.

Again, this didn't require some big Russian vote stealing bear!

Yes, of course the Russians did hit social media a bit and did a propaganda blitz. (just like everyone else)

But if you want to know who stole the election then look at your fellow Americans.

frantically trying to squash any conversation about looking into the voting anomalies that have been found. He seems very invested in characterizing those conversations as hysterical accusations of a stolen election, when in fact they are simply conversations calling for examination of the voting anomalies that have been found.

And yes. There was so much crap going on that it would irresponsible NOT to look into any anomalies. That doesn't mean that we necessarily expect that investigations would put Hillary in the White House, though it wouldn't particularly surprise me if audits found major cheating. But it is important for the nation that people feel that their vote is safe.

Some people seem very, very invested in characterizing that wish for transparency as stupidity or blinkered politics. It is neither.

Definitely hasn't gone unnoticed.

Was "password." It was probably the KGB who hacked him, but it sure didn't take a computer scientist to do it.

but it said basically that Podesta fell victim to a phishing scheme, and basically gave them his password.

I'll see if I can find the article.

1) August was a critical month for the Clinton Camp - they dropped the ball.

2) They should have prepared for this year being the first year without Voting Rights Act in place and mobilized the Carolinas and other Southern States - they dropped the ball again.

3) A targeted campaign to retake the house should have started way back in 2013 and hooked onto the eventual Nominee. We had a 30 seat deficit ( this should have been the focus)

4) The DNC should not have played favorites I suppose - but Bernie also should not have barged into the party at the last minute demanding change and demanding the Democrats change their platform to suit his agenda. Joining the partya year before an election and using it as a vehicle for your political ambitions - when did he pay his dues like everybody else? You don't do that, you don't EVER do that. That is a poor strategy and it divided the party. A party divided cannot stand.

5) There needed to be a cohesive counter argument to the nonsense populism coming out of Trump's piehole - unfortunately some of it was also coming out of Bernie's piehole.

-- And I don't know why you're dismissive about the impact of the other things..

1) the BenGhazi witch hunt had an effect, Hillary's favorability ratings was sailing high two years ago.
2)the bullshit email scandal had an effect - it should piss off every democrat that one of our stalwarts was hounded over this
3)the leak of hacked private correspondence between private citizens running a political campaign had an effect, it reinforced in people's mind the attacks against Hillary of her being a "liar" and "corrupt" , even though the the contents of the emails aren't all that shocking. Worse yet her nuanced positions on energy, trade and politics was truncated and spun into damaging soundbytes -
4) FBI bullshit from Comey. Hillary was on a strong upward trajectory before Comey's letter hit, she was outside the margin of error. The letter and the poor reporting of it, and a week of suspect leaks from the FBI from agents with an agenda, talk about Hillary being indicted, affected the momentum of her campaign. It was a week of total bullshit. After Trump heralding the FBI for "Finally doing their job" , Comey's second letter reinforced in the mind of his supporters the myth that the FBI is rigged in Hillary's favor and they came out to vote.
5) Russian interference - which should PISS OFF EVERY AMERICAN ( see point 3)

I actually think there were a number of factors in the loss, including the ones you mentioned, although I think sexism and racism drove a lot of the factors.

We're supposed to pretend racism and sexism doesn't exist though.

Yes, anytime laws are put in place that promote voter suppression, they should be fought in court. But at the same time, we should be ensuring that we reach out to the people who are being suppressed. Helping people obtain the required ID...maybe that means we pay for the birth certificate copies or for the state issued ID. Being available outside of polling locations to ensure that those who have to cast provisional ballots meet the timeline for providing proof...maybe that means driving someone to the centralized election HQ to provide the ID, maybe it means helping the voter obtain the required ID so that their provisional ballot is counted.

It's critical to fight to overturn the laws, but it's equally critical to try to blunt the impact on suppressed populations while the laws are being fought out in court or in the state legislatures.

I knew we were in trouble when a memo among NC republicans was leaked showing them happy.. HAPPY .. that turn out about AA's was low.

Our politics is sick to the core.

schedule that was obviously created to favor Hillary who was already the well known front runner.

The DNC made a new rule limiting debates by not allowing debates not created by the DNC.

In 2007 we had had over 13 debates in the same time frame before we had our first debate in 2015.

It was a blatant effort to shut ANYONE else out who would challenge Hillary and it worked very well...

The shitty things the DNC did to Bernie beyond that was just icing on the cake....

Please Read:

http://www.newsweek.com/myths-cost-democrats-presidential-election-521044

"The first big criticism this year was that the DNC had sponsored “only” six debates between Clinton and Bernie Sanders in some sort of conspiracy to impede the Vermont senator. This rage was built on ignorance: The DNC at first announced it would sponsor six debates in 2016, just as it had in 2008 and 2004. (In 2012, Barack Obama was running for re-election. Plus, while the DNC announced it would sponsor six debates in 2008, only five took place.) Debates cost money, and the more spent on debates, the less available for the nominee in the general election. Plus, there is a reasonable belief among political experts that allowing the nominees to tear each other down over and over undermines their chances in the general election, which is exactly what happened with the Republicans in 2012.

Still, in the face of rage by Sanders supporters, the number of DNC-sponsored debates went up to nine—more than have been held in almost 30 years. Plans for a 10th one, scheduled for May 24, were abandoned after it became mathematically impossible for Sanders to win the nomination.

Notice that these were only DNC-sponsored debates. There were also 13 forums, sponsored by other organizations. So that’s 22 debates and forums, of which 14 were only for two candidates, Clinton and Sanders. Compare that with 2008: there were 17 debates and forums with between six and eight candidates; only six with two candidates, less than half the number in 2016. This was a big deal why?

The next conspiracy theory embraced by Bernie-or-Busters was that the DNC-sponsored debates were all held on nights no one would watch. Two took place on a Saturday, two on Sunday, three on a Thursday, one on a Tuesday and one on a Wednesday. In 2008, the DNC scheduled two on a Monday (one was canceled), and one each on a Sunday, Wednesday, Tuesday and Thursday. Not including any of the 2016 forums, there were 72 million viewers for the DNC-sponsored debates, almost the same amount—75 million viewers—as there were for every debate in 2008, including those sponsored by other organizations. And those Saturday debates, which Sanders fans howled no one would watch, were the third- and fifth-most watched debates (one of them was 3 percent away from being the fourth-most watched).In other words, the argument that the DNC rigged the debates is, by any rational analysis, garbage. For those who still believe it, hats made of tin foil are available on Amazon.Next, the infamous hack of DNC emails that “proved” the organization had its thumb on the scale for Clinton. Perhaps nothing has been more frustrating for people in the politics business to address, because the conspiracy is based on ignorance."

that important fact and claim that there more sanctioned debates. He deliberately refuses to discuss the many non sanctioned debates we had in previous years and focus soley on the limited DNC sanctioned debates.

We had 13 debates in the spring and summer of 2007. In 2015 we had ZERO debates in the spring and summer.

threatening to primary the first AA president for a year weekly on the airwaves and decades of saying shitty things about the Democratic party because he answers to no one.

I always felt a little bad for DWS for having to go on TV and talk about our Democratic candidates when really there was only one. Shocking the DNC wasn't eager to launch Bernard into the White House.

social programs. It had absolutely NOTHING to do with Obama's race.

Representative John Conyers was also upset with Obama's willingness to cut these programs.

In fact he was so pissed that he even threatened a massive march on the White House to keep the president from putting social security and medicare up for cuts:

This crazy entitlement BS again.

If Bernie was serious he should have joined the party 4 years ago, he came in like a wrecking ball and was shocked - SHOCKED - that there were dems who resisted.

What about democrats like me who disagree with some of the things on the progressive platform?

He came in at the last minute - didn't pay his dues - and his supporters acted entitled as if he was owed the Nomination compared to a woman who worked hard for the DEMS for over 30 years.

Sanders needed to : Join the Democratic party years ago, Work on convincing and swaying Democrats to his ideas, Use his platform to address the house deficit , flesh out his ideas with sound policy positions. ...heck..

You want Clinton supporters to reflect, how about you reflect on what Sanders could have done differently so that we didn't have a house divided in an incumbent year?

Frankly, any Democrat who proposes cutting Medicare or Social Security should be primaried. Secondly, Sanders made that comment in response to a caller's question on the Thom Hartman show. The very next week he admitted it was a mistake to discuss primarying President Obama.

Bernie said it, it was conditional on Obama cutting Social Security, which he didn't end up doing-- and Bernie walked it back almost immediately.

So, when you repeat distorted made-up SHIT like that,
you lose all credibility.

If Obama had agreed to cut Social Security benefits,
he would have DESERVED to be primaried.

Friday ritual - Take a bath, listen to Brunch w/ Bernie. Then the non-stop trashing of our president started - caller after caller Bernard took the time to take nasty shots at Obama. Never republicans, just our president and the party.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/evanmcsan/the-obama-campaign-remembers-2012-very-differently-from-bern?utm_term=.kswO0RO3w#.uma9xR95q

Here's this gem - took him two months to campaign for Hillary, just two days to work with Trump.

Let me just suggest this. I think that there are millions of Americans who are deeply disappointed in the president, who believe that with regard to Social Security and a number of other issues, he has said one thing as a candidate and is doing something very much else, who cannot believe how weak he has been — for whatever reason — in negotiating with Republicans, and there’s deep disappointment.


Notice "throughout 2011"

In May 2012, Sanders’s support for the idea of a progressive primary against Obama, which was prevalent in national interviews with Sanders throughout 2011. In November 2011, Politico reported “liberals like Sen. Bernie Sanders are declining to give their unqualified support for the president.”

But Sanders did use talk of a progressive primary of Obama to send sharp criticisms his way in 2011. And at least once he said, “I am now giving thought to doing it.” (finally he admitted that mystery "progressive" he wanted to primary Obama was him)

"I think one of the reasons that the president has been able to move so far to the right is that there is no primary opposition to him, and I think it would do this country a good deal of service if people started thinking about candidates out there to begin contrasting what is a progressive agenda as opposed to what Obama is doing,” Sanders said on radio host Thom Hartman's show in 2011.
http://www.businessinsider.com/bernie-sanders-obama-primary-challenge-2015-11

From The Nation and the word "continues"

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders CONTINUES to argue that a Democratic primary challenge to President Obama would be “good for democracy and for the Democratic Party.”

“I do a radio show every week. Over a million people hear it in almost every state in the country. Those are working-class people, progressive people. There is a lot of disillusionment. They want the president to stand up for the middle class, for the working class of this country, and they want him to take on big money interests in a way that he has not done up to this point.”

If it wasn't one thing it was another - trashing Democrats never Republicans - took him 2 months to go on the road for Hillary and 2 days to cozy up to Trump.

Half truths make you look bad

And it's all true.

It seems that what the OP is trying to get at is a desire to say "Told Ya So!" and a claim that we should have babied the Bernie supporters more or given the nomination to the person who didn't get the most votes.

The DNC absolutely should not have played favorites, but the kind of people who say things like "b-b-but, I was told we weren't wanted or needed!" are the kind of people who frankly deserve a President Trump.

And then there are the people who think we should kowtow to voters who feel that "gay marriage" is being forced on them.

These people ignore major realities about the FBI, Russia/Wikileaks, the rise of fake news and Hillary having an affair with some guy named Ben Ghazi.

The fact that it is conventional wisdom does not prevent it from being completely wrong.

Since the primaries in 2008 I have been telling folks that Hillary Clinton was good for 48% of the vote. This 48% would be and turned out to be impervious to anything. She was unlikely to get more than 48% and short of being in jail on election day unlikely to get much less.

None of this stuff, Bernie, Benghazi, Comey, the Russians, did anything at all, Hillary at latest count got 48.1%.

The question that needed consistent sharp focus by her campaign was how to turn 48% of the vote into a victory. It had nothing to do with spending lots of time chasing North Carolina. Playing around with AZ, GA and TX were wastes of time and money. She never even went to WI.

The right approach had to do with putting MI, WI, and PA to bed, in short doing the work to make the "blue wall" impenetrable. She let the polls mislead her and failed to keep in mind that she was essentially a 48% candidate, and to live within those simple means. She needed to focus on putting the election away with the voters she already had. She had all the voters she needed to win for a decade, she needed to keep humble and use them. This meant working hard in places most democrats have not needed to work in and ignoring the temptation to expand the map.

That make us lose. It was hidden.

I don't think anyone is maintaining that they were the only reasons, but they are certainly important reasons.

Also you forgot one: they are dumb as dishwater and voted for the person who is guaranteed to make their lives suck even harder.

1. The VRA hadn't been gutted there would've been 868 more voting places, mostly in dem areas. So yeah bcuz of that & voter suppression typical in gop counties, that counts as cheating.

2. Review trump rallies, the confederacy flags, the anti immigration bigots & look at the racist anti-semite cockroaches that came outta the woodwork. trump did that. He gave them voice & reason to vote like no other gop candidate ever did before. So yes bigotry & racism were very much amplified.

3. HRC won the popular vote. That's not saying she, like every candidate for any office ever, didn't make mistakes. Show me a flawless candidate. Winning the popular vote however gives #s 1 & 2 above much more weight than her missteps. All on top of fighting wikileaks, russia, fbi holy shit any lesser candidate would've melted down in week 1 of that onslaught. So MAYBE just maybe cutting HRC some slack just doesn't cut it. She deserves our deepest respect.

4. Fucking genx women already low-info racists & bigots in those red swing states are, imho, gender traitors big time. But that's jmo. https://www.buzzfeed.com/wendyluwrites/hereas-why-gen-x-women-should-care-about-feminis-m9sd?utm_term=.qgQrwzx7Zz#.rtNnQGXaZG

5. Sometimes i think that talking to those disaffected economically suffering voters in the red swing states is impossible. Their jobs aren't coming back. More & more jobs will be lost to AI/robotics. And these people don't and may never adapt to new opportunities. They're set in their confined conservative xtian ways & any knowledge that challeges that dogma is rejected. Instead of dishonest promises, dems should start including ubi & more educational opportunities? IDK the answer, but i do know you can't hobble the whole country for them.

The Millennials are still the progressive demographic that can save us and they aren't going to be excited about voting for another 'grandpa' or 'grandma' to see to their interests.

Maybe that sounds horribly unfair but I'm starting to think we need to reset the DNC board to a greater extent than we thought.

Obama had the energy and charisma we needed. People were excited about him. Millennials were excited to vote for him. We need to replicate that everywhere, for Congressional and Presidential elections.

I'm sorry but it's time for the oldsters running the DNC to stand down and let a younger set take over. For the greater good.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font][hr]

Matter in politics. Politics are dirty and mean, and are rarely fair.

The Republicans began spoiling Clinton's presidential run not with Comey or Benghazi, but when her husband ran for governor in 1978. A lot of us believed that having that much baggage was definitely bad, and that she was probably unable to overcome the decades long slander. And she wasn't able, at least not in the upper Midwest.

[hr][font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font][hr]

is a remarkable achievement.

Be proud.

by focusing only on DNC sanctioned debates facts while completely omitting the fact that the DNC made a major rule change not allowing the candidates to debate in non DNC sanctioned debates.

Yes we had a couple more sanctioned debates. But overall we had far fewer debates than in 2007-2008 because there were no non sanctioned debates.

In 2007 we had over 13 debates in the same time frame before we had our first debate in 2015.

Eichenwald's blatant manipulation of the facts makes his whole article just a bunch of lame excuses for the obvious manipulation of the primary by the DNC. He deserves credit for producing feel good propaganda for those that want to deny the truth of what really happened.

How about how scheduling the debates two months after the first repuke debate allowed them to get more free media and for them to set the narrative and frame the issues for the election and thereby damage ALL democratic candidates? No matter who the candidate would be, this sort of nonsense actually helped no one! The republicans were too chicken to go after Trump. wouldn't mocking them later that week or the next week have diminished that entire party?

And of course the exclusivity clause forced all non-Hillary candidates to play by the limited and marginalized debate schedule or be knocked out of all future debates. This was really, really, stupid.

Never turn down free media access. Never!

What Kurt fails to realize or blindly over looks is the fact that Bernie didn't deliver this young coalition to himself. They didn't show up for him so why would they show up for Hillary? They didn't turn out for anyone but keep their lazy ass at home.

Hillary made numerous policy proposals that would have improved the lives of the very people who voted against her. The television media wouldn't cover them.

They spent more time covering emails than all other issues combined.

Even Hillary's line about a basket of "deplorables" was taken out of context. The bulk of what she was saying was how we need to reach out to the people who feel left behind. The media ignored Hillary's "other basket". Here's what she said:

"But the other basket -- and I know this because I see friends from all over America here -- I see friends from Florida and Georgia and South Carolina and Texas -- as well as, you know, New York and California -- but that other basket of people are people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they're just desperate for change. It doesn't really even matter where it comes from. They don't buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won't wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they're in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well."

But you can say all the right things, propose all the right policies, and have the very best of intentions, but if the television media refuses cover it, it's hard to get the message out.

to define their campaigns in 140 characters or less.

"And we'll be back, right after this."

it was there, easily found, for anyone who had any interest in seeing what Hillary stood for and how she would help these people we are currently tying ourselves in knots over.

The thing we are not saying out loud is that they simply didn't want to know what she stood for. We are all wringing our hands over how much we didn't address their "suffering." But if their "suffering" was the real reason behind their vote, they would have spent two minutes to see where the candidates stood on issues that affect them. They didn't care even enough to do that. They couldn't drop their prejudices even long enough to find out who would actually help them.

They are waiting for a white knight to swoop in and put everything back to 1959. Everyone knows that isn't going to happen and most of us, the majority of Americans, the Hillary voters, know that SHOULDN'T happen. But Trump lied and told them that's what he would make happen. And they ate it up. They were lazy. They fell for the spiel of the snake oil salesman.

That's not on us. That's on them.

When Ed Koch lost his last election for mayor of NYC, he said, "The people have spoken and now they must pay." And I don't think any of us doubts just how much they will pay, because we will be paying along with them.

But sometimes the people are just stupid and lazy. That's what happened here. And we can't stop them from being lazy and stupid. And the last thing we should be asking ourselves and each other to do is to pander to their laziness and stupidity.

I never heard the second part of the comment. I had no idea it even existed. It is outrageous that the first part was all over the media, while the second part was nowhere to be found. And now, all we hear is that Hillary didn't pay attention to the suffering of the white working class.

That M$M dumbed down the coverage to make it more like a reality TV show than a serious matter.

majority of governorships and the vast majority of state legislatures ? I'm listening.

to the republicans. MSNBC was the first network to pick it up and misreport it as breaking news, "The FBI was reopening the email investigation". That was a blatant LIE. MSNBC then proceeded to parade every right wing politician across their screen to re-enforce that LIE. Soon the other networks jumped right on board with the same distortion and LIE.

After several days the story started to calm down some, but that didn't stop the fake-news outlets from facebook or other social networks

Then fox news' bret baier reported that "according to his sources in the FBI, an indictment was pending against the Clinton Foundation". Another lie, and 2 days later bret baier apologized for the report which wasn't true. Rachel Maddow from MSNBC was so taken with bret baier's apology, she "gushed" how he was such a terrific reporting for admitting a mistake, and really couldn't be blamed for that false report, because "we all make mistakes". Not surprisingly though, in spite of baier's retraction, fox news continued to spew that lie, along with other outlets, including the fake-news from Facebook, Twitter, and Google news.

Then there is that dirty little secret that no one seems to talk about, that a significant number of Sanders' supporters refused to vote for Hillary. So much for the influence that Bernie supposedly had. The fact the Zypher Teachout lost by 10%, and Russ Feingold lost only puts emphasis on that point.

That every establishment republican incumbent running for Senate in the swing states won against the Democrat, is also quite curious.

Take Michigan. Hillary lost by .3%. Jill Stein received 1.1% of the vote. A similar situation in Wisconsin, and other critical states.

Between the FBI and those self-identified progressives who refused to vote for Hillary, this isn't rocket science.

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_58385d81e4b000af95ee1fda

It is the Electoral College, period.

I hear all this critique of gerrymandering, but abolishing the EC would have the same, no worse, impact at a national level.

3 states cannot, and should not, be determining the presidency.

Popular votes are vanity contests.

It's fine to have issues with the EC. I myself have issues with it, but it's not going anywhere and we all know how you win. 270 or more electoral votes is what is needed for a candidate to claim they won.

And with a DJT presidency, we all lose.

"So I guess Clinton and the DNC contributed nothing to this loss."

they specifically sowed dissent in the Dem party.

Tons of misleading articles were written about those leaks too, and how the primary election was stolen. I bet a lot of those came from dubious sources.

My prediction - they will 1) console themselves that they won the popular vote, 2) tell themselves the root causes you listed, over & over again, & 3) continue with business as usual.

If you have time, watch this Van Jones video. It's really worth it. He nails it completely about the Trump vote & has some ideas on how to move forward. Democratic leadership would be wise to listen to him & others, like Michael Moore, who also called this election for Trump.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017412280

It's kind of long, but you can watch it at 1.5 times the speed - I just discovered that.

lies not in our stars, but in ourselves.

explode, maybe ALL THESE THINGS are true.

Maybe Clinton and DNC contributed to the loss,

AND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rs cheated, are racists, etc.

BOTH/AND.

How on earth can we fix problems if we cant clearly, lucidly look at ALL the things that went wrong?

There were all ready a gazillion threads on those.

But nothing about what WE did wrong. OK?

You said Clinton and the DNC. There is nothing in the OP that suggests you are considering your own contributions or lack thereof.

This piece was first published in Jacobin under the headline ‘Garbage In, Garbage Out.’

'It is now becoming clear that Clinton’s ground game — the watchword for defenders of her alleged competence — was actually under-resourced and poorly executed. Like so much else in this election, her field strategy was hostage to the colossal arrogance and consequent incompetence of the liberal establishment.

At the heart of the failure was the notion of the “new emerging majority.” According to this argument — pushed by, among others, John Judis and Ruy Teixeira — women, Latinos, blacks, and skilled professionals who support the Democrats were becoming the demographic majority. Thus the traditional white working-class base of the Democratic Party could be sidelined.

Back in July Chuck Schumer summed it up: “For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.”

From this theory and strategy flowed a deeply flawed set of tactics, and a badly fumbled get-out-the-vote (GOTV) effort.

A labor organizer in Ohio, who wished to remain anonymous, reports that Clinton’s early GOTV effort there focused on Republicans in the mistaken belief a significant number of them could be peeled away. This play largely failed. And it also involved serious opportunity costs: traditional Democratic constituencies like African Americans and the white working class were neglected, and Clinton ended up badly under-performing Obama among both groups, especially in the Rust Belt.

Only in the last two weeks, according to this labor source, did the Democratic Party outreach effort really switch back to traditional Democratic voters. By then, it was too late. Due to lack of preparation, the voter lists guiding the effort had not been updated. Because poorer voters tend to relocate more frequently than home-owning suburbanites, many addresses were wrong. And for lack of more frequent contact the campaign was often unsure about the voters’ current political attitudes.

And when the campaign finally showed up in the African-American, Latino, and white working-class areas they got lots of “so you only come by once every four years?”'>>>

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-hubris-of-the-clinton-ground-game_us_5831cebce4b099512f835e78

as part of the volunteer ground game. We showed up weekend after weekend in African American, working class, and working poor neighborhoods. We re-registered voters who had been thrown off the rolls due to new laws that were implemented after the gutting of the Voting Rights Act and helped people devise election day plans to enable them to get to the polls. I had friends working Ohio, and they were doing the same type of outreach for months in advance of the election.

The author of the HuffPo piece certainly seems to have an anti-Clinton ax to grind. Next time he should do something besides pontificate and belittle other people's efforts after the fact.

'Clinton’s ground game.'

is that it is a genuine, costly hardship for some people to vote because in certain places the system has devised clever (but legal) obstacles that prevent them from exercising their franchise. I got a good look at exactly how privileged I am. I respectfully suggest that the author of the Huffpo screed do the same.

When the author of the Huffpo piece belittles the ground game, he is belittling me. I was the ground game. The author should be examining how Trump managed to win without ever setting up anything resembling an organization.

I guess it helps to have a propaganda arm in Breitbart News, a complicit MSM that covers rallies and ignores policy speeches, pundits who criminalize mistakes and normalize outright sexism and bigotry, and unprecedented meddling from an FBI director and a foreign government. And even with all this, Clinton got more votes than anyone.

It just seems odd to blame Clinton's "arrogance" for the loss. I know that this critique plays well in some circles and that some in those circles were secretly rooting for a Trump win as some sort of vindication of their own entitlement, but it doesn't help all those people who found it onerous to vote, made their best efforts nonetheless, and counted on the privileged to get over their snit and do the right thing.

I'll say it again.

I was the ground game, and I'll stack my efforts to fight the good fight in the interests of my country and my fellow countrymen and women against the author's any day of the week.

That is exactly what it takes. Everyone pitching in rather than simply pointing fingers.

Where was it undersourced? I wasn't in a swing state and they were active here many months before the election. Did you volunteer in your area? You know that "hubris of the ground game" depends on volunteers. How many calls did you make? How many doors did you knock on? If you didn't volunteer, then you know where the problem lies.

The author of the article doesn't seem to know much about working on turn out efforts. There are some comments in there that indicate to me he's never done it at all.

Not Your Grandmothers Wisconsin

*As much as Mr. Trump won the election in Wisconsin, Hillary Clinton lost it. Her campaign, which prided itself on employing all the data wizards and ground game gurus money can buy, did not do nearly enough to lock down the upper Midwest, particularly Wisconsin and Michigan, and instead treated those states as a given.

Paul Soglin is the mayor of Madison, Wisconsin’s capital city, in cerulean Dane County. He supported Senator Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary, and said he talked at least once a week with a field organizer from the Sanders campaign during the primary. But once Mrs. Clinton locked up the nomination, it was radio silence from the Clinton campaign.

“Since I first held elected office in the early ’70s, virtually every presidential election, I’ve been contacted, either by the candidate or by a staffer,” he told me. “I’m not saying this to say I’m important. But the point is, not only wasn’t she in the state, but I never got a call, a contact, anything after the primary.”'>>>

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/22/opinion/campaign-stops/not-your-grandmothers-wisconsin.html?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1016171309

Many in Milwaukee Neighborhood Didnt Vote and Dont Regret It.

MILWAUKEE — Four barbers and a firefighter were pondering their future under a Trump presidency at the Upper Cutz barbershop last week.

“We got to figure this out,” said Cedric Fleming, one of the barbers. “We got a gangster in the chair now,” he said, referring to President-elect Donald J. Trump.

They admitted that they could not complain too much: Only two of them had voted. But there were no regrets.

“I don’t feel bad,” Mr. Fleming said, trimming a mustache. “Milwaukee is tired. Both of them were terrible. They never do anything for us anyway.” . .

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1016171204

I would comment more but ...........

So what are you worrying about anyway? Wasn't the point to defeat her? We were told that all ills in the Democratic Party and in fact the nation derived personally from her. So what other problem could there possibly be? What is iit you want people to say? They should relinquish their independent votes in the future and vote as you demand?

One part of me agrees with you. The level of finger pointing has been intense to say the least.

And the other part wants to be fair and point out that any true introspection will come after Trump is sworn in. And I would be saying this regardless the potential 3 state audit.

I will also say that I have been surprised by some of the posters here with whom I've tangled with who have prescribed some guilt to Hillary and the DNC.

was she supposed to say to the 150,000-some voters in the battlegrouns who decided misogyny and racism were more important than their health and well-being?

Ie anything but the candidate or her campaign

Ask Bill and he'll tell you the DNC ignored the rust belt. DNC including Hill laughed at him. Don't underestimate voter suppression and long lines. Why the Democrats don't do something about that is beyond me. Just arrogant belief they couldn't lose I guess. It was obviously a change election - obvious to Sanders supporters. Too bad no one on the DNC was paying attention.

Watch for a really good, clarifying look at the election: https://www.c-span.org/video/?418406-1/year-voting-dangerously
You don't have to like Dowd (the messenger) but her insights and knowledge gained as an insider cannot be disputed.