As a college professor, I hear a lot of excuses for poor academic performance. They sometimes reference circumstances outside the students control, such as, "I was sick," or "My boss made me work on my day off". My all time favorite was when a student told me that his grandparents forced him to schedule a trip to the Bahamas over an exam. The excuses sometimes reference unfair course or assignment requirements, such as "This exam was much harder than I realized," or "I didn't expect that this element was so important."
With the end of the semester approaching, a new pattern of whining and complaining will certainly emerge. After I post the final scores, students who are very close to getting a higher grade contact me to haggle over points on the final exam or assignment. They tell me that they should have the opportunity for extra credit or that I should be more lenient on a question on the final because a mistake at the end shouldn't cost them a higher grade that they earned. What I point out to them is that their final grade is not solely determined by an event at the end of the semester. In fact, I design my classes so any one assignment doesn't have such heavy weight. When I get this email, I point out to them all of the classes they missed, all of the extra credit assignments they didn't complete, and all of the other mistakes they made throughout their semester. The final grade is reflection of their performance throughout the semester and pinning the blame on me for what happened the final week may be psychologically comforting to themselves, but does not reflect reality. I often tell them: "This is the grade you earned. Own it."
I thought about this when I watched Jake Tapper's interview with Kellyanne Conway and Robby Mook this morning. During the interview, I also thought of Joe Biden's joke about Rudy Guliani from 2008. Poor Robby, there are three things in a sentence for him: a noun, a verb, and James Comey. Robby repeatedly turned the discussion back to James Comey during the interview. The Clinton team also did this in the Harvard forum hosted on Thursday evening. When I read about the articles about the bickering between the two teams, I decided to listen to the whole thing while I was doing some data analysis--the stuff that doesn't require my full attention. The Clinton team has settled on a message which they have put on repeat: "We would have won if it weren't for James Comey."
That may be a psychologically comforting thought, much like the accusations of racism that is popular among smug, upper-class liberals, but the "Blame Comey" theme allows the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party to avoid taking responsibility for the mistakes they made throughout the campaign cycle. They bungled a winnable election against the most unpopular candidate to ever run for the presidency. Hillary Clinton herself made a lot of mistakes--using her political power for own financial gain, setting up a private email server so she could control what constitutes "work" email, lying repeatedly to the public about it, flip-flopping on many issues that are so important to the Democratic base -- TPP (economy), the 1996 welfare reform bill (economy), the 1994 crime bill (criminal justice reform), and the Keystone XL pipeline (environment).
Another thing the campaign staff revealed was that the debates helped Hillary Clinton. When asked about their greatest regret during the general election campaign, Jennifer Palmieri and Karen Finney both said that they regretted not pushing for a fourth debate with Trump in late October. In fact, they said that debates helped Hillary during the primaries, as well (there are separate roundtables to discuss the primary and general election campaigns). Perhaps having allies in the DNC rig a primary schedule that would limit the exposure of Hillary's primary opponents wasn't such a great idea. But wait, James Comey.
Another thing that stood out to me was the claim that they knew Sanders was a threat much earlier than they seemed to let on publicly. One of the men on the roundtable--I can't remember if was Robby Mook or Joel Benensen--said they knew Bernie was a serious threat when he filed his first fundraising report. Why did they wait until he was surging in the fall to do anything about it? But wait, James Comey.
One final nugget that didn't make it on the news was that both campaigns did not like that the media kept saying Trump had no chance. The Clinton campaign suggested that the "inevitability" talk made voters complacent--depressing turnout and small-dollar fundraising. I don't remember them worrying about all those superdelegates coming out for them early to build up an "insurmountable" lead during the primaries.
At the end of the day, the rich, entitled assholes who helped engineer one of the greatest defeats for the progressive movement will not actually have to suffer any of the consequences. They have cushy lobbying and consulting jobs to protect them from the economic fallout, and as Zach from the DNC bluntly stated,
"You are part of the problem,” he continued, blaming Brazile for clearing the path for Trump’s victory by siding with Clinton early on. “You and your friends will die of old age and I’m going to die from climate change. You and your friends let this happen, which is going to cut 40 years off my life expectancy.”
Thanks Comey.
