This post-mortem does not involve any kind of ‘I Told You So’. But I am going to be very critical- so be forewarned. We Dems have bought into this ‘demographics is destiny’ mindset, and built an entire campaign around pandering to every non-white (or sometimes non white male) minority group out there, in the most transparent and obvious way. Of course nobody should be surprised when whites reacted and sent us a huge ‘F. U.’
Clinton’s entire campaign was built around assembling a minority firewall. This was done through rigorous data-mining; recruiting of prominent black, latino, women, muslims, asians, disabled, etc spokespeople; targetting the exact voting segments with audience tested advertising; promises of specific goodies to each constituent. All very scientific. And totally artificial and forced. It’s painting by the numbers. Even as a minority who is pandered to, I don’t feel particularly good about this approach to politics. Hillary Clinton is already a politician who is sorely lacking in authenticity and charisma. She looks even less sincere when she makes a big show of hugging this parade of minority faces. It is unconvincing to minorities, and downright off-putting to whites who have been left out of the hug fest.
The national headlines these past 3 years have been dominated by campus protests, Black Lives Matter, and the shooting of police officers. The campus protests mostly involved over-reaction to either clumsy wording by well meaning people (Claremont McKenna), or just plain outright hoaxes (KKK tweets at Missou), and demands which flew in the face of free speech (Prof Melissa Click, ‘safe space’, etc). The campus movements drew guffaws, but the real damage came with the BLM movement which followed. It was a tactical, and factual error, to have called it Black Lives Matter instead of All Lives Matter. Because white people suffered more police shootings than blacks, and Native Americans caught it the worst percent wise. It should have been a universal campaign against police violence, and those of us on the left should have spearheaded that effort. Instead it turned into another one of our ID politics grievance project yet again, to the detriment of both the cause, and our credibility. Furthermore- as it turns out- many of these cases were frankly of dubious merit. Mike Brown really was a robber who charged the policeman. Sandra Bland had a troubled personal, psychiatric and traffic violations history, and she commited suicide in jail. By leaping to conclusions we squandered our political capital and antagonized white people unnecessarily. And the protests which turned into riots certainly did not help anyone, except convince rural whites that America was going to heck in a hand basket, and that democrats were too busy coddling their favored minorities instead of protecting the rule of law.
The Clinton campaign was equally clumsy on the immigration question. In the past two years, people see on their TV screens 100’s of thousands of refugees clamoring ashore in Europe. They feel besieged, no different than the Brexit voters. Some feared terrorists slipping in. After Paris and Nice- you can’t say their fears were unfounded. The administration should have talked about the issue honestly- the USA, as the leader of NATO, has to make a token effort (and 10,000 is barely a token effort), when countries like Germany and Sweden are taking in 10X as many Syrians. Otherwise we have no credibility as the de facto leader of the anti-ISIS coalition. Frame the issue as a geopolitical necessity. Do not frame it as ‘We all love our peaceful, patriotic muslims and diversity makes us all better’, etc, etc. That does nothing to assauge white rural americans’ fears, or convince them that it is in their best interest to open their community to refugees.
The related immigration issues of H1B , L1 and J1 abuses- Clinton never brought these issues up even once. She was the head of the State Dept. How could she not know about these problems? When she keeps mum about these issues for fear of upsetting her ethnic firewall, people naturally see her as selling out our jobs for immigrant votes. Similarly on the amnesty question. Instead of defending it as a matter of ethnic pride, Clinton should have defended it on purely economic grounds. The best way to stop illegal immigrants from undercutting legal workers, is to make them all legal and subject to the same wage laws. The best way to stop the freeloading of services, is to turn formerly illegal immigrants into legal taxpayers. Best way to stop outflow of remittance, is to have legalized workers bring their families here. That’s how you sell an idea to an audience- you have to tell them it’s in their own best interest. Instead Clinton never even tried to sell this idea to white people. She thought she did not have to. In her mind she thought she only needed to hand this candy to the hispanic voters, and hand that candy to the black voters, etc. It never occurred to her that she had to sell the idea to white voters.
Finally, she pushed that idea of breaking the glass ceiling too overtly. As Scott Adams (it kills me to admit he was right) said- this was overselling. The fact that she was standing there running for president, says everything that needed to be said about that subject. People can see you are a woman. There is no need to trot out all these surrogates gushing about how historic it is and how proud their daughters are, etc. That can only prompt a backlash from men, and from jealoused women. As Scott Adams said- don’t ‘sell past the close’. Selling requires a light touch. The Clinton campaign seems incapable of a light touch.