As much as everyone might have thought Hillary Clinton wanted to be President, I’ve always been of the opinion that she actually had a tough time deciding to run in 2016. I’m pretty sure that she would have been happy to retire from politics and not go through a grueling campaign. However, we begged her to run, in part because she had amazing poll numbers at the time. I was relieved when she announced she would run because I was concerned we didn’t have a good second choice. This campaign was hard for her and she did her best to win for us, not for herself.
So, thank you Hillary Clinton for tying to win for us.
We should not simply say evil/racism/hate won. It didn’t. It is clear from some of the results that Clinton lost counties in the Midwest that went for Obama. These areas where the margin of victory/failure occurred are evidence that this wasn’t all about race. These areas switched their votes because their concerns were not being addressed.
I don’t want to redo the primary. However, I think we definitely need to look at how we all failed to win the presidency and both houses of Congress. No one knows if Sanders would have won. I would argue that he would have performed better in Wisconsin and Michigan, where we ultimately lost (he lost PA, but the primary race was over by then). Clinton cleaned up in the south where we got zero electoral votes in the general. All across the country, Sanders overperformed in the rural areas while Clinton did best in the urban areas. We lost the general in the rural areas. Sanders did best with young voters. Millennials didn’t turn out the way we needed them to in the general. All of this points to things we need to work on in the future.
If we ever intend to win Congress, we have to be attractive to rural Americans. We cannot rely on urban areas to carry us. Gerrymandering has made it so that we can win the urban areas with big numbers, but still loose most of the House. The natural division of states means that there are more rural dominated states than urban dominated states, making winning the Senate very difficult. We need to concentrate on improving our results with rural Americans.
We cannot rely on demographic changes to carry us. The changes are occurring too slowly. They are too concentrated in particular areas (much like the urban vote). We need to stop concentrating on defining our coalitions and campaigns by what race our supporters are. This will always be a central part of the internal campaign, but should NOT be how the campaign is presented to the public. Much of this is the media’s fault, but I would also argue that Sanders avoided this successfully, while Clinton did not. We must define our campaigns by a central theme that appeals to rural Americans and urban Americans if we want to have any chance of winning.
These are my first thoughts on how to go forward. I expect this to drop down the list of other people’s contributions today, but I felt the need to speak my mind and hope it might provide guidance to some people in the future.