Okay.
The question we should be asking ourselves is: why did the Democratic Party put its thumb on the scale to nominate the one person the Republican Party was sure it could beat?
Why?
Because whatever her qualifications she was a Clinton, and was always going to be carrying the baggage of having supported NAFTA, which was going to be electoral death in the Rust Belt. The Republicans new that. They banked on that. It would not have mattered if she had cured cancer - her name equaled lost jobs, equaled a crime bill that put tens of thousands of young Black men away, and a Welfare Bill that made it harder for those least well off. The DNC only saw "Clinton" as an eight-years-in-the-White-House brand, but not as a brand that had undermined their support in the Rust Belt. They made a strategically conservative choice with a name-brand candidate who, despite her years in Washington, had only negative name recognition with Midwestern workers.
The Democratic candidate who polled best with those workers, who had not supported NAFTA, who had always been on the side of those Rust Belt workers, and who would not have to struggle to whip up enthusiasm - that candidate the DNC undermined in favor of the one the Republicans knew was wounded.
"Too smart by half" is a saying that indicates that someone has over planned, over thought, tried to be so clever that they end up ensuring their own failure. That's what the DNC did. They tried to replace a popular movement with a cult of personality, without seeing that the personality they picked was in a hole with a significant segment of the country. If they had simply let the process honestly play out and Clinton had gotten the nomination she would have been strengthened. Instead, through no fault of her own, she benefitted from a tilted playing field, which in turn played into the meme of her untrustablilty. This didn't keep Sanders voters away, but it kept her from winning independents and undecideds. It looked bad. And appearing to be designated by the DNC higher-ups was, in this case, exactly the definition of “elite,” which the RNC gleefully used. The problem was it fit. The Billionaire was the populist, who ran against the his Party’s elite, while the Dems choice looked like one calculated in a back room among her Party’s powerful.
So though I honestly think that Clinton, while qualified, was not as inspiring a candidate as she could have been I also believe she was hamstrung by a tainted process reenforcing some people's distrust of her. And, as I've said before, the Republicans really wanted to run against her because they anticipated her weakness in the Rust Belt. They wanted to run against her 2008, but Obama came out of nowhere, and they had no ammunition against him.
Do I think any of this will convince anyone to just fucking listen to us next time? Do I think that all the Liberals will question their own wisdom and vote for the passionate, never-called-themselves-a-moderate progressive next time? Do I think the Republicans won't be able to run circles around the DNC again, getting them to nominate which ever wounded duck the RNC knows it can beat? Someone that will be presented as the "sensible" choice, the wise choice, the "you must be a some kinda bigot if you don't vote for them" choice, anything but not the blazing progressive choice?
We told you so. We fucking told you so, but will you listen to us next time? No. Because there won't be a next time.
So when December ends pop your corks, drink your champagne, and party like it's 1932, because the Democratic Party just allowed the storm troopers to recruit a big chunk of the Working Class. And they did it because they are strategically inept, and because they didn't want their standard bearer to be a Socialist. And they hypnotized themselves and their adherents into believing that the Socialist's very high likeabilty ratings were a mirage, and that their designated candidates very low like ability ratings were easy to overcome. They just wantedwantedwanted a Clinton so badly, and didntdidntdidnt want the old Socialist so much that they, and perhaps you, refused to believe those polls, those voices, that rumbling. Each new poll that said that only one person of the three was seen as honest, ethical - that could not penetrate the self-delusion. The DNC knowingly ran an unpopular candidate, tailor made for an RNC that needed an opponent to whom the “elite” tag would stick. That's really not deniable. But will they learn from that? Will all those who denigrated the more progressive choice question their acumen? Of course fucking not.
Next time they will pick another Wall Street Dem who will, again, have no connection to the workers who suffered under the profit-driven insanity that is destroying their lives, and that person will promise to not challenge any status-quo. They will probably be a Southern, humble beginnings millionaire. And there won't be a Sanders in that race, there won't be someone who ACTUALLY was part of the progressive movement for decades, someone trusted and liked. Instead another corporate Dem in jeans when talking to workers, looking desperate to seem common.
We had a chance, people, and it slipped through our fingers. We were cheated, and too many were okay with that for some fucking reason. And now we are lost. Arts funding? The EPA? Roe v. Wade? The Supreme Court? Department of Education? Free Speech? We lost all that as soon as the DNC was allowed to tip the balance. It was unethical, and after that the Dems couldn't convince independent voters they or their candidate could be trusted.
NAFTA and the appearance of chicanery killed Clinton in the Midwest, and liberal Democrats let it happen because they thought the popular, ethical, Socialist couldn't win.
We fucking told you.
