… no, no, there is too much, lemme sum up.
Hillary Clinton won the election, right up to the moment she lost it: All her faults conspired, even against the noble intent of the electorate, to grab defeat from the very maw of victory.
Very shortly afterwards people began to murmur… “doesn’t this, rather surprising, result smell sort of sexist and racist…? Maybe the electorate isn’t half so noble as is made it out to be?”
The reply: ”nohellnofucknonofuckkenwayyou’reouttayourmind. Don’t be redonculous. It was the economic anxiety what made them do it!!! anybody can see that, duh-hurp”
Purely coincidentally…[insert ironic wink here]… 7 months later, newly emboldened white guys in Charlottesville, openly shouting ‘Jew will not replace us.” and “Blood and Soil,” and openly displaying the Nazi standard escalated the defense of a monument to Robert E. Lee into a riot, resulting in vehicular manslaughter.
Gradually, over time, ever-so-not-so-subtly, the aforementioned cries of “nohellnofucknonofuckkenwayyou’reouttayourmind.” have morphed into a mumbled “maybeyouwererightabouttheracismbutsowhat…?”
Which is where we’re at now. Progress, I guess, of a sort…
But the real kicker in terms of politics was how Trump himself reacted to Charlottesville. After that, there really is no way to wiggle out of support for him equaling being way too tolerant of these attitudes, which many of us were trying to say from the moment he descended that escalator.
In my view, the “real kicker in terms of politics” is, as the threadstarter points out, the extent of racism and bigotry in our society, and the extremes that we’ll go to in order to deny that.
Not ALL of us, but too many of us. Specifically, TOO MANY DEMOCRATS. The problem is NOT “how Trump himself reacted to Charlottesville”. Donald Trump is the easy out.
The real kicker is the myriad of ways that we wriggle in a desperate attempt to persuade ourselves that America is not racist, and that a SIGNIFICANT part of America’s support of the GOP is racist.
At the local and state level, America is overwhelmingly RED. The GOP holds an all-time high number of local and state offices. The response by that GOP to the flagrant and blatant racism of the nazis and white supremacists, and to Donald Trump’s embrace of them, is tepid and fleeting.
The real kicker in terms of politics is the refusal of the GOP to DO anything at all to address the flagrant racism of its elected leader.
When we talk of “progressive populism”, we MUST explicitly recognize that blacks and minorities feel the brunt of our obscene income concentration at TWICE the rate of whites. Gender bias is similarly pervasive across all racial and income groups.
Our nominee was exactly correct when she described a significant part of Donald Trump’s supporters as “deplorable”. That was NOT a gaffe, it was a display of selfless political courage.
In my view, it is crucial that we remind ourselves of that as we strive to regain our influence over America and its government.
Clinton’s loss was the price she paid for holding a mirror up to the face of America’s dirty secret : the racism, bigotry, sexism, and homophobia of ‘ the deplorables.’
Clinton’s loss was the price she paid for those $225,000 speeches to Goldman Sachs and the gala fundraisers at Provincetown with Cher…instead of speaking at the local Lion’s Club and meeting working class folks.
I would be willing to bet a substantial amount of money that Hillary Clinton, in 2016 alone, spoke at more local clubs (Lions or otherwise) than Donald Trump has in his entire lifetime. And I would go double or nothing on how many working class folks Hillary looked directly in the eye, in 2016, again over the entirety of Donald Trumps lifetime.
Silly man, you keep talking about actual facts.
Don’t you see that those facts don’t fit the
lienarrative being repeated yet again here?Bet all you want because it was not about Donald Trump. Both candidates had historically high negatives. Hillary and Bill never cared about the working class and probably still don’t, and neither does Trump who never will. Three peas in a pod, in many ways. So, yeah, she was not quite as horrible as Trump with regard to speaking at the Lions Club, but that’s a pretty low bar to set, isn’t it?
Hillary looked working class people directly in the eye and told them that health care as a right would never ever happen. Hillary looked at working people in the eye and opposed a national minimum wage of $15. Her husband looked working class people in the eye as he relaxed regulations on Wall Street, signed NAFTA and then tightened regulations on aid to poor working class people. Yup, looked us right in the eye…..
Don’t you ever get dizzy?
You explicitly stated, above, the reason Clinton lost. Here, let me quote you back to you (again).
This is you saying “A lost because she didn’t do X.”
Ok.
I said “A did X more than B did X,” implicitly asking (again) why, according to you, what A does, or doesn’t do, counts more against A than what B does or doesn’t do counts against B.
In case you’re still too dizzy to see it, let me be explicit:
YOU HAVE A DOUBLE STANDARD. YOU ARE SEXIST.
You are quite free to have your double standard, just as I am quite free to stop taking you at all seriously.
Yup, Clinton lost because the working class vote was up for grabs and she passed on that, preferring to pander to Wall Street and her celebrity fund raisers. Nothing sexist about it. That’s how she lost.
You complained that Ms. Clinton didn’t spend enough time “speaking at the local Lion’s Club and meeting working class folks”. Petr pointed out to you, correctly, that Ms. Clinton spent FAR MORE time doing just that than Mr. Trump.
Whatever it was that motivated the “working class vote” that you claim was up for grabs, it was NOT how many local Lion’s Club appearances the candidates made.
I’ve BEEN to local Lion’s club meetings. Have you? I didn’t see any “working class people” that those. I saw business owners, not business workers.
Your lie that Ms. Clinton “prefer[ed] to pander to Wall Street and her celebrity fund raisers” is just another sexist lie. When confronted with the facts, you deny them.
I’ll soften petr’s characterization just a little bit:
YOUR COMMENTARY SHOWS A DOUBLE STANDARD. YOUR COMMENTARY IS SEXIST.
It is insufficient to explain her loss and it is insufficient to explain his win. If she did it more than he did, then it’s not why she lost since, as you allege, the mere doing of it should have been enough.
It’s very sexist John, because you cling to it in defense of all the logic I, and others, have met it with… yet still you cling to it… where would that kind of insistence be found, I wonder? (Not really… I don’t really wonder, at all.).
Hillary Clinton’s loss was the prize the rabid right invested billions of dollars to attain over the past two decades Billions of dollars invested in making sure that their lies about her prevailed in public opinion. The very existence of Fox News is a direct consequence of the desire of the rabid right to attack Bill and Hillary Clinton, a network formed out frustration that Bill Clinton kicked their butt each time a political confrontation happened.
Funny how the pervasive misogyny of Fox News is revealed after the 2016 election, as abuser after abuser is named, shamed, and dismissed.
Funny how in the early years, Ms. Clinton was allegedly dishonest because a few hundred thousand was entirely too much money for her to honestly gain from Whitewater. Twenty years later, she was allegedly dishonest because a few hundred thousand was entirely too much money for her honestly gain from legitimate speaking fees.
The only constant, across twenty years of her career, is the relentless drumbeat of baseless accusations and lies from the rabid right and those who listen to the rabid right.
The result of that election is an administration with more Goldman Sachs alumni than Ms. Clinton or any other Democrat would ever have retained.
So Clinton was right when she called out the ‘rabid right’ as the vast right wing conspiracy. Right ?
She was absolutely correct.
Clinton naysayers are having buyers remorse now. On her worst day she has 1000 times more guts and character than that corrupt, incompetent, racist, lying, traitor. .
That’s a mighty low bar you set there……”Better than Trump”….wow, that’s quite an feat.
When one of your options is a Dangerous Unqualified Misogynistic Bigot, being better than is, or at least should have been, all we need.