So, I read Clinton's account of the 2016 election. Hence my long post relitigating everything that happened and explaining my experience from 2014 on. Clinton's take was a bit different though.
She started counting it from April 2015 when she declared. By then I was already souring on the democratic party due to its behavior toward us lefties who wanted something different. Clinton was heavily anticipated to run, and the machine was in high gear by then already, working on her behalf. Clinton seemed unaware of this, and this was not a part of her book.
She claimed she ran because she had the experience to be president and thought she would do a good job. She saw herself as a progressive, she saw Bernie and the left as "socialist". SHe claimed to admire FDR, but seemed to not realize her policy prescriptions were way out of sync with his. Bernie was basically running on FDR's platform, Hillary was running against that mostly. She saw herself as progressive, many people didn't. She focused a lot on pragmatism on policies, but I like to see myself as a pragmatic policy wonk and am far left of Hillary.
Clinton's worldview is shaped by her history. She got into politics in the late 60s and early 70s, when the democratic party as we knew it fell apart. She spent much of her younger adult life watching the democrats get gutted by the GOP, until her husband saved the party. And she believes that his legacy proved the democrats can still compete with the GOP in the age of conservatism and neoliberalism.
But....her politics are completely stuck in that mindset, to an infuriating degree. She just couldnt break out of that. She kept attacking Bernie on policies claiming they couldnt work, while not really explaining why not. She pushed the fact that she was for a public option. Looking it up, since I myself was unaware of this, I found the weakest public option approach I had ever seen. She basically wanted to make it so states could set up their own programs. Given states responded so poorly to the ACA who the heck thinks this is a good idea? More duct tape and band aids on a broken system. Yay....
The most infuriating part of the policy aspect came from the fact that....she knew. She knew how screwed the country is. She actually was very aware of the problems of technological unemployment and was an avid reader of these concepts. She even considered running on UBI...but didn't because she couldnt make the numbers work. What does she mean by this? She would have to raise taxes to make it work, particularly on upper middle class people who she promised not to raise taxes on. We could have had a UBI, from FREAKING HILLARY, and she instead got so centrist brained she rejected it and instead focused on upper class suburbanites. She apparently also needed handlers to stop her from talking about technological unemployment and the like.
Yet in all of this, she doesnt think focusing more on economics wouldve helped her. She kept going on about how she wishes the race was more about policy and that she focused a ton on jobs and no one bought it. But uh...so did Obama. And we had plenty of jobs. The problem is that these jobs pay poorly and are often extremely unpleasant to do. People are upset at the loss of status and income and being consigned to service jobs on the margins of the economy with no steady schedule, pay, or decent working conditions. Jobs aint the problem. We either need a bernie esque approach to the economy to improve the living conditions or those jobs, or we need to admit jobs arent the answer. She also mentioned she couldnt win west virginia no matter what. I mean, sure, but its a deep red state. But imagine if she brought it down to +20R rather than +30, imagine how that would translate in neighboring PA or OH. Or what about MI or WI or IA? She seemed to miss the point.
I just had to mention that since reading how she was so close to getting it then her centrist brain pushed her the other way literally infuriates me. If she ran on UBI and technological unemployment, it might have actually been enough to get me to support her over bernie, and even if it was not, by the time we got to the general I might not have been so bitter at the democrats for ignoring me.
Instead she spent most of the time blaming Comey, Russians, and her emails. I get it. It's easy to be pissed. Comey did interfere within the 90 day window of an election. Which kind of makes how obvious Trump is being treated with kid gloves is. And her emails never were a big issue. She used a private account like most secretaries of state. If anything putting the emails on her server made them more secure. It actually seems like weak sauce that she was treated that way given trump was literally holding classified documents related to nukes in mar a lago. Honestly, I have to sympathize with clinton here. I might have hated her politics and her policies in 2016, but she didn't deserve that crap.
And of course the russian hacks were a big deal and Putin was intentioning undermining her. She mentioned it seemed to be a matter of the country having a weakened immune system, and I would agree. We were all suffering malaise from the obama administration and 4 more years of the same crap. We wanted change, we were told to eat crap, and many of us responded angrily at the prospect of the process being unfair. I would agree. I keep saying, if the democrats couldve appeased their left flank, and motivated voters to respond positively to her campaign, it wouldnt have mattered what crap the right or the russians flung at her. We wouldve backed her up and she wouldve won. Instead she blew the most easy to win election by running to the center and alienating progressives and independents who wanted change. That's how I see it anyway. She talked a lot about how she wishes there was more unity and a more collective spirit in America, but I dont think she realizes her own role, or her party's role, in sowing discord.
Heck, CLinton seemed to have a huge blind spot with her own side's weaknesses in politics. She was so quick to call out "Bernie bros" and toxic trumpers and russians, but did she ever mention her own crap? No. She attacked bernie bros, while ignoring that the Hillary supporters were extremely toxic and largely responsible for making the bernie camp so insular and toxic in the first place. She mentioned how russian interference was like the equivalent of a hostile superpac against her campaign, not mentioning she had her own super pac doing THE SAME FREAKING THING. Really. I dealt with these people. It just drove me further away. I cant say she never took responsibility for her own failures as when she acknowledged a problem she at least tried to take responsibility, but the problem is she seemed woefully unaware of how alienating her campaign came off to anyone who wasnt 100% on board with her.
She mentioned her feminism in the book too, and I couldnt help but feel her view there was endemic of her flaws. Once again I felt like she was stuck fighting the previous generation's battles. Hate to say it, but the first female president isnt that big of a deal to me, as a millennial. Why? Because it seems obvious to me a woman can be president. Maybe the right one hasnt come along to break the glass ceiling, but i think it could happen, easily. I dont think most americans are sexist against women politicians. Those who are are likely very old, very religious, nor either. Clinton might think im sexist for saying this as im denying her struggles as a woman, but honestly, for me? Eh. As I see it, her generation won, and she's still stuck in the last generation like she is with everything else.
I also find her own takes very blind toward the problems of the other side. She mentioned once that when she was trying to get into law school a guy came up to her and was mad she was there because she might steal his position and he needed it to avoid the draft. I mean, I understand that clinton had every right to compete and agree with men here, but so much of feminist politics IS about taking limited opportunities from men and redistributing them to make it more fair. Might make women more mobile, but men less so. Huge reason i would rather focus on universal policies that make everyone's live sbetter. And honestly, I do have to sympathize with the draft thing. Men in that era did face a draft and college was a way to get out of it. Losing their opportunity to go to college was arguably a death sentence. Again, im not trying to say it was wrong for clinton to compete in a traditionally male space, I support equality. But, so often I cant help but feminists only care about making progress for themselves while ignoring the consequences for others. THen they say self righteous statements like "equality to the privileged feels like oppression." Okay Hillary, how would you like it if we sent your butt to Vietnam? Didn't see you volunteering.
Honestly, you know those toxic MRAs you guys scream about? Thats what feminists remind me of. Identity politics is cancer. MRAs, feminists, two sides of the same coin. Identity politics is just zero sum BS that pits people against each other and sows tribalism and division, keeping people fighting over limited opportunities rather than improving everyone's lives. But Clinton's worldview thrives on it, for better or for worse. It's something that always alienated me about her. And that worldview was on display here.
Other issues with her worldview was a focus on children and women. Ok...but...what about men? Well again, men are privileged. It's not uncommon in UBI communities to focus on how the traditional welfare state and tax structure punishes ABAWDs (able bodied adults without dependents). But Clinton, once again, thrives on separating the deserving and undeserving. Means testing is in her political DNA. She focuses on sympathy toward various groups, but she lacks a universal approach to making everyone's lives better.
She also seemed to take every opportunity to trash Bernie. She focused on how he accused her of being bought out by establishment interests and reverse uno carded him on guns, claiming he was in the pocket of the NRA, and going on about how she was more progressive on guns and how many victims of gun violence she talked to. She had to make a point that she was more "progressive" on guns because she wanted to ban assault weapons and allow people to sue gun manufacturers for gun violence. She insisted this wouldnt put gun manufacturers out of business, but isnt the goal of such an idea to force gun manufacturers to pay whenever their weapons are used to kill someone unlawfully? Seems like a way to force them out of business or to stop selling to the public, and a way to undermine the second amendment.
Honestly, Clinton isn't a bad person, and she seemed a lot less machiavellian than I thought she would, but her views are just...dated, her priorities are wrong, and sometimes she's so frustratingly close to getting it, only to completely miss the point and go the other way due to her boomer centrist brain.
As far as the BS I experienced in 2016 from her camp, she seemed completely unaware of the political operatives operating on her behalf and how bad of a job they did. As I said in the previous post, I was so alienated from Hillary, I just couldnt support her. Doing so wouldve meant the bullies won. And I couldnt allow that.
Still, I do sympathize with her somewhat. She was better than trump, and I cant imagine how frustrating it has to be to lose to that guy and then he does everything clinton was accused of but worse. It's sickening really, and I can understand why that drives her crazy. But honestly, she (or at least her operatives) did a poor job at winning people over, and she did seem to miss the point. I just couldnt support her because she wasnt what I wanted, and because her campaign was so alienating and tone deaf it literally pushed me away from the party. I still maintain if she was more progressive, she could have won. BUt she seemed to lack awareness to understand how that could have been possible.
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