Blaming external problems is just asserting weakness

[hellofromreddit]

Re: the numerous blame threads

I agree that lots of bad things happened that hurt Clinton and were beyond her control. But you can't fix any of that by sheer force of complaining, and focusing on it quickly turns into 16 years of crying about little old Nader. How do you think that hostility towards rinky-dink bit players fares in the face of being utterly feckless against a party that produced: monstrous debt, mass incarceration, Bush, the Iraq debacle, a policy of torture, mass financial industry corruption, legendary congressional inaction, government shutdowns, and now TV's Trump?

I know it's hard work, and people just love to distract themselves by blaming the hostile universe around us, but the democrats desperately have to focus on fixing the internal failures consuming them since those are something they do actually have control over.

[unblock]

1. this assumes we lost fair and square.

we can fix all the internal problems we want, then our candidate might be more popular by 5% or 10% instead of 2%

but we will continue to lose as long as republicans are removing eligible voters from the rolls, reducing the number of polling places, preventing mail-in voting, requiring onerous identification, using unverifiable and easily manipulated voting machines, and otherwise playing around with the actual vote numbers.

[boston bean]

2. white working class people don't face these obstacles... but guess who does.

[uponit7771]

6. +1, yeap... seems the exit poll skewing etc is happening in the voter suppression states and

... I'm going to be far from trying to blame ourselves for it.

I think a 50 state all county pre election YEAR strategy will work better but there's not much I'd change about this election

[hellofromreddit]

8. Of course it's not fair! In what world do you think we live?

If your strategy is to passively wait until the day that things are fair, I've got terrible news for you. There are no fair fights. The only things you can do are prepare for all the unfair shit the world throws your way and know that there will be no end to it. How many actually important struggles were won through people bitching and crying about unfairness?

Zero. They all took actual work, which included a hell of a lot of self-doubt and improvement to fix the flaw or fix the doubt.

You prepare as best you can and go face it toe-to-toe. The Clinton campaign failed because it was preoccupied with shooting holes in its own feet or hiding out at fundraisers. The party keeps failing because so far the response to every loss is to (1) double down on feel-good bullshit about how awesome we all are, (2) punch down at third party candidates and young voters, and (3) abandon the base, like we did when ACORN was under bullshit attack from the republicans.

So, no, I did not assume fairness.

[kcr]

3. Burying your head in the sand isn't strength

In fact, it's quite stupid. It's nothing but a false sense of control. It also emboldens the evil. This is the rallying cry of those who want to assert that might makes right. The world is a harsh place, and everyone is meant to turn away and ignore the bad that is done. There's no point in fixing it because that's how it's meant to be. There are no bad people, only the weak that they preyed upon. They are always the ones at fault if something bad happened to them, therefore they must be weak. It's meant to give people the false comfort that nothing bad could ever happen to them as long as they do everything right.

[uponit7771]

5. +1, "It's nothing but a false sense of control."

Thank you for this... that's been my life for a second

[uponit7771]

4. You're right, Comey, Voter suppression and Russia were the only DOCUMENTED reasons she

Last edited Thu Dec 8, 2016, 07:12 PM - Edit history (1)

... could've lost by slim margins in the voter suppression states but lets ignore those well agreed upon factors and point towards Clinton :rolleyes:

[hellofromreddit]

9. Why lead in by calling me Comey? I know that you mean it as an insult.

[uponit7771]

10. sry bout that...edited

[BeyondGeography]

7. When you've won the PV twice in the last 16 years and all you get is Dubya and Trump

for your trouble, I think people can be excused for railing at the system. We've won the PV 6 of the last 7 times, in fact, more people (again) voted for Democratic candidates than Republicans, our positions on the issues consistently poll better than Republicans and all we get is the hope that Chuck Schumer will be able to keep his minority caucus in line.

How did we get here? Here's where I agree wholeheartedly with you: The mind-numbing failure of Democrats, from President Obama on down, to brand the Republicans for the soul-sucking, economy-killing, planet-destroying thugs that they are is killing us. From now on, no Democrat, and that starts with you, Barack Obama, once you no longer have the responsibility of the presidency pushing you in the direction of decorum, should be allowed to say, "Congress," when talking about what ails our politics and our country. It's "the Republicans." Stop overselling the average American's ability to "get it." If we keep saying when they go low, we go high, we might as well just get high because that will be our only consolation.

This should be easy, with a Republican in the WH, Republicans controlling the house and Senate, a Republican majority in the SC and Republican Governors heading 2/3 of the states. Shame these bastards! We've been taking it on the chin from these assholes since the 60s. They have branded us as unacceptable, anti-American freaks, and now we're looking at a 6X bankrupted failed casino owner, compulsive liar and thrice-married certified sexual predator as President who is already basically guaranteeing us (with full Republican support) that he will be the most corrupt occupant of the White House in history. They are asking us to go on the ideological warpath, begging us, in fact. Will we? It's pathetic that we even have to wonder.

[BainsBane]

11. Does that apply to Bernie too?

Are people going to admit he played a role in his own loss? Or is it somehow limited to Clinton?

[hellofromreddit]

13. Sure, have at it. But mind the context.

He wasn't the nominee and didn't push votes away from the down ticket races. Losing at the top of the party in a presidential general election is a very big deal.

[BainsBane]

15. Push votes away?

What evidence do you have for that? You claim expertise with no data. All this reveals is your dislike of Clinton, and you've decided she is personally to blame for failing to accomplish what no Democrat has since Harry Truman.

I never saw you here once during the GE campaign, yet now you think you have some expertise to declare that no external factors were any way relevant, which is a nonsensical. External factors are always relevant. And if you truly believe the only problem was Hillary, there is nothing to discuss since she won't be a candidate in the future. Therefore there is no reason to try to get others to accept your one-dimensional explanation.

[hellofromreddit]

17. Congress got decimated. States got decimated. If you have internet access, it's easy to check.

Not to mention that every single time a presidential candidate fares poorly, the party fares poorly. It's sort of a common knowledge thing.

All this reveals is your dislike of Clinto,

As long as you equivocate criticism and 'dislike' you have no ability to improve.

failing to accomplish what no Democrat has since Harry Truman

Lame excuse. Truman pulled it off.

I never saw you here once during the GE campaign

Neat. I really don't see how your personal perception of my username from across the internet governs my skill set.

you think you have some expertise to declare that no external factors were any way relevant

Never said that.

[TwilightZone]

12. Nonsense

If we don't address outside influences, there's nothing stopping them from being used again in the future.

I know this is difficult for some to understand, but it is possible for an event to have multiple causes. Trying to boil this election down to one or two soundbytes completely ignores the big picture.

[hellofromreddit]

14. Address? Sure. Scapegoat? No.

I said nothing about excluding everything else from consideration. I'm only advocating to also include some self-reflection.

[TwilightZone]

16. No, you really aren't.

You're posting over and over with variations of a theme: it's all Hillary's fault. We shouldn't have run her. She was a horrible candidate. Blah, blah.

You're not really fooling anyone.

[GummyBearz]

18. You misunderstood

The "postmortem" board isn't where we brainstorm to solve problems or figure out why things happened as they did. It is a place for supporters of a certain candidate to blame everyone else for what happened without any introspection. If you suggest anything else you are risking alerts

[BobbyDrake]

19. From the "blame the DNC, DWS, blacks/gays/women for Bernie's loss" crowd, this argument is

...ridiculously hilarious.

Thanks for the laughs though.

"Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, "It might have been." -Kurt Vonnegut