Question about weak candidates.

[BainsBane]

Were Al Gore, John Kerry, and Jimmy Carter weak candidates, or just Hillary Clinton?

[Hekate]

1. Definitely only Hillary. She lacks that certain je ne sais quois...

wink wink

[pnwmom]

6. She just doesn't have the "Presidential look."

[duffyduff]

58. It is sexism.

The more people deny there was sexism involved in the voting, the more it is obvious the people who deny it are themselves sexists.

[Joe941]

68. Maybe ageism too! Many here are saying...

Bernie shouldn't run in 2020 because he would be too old!

[meadowlark5]

101. That's what would be said

But had he won this election, no one would be focusing on that if he ran for a second term. But for some reason that initial run age seems to be ridiculously important

[Fast Walker 52]

121. haha, indeed.

[TexasTowelie]

2. I suggest that all of the candidates be entered into the Olympic weightlifting competition.

If they don't match up with the Russians, then they are weak.

That should start a run by future Democratic candidates for untraceable steroids on the black market.

P.S.: Jimmy Carter won one of his elections so he shouldn't be considered as a weak candidate.

[Crunchy Frog]

88. He was up against an even weaker opponent.

[JCanete]

3. No, or at least not opposed to their opponents. But I already had a long discussion with you about

media influence and its corporate bias, and you dismissed or glossed over my assertion that the problem with our Party and its abysmal chances of ever actually being at the helm of an actually functioning government, is that it does not as a unit expose and disavow this cancer in our politics that is not only abdicating its responsibility to nurture an informed public, but intentionally and systematically misinforms or distracts it with total garbage. It is killing our so-called democracy.

Why can't we as a party find common ground on this pretty fucking obvious fact?

[BainsBane]

12. Let me understand this

You think the problem with the party is that it doesn't focus like a laser beam on the media as a cancer on politics? That the party abdicates its responsibility to nurture an informed public?

Yet, you were critical of me for supporting the one candidate who had a plan to address systemic k-12 inequality that cements generations of inequality instead of the other candidate who spends a great deal of his time appearing on that corporate media and whose campaign spent nearly all of its huge fundraising haul on corporate media ads?

So the other losing candidates were not weak compared to their opponents. That designation is reserved for Hillary Clinton, who following an 8 year Democratic presidency, won the popular vote by more than 2.8 million votes?

[JCanete]

79. No, what? I'm sorry, I thought I was including Hillary as not being a weak candidate, again,

especially compared to her opponent.

I'm not going to bother with your Sanders or Clinton characterization there, because neither are on point anyway. And no, I don't want democrats to have a single issue, I want them to all be on the same page when it comes to calling out the media.

In your opinion, is the media corrupted by corporate affiliation or is it not? I think we need to establish that baseline here, because our conversations are getting nowhere.

[BainsBane]

100. If your question is whether I think corporate ownership influences

the content of news outlets, yes of course. I think the end of the Fairness Doctrine was even more influential since the news outlets and papers have been privately owned since their inception.

Media is a very broad term. Some of the press and broadcast media is better than others. In general, cable news is complete crap and really more entertainment than news. However, many fault public radio and television and it isn't owned by for profit corporations.

Are you saying that the solution is for Democrats to lambast the media as Trump and the far right does? Or what other solution do you propose?

The only way you can claim my characterization of Clinton isn't on point is if you never informed yourself on her proposals on education, and as for Sanders, if you made a point of avoiding reporting about how he spent his money and didn't look at his FEC filings.

[JCanete]

110. Point is I'm not trying to refight the primaries with you, nor am I trying to turn this into a

Clinton vs Sanders discussion. I could get off-track and tackle either of those things you brought up...for one, good for Clinton for having an education proposal, but that isn't about the media, and Sanders also had proposals on k-12 education...

I'm very glad we see eye to eye about corporate media and the loss of the Fairness Doctrine. Unfortunately, the history of the loss of that program is not only the Republican's to own.

Public Radio is far better than other sources, no doubt. It is not without its corporate influences and NPR has been guilty of shallow reporting, not to mention perpetuating the myth that the media is liberal. I heard them do that shit right before the election, and without a hint irony. Nor was it a guest saying it that went unchallenged. It was the host. That said, they've been doing some great series lately, about what welfare really looks like, and they just did a story on Basic Income Guarantee that I want to hear, so as far as media with reach goes, its decent, if still having a fairly mainstream conventional overall mentality that doesn't rock too many boats. Nor have I heard it do much hard-hitting investigative reporting against big corporations.

As to whether the Democratic Party needs to call out the media like the Republicans do...YES! The game we are playing only makes people believe that the media actually does have a liberal bias. The media smirkingly calls itself the liberal media, and the American people assume that anything factual out of its mouth must be biased, and anything that props up republicans must just be so uncontroversial that they had no choice in the matter but to begrudgingly report it.

We don't fight that characterization and it would be so easy! The idea that the media wants to push a liberal agenda, like raise taxes on its parent corporations and their shareholders is absurd on its face if we draw that connection for people. That kind of cognitive dissonance, if we actually start sewing it, would force people to at least feel confusion about their assumptions.

would the media do its best to destroy us as whiners? Fuck yes they would. But unlike republicans, we don't refuse to go on their show, we just go on and always show the connection. Always point out what the media outlet we're talking to is owned by. Tie that same company to campaign contributions. Tie it to its lobbying interests. That is the framing that should be done. And if we have a conflict of interest when it comes to doing this, then I submit that we have a problem.

[BainsBane]

111. Well, as I said in the other thread

I claim no insight into messaging or campaigning. I simply make the most informed decision I can as a voter. I don't like the post-truth world where people dismiss every news story they disagree with and only consider those they do. It is that tendency among voters that I think has led to the threats on democracy we know face with Trump. The corporate media played a role--through cable and talk radio--but voter choose to consume and adopt it. The right aren't alone in that. Progressives and Democrats more generally display similar tendencies, and the anti-Democratic left circulated a great deal of fake news about Clinton in the primary and GE. Sadly, the public lacks the capacity or even the inclination to critically evaluate sources and information. And they don't understand civics. They expect a president to take care of everything, and it is that which paves the way for authoritarianism.

I wouldn't like to see a Democratic party that treated truth the way Trump does, but it probably would win elections. At that point I'd probably just give up on politics altogether.

I looked several times on Sanders website for something on K-12 and never saw anything.

[dionysus]

117. This bizarre obsession with bernie is weakest of them all.

[BainsBane]

119. Yeah, I'm the one totally obsessed with Bernie

[AgadorSparticus]

123. THIS!!!!! I don't understand why so many focus on blaming democrats when

CLEARLY it doesn't matter who it is or what the message is that we run because the media has a right wing agenda. Nothing we say will matter until we fix this media issue.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

4. Carter was the anti-establishment guy of his time. So, "no".

[pnwmom]

7. Kinda sorta. His background was similar to a number of other Presidents.

He'd been Governor of his state and a two-term Senator. He wasn't a US Senator, but he had a solid political background. And his policies weren't exactly anti-establishment either.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative_Democrat

He is a born-again Christian and was (until 2000) a member of the Southern Baptist Convention. While the Republican Party began to pursue a strategy of wooing born-again Christians as a voting bloc after 1980, led by activists Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, in 1976, 56% of the evangelical Christian vote went to Carter. He combined conservative fiscal and social policies with more moderate views on peace and ecology, making for a rare combination in the history of American Presidents.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

84. New York is what got him in....

California voted for Ford. The South got their guy while the rest of the country thought they had installed a hayseed.

The Right was in a panic as they were trying to claim religion and here was an actual Christian in the other party. Took them YEARS to get people to think of God and guns again after all that "peace" stuff.

[BainsBane]

109. I think a lot of these people

assume his presidency reflected what they know about his work since. They are not the same.

[BainsBane]

14. Carter was a conservative Democrat of his time

and represented a shift to the right for the party. But he wasn't weak, despite being crushed by Raegan. Clinton was weak, even though she won the popular vote by 2.8 million votes because you have decided what matters is memes about "establishment."

I know it's a shock to you, but women have been systematically excluded from political power for 240 years. Yet in having the audacity to try to break through that exclusion, Hillary Clinton was "establishment."

David Duke in the past ran as an anti-"establishment" Democrat too. I guess that must mean he was a stronger candidate than Hillary Clinton?

[Spitfire of ATJ]

81. This country tends to vote Republican with exceptions....

Usually when a Republican does something outrageous like Watergate, "No new taxes" or WMDs.

[SleeplessinSoCal]

5. there are many undecideds/independents who tend to alternate party choices.

My persinal take:

Sometimes it is just timing. John Kerry got the Swift boat treatment and probably won Ohio and the election, if all had been allowed to vote in Ohio.

Gore won the Popular vote and lost the EC in Florida where brother Jeb Bush wiped the rolls and Harris was I believe the GWB campaign Mgr as well as SoS, distributor of electors.

Carter seemed weak because of the Iran hostage "crisis". They lived. Reagan cut a deal. And went on to commit the impeachable offense of Iran Contra. "Reagan Administration. Senior administration officials secretly facilitated the sale of arms to Iran, which was the subject of an arms embargo".

That should have ended the impeachment fever forever.

[BainsBane]

15. but Clinton was just plain "weak"?

and the voter suppression that excuses Kerry's loss in irrelevant to the 2016 election where voter purges were far more extensive and more states?

[SleeplessinSoCal]

73. swift boating isn't irrelevant.

They did the same to H Clinton. Bill's faults probably helped him. Had Gore embraced him, he'd likely have won big.

Hillary cannot be called weak. She may however have had a team that wasn't savvy enough to manage our toxic media landscape. Only Obama won in the Era of Fox News and Co. Although, she still won the vote by nearly by 3,000,000.

If she could only keep blasting as the opposition for the next 4 years how "he" lost BIG.

[MarianJack]

8. None of them were weak candidates!

PEACE!

[baldguy]

16. There's a difference between seeing someone as "damaged"

and swallowing the oppositions bullshit propaganda whole without question or hesitation.

That doesn't get us into the White House.

[BlueProgressive]

20. Go back and re-read my post, since you obviously didn't get it the first time.

I swallowed nothing here, but perhaps you did.

[baldguy]

29. You don't think there are "liberals" and "Democrats" who believe RW bullshit?

Have you actually read any of the threads in this forum?

[BlueProgressive]

30. Oh, you're saying you believe the right-wing smears you say you've seen posted on this site?

I never saw that coming.

[baldguy]

33. You've just exposed yourself. 'bye.

[BainsBane]

17. So the GOP bullshit about the losing candidates above

was not their fault, but the GOP-media bullshit about Clinton was her fault.



Clinton failed to do what any Democrat since Truman has done--succeed a two term Democratic President, yet even then won the popular vote by 2.8 million was irretrievably and intrinsically weak. Yet Kerry who ran against an incumbent president and is obscenely wealthy lost due to no fault of his own, whereas Carter was unjustly held responsible for the economy and crises during his his own presidency.

I'm detecting a pattern here in these responses, and it has nothing to do with success in elections.

[betsuni]

10. Hillary Clinton was by far the strongest candidate.

It took quite a lot of time and effort and money from all directions to really hurt her, and then she didn't even come off as weak -- the others seemed to be labeled easily by the media as weak and that was that.

Carter: Wore a cardigan and told Americans to save energy, was too nice and honest. Loser.
Gore: Sighed during debates, accused of claiming to invent the internet and therefore a liar, wore earth tones. Loser.
Kerry: Flip-flopping liar because of one vote change, looked silly wind-surfing. Loser.

I mean, come on. Hillary was accused of being an evil corrupt lying murdering warmonger, etc (there really is no end to this list). No contest.

[FBaggins]

11. Depends on how you define "weak"

Generally speaking... Yes. At least a couple of them had weakness that hurt their chances.

But Clinton lost to the weakest, most fatally flawed candidate (possibly in history)... Hitting a new low for "weak candidate".

[JHan]

26. A fatally flawed candidate who beat 14 Republican politicians..

or whatever the number was.

[FBaggins]

44. That's certainly his spin. Are you saying that you buy it?

In reality - it was easier for him to survive the primaries because of the large number.

Of course - it didn't hurt that Clinton and the DNC wanted him to be the opponent, encouraged the media to cover him and take him seriously, and even drove some crossover voting in the republican primaries to boost his chances.

[JHan]

49. That's not spin.

That's fact.

He beat his Republican opponents,however he did it.

And the media loved him: Moonves and Zucker didn't need Clinton or anybody to tell them he was ratings gold.

[woolldog]

13. Were Gore, Kerry, Carter

under active FBI investigation when they ran for President? Clinton has a penchant for secrecy and arrogance and that server cost her. She's also not a good retail politician, something she admits.

[BainsBane]

19. and Gore and Kerry were good retail politicians?

Sanders doesn't even attempt retail politics. He relies entirely on rallies where he gives speeches from a stage. Hillary did not have her husband's gift with retail politics, but she did talk and listen to voters. Obviously you aren't concerned with retail politics or you wouldn't have backed Sanders.

So weakness is not determined by performance in elections but how dedicated the GOP is to burying the person.
The fact the accusations amounted to nothing is of course irrelevant, unless you're John Kerry, Keith Ellison, or someone else deemed worthy by the self-appointed crossing guards of the party.

[woolldog]

23. Am I concerned with retail politics?

No. Am I concerned with the personality of the candidate? How entertaining they are etc? No. But most Americans are. In that environment, not being likable, not having a star personality hurts your election chances.

I repeat, however poorly Gore etc came across, they were not under active FBI investigation. The private server, and the Comey letter, is what ultimately cost her the election.

Lots of possible democratic candidates were NOT under FBI investigation. Sanders, for example.

[BlueCaliDem]

52. This myth that Sanders was pure is outright stupid. Kurt Eichenwald SAW the oppo on Sanders and the

Republicans would've CRUSHED him in the general - and they didn't need no fake FBI investigation for that to happen.
http://www.joemygod.com/2016/11/15/newsweek-posts-gop-oppo-research-on-bernie-sander/

If you're a Sanders supporter, you know exactly what Eichenwald means and what oppo the Republicans, Putin, the GOP, and GOP-favoring U.S. media were ready to launch against Sanders. He definitely would not have gotten 2.8 million more votes than Trumpf.

Fact remains, the above groups were silent on Sanders, hoping he'd win the nom and Sanders supporters either delude themselves into thinking he'd win the GE or they don't know what the GOP were geared up and ready to use to attack him. But let's dispel the myth that Sanders was pristine. He's not. In fact, in the eyes of voting Americans, Bernie Sanders was anything but.

[woolldog]

60. I f'ing hate Sanders.

Both our options in the primary sucked. My only point with Sanders is that he was a candidate that wasn't under FBI investigation that we could've nominated.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511457503

[karynnj]

61. Sanders is an extremely good retail politician, which is why he has the highest approval rating in

the Senate. He is KNOWN for having town meetings across the state. This is something he has done since he became a Congressman. I have lived in Vermont for 4 years and even now I am sometimes surprised at how much access anyone in the state has to our elected officials. The comparison to NJ or IN the states I lived in before moving here is stunning.

As to John Kerry, other than his position as Secretary of State, he earned his elected positions through retail politics. He was NOT the party or media favorite to get the Democratic nominations for either the Lt Governor position or his first Senate nomination. In both elections he took on competitors who the party favored and whose "turn" it was deemed to be.

In 2004, it was EXACTLY retail politics in both Iowa and NH that made Kerry our nominee. Before Iowa, he had almost no media support. When he was mentioned, it was more in the context of would he drop out after losing Iowa or after he lost NH. It is true that in 2002, he was among those favored by some in the party, but by fall 2003, he was getting no money from the big money men of the party. (He had never been a favorite because he investigated BCCI even when the Pakistani bank had coopted both top Democrats and Republicans. Kerry refused to stop his investigation on that until they took his subcommittee away! This paralleled his investigations on the Contras.)

I saw Kerry speak to crowds where he had us on our feet and completely behind him. This was post 2004 and in both NJ and MA. I also saw (from video) MANY town halls he did in MA - mostly after his run for President. They were interactive and he was very very good - explaining complex answers well -- and, in a very few cases, saying he would get more information to the person on obscure issues. It was not until I moved to VT that I understood my MA friends comments about how essential retail politics are in MA where their culture demands that even the highest elected official communicate directly with them. Without retail politics ability, Sanders would NEVER have even been mayor of Burlington; Kerry would never have been elected to anything. Neither had party mentors that smoothed the way for their early runs.

There is a solid case to be made that Hillary Clinton is extremely smart, extremely hard working, and very competent. She also DID (as Kerry did as well) become the head of student government in college. This showed both interest and the ability to engage in retail politics among their college peers. It is entirely possible that she made Bill Clinton's Presidency possible by her 60 minutes appearance at a point where his primary campaign could well have gone in a death spiral.

Hearing the many stories of a warn, funny likable Clinton someone saw in a chance meeting -- I was struck by the fact that the same stories were plentiful about Kerry. Walter Shapiro in a summary written during the primary noted that Kerry was much better and much more engaged when the media was not there - which he contrasted to John Edwards' million dollar smile for the media, which disappeared when the media left. I suspect that the same is true of Clinton -- for the same reason. They were - for good reason given their respective past histories - wary of the media.

What you are dealing with now is what we in the JK group dealt with since Nov 2004. There is a desire to find a "reason" the candidate was not good enough to win. People want something more than "the country was still to traumatized to move from the President they rallied around after 911 and particulary did not want someone very likely to be constrained by morallity in fighting "those who attacked us" (and anyone who looked like them.) In 2016, HRC was the wrong person for a year where change was wanted and there was anger against the (undefined) "elites". It is possible that Had she quietly left her emails with the State Department soon after she left, she might still have won.

Donald Trump was the MUSIC MAN, TOMMY or the newest evangelical preacher to the masses. He convinced people who were hurting that he could "make America great again". Note that he rarely bothered to state exactly what that would look like. I suspect because keeping it vague his fans to picture it meaning what they wanted it to mean. Not to mention -- what retail politics did he do? Unless there is a lot I missed - he was entirely a stage act - the bigger the venue the better. He is the type of demogogue that I have feared for decades. It will be a test of our democracy as to whether it is stronger than he is. What will derail him will be that people may see that he is not just not their savior, he is hurting them.

Every Democrat you named has a better personality, character and is more likely to be able to speak to average citizens than Donald Trump is.

The last thing we need to do now is to attack the personalities and abilities of anyone who could be a strong voice for our values going forward. We will have very little power that comes from having the Presidency or majority. What we need are strong, clear voices. Fortunately, many in the Obama administartion - including Obama himself, Kerry and Loretta Lynch have spoken of their own likelihood to stay involved on their issues. In addition to speaking out, Gore has already spoken to Trump. From the Senate, I assume that others will rise to join Warren and Sanders (and Schumer from a more centrist point). Obviously, Bill and Hillary Clinton will be strong senior statesmen as well.

[EffieBlack]

25. No, they weren't. And they lost anyway. Hillary, on the other hand, handily beat her opponent

Apparently, she's not as weak as you claim.

[woolldog]

28. Kerry Gore and Carter didn't have the luxury of running against Trump.

Losing to Trump is a whole other level of incompetence. Never bothering to campaign in Wisconsin. Emphasizing Arizona instead of Michigan too.

Clinton didn't beat her opponent. She lost. Oh she won the popular vote you say? Doesn't matter. The rules of the game were well known before the election and under those rules she did not beat her opponent handily. She lost.

[EffieBlack]

37. Keep thinking that...

[FBaggins]

47. "Losing to Trump is a whole other level of incompetence"

That about sums it up.

[JHan]

53. So What other blasts from the past are we going to use to see who would beat Trump?

Walter Mondale? Dukakis?

An abnormal year in politics produced an abnormal E.C win for Trump.

Dismissing the idiosyncrasies of the E.C. is myopic. This is the second time it's happened over the past couple decades - in all cases to a Democrat President. Something is fundamentally wrong with our system when it produces results that breeds dysfunction. When will we take it seriously? When a president wins only 30% of the popular vote but takes the Presidency because of the Electoral College? Saying "well you agreed to the rules" doesn't make the situation any less bad.

A difference of 80,000 votes could mean any number of things. I noted the hubris of her campaign in their approach to the midwest, but it's not the *only reason*. Such a razor thin loss could be the result of any number of reasons - including Comey, voters who don't care, GOP smears, voter suppression, anything.

The "establishment" got hit hard and who represented the establishment this year? Democrats. Yes , every single anti-establishment argument was a hit against the democratic party, because we are in an incumbent year, which is why Trump's arguments were so potent. Never mind the cravenness of the GOP establishment, they get to hate government when it suits them.

Clinton was a strong candidate: She beat Trump in all the debates, she ran a clean campaign, she focused on issues- and I know this because I bothered to follow her speeches. And she had enough respect for me as a voter to not dish out slogans and false promises and lies in my face, but dared to offer a detailed road map showing how she would get what she needed done.

Instead of crapping on a candidate you disliked, maybe take a more objective view because there are loads of lessons we need to learn about what went down this year.

[woolldog]

70. The lesson for me is don't nominate bad candidates

The fact that a bad candidate like Clonton was so close to beating Donald is testimony to how the election was there for the taking had we nominated a good candidate.

[JHan]

71. Yeah that's your view...

As I explained, she was not a "Bad candidate".

She had baggage of course, but who doesn't after 30 years in politics. Some of that baggage was suspect and outright BS.

Clinton lies no more than her peers, she is not a terrible human being, neither is she the corrupt monster she's often described as being- and if you liked Obama, then the only difference between the two of them In terms of their qualities as Candidates) was Obama can easily purchase goodwill with his charisma because he mastered the art of political performance. Clinton always acknowledged this was a weakness with her, she's not a "natural politician" in that sense.

Given the effort she made this year, evident in her policies and ideas, she would have made an excellent president.

[woolldog]

75. I don't disagree with you

on anything you posted.

However unfair, she was under FBI investigation, doesn't have a lot of charisma, had high baked in negatives. That kind of makes her a bad candidate.

And while you and I had no problem voting for her despite that baggage, you and I aren't the standard.

[BainsBane]

108. Here are the facts

You get one vote. You don't determine the voters of others. The majority disagreed with your assessment of Clinton. If you think the lesson is that you get to control their votes and decide the primary, you understand nothing. You do not pick the nominee. You cast one vote like everybody else, and the voters as a whole decide.

The candidate you consider so weak won the primary by 3.8 million votes. That means her opponent was even weaker. As much as you may believe that Democratic votes matter less than Republicans, the constitution does not allow you to decide whose votes count. The fact is no candidate can run as a major party nominee without first winning the primary.

If you are to learn anything from the election, including the primary, it should be that you need to figure out how to help your preferred candidate get more votes-- votes from citizens, not tweets or insults on social media, but votes.

[woolldog]

112. Huh?

Oh you must be assuming I preferred Bernie to Clinton. The truth is I didn't like either. We were doomed once the field narrowed to those two.

[BainsBane]

97. Well said

I especially agree with what you said about her respect for voters.

[FBaggins]

46. Hillary beat her opponent?

That's odd. She doesn't seem to be doing any transition planning.

[Hekate]

72. Three million votes, and those are only the ones tht got got counted and not "lost" somehow

[TCJ70]

18. Did those candidates have a pages long list of reasons the public may not trust them?

Not that I'm aware of. The small list of issues the others faced has already been outlined in this thread.

[EffieBlack]

24. They also didn't have a 25-year witchhunt, tens of millions of dollars and an entire media industry

working 24-7 to develop that "long list of reasons.""

Had they faced even a fraction of what she did, they would never have made it past Iowa - or even gotten there in the first place. Hell, John Kerry got taken down by a couple of months of swiftboating by one fringe group.

Hillary not only wasn't a weak candidate, she was one of the strongest and baddest candidates the Democrats have EVER had.

[BainsBane]

32. which is precisely why the GOP dedicated so much of its resources to trying to

destroy her.

[TCJ70]

42. You aren't wrong...besides the last half of your last sentence IMO...

...true or not that long list of reasons turned out to matter in the places she needed votes.

[BainsBane]

51. Notorious HRC!

She is as tough and resilient as they come. I recognized that even back in 2008 when I didn't like her.

[karynnj]

66. Kerry was attacked since 1971!

Not to mention he ran against an incumbent President, in a time of war. Bush had been at 60% approval in December 2003. Kerry did not get "taken down" by the liars. By November, the polls done showed that even many who voted against Kerry knew they were lying. Winning 2004 was a long shot for the Democrats. Polls in early 2004, showed Dean losing badly to Bush. Kerry's excellent debates and convention were the ONLY unfiltered TV coverage he got -- and he used them to make the election very competitive. Had there been enough voting machines in Ohio, he would have won. They had to cheat to win.

What the SBVT did steal was that they made it harder for Kerry to use the endorsements of his character and leadership as a young man. The odd thing is that it was only because of the liars that I bothered to read the Navy fitness reports that were on his web site. They showed an extraordinary, mature, thoughtful man. Years later, I heard one of them speak and even 40 years after they served together, his admration and love for JK came through. Many Republican memes - that he was wooden, elitist, priviledged, haughty or arrogant are blown out of the water in those long ago accounts. A repeated comment - over his two tours with different crews - was how he generated an usual amount of both loyalty and trust from his guys.

The attacks by the liars was more to attack an asset that Kerry had. That he, when he easily could have avoided it, served with those who had no choice and that he was a real hero. Other than that, their other attacks were that he wind surfed - in a country where athleticism had always been a positive - and that he "flipped flop" - as all legislators do when versions of bills change. Note that the fact that he genuinely has been a very clean politician meant that there were no real claims otherwise. (Consider also that had he NOT been seen wind surfing, there likely would have been a whisper campaign about his health - as one campaign did in the primaries in push polls suggesting his cancer had returned.)

While it is true that 2016 had many seeking change, President Obama had approval ratings higher than Reagan did when his VP Bush ran and won.

[BainsBane]

31. So relative electoral success

has absolutely nothing to do with the strength of a candidate. What matters is that so-called progressives repeated GOP and Kremlin propaganda about the candidate designed to promote the electoral prospects of a pathological liar and con man. Voters have no responsibility to inform themselves on what is actually truthful. John Kerry was unjustly swiftboated, but Clinton herself is responsible for for everything said and done against her.

Given that Clinton was so hopelessly weak, it doesn't speak well of her primary opponent that he still lost by 3.8 million votes. If someone loses to such a hopelessly weak candidate, they must be even weaker.

I've read through the thread up until your comment, and I don't see anything that could be construed as an issue. What I see are excuses for why losing male candidates should not be considered weak, even when they didn't face the great obstacle of running following an 8 year Democratic President, but the one woman who sought the office was weak, despite earning 2.8 million more votes.

I would say one difference is that a certain faction of "progressives" didn't devote themselves to destroying the above candidates or celebrate when they lost the election. Democrats can hardly win elections when a segments of self-proclaimed progressives are invested in promoting GOP misinformation and some of them even work to put a fascist in the White House. But they can't be faulted for repeating GOP talking points. That's entirely the fault of the Democrat targeted by the GOP, White Supremacists, the Kremlin, and the FBI.

[EffieBlack]

39. I love you

[TCJ70]

40. She was strong in the expected places...weak where it mattered...

...and true or not, that list of reasons turned out to be important.

[BainsBane]

45. I don't dispute that the propaganda was effective

but its the excuses for other failing candidates, in sharp contrast to the eagerness to denounce Clinton, that I find troubling.

[karynnj]

67. No one - even here in Vermont - ever thought Bernie would do anywhere near as well as he did

Most thought he would not even win VT. On DU, even as he essentially tied her in Iowa and was polling well in NH, almost no one projected that he could win the nomination.

A valid comparison to this year could be 2000. Hillary Clinton, as much as Al Gore, was the designated choice of the party. In Bill Bradley, Gore had a MUCH stronger, more mainstream challenger than either O'Malley or Sanders. Gore won every single state in the primary. This was an early signal that there was not a lot of enthusiasm behind Clinton - in spite of the strong support form Obama and many in the media who have supported her since 1992.

[BainsBane]

78. That "enthusiasm" assumption is certainly popular among the media

But we have to ask what constitutes enthusiasm? If voters had so much more enthusiasm for Sanders than Clinton, why did he lose the primary by 3.8 million votes? He wasn't able to generate enough enthusiasm among Democratic voters to win the primary, whereas Clinton did. She also managed to generate enough enthusiasm to win more votes in the general election.

It turns out Trump generated more enthusiasm among white voters in some key states, but not enough to win the popular vote.

As for the primary, Clinton won it by March 15. Any Democrat would have pulled out at that time, but Sanders huge war chest enabled him to stay in long after he had no chance of winning. It turns out that battle exposed fault lines that would be key in the general election--defined by some as "establishment" vs. outsider and others as differing views of America and politics that broke down along race and gender.

[karynnj]

96. You can have a smaller group of very enthusiastic people vs a larger group that vote, but are not as

enthusiastic. I agree with you that there were a group of people who were very enthusiastic that HRC was the nominee and many had followed her for decades. I would suggest (with absolutely not a scintila of proof) that, in the primary, she won more of the people not excited about either. If it is true that she won the lion's share of those not excited by either, it would explain why the people who voted Sanders were more enthusiastic.

I suspect that had Sanders been the nominee, he - just like Clinton - would have had a fair number of voters who voted for him with as little enthusiasm as some of his supporters exhibited for her. I would hope that many of her supporters would have considered the importance of the election and looked to find positive things about him. My youngest daughter, who caucused for Sanders in her state which went heavilly for Sanders ended up using her facebook and her other social media to share several very well written pieces she wrote in support of Hillary with links to support every claim she made. On iissues where she disagreed with Clinton, she noted that, but made the best case she could honestly make for Clinton vs Trump. She KNOWS she persuaded some people to vote for HRC. This gets back to enthusiasm. I would say that by election day - by looking at the good even while knowing the negatives - she was very hopeful we would win.

I considered that BOTH candidates were more flawed than our average nominee. I know that I was not alone in this position. I would have loved a candidate I could believe in wholeheartedly. Looking back since I voted for McGovern, I have voted for all our candidates, liked several, but was wholeheartedly only for Obama in 2012 and Kerry 2004. In 2008, I was excited by election day for Obama, but had supported him in the primaries mostly because I rejected his opponents. I know there are many who might have had HRC as the first candidate they wholeheartedly were for and I know from 2004 the pain they are in now.


There were barriers for some of us being as excited about Clinton. She was more hawkish than many of us like. Also, Clinton created a liability for herself by leaving the State Department with no archives of her email which had already been requested for more than a year. The really sad part is that there was nothing to hide. If she would have had a practice of creating an archive of work emails that she could have given the State Department when she left, the State Department could have complied with Congressional and FOIA requests. This would have meant that she would have testified much earlier than she did on Benghazi, where she did nothing wrong, and it is entirely likely that no one would have ever known how she handled email. She compounded this by repeatedly making changes in her explanations of the email. Unfortunately, BOTH the desire for privacy and not telling the complete truth immediately were her two worst traits in the Clinton years. This is why it was after March 2015 when this came out that her favorability shifted very significantly and her scores on honest and trustworthy fell.

It is pathetic that at the time of the election, Trump was winning on "trustworthy" though nearly every thing he ever said was a lie and he clearly paid no taxes for many years. note that HRC won the most votes. My quess is that this reflects that many people who voted for Clinton or Trump did so willing to admit that they did not think she/he was honest or trustwothy. These are clearly reluctant voters. (In fact, very reluctant voters -- I know if polled I would have said I thought Clinton "honest" in spite of any conc3rns I had.)

There were problems with Sanders too. Bernie Sanders was someone who was more comfortable speaking about Denmark, when he could have invoked FDR. It might be that he felt that the combination of the programs that were FDR like AND a massive change in the tax structure to become like Denmark were what he saw necessary. In addition, while there were great things in his bio - he was a very good mayor, he did work in the Civil Rights movement in Chicago and he was a very good Senator and Congressman for VT, his background was not typical of someone who intended to run for President.

However, while these things did make various people unexcited -- Trump was awful enough to make all of us committed to beating him.

[Exilednight]

113. Bernie lost the primary due to one reason and one reason only. He did not execute a sound strategy.

If Bernie had campaigned in the South, and not wrote it off, then he could have quite possibly won. Subtract the SDs and he was within 300 delegates of Hillary.

He basically forfeited Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia and Arkansas on Super Tuesday. Then he later forfeited Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. He was still awarded for delegates, but there's a strong case to be made that he could have done better had he actually put the time in those states.

That is where Bernie went wrong, and that is 100% on him.


The one thing that Bernie's run should have shown people is that Hillary was vulnerable. A man who was not considered a serious contender could have upset her if he had been more strategic.

[el_bryanto]

21. Yes they were all weak too. They had some strengths obviously.

Out of those four, I'd say Hillary Clinton was probably the strongest.

Jimmy Carter won, but he benefited from the post watergate feeling against Republicans; it's possible he wouldn't have done so well otherwise. Also we are evaluating them as candidates - they all had or will presumably have careers after their presidential runs, and those runs have been quite impressive (I guess we can't judge Hillary Clinton on this score yet, but it seems likely she will go on to do good things).

Bryant

[BainsBane]

34. A fair and thoughtful response.

[EffieBlack]

22. Just Hillary.

Because there's something different about her.

[BainsBane]

35. I just can't quite put my figure on what it is

[Hassin Bin Sober]

102. A 59% unfavorable rating among registered voters?

[JHan]

27. Just Hillary. I think it's because she possibly owns frilly items of clothing.

[BainsBane]

36. pantsuits

It's the pantsuits.

[JHan]

41. True......

more pantsuits than frilly things are the prob then?

[BainsBane]

43. It's probably what the pantsuits and frilly things

cover.

[JHan]

54. don't know if you've read this..

I'll share anyway:

"So why is Clinton critiqued for raising her voice like Sanders, speaking hard truths like Biden, and making an awkward Pokémon Go reference we almost certainly would have dubbed a “dad joke” had Kaine said it? Why do we find their flaws likable and Clinton’s flaws off-putting? Why isn't she seen as America's awkward aunt or nerdy stepmom?

I would argue it’s because we don’t yet have cultural touchstones for flawed but sympathetic women. We can recognize Sanders as a fiery activist, Biden as a truth teller, and Kaine as an earnest goof, but we just don’t have an archetype—fictional or otherwise—through which to understand Clinton. As the first female nominee of a major political party, her campaign is in uncharted waters."

http://boingboing.net/2016/09/15/to-find-hillary-clinton-likabl.html

[BainsBane]

56. I hadn't

It's a good article. Thanks for linking to it.

I did find it hard breaking to watch the video embedded in the article. Now that she's been defeated, it reinforces the author's argument.

[Orsino]

48. Hillary inherited a whole Clinton mythology.

And had the temerity to attempt smuggling a uterus into the Oval Office.

They may never forgive her.

[BainsBane]

50. I think you nailed it

In two sentences.

[Gothmog]

55. No

[duffyduff]

57. Anybody who says that is full of shit.

They don't belong in the Democratic Party.

Ditto for those who claim the Democrats are "weak," "spineless," and "roll over."

They don't know squat about politics or political strategy.

There is a REASON why the DP is relatively silent over Trump and why they are not pushing for the idiotic "Hamilton Electors" bullshit.

Look up the term "rope-a-dope." That will give you a clue.

[Arazi]

59. None were/are weak. All had flaws

Which the media and the Repugs were able to successfully exploit

[mtnsnake]

62. They were all excellent candidates, but they weren't all good campaigners, IMO.

I think John Kerry was the best candidate of the 4 you listed but not a good campaigner. I think Hillary is the second best of the candidates you listed but not a very good campaigner. I like Gore and Carter, too, as candidates, but like the others, I don't think any of them could ever compare to the likes of Obama or Bill Clinton when it came to campaigning.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

63. just hillary. the rest has penises.

[cry baby]

64. It took the addition of Russia to beat Hillary in the EC

but she still won the popular vote. She wasn't a weak candidate.

None were weak, but all had flaws...republican are meaner in exploiting those flaws. Dems must get better at controlling the message. The Democratic Party is the weaker party when it comes to messaging.

[mcar]

65. I'd asked the same question about "flawed" candidates

Seems like every other presidential candidate in history hasn't been. But "flawed" has been a ubiquitous descriptor in nearly all media/DU/whatever accounts of HRC's run.

[BainsBane]

77. and requires no explanation

rather it is just assumed to be so.

[mcar]

82. Yes

Odd how it had to be continually pointed out WRT HRC.

[Act_of_Reparation]

69. A loaded question I'm happy to disarm.

Are they "weak" candidates? No. They ascended to senatorships, the vice presidency, and in once case the presidency itself. Clearly they are not generally weak.

That said, they all lost major campaigns. Meaning, ipso facto, they were weaker than their opponent.

[Hekate]

74. 3 million votes

[Act_of_Reparation]

90. 67.9998911234 quintillion votes.

Meaningless if you lose the votes that make or break the EC.

[BainsBane]

98. The other candidates lost the electoral college too, and all except one the popular vote.

Yet Clinton alone is maligned. What is absolutely clear is that double standard says far more about those who invoke it than Clinton herself. We have an electorate that prefers a liar and a con man, yet people here attack Clinton for not being what voters wanted. That she didn't sink to that level and refused to pander to voters speaks to her integrity, yet a public that will accept nothing short of empty promises doesn't deserve a president with integrity or competence. We got Donald Trump because that is who we are as a nation.

Clinton has already been a Senator and Secretary of State, but because she refuseed to clear the way for far less qualified men, she is despised.

The difference between Clinton and the candidates above lies in the electorate and the underlying contempt for women (and people of color since this election was a whitelash) that characterizes a society desperate to return to the past. We are a country in decline with a criminally uninformed and poorly educated populous, and nothing illustrates that better than this election.

[guillaumeb]

76. If by "weak candidates" is meant candidates who did not win,

three of the above candidates lost under very questionable circumstances. Kerry in my opinion is the exception. But he was running against a "wartime" President.

[melman]

80. Gore and Kerry

were terrible candidates. Absolutely.

[geek tragedy]

83. Not weak, but relatively untalented politicians who had been insiders for too long

Prospective presidential candidates don't have a very long shelf-life once they begin to serve in DC.

Carter's strength is the hardest to assess, because both his victory and his defeat were driven by exogenous circumstances rather than his ability to campaign and win voters over.

[JCanete]

87. I don't actually think this is fair, to Clinton or these other candidates. Because...

ALL OF THEM WERE WAY BETTER THAN THEIR OPPONENTS.

The fact that Democratic Candidates have to be 50 times more perfect than their opponents, speaks loudly to what is actually going on in America, which is massive corporate influence on our elections. It is a worsening condition that continues to move us economically to the right, and as a nice little bonus, keeps us divided over issues of race, religion and gender, not to mention less and less educated on Constitutional matters and American Idealism.

I do think it says something about the continued attempt of Democrats to be cozy with big corporate interests though. It tells us that that is a strategy that will prop us up into a slight minority status in congress and the Senate in perpetuity.

Where we have been weak for some time, is in our unwillingness, due to political expedience, to take on the very interests that ultimately tank our prospects. We keep helping to take the scorpion across the river and it keeps stinging us just as we get to the other side.

[geek tragedy]

89. better qualified to govern doesn't make someone a good candidate.

It's hard to deny that Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have something that Al Gore, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton don't have when it comes to political talent.

[JCanete]

91. come on...Bush was a good candidate? Better than gore or Kerry? It takes help to make

people look better than they are. Can you really say candidate quality matters in a cycle where we saw the media prop Trump up without ANY investigative reporting for months? They could have jumped on any absurd things he said that were in direct contravention to our Constitution, but they never did. It might have seeped into their reporting because of pundits, but the job of the media in those instances was false-equivalency.

Frankly, Reagan, actor or not, talking-points or not, could have been destroyed by the media for not having a solid grasp on all kinds of matters...for outright mischaracterizing things...making up utter bullshit about welfare queens. For threatening to escalate rather than to deescalate a cold war. The media made carter look weak. Did it play on physical attributes and personas? Sure...that all made it easier to do. It didn't take any work to make an actor like Reagan appear presidential. He appeared presidential. It didn't take any work to help Carter look ineffectual and soft. But work CAN BE DONE AND IS to undercut people's strengths when the media wants to.

You pointing out just how amazing Obama and Bill Clinton were at navigating the minefields of our election system doesn't change the fact that they HAD TO BE THAT GOOD in order to survive it. The candidates on the right never measure up to close to that level, they just get protected and insulated, and their gaffes are rarely pounced upon and gnawed on for weeks on end.

Dean was sunk by a scream. Not by words, by a scream and a media effort to take that--out of context of everything else--as evidence that he was unstable. We just elected Trump, but it was Dean who the media showed to be unstable. As was said here in these threads already, Gore was destroyed for saying something he never said. The media made sure we thought he said it. It was common knowledge for years that he did, and probably still is.

Swift-boating of Kerry was given way too much media legitimacy.

And on and on. Do you actually have a different take on this?

[geek tragedy]

92. 2000 Bush was a better candidate than Gore, absolutely.

Horrible president, but an effective candidate.

[JCanete]

93. how? If the media makes up the rules about what makes you an effective candidate, then yes

Bush was a better candidate. But the media determines how we judge our candidates. It determines how much to focus on issues, how much to hold the feet of politicians to the fire when they make claims or assertions or try to get by with vagaries or folksiness.

ARGHHH> does the media affect our political system or doesn't it?

[geek tragedy]

94. the ability to handle the media is a big key

Obama was much better at it than Hillary or Kerry or Gore

[JCanete]

95. well, thanks for this discussion....no shit. The question remains, do Republicans actually

have to be as talented as Democrats to handle the media? I am making an assertion that no they do not...the media is there to hold their hands.

You, on the other hand, keep ignoring that part of my argument over and over and just repeating that compared to two of the most stellar candidates in the history of our Democracy, our other candidates are weak. You did throw in that Gore was weaker than Bush, but Bush was nearly insulated from the media his whole time in office, and that isn't just the result of good political management, it is the result of a media being fine with it. He didn't manage the media--except for the in the case with Dan Rather, but that was the rest of the media destroying Rather, they could have rallied behind him--Bush got propped up by the media.

[emulatorloo]

103. media: steely-eyed skepticism for Dems, starry-eyed wonder for Repubs

You are absolutely correct, media handles Republicans with kid gloves.

Anyone who thinks otherwise has not been paying attention.

[Yo_Mama]

85. I think by the time a candidate wins the nomination, that candidate has real strengths.

I tend to believe it's more whether that candidate's particular strengths match the priorities of the electorate that makes the difference.

One can complain about the US candidate selection process, but it is quite a mill and a truly weak candidate will never get through.

The first time Jimmy Carter ran, his strengths matched what the voters were seeking, so he won. The second time he ran, the voters had other priorities. If anything, Carter was a better candidate the second time around.

[Crunchy Frog]

86. IMO yes. Mondale and Dukakis even more so.

[Exilednight]

99. Yes, Yes and only in his reelection campaign.

Gore was weak and made several strategic mistakes, including not letting Bill campaign for him.

Kerry was weak. When I saw him on stage accepting the nomination, the first thing that went through my head was "he looks like Droopy the Dog, we just lost this election." Kerry was also bad at not being able to put the whole medals over the bridge thing to bed. "Swiftboating" didn't start with the Kerry campaign, not did it end there. Bill had his form of it deal with, Obama had his form of it to deal with, and Hillary had hers.

Carter is a mixed bag. It's hard to say Carter was a weak candidate considering that he actually WAS president. He was heavily primaried in his second term run by a Kennedy who beat the hell out of him. It's one thing to have candidates from the same party hit each other when they're not holding power, but to do it to a sitting president makes the party as a whole look weak.

[LexVegas]

104. In the current bizarro world, Hillary is weaker than the guy she destroyed in the primary. nt

[BainsBane]

105. Right?

Forget about logic.

[Gothmog]

106. Clinton is a female and so it is acceptable to attack her

[Donald Ian Rankin]

107. Not very, no, and arguably yes, I would say. N.T.

[jack_krass]

114. No, just HRC

[Ken Burch]

115. I'd say the campaigns of the first three had significant weaknesses as well.

(For the record, I don't personally think Hillary was a "weak candidate"-just that a very questionable campaign was run on her behalf. It isn't always about personally maligning a candidate)

Gore had spent the previous fifteen years fighting to marginalize the progressive wing of the party, and was then unable to understand why a lot of progressives couldn't bring themselves to support him in 2000(and yes, I say that acknowledging he WOULD have been better than Bush). He sounded passionless and obsessively "safe", and he spent too much time trying to blur the differences between himself and Bush.

Kerry's campaign had known that he'd be attacked by bitter-end Vietnam War apologists even before he declared, and they never ever prepared for the attack(if they had, they could have beaten it back simply by getting ahead of the story).in

Carter, while one of the most personally decent people ever to hold the presidency, let himself be fatally constrained by conventional wisdom politics...he inadvertently helped cause the Iranian hostage situation by defending the Shah to the bitter end and he gave Reagan the "misery index" by taking conservative advice to make low inflation(rather than full employment)the major economic priority of his administration. And he needlessly alienated progressive by making no proposals to restore any of Nixon or Ford's cuts to social services.

All had their flaws.

I don't think you'll find many people here who think Hillary was the only problematic candidate we've ever nominated, OR that the main issue was her gender. I'm convinced that the only people who had an issue with that were people who would never have voted for ANY Democrat.

[dionysus]

116. In ways. They lost. Being a weak candidate does not mean they'd be a bad president.

You know what's weaker? This bizarre obsession.

[jfern]

118. They and their opponents all had much better favorables than Hillary and Trump

[BainsBane]

120. Yet lost by wider margins

[jfern]

124. Gore didn't really lose

[hellofromreddit]

122. We aren't saying she ran a weak campaign because she lost

We're saying she lost because she ran a weak campaign for the reasons denied in thread after thread around here.