A despicably long time ago, my reader had a rejoinder on the topic of Obama’s mistakes impacting Clinton’s failure:
I mostly agree with you on Obama trying to avoid a greater divide by not prosecuting the misdeeds done by the Bush administration. And maybe that’s the calculus that put him firmly on the side of the banksters. But that specific subject did not have to come up during the campaign for it to be a deciding factor. People felt screwed by the establishment in 2008 and 2009, and remembered that FEELING well in 2016, even if they could not connect the dots to the bank bailout. Trump played into that feeling, and here we are.
Clinton very well described her policies, and on a policy basis, most voters, even most Trump voters, actually agreed with her. But they were not “hearing” policy talk from Clinton. Al they were “hearing” was she was part of the establishment that screwed them the past 8 years. It almost did not matter what she said, because the disaffected voters were not ready to hear it. (I think she could have gone radical, but even then they may not have listened.)
I apologize for forgetting about this reply. I have a couple of thoughts on this matter:
- The voters had an opportunity to vent their anger in 2012, but … well, at least didn’t enough to toss Obama out of office. There’s certainly many factors in play here – Romney’s Mormonism played against him in a party dominated by evangelicals, as would his government experience (yep, you read this right), as his tenure as Governor of Massachusetts would mark him as part of the establishment – that particular inclination working against Clinton four years later. Not to mention his remark about so many voters latched on to the government teat – that would chase away most potential liberal votes. But Obama did win, and left office four years later on a high note.
- Clinton, for all her being of the establishment, is not (and I suppose was not is more accurate, as I doubt we’ll see her in a political role ever again) much of a politician. Trump was a far more polished politician than Clinton, although in a mold to which we’re unaccustomed – which is to say, promise everything to the disaffected, discredit the traditional, independent sources of dependable facts when they go against you, and always lie when the lie benefits you, even if you’re caught in it. I despise that particular model. But Clinton’s Deplorables remark was disastrous, no matter how prescient it’s proving to be; her hyper-intellectual approach didn’t play well in a country in which many people put their religious convictions ahead of, even in place of, their intellectual attainments. Starting from a position of dominance twice (2008, 2016), she failed twice. In a way, she campaigned as if she lived in the country she wants to live in, where rationality and intellect are dominant. That’s not what we have, even though she won the popular vote – we have a dismayingly large number of folks who are gullible, who are desperate, and who either did not do the research on the candidates, or didn’t mind having a liar for a President.
