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Not to be rude to Michael whom I respect very much, but in 2012 Hillary Clinton was the most popular politician in the country and had a viral meme. In 2020, numerous people said that Biden was so great he should have run in 2016. The weaknesses of these candidates pale to the weakness in us.

I'm constantly marveling at Trump's luck as a politician. He only won in 2016 because he ran against one of the Democrats' weakest candidates. In 2024 he ends up running against someone even weaker.

This is a rant I have had for a while, but the first First Lady with a postgraduate degree, Watergate lawyer, children’s rights activist, US Senator and Secretary of State was not a weak fucking candidate. She was more progressive than Biden in every conceivable way. She got fucked over.

And, as much as I hate Joe Biden (and I do!), the man is a six term US Senator, a former VP who actually did something, and an extremely capable administrator. If we were focused on the job of president and not the spectacle of it then this would be obvious, but we keep getting caught in the circus

It took two decades of concerted DC media and Republican efforts and a racist backlash to Obama to sink Hillary’s campaign.

And faithless electors, and electoral college fuckery

It’s unilateral warfare and too many on the left keep blaming the victims and falling for it because they don’t personally like the victims.

But nothing I can say will ever convince anyone who doesn’t already see it.

Yep. That's the horrible part

and because that's common in an abusive system: blame everyone but the actual abuser, because you don't realize you've been gaslit yourself, and/or it's too scary/inconvenient to do otherwise

Exactly. And this will keep happening until the centrists and moderates are radicalized and it becomes bilateral.

she had slaves in the governor's mansion and wrote about how nice they were to her, I think people just didn't like her

I keep thinking he's got to be the most experienced president we've ever had.

He’s lived through a lot of politics, to be sure

Why do you hate Joe Biden?

There is not enough room here, but quickly: anti-school integration in the 70s; friends with open segregationists; Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill; Crime Bill, Iraq War intelligence laundering for the Bush Admin; plagiarist; racistly assumed that what the GOP did to Obama wouldn't happen to him

People say it’s not she’s a woman it’s her personality but they didn’t like Warren either for equally nebulous reasons.

You know, I think many of the same people dislike Kamala as well. I guess it’s a mystery!

Yea and I bet they didn't support Sarah Palin either

🤨

why do you hate ambitious women, there's no reason to not support her unless you're mad she's a woman, it's impossible to look at a candidate's record and go 'she seems like she sucks' or her personal factors like, say, massive racist lies and being a literal Goldwater Girl.

You had me in the first half there not gonna lie

And she got more actual people’s votes. (And won the debates not that making sense and knowing things apparently matters.) I literally advocated against her policies in Latin America as Secretary of State but never denied her qualifications.

Hillary wasn't weak; she was a strong enough candidate that the Republicans had spent 25 years bashing her and scaring their base into hating her. But she was vulnerable to that. If Obama hadn't beaten her in the 2008 primary, she'd've probably won then anyway.

I agree that she was not weak, but I’ll respectfully suggest that her history as Bill’s aide-de-camp and involvement with Wal-Mart showed her to be less progressive on labor issues than Biden.

Completely agree, and yet I think her pick for labor would have been pro-labor in unexpected ways. And here’s one thing I liked about her in particular: If you complain to her, she listens and changes.

That’s how I feel about HRC as well. She’s open to listening and changing. Which is better than 98% of people who share her generation and background.

In the emailz! saga, my favorite thing was seeing how thoroughly she followed up on every single lead she got. It was the correspondence of an exceptional public servant! It was very boring! That’s why they had to make up a nebulous sinister controversy to create drama.

Exactly! She was policy wonk, constituent services, and concerned grandmother in those emails. What’s not to like?!

also had a bad habit for a politician in she'd clearly do quiet good deeds, at least once at potential risk to her life, and someone in campaign staff would find out, and she wouldn't want them publicized.

Bad trait for a politician, but ironically a good sign of character.

Perhaps, but it was reported after the election that she was considering Howard Schultz for Secretary of Labor: slate.com/news-and-pol...

If Leaked List Is Accurate, Hillary’s Cabinet Choices Would Have Enraged the Democratic Leftslate.com Former Politico staffer Mike Allen has published, via his new Axios newsletter, a list of what he says are the names of individuals who were being...

I don’t hold any credit to that for two reasons: The source The way she would have backtracked so hard once the reaction happened; she has no appetite for fighting her left when the right is gunning for her

She did get fucked over, and the hate for her was irrational. But her "weakness" was just that so many people already hated her, or were suspicious of her to the extent that the email thing could seem like a big deal to them. She was qualified and capable. And came with a lot of (unfair) baggage.

The “weakness” was that a carefully crafted propaganda campaign would spring up against her, but now that Biden is experiencing the same thing (and Obama, and Bill Clinton, and…) why is that her fault instead of just what Republicans do?

YUUUP. I love Warren and I like Harris too, but every time anyone says “We should run [woman]”, I feel a pang of sorrow and terror. 2016 taught me *just how much* this country hates women. As much as I want a woman president, I don’t want to learn that lesson again.

yep. right now people love Whitmer, and she sounds pretty great, but she'll be pilloried instantly, assuming you know we actually get another election

Everyone is great—especially women—before we have to live as people. Then all of a sudden our flaws are the only thing anyone notices.

The GOP and even mainstream Dems have been after her since her husband was elected. The Washington Post jumped all over her when she said she wasn't going to be the kind of first lady to host tea parties in the rose garden.

Her husband abandoned her push for healthcare reform. She was handed a Senate seat with the plan to run for president and she got beat by a freshman senator from Illinois. And it was difficult for voters to parse her policies from her husband's.

And let's face it, Bill Clinton was an absolute disaster. Welfare reform basically screwed over part of his base and handed the GOP a huge victory. Cutting off direct cash assistance is a disaster. The crime bill and expansion of three strikes essentially created the prison industrial complex.

Repeal of Glass Steagall, 7 years later, worse economic crisis since the depression. His plan for the break up of the USSR was basically we'll just show them capitalism, and it nearly collapsed the economy.

Handed? A’ight, you don’t know anything about that New York Senate race because it was not obvious that she would win. A lot of people were skeptical; she had to do a ton of internal work with the state party. And downplay Obama, but he worked very hard for that win. Hating clouds facts.

I guess that’s why she got 3 million more votes than Trump.

Yeah, too bad we don't elect presidents by popular vote.

Why is it that everyone knows Gore was cheated in 2000, but we pretend that 2016, with a 3 million vote margin, was more legitimate? Who did this to us?

The framers.

Wasn't the problem in 2000 that Gore probably did win Florida but the Supreme Court called off the recounts and declared Bush the winner then Bush ordered the votes destroyed so no one could do any recounts after the fact? Was anything in 2016 that close?

That’s not a good response to the “flawed candidate” narrative. Clinton got more votes than any candidate in history not named Barack Obama. Biden got far more than that. And yet there’s this persistent “flawed candidate” narrative.

Neither were my first choice, but I still voted for them because I understood the alternative. Unfortunately, there are millions of people who declare a candidate “flawed” and withhold their vote unless there’s alignment on every policy issue. Cutting off their nose to spite their face.