Clinton Campaign Hoisted By Its Own Too Clever By Half Petard

Another one from the Picking at the Scab files of what went wrong for the Democrats. Those manipulative lever pullers behind the scenes in Clintonville really outsmarted themselves this time in their efforts to stage manage the Hillary coronation. Little did they know that their elaborately constructed set with its paper mache ogre would topple over at the end of the third act and crush their leading lady just as she was about to take her bows.

You can't make this shit up, can you? For your perusal this morning, this article by Ben Norton from yesterday in Salon:

How the Hillary Clinton campaign deliberately "elevated" Donald Trump with its "pied piper" strategy

An email recently released by the whistleblowing organization WikiLeaks shows how the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party bear direct responsibility for propelling the bigoted billionaire to the White House.

In its self-described “pied piper” strategy, the Clinton campaign proposed intentionally cultivating extreme right-wing presidential candidates, hoping to turn them into the new “mainstream of the Republican Party” in order to try to increase Clinton’s chances of winning.

The Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee called for using far-right candidates “as a cudgel to move the more established candidates further to the right.” Clinton’s camp insisted that Trump and other extremists should be “elevated” to “leaders of the pack” and media outlets should be told to “take them seriously.”

Not content with simply responding to the world in its natural state, the mad election scientists on Team Hillary felt the need to create a right wing bacteria that they would release into the environment so that their candidate could emerge as the Jonas Salk savior with the vaccine. They never anticipated (because mad scientists never do) that due to the hallucinogenic properties in their engineered bacteria, the populace would embrace the infection and reject the vaccine.

I know, I now have used 5 unrelated metaphors in this single essay, but that's the dilemma with this story - there are so many apt bromides, literature, history and fables offering comparables and similes that it's hard to pick one and stick with it when reflecting on the massive conceit, hubris and self-importance at the heart of the Clinton run for the Presidency. Let's just wrap up by saying that it's difficult to find another example of someone who started out with so many advantages, i.e. money, position, influence, a sewed up media, a campaign willing to operate with no boundaries, and yet they still managed to lose to the person they themselves defined as the easiest option to beat.

They tilted the machine and all the balls still ran the wrong way. (#6).

Share
up
0 users have voted.

Comments

up
0 users have voted.
Steven D's picture

Die by deceit.

To paraphrase another metaphor/adage.

up
0 users have voted.

"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott

up
0 users have voted.

up
0 users have voted.
edg's picture

That wasn't no stinking collapse!! The Washington Post and NY Times assured me it was just a "wobble"!! A collapse would be when you lose consciousness and Secret Service agents have to throw you into a van like a sack of potatoes and your shoe comes off during the fracas and ... Oh, wait a minute. Never mind. I guess it was a collapse.

up
0 users have voted.

be freaking HILLarious if it was a plot in a Mel Brooks movie. As it is it's just sick....and sad for what could have been.
Bernie2016

up
0 users have voted.
Phoebe Loosinhouse's picture

Instead of producing a show so consciously bad it would shut down overnight in order to scam the investors, this is a show that was unconsciously horrendous which planned on a long run and the producers wouldn't believe the out of town tryout reviews - The lead sucks, The star can't sing, the title character makes no sense, but who is the guy with the white hair -rewrite the show around him, etc.

up
0 users have voted.

" “Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.” FDR "

OzoneTom's picture

"What did I do right?!?"

up
0 users have voted.
Steven D's picture

But played out in real life.

up
0 users have voted.

"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott

Exactly!

up
0 users have voted.

... winter for workers and the little guy.

up
0 users have voted.

It was pretty obvious all year, and it's clearly a reprise of Claire McCaskill's manipulation to get Todd Akin as an opponent in 2014. I don't think this is why Hillary lost, however. She probably would have lost worse to Ted Cruz or John Kasich, or most of the other clown car riders from the primary. If anything, she may have saved us from a President Cruz, who would have been far worse than Trump.

I agree about the fundamental cluelessness of the Clinton campaign, though. The Clintons have always been about small-bore tactical politics, trying to sell just enough lies to get elected so they could pursue the agendas of their sponsors. They never gave a shit about average people, though they have been unaccountably successful in peddling the lie that they were. They have remade the Democratic Party in their image, and just may have killed a political institution two centuries old. At this point, let's see the end of it and build something new and far better.

up
0 users have voted.

Please help support caucus99percent!

Phoebe Loosinhouse's picture

tried to keep her out of the public eye from the getgo. There was the "listening tour" where she only listened to pre-selected small groups, followed up by an official campaign where she pretty much followed the same format. Her press opportunities were few and far between. It read to me that they lived in constant fear of some shoe dropping from out of the sky on them. I used to wonder, for God's sakes, if she can't face the American press corps out in the open as this cloistered candidate, how much more furtive will she be when actually in power?

I recall you, Dallasdoc making a comment about how wrong it was of her to think she could run a Rose Garden campaign before she actually occupied the White House, and I thought, exactly! We couldn't have been the only ones who wondered what it was they were so afraid of by letting her loose and unscripted.

up
0 users have voted.

" “Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.” FDR "

Socialprogressive's picture

dropping they completely missed the house that dropped on the wicked witch.

up
0 users have voted.

When I offer to wash your back in the shower, all you have to say is yes or no.
Not all this "who are you, and how did you get in here?" nonsense.

MsGrin's picture

Exactly.

up
0 users have voted.

'What we are left with is an agency mandated to ensure transparency and disclosure that is actually working to keep the public in the dark' - Ann M. Ravel, former FEC member

she said stuff like "nuclear weapons are not off the table" and in the same sentence, "a military response to Russian and Chinese hacking". And that eye roll and laugh - "haha, you caught me lying - now go to your room child." (that'll teach you to embarrass Mommy in front of the neighbors.)

up
0 users have voted.

On to Biden since 1973

up
0 users have voted.

Love ya, mean it

I had thought I'd written my last diary at TOP in January about Clintonian corruption, but that boot on my face made me pour my heart out in anger over there. I'm still fucking pissed about it.

up
0 users have voted.

Please help support caucus99percent!

up
0 users have voted.

Love ya, mean it

Thinking what Alligator Ed wrote regarding this. Think the Clintons finally figured out what medication she needed - especially after her horrendous sickness shown 9/11. Before that, she was unable to walk upstairs unassisted, many incidents of what looked like partial seizures, had to hold on to railings & unable to stand without some kind of support. This seemed to change after the 9/11 event, think it was a change in medication.

Expect we will some day learn real medical condition. Meanwhile, almost feel badly for Bill, so often just standing in the back ground literally chewing his tongue - very strange. Both of them, very strange.

up
0 users have voted.

Saturday nights, holidays? Anything to NOT build an audience, not build a movement, and not give air time to other candidates.

up
0 users have voted.

Love ya, mean it

MsGrin's picture

in getting whole election cycles for 6 weeks? Two months? while the country essentially didn't hear a peep about policy and priorities from our side of the aisle to get momentum building while they were all pissing on themselves like puppies. Brock taught them all to 'show contrast' except they simply DID NOT as the country began paying attention. The Dems were whistling, Nothing To See Here, so folks (and the media) would hopefully ignore Bernie.

up
0 users have voted.

'What we are left with is an agency mandated to ensure transparency and disclosure that is actually working to keep the public in the dark' - Ann M. Ravel, former FEC member

After the Iowa caucus, there was a professor from the State University on C-SPAN. He was asked what mistakes did Hillary make that prevented her from getting a clear victory. He said it would take a whole day. To give a short answer, he said, she would turn up at an event with her large entourage, speak for ten minutes then get back into her car without shaking hands with people who had waited for hours to see her.

up
0 users have voted.

It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back. Carl Sagan

Phoebe Loosinhouse's picture

I think voters picked up on the vibe given out by her campaign that the election to Hillary was always about her, her position, her history, her desire for a place in the record books, her slogan focusing on her "I'm With Her", etc. it seemed like a campaign with no place for the voter except as a rubber stamping formality.

I was hit with an epiphany lately that the only people Hillary seemed to care about were those that either funded her or served her, everyone else was an extra in her movie.

up
0 users have voted.

" “Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.” FDR "

Phoebe Loosinhouse's picture

up
0 users have voted.

" “Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.” FDR "

If you get good at deleting dupes, maybe you could something about the DNC?

--

up
0 users have voted.

If you get good at deleting dupes, maybe you could something about the DNC?

--

up
0 users have voted.

with people who had waited for hours to see her."

that one will stay with me.

up
0 users have voted.

It should be a real plus for the old resume.
Kind of hope it belongs to Robbie Mook.

I loved Eddie Haskell, but I can't stand Robbie.
He just pisses me off.

stein - baraka
2020

up
0 users have voted.

After all, he's the strategic political genius that made all the Dems' dreams come true.

up
0 users have voted.
Not Henry Kissinger's picture

Just his kinda of caper.

up
0 users have voted.

The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?

Bisbonian's picture

and far better."

Amen.

up
0 users have voted.

"I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” —Malcolm X

Maybe with a little tidying up the democratic party could be set to right: you know, something along the lines of how Hercules cleaned out those stables in Greece.

Corporations acquire and gut companies just to get their hands on a resource they want, so maybe the tank and file of the party, etc., ought to try something similar. Our system currently doesn't make something like Syriza feasible.

up
0 users have voted.
MsGrin's picture

They never gave a shit about average people, though they have been unaccountably successful in peddling the lie that they were.

...it just doesn't go far enough to both get the lie choked down the throats of the base AND get her elected - that's a bridge too far, apparently, given all of the OTHER lies and corruption.

up
0 users have voted.

'What we are left with is an agency mandated to ensure transparency and disclosure that is actually working to keep the public in the dark' - Ann M. Ravel, former FEC member

Hillary never won one, except for an open Senate seat for which she ran while she was still FLOTUS and her husband's ratings were very high. And pulled the woman card because her opponent did the same thing to her that Gore did to Bush the Lesser.

If you've read Game Change and watched the 2008 campaign closely, you see she did not lead that campaign, despite having been in politics since age 13 (by her account), including her own husband's three gubernatorial campaigns and two Presidential campaigns. And when her team presented options, she made all the wrong choices. (Michelle must have invented "When they go low, we go high" for the Hillary 2008 primary campaign.)

On election night 2016, Carville related that Hillary had received lots of advice for the closing weeks of this campagin. Some people wanted her to run on her financial plan. Others told her to rely on negativity and her allegedly incredibly GOTV machine. Guess which alternative she chose? And the GOTV machine was considerably less incredible than it had been assumed to be.

Inability to lead and bad judgment are an awful combination for a candidate or a President.

up
0 users have voted.

Between my wife and I, it consisted of a single text message she got from Move On asking her to knock on doors. TUESDAY MORNING. We had both already voted for Stein long before then.

I'm right on the I4 corridor. The part of the state you need to win. We're both still registered Dem. We both knocked doors for Obama and have contributed to other candidates on many occasions. One text message. lol.

up
0 users have voted.
Phoebe Loosinhouse's picture

unbeatable, I don't understand. I read another comment someplace else that the campaign ignored Michigan until the day before.

It's obvious that the air in the bubble was critically short on oxygen from the outside world. They really believed their own script, didn't they? It was enough to simply be Hillary Clinton and rely on the demographics and glass ceiling busting to carry you over the finish line

up
0 users have voted.

" “Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.” FDR "

mini me Chelsey and Tim Kaine then maybe not (NOT)! People want to see the candidate not the surrogate. I the campaign only focused on Metro areas -- Madison and Milwaukee. Green Bay to some extent.

up
0 users have voted.

O.k. When is the next meeting for the revolution?
-FuturePassed on Sunday, November 25, 2018 10:22 p.m.

I live in Philly, had (at least) 2 pairs of canvassers at the door over the weekend, 3 mail pieces telling where my polling location was, 2 text messages and a bunch of calls I didn't pick up. Plus the gigantic election eve event with the Boss and Bon Jovi. And Hillary still took tens of thousands fewer votes out of the Philly region than she needed to win the state.

No, the problem was the product they were selling, people weren't buying. The problem was as soon as Obama was done talking at the rally Monday night, when Hillary was finally on, people started leaving. That's the problem.

up
0 users have voted.

Love ya, mean it

up
0 users have voted.

She spent a hell of a lot of money here in Arizona trying to win big, and run up the score, while taking Wisconsin and Michigan for granted. It reminded me of Chris Christie, who was always going to win re-election as governor of NJ, but wanted it to be a landslide. So he wasted millions of dollars on a special election 20 days before the regular election so people voting for Cory Booker would have only that one seat on their ballots, and then he strong armed Democrats into supporting him while ignoring members of his own party.

Look where that got him. Look where using that strategy got Clinton.

up
0 users have voted.
MsGrin's picture

In Texas in '08 & '12 for Obama's elections and in whatever year Wendy Davis ran, the top of the ticket paid the lion's share of the Coordinated Campaigns in Texas.

Clinton elected to NOT do that this year. There was a lot of noise that Hillary Victory Fund would contribute to the Coordinated Campaigns, but this state got TWO dumps of money in 2016, $90K in January which was immediately redirected to the DNC, and then $10K in June which I believe we may have been allowed to keep. A whole $10K.

I do know of one local female candidate who was given office space in the Hillary campaign office.

Upshot is, for the Obama and Davis races, phone banking and training was done out of a large building with air conditioning. This summer, they had something with a real abandoned warehouse feel sans adequate lighting or air conditioning because that's all the county party here could afford since it was all on their shoulders without $$ infusion from that BILLION dollars to GOTV and get HER elected. Ground game? I sure didn't see this year what was all around me in 2008 - and that year, I was not nearly as able to peer inside as I was this year. It was totally accessible then. This year...?

up
0 users have voted.

'What we are left with is an agency mandated to ensure transparency and disclosure that is actually working to keep the public in the dark' - Ann M. Ravel, former FEC member

up
0 users have voted.

I really DO think we have.
Much more optimistic now than thinking we'd have the Clintons back in the White House. Realize I feel a sense of relief!

up
0 users have voted.

Democrats would finally see the light. They cannot chose the candidate they must be, you know, democratic. But from what I hear from those to travel over to denial central I guess not. Those darn racist white men and women.

up
0 users have voted.

O.k. When is the next meeting for the revolution?
-FuturePassed on Sunday, November 25, 2018 10:22 p.m.

Not Henry Kissinger's picture

up
0 users have voted.

The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?

orlbucfan's picture

$hrillary lost cos she's just not as bright as people think. If a buffoon idiot clown barker like tRump can beat her, what's that tell you? It was too apparent that she and her operatives cheated the Bernster. She always hid from the corporate press--wrong--hairball brained killed her there. She would parrot Bernie's ideas, and the insincerity came through. Not all voters are stupid. Then you had Billyboy getting away with voter hijincks like what went down during the MA primary. Their condescending sense of entitlement was always there, and voters sensed it.

I planned on just skipping POTUS on my ballot. I filled in the Green Party on a last second impulse. It made no difference as the Dumbshine State went for hairball. Phoebe, thanks for the read. Rec'd!

up
0 users have voted.

Inner and Outer Space: the Final Frontiers.

Phoebe Loosinhouse's picture

but won't take a back seat to anyone in her progressiveness! Said to whichever audience prefers a particular version of HRC.

Speaking of Bill, or the "other Bush son" as he's also known as, how many non HRC voters simply didn't want to listen to Old Husky lecturing us ever again? There had to be some anti-Bill sentiment wrapped up in the anti-Hillary sentiment. Plus, the idea of the head of Bill Clinton Inc. being put in charge of the economy was probably a bridge too far for many.

The DNC just didn't get that the appetite for change that was revealed in 2008 remained unsated and when the Dems wouldn't step up and deliver and instead offered the Clinton retread option, either Bills 5th term or Obama's 3rd, depending on how you look at it, the we want something new crowd went for Trump.

up
0 users have voted.

" “Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.” FDR "

and DNC is a little too familiar?

To me, it's exactly the same plot line that we got to watch when the Romney campaign and RNC collapsed in 2012. Except the sides changed. And throughout 2013/4 we all got to watch the RNC autopsy and we got to watch the gotp not follow through with post-autopsy decisions, and we got to watch the gotp prosper accordingly. I expect the DNC will do a better soul-searching autopsy and find Clinton/WS/Brazile similarly not-to-blame, but I don't think that 2018 is going to have the same happy outcome the gotp enjoyed in 2014.

I don't like popcorn with my Kabuki theater, please don't pass it. otoh I am exceedingly self-satisfied that I donated so little money to watch this 2016 $hit $torm. Just a pittance to Bernie last spring, that's the only ticket price I paid to watch Act 2 of "USA, a republic .... if you can keep it" play out.

Glass ceiling my ass. Edited to add: my POTUS vote went to Gloria La Riva.

up
0 users have voted.

~annominous

Or maybe here about exactly that.

Of course the programmer in me kept thinking "over-engineered," especially when compared to Bernie's elegantly simple strategy (which Trump reverse engineered and turned into his own hack.)

up
0 users have voted.

I ran across this and thought it went a long way toward encapsulating the modern Democratic Party:

Young DNC Staffers Reveal How To Work 7 Days A Week And Love Every Minute

Elite Daily spoke to five Millennial women working for the DNC, all of whom expressed excitement and passion about their jobs...

With the election reaching its peak, the women are often working seven days a week. But they said they are working with such excellent teams and are so driven by the mission of the DNC that they are inspired daily to keep going with enthusiasm.

If you click through, be sure to check out the front page of the "Elite Daily" to get further exposure to the site. It's quite clearly a Democratic Party site devoted to gossip and style. And called the "Elite Daily." This is the mindset of many of the people at TOP who are the whip-crackers over there.

Having seen Podesta's emails, we know how many of these folks got their jobs. I'm sure there are exceptions, but the DNC and HRC campaign staffs served a role as resume builders for offspring of the rich and powerful.

I'm sure these folks are great at outreach to hurting working class people in Youngstown.

up
0 users have voted.
darkmatter's picture

They were really expecting to ascend to neoliberal heaven, weren't they.

up
0 users have voted.

up
0 users have voted.

Bill Clinton praises Trump and paints Sander supporters are losers.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lC-U5xiFjs]

up
0 users have voted.
Steven D's picture

he was.

up
0 users have voted.

"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott

This is wonderful:
"Not content with simply responding to the world in its natural state, the mad election scientists on Team Hillary felt the need to create a right wing bacteria that they would release into the environment so that their candidate could emerge as the Jonas Salk savior with the vaccine."

The shenanigans, manipulation, conniving, inability to be authentic...hideous!

up
0 users have voted.
bondibox's picture

I've been reading the chat transcripts of a guy purporting to be a high level FBI silent-whistleblower on 4chan. It's a tough call as to whether it's for real, since it was July and he was obviously working PsyOps on the Trump supporters. But so much of what he says sounds accurate that I have to share this tidbit.

Bush had been selected already. What the GOP does is keep the anointed one in the shadows until the last minute, like they did with Romney. The 17 person field was a smokescreen. That's why Jeb was so "low energy," he was just phoning it in.

up
0 users have voted.

F the F'n D's

up
0 users have voted.

O.k. When is the next meeting for the revolution?
-FuturePassed on Sunday, November 25, 2018 10:22 p.m.

was an unexpected hit.

up
0 users have voted.

up
0 users have voted.
ggersh's picture

up
0 users have voted.

I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

claiming everyone was doing great and if you weren't you were either delusional or just plain unlucky, because everyone else is doing great. And if you are feeling down, well, let's go punch some hippies - that'll make us all feel better. She forget that Bill won because people caught on to that shit.
(Uh, actually Reagan's 4th term, since Bush Elder was Reagan's third)
(Uh, actually Reagan's 9th, as Bill and W and Obama …)

up
0 users have voted.

On to Biden since 1973

sojourns's picture

To bad her campaign manager was nowhere near Salk's architect's level of consciousness.

"All material in nature, the mountains and the streams and the air and we, are made of Light which has been spent, and this crumpled mass called material casts a shadow, and the shadow belongs to Light."

Louis Kahn

up
0 users have voted.

"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."
John Cage

mouselander's picture

made about Hillary in the next couple of years - my question is, who are they going to get to play her?

If I didn't like Evan Rachel Wood so much I'd suggest her, but who would want to be burdened with those ghastly memories for the rest of their life? They say you have to suffer for your art, but there's gotta be a limit.

up
0 users have voted.

inactive account

Steven D's picture

I don;t go in much for faux hagiography.

up
0 users have voted.

"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott

jamess's picture

Those who think, They can do No Wrong ...

have really disengaged from the process of thinking.

Entitlement, is not a valid rationale;

it is rather, the essence of our systematic problem.

Which continues, unabated.

up
0 users have voted.