I think enough time has gone by that we can begin to assess what did happen, what went wrong and what was done right. For what it might be worth, here is my modest contribution to doing just that.
I’ve been thinking about the election. More precisely, what the morticians the pundits (both professional and amateur) repeatedly offer as explanation. Or, I should say, explanations.
The Democratic Party establishment got almost everything wrong.
The Democrats have been swept from power at every level.
Normally that should mean a housecleaning. Everyone should be fired.
Over at TOP, this election was all about the racism and misogyny of Donald Trump.
But in the real world...
Somehow the republic has survived similar idiots, but now it’s as bad as it’s ever been and the Democratic party is in unprecedented territory because even during the most horrible times there was some vestige of Democratic resistance in terms of political representation, but now especially for all POC, there will be heightened micro-aggressive hate in the most mundane actions of daily life.
There is an above-average chance that 2016 will set the standard...until 2020.
Don't misunderstand me: I would prefer that Jill Stein wins.
In fact, I would prefer to get punched in the face several times if it would prevent Hillary winning.
But that isn't the choice before us.
I'm under no impression that Hillary will be anything other than a terrible president, but so would The Donald.
Sanders beat Clinton with millennials in all but two states.
Then the DNC cheated Sanders out of the nomination. Millennials not only aren't coming around to Hillary, they are turning away in increasing numbers.
"Will he [Donald Trump] have some appeal to working-class Dems in Levittown or Bristol? Sure,” Rendell said. “For every one, he’ll lose one and a half, two Republican women. Trump’s comments like, 'You can’t be a 10 if you’re flat-chested, that’ll come back to haunt him.'"
And then, he offered this, perhaps jokingly:
“There are probably more ugly women in America than attractive women. People take that stuff personally."
One thing I noticed about most of the primaries: Bernie does better in the initial CNN exit polls (released after the polls close) than in the vote result. CNN then modifies the exit poll to reflect the vote results. Tonight the initial exit poll had Hillary up 52-48 and the vote result was 58-42. This is a shift of 12%. Being that it seems to happen mostly in one direction, I was wondering why the exit polls seem to favor Bernie. I cannot come up with a good reason.
