Ok. Everybody recovered from either celebrating or being sad and confused yesterday? Good. Let’s take a collective deep breath or three. It’s time to talk like grown-ups about what happened this election.
Protest signs with swear words are not helpful. Stop it with the popular vote argument unless you were equally outraged in 2000.
I’d like to share some of the more level headed things that were said yesterday about Hillary’s defeat. No, not Trump’s win, but Hillary’s defeat. There were a lot of people who had a hard time choosing between — as this season of South Park put it — the douche or the turd sandwich. No, you can’t boil this down to “hate won” or “xenophobia and misogyny.” So here I offer the thoughts of Ryan Bort and Juan Cole. Note the theme of an enraged electorate whose standard of living has been in decline.
Hillary was a weak candidate: a “limousine liberal” in a time when Joe Average is not doing well. She was beset by scandals both real and imaginary.
Her slogan was “Stronger Together,” but she ran on “Come now, be reasonable and accept small variations on the status quo.” Bernie Sanders’s ideas? Come now, be reasonable. Recent radio ads purportedly sharing the thoughts of Republicans planning to vote for Clinton actually used the words “She’s reasonable.”
Here’s a good summary: “She was a weak candidate with tremendous baggage and very high unfavorable ratings. She was a status quo candidate with a status quo campaign in a change election.” And yet the decision was made very high up in the DNC that it was “her turn.”
So yeah, it’s time for a shakeup in the Democratic Party.
