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US Elections: Apocalypse Now


Inigima

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4 minutes ago, Altherion said:

On the contrary, Clinton had the best branding money could buy:

Every aspect of her campaign was analyzed by some very smart people and almost every position and action worth noting was vetted and tested. In retrospect, perhaps this was part of the problem. Sanders ran on the Scandinavia-style socialism he has been advocating for decades even though "socialism" was quite recently a dirty word in the US. Trump has been obsessed with winning and greatness his entire life. He made this the theme of his campaign and then proceeded to run in the same offensive and somewhat vulgar style he is famous for. It can be argued that this was not good, but at least it felt authentic.

Clinton was... what? Whatever the A-B testing told her to be? There was practically no evidence of a soul with the only exceptions being misspeaks (e.g. the comments about Nancy Reagan or the basket of deplorables) which were immediately walked back. Perhaps it's not exactly the same as selling an iPhone or a soft drink or a cereal.

I didn't argue that she didn't attempt branding.  I said she did and it was atrocious.   There was no vision, no unifying message, no inspiration, no style.   It might have been super expensive, but it sucked.    Which I think you agree with?

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1 minute ago, James Arryn said:

It kills me, absolutely kills me that people still think this.

yeah, he and those around him took all the evidence they could assemble and sorted it to fit their narrative. They wanted to go to war, and they found the evidence for their war. 

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20 minutes ago, butterbumps! said:

I understand that her opponents maligned her, but I don't think that would have been enough to make an inspiring visionary narrative a lost cause.   All she had to do was inspire a total of 190,000 democrats who had stayed home across 3 states to come out for her.   190,000.    You don't think that if she harnessed a narrative about herself and gave us a vision, she'd have easily inspired those votes?

She did create a narrative and she did present a vision. There were many, many people who sincerely felt the "I'm With Her" message, the message about her decades of public service, about her resilience in the face of gross slanders and misogyny, about her willingness to work toward a better tomorrow for everybody, about her very detailed and thoughtful policy plans, and so on and so forth.

The problem is that those who decided to stay home, or those who decided to go for Trump instead of Hillary, did not care, or were unimpressed, or actually decided that the narrative was distasteful in some way or another.

She didn't lose because of a narrative problem. She lost through a host of factors, but I'm convinced that the largest of them is that Trump's pie-in-the-sky promises were simply more appealing in the Rust Belt than her solid, considered policy solutions. No amount of narrative could get around the fact that she's a deeply knowledgeable policy wonk and has thought long and hard about these things, which basically confirmed she was part of the hated "establishment" that had been failing them.

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10 minutes ago, Frog Eater said:

yeah, he and those around him took all the evidence they could assemble and sorted it to fit their narrative. They wanted to go to war, and they found the evidence for their war. 

The NIE report..it's public record FFS...said no WMD's, and highly unlikely to be used by Saddam even if he had them short of something like being invaded. Intel communities around the world said no evidence of WMD's. Bob Woodward was in the Oval Office with Dubya when 9-11 went down, recorded Bush as telling his people to find a way to connect this to Iraq and the Bush administration never denied it and had Woodward's book detailing it on their recommended reading list.

And WMD's were like the 5th or 6th argument for invasion; they just kept trying different tacks until one stuck, and then they had a problem with their own intelligence community disagreeing with them so they invented an entirely new intelligence branch within the WH that then, shockingly, was the only one to give them what they wanted.

Moreover, had Saddam actually been hording WMD's his crime would have been violating the treaty established after Iraq I...a treaty which the US DID violate by unilateral invasion against the stipulations of the UNSC who were the body designated by the treaty to rule on violations and repercussions. 

None of this is unknown. All of this is public record, and was at the time. The people who continue to blame 'bad Intel' either don't want to face the truth about their President/country/selves or haven't bothered to look into it very much.

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At the very, very best, Bush deluded himself into believing that Iraq had WMDs and that agencies were failing to turn it up because they were just not good enough. At very best. The idea that he was simply a puppet to Rove and Cheney and was too incurious to recognize the fact that evidence was being ginned up strikes me as ludicrous.

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28 minutes ago, Ran said:

She didn't lose because of a narrative problem. She lost through a host of factors, but I'm convinced that the largest of them is that Trump's pie-in-the-sky promises were simply more appealing in the Rust Belt than her solid, considered policy solutions. No amount of narrative could get around the fact that she's a deeply knowledgeable policy wonk and has thought long and hard about these things, which basically confirmed she was part of the hated "establishment" that had been failing them.

This is probably true. And it might be one of the most depressing things I've read in a while.

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13 minutes ago, Ran said:

She did create a narrative and she did present a vision. There were many, many people who sincerely felt the "I'm With Her" message

what's the vision for America contained in "I'm with her," though? 

Agreed this isn't the reason she lost or even a major one.   But I think she lacked something like a compelling "thesis sentence," or "big idea" to get people to rally behind, and considering the tiny margin she lost by and voter apathy, I think it could have made a difference.  It was something that made me nervous throughout the campaign based on my experience delivering design presentations-- a bunch of great ideas are never received as well as one big idea in a project, even if that big idea is impossible or stupid.  

ETA:  I don't think any amount of reframing a narrative would convince Trump voters to go for her.   I think this was a missed opportunity to get more left-leaning voters who stayed home to become more enthusiastic about her.   

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Clinton's branding seemed subtle, which was appropriate for who she appears to be as a person and politician, but I find it hard to remember anything she actually said. As someone who follows politics, I believe I have a pretty good idea of her positions, but as a naive viewer/reader starting from the beginning of the campaign, there's not much in the way of strong images that comes instantly to mind.

It's easy to remember what Bernie was about - both specific goals and more vague principles. The $15 minimum wage. Millionayahs and billionayahs. Overturning Citizens United... Slogans are a poor way to make complex political decisions, but they're a great way to constantly keep in mind what a candidate is pushing for. 

I feel like "I'm with her" was strong at the beginning of the campaign, but lost traction - I don't think it became less effective, I just didn't hear it as much throughout October. I think her visual image at the DNC was strong, but didn't feel like I ever saw it much again. I never saw a single TV ad, because I don't have a TV, which may be unusual for an American, but less so for a Millennial. I'm a registered Democrat and no one direct contacted me about either voting for or volunteering for Hillary, until two days before the election, some Democrats asked if I needed help dropping off my ballot. I felt like I was flooded with opportunities for Bernie before the caucus. 

I don't think what I observed is what everyone took from it, nor do I think it's as simple as "she lost because of poor branding". But I didn't feel like it was good or effective or mobilizing. FWIW, I voted for her, was public about my intent to, but didn't volunteer for her.

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5 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

This is probably true. And it might be one of the most depressing things I've read in while.

Well, there is, too the Brexit problem, that complaining about the status quo is a much easier argument requiring much less subtlety than defending the status quo. This has always been true; go into a room full of people anywhere in the world and shout that they've got a raw deal and the odds are a lot of them will agree with you.

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Here is your Cult of Personality based Comedian:

http://www.mediaite.com/election-2016/chris-rock-has-announced-his-presidential-bid/

Chris Rock comedy routine has had several fairly Conservative aspects to it. If he bridge some of that is to be seen.

I did see Head of State and love to see them of that.  No Bernie Mac though.:(

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Just now, James Arryn said:

Well, there is to the Brexit problem, that complaining about the status quo is a much easier argument requiring much less subtlety than defending the status quo. This has always been true; go into a room full of people anywhere in the world and shout that they've got a raw deal and the odds are a lot of them will agree with you.

I'm at heart a free trader. But, I'm certainly not a neo-liberal dogmatist. I think there were issues that were brought about by free trade that would have justified  government intervention.

Said government intervention didn't happen.

People rejected free trade and dogmatic neoliberalism. 

I can understand why.

The irony of all this that Donald Trump got elected as a rejection of neoliberalism. This might be the funniest joke of the 21st Century.

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30 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

It kills me, absolutely kills me that people still think this.

I was referencing that Cheney kept him the dark about a lot of the details. I'd encourage you to watch The World According to Dick Cheney. He flat out admits that he manipulated Bush all the time.

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Ultimately, setting aside the bigotry etc. and the idiocy of EC, and just analyzing Clinton's failings, and leaving out my HUGE issue with her foreign policy, I just don't think she's a natural campaigner. She doesn't win people over; she has had some good campaigns because she's a good administrator who can run a good machine, but she herself doesn't inspire and tends to leave people nonplussed and slightly suspicious.

In some ways she's the opposite of her husband; he could come across sincere even when everyone knew he was lying, whereas Hillary could speak truthfully and have it come across like rhetoric. Again, there are differences, but the comparisons with Al Gore keep striking home to me. 

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I think Hillary had something of a relatability problem stemming from certain unexplainable items about her like why she had a private server and why she stayed married to a probable sex offender even after his presidency. The latter does damage to the hopefulness of any feminist vision offered by that candidate. 

The era where you can just relentlessly stay on message and not answer these things is over. People expect much more transparency in the age of social media; they feel entitled to know who the President is.

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 Solid Matt Taibbi article on how Trump spoke to the electorate. Bang on and more than a little scary in bits...

 http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/president-trump-how-america-got-it-so-wrong-w449783?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark

 

"When [Trump] talks, I actually understand what he's saying," a young Pennsylvanian named Trent Gower told me at a Trump event a month ago. "But, like, when fricking Hillary Clinton talks, it just sounds like a bunch of bullshit."

So these Trump voters had a comprehension problem. But we were just as bad. We couldn't understand what they were saying to us. We refused to accept every signal about whom they hated, and how much. Why? Because Trump's voters were speaking a language that has been taboo in America for decades, if not forever.

 

 

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38 minutes ago, Altherion said:

On the contrary, Clinton had the best branding money could buy:

Every aspect of her campaign was analyzed by some very smart people and almost every position and action worth noting was vetted and tested. In retrospect, perhaps this was part of the problem. Sanders ran on the Scandinavia-style socialism he has been advocating for decades even though "socialism" was quite recently a dirty word in the US. Trump has been obsessed with winning and greatness his entire life. He made this the theme of his campaign and then proceeded to run in the same offensive and somewhat vulgar style he is famous for. It can be argued that this was not good, but at least it felt authentic.

Clinton was... what? Whatever the A-B testing told her to be? There was practically no evidence of a soul with the only exceptions being misspeaks (e.g. the comments about Nancy Reagan or the basket of deplorables) which were immediately walked back. Perhaps it's not exactly the same as selling an iPhone or a soft drink or a cereal.

Many people said that sanders wast even a socialist truly. They described him as a new deal progressive. But yeah Hillary seems kindle like a robot created by wall street. They both were terrible candidates. One more so then the other but still. But if you want a look at a leader like Donald trump look up 

Silvio Berlusconi

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25 minutes ago, butterbumps! said:

I understand that her opponents maligned her, but I don't think that would have been enough to make an inspiring visionary narrative a lost cause.   All she had to do was inspire a total of 190,000 democrats who had stayed home across 3 states to come out for her.   190,000.    You don't think that if she harnessed a narrative about herself and gave us a vision, she'd have easily inspired those votes?   

speaking to my college aged Bernie Bro sister, the issue with Hillary amounted to her not being inspiring enough.  Basically, my sister wanted a good narrative to counter the corruption bullshit.  To be sure, she voted Hillary, but she resisted it, as did a lot of her associates.   I think that lack of inspiration is a really common story this election season.  And not just with Millennials, but a number of other groups who say things like "I hate Trump but what is Hillary giving me?"

I think a number of variables could have changed the tide-- we're talking about a difference of less than 200k voters.    But this is something relatively simple that I think the campaign could have harnessed that wasn't a setback imposed on them.

Sure, I feel like I'm in the odd position of arguing for someone not being inspiring. If she was it'd have helped, along with many other things  that's indisputable.With these margins -and assuming voter suppression wasn't that bad- she might have won.

Sure, it's always good to be inspiring. I just think there were many things at play that caused friction with that goal. And it's easy in hindsight. James Comey never sending that letter might also not have depressed turnout and we might not be having this discussion. Imagine some stranger that's demographically similar to Hillary working her way to voting for her and then getting hit with headlines all over Facebook that imply that the possible President would be indicted while in office or really did do something wrong.

Younger Bernie supporters are a good example of what I'm skeptical of: Hillary being uninspiring isn't something that passively just happened to them y'know? It was a self-reinforcing part of their campaign. It's the main reason the Democratic primary wasn't very boring. Hard to just step away from that, and it cause a lot of their support to be based on moving targets imo.

 

 

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