U.S. Politics: From Russia, With Love

[TerraPrime]

It'd be a miracle if the Democratic party has a unified vision and overwhelming cohesion amongst the ranks, considering that it represents roughly half the voting electorate.

 

So let's ask ourselves why are we taking the dissent and intra-party struggle as a sign of something wrong, something uncommon? 

 

But you know, books don't sell themselves. 

[TheKitttenGuard]

22 minutes ago, Swordfish said:

Missing the point, like, entirely.

Several posters, and I, acknowledge how poor Clinton campagin was. It Still does not exclude those other factors.

[Swordfish]

1 hour ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

Eh, both could be (and I think likely are) true. 

Sure.  But the article was not about both, and was not an attempt to deflect from other issues.  So I fail to see the relevance here.

 

1 hour ago, Mexal said:

If 80,000 voters from 3 states voted differently, then the book wouldn't be an evisceration of Clinton's campaign but would be a book about how Clinton overcame all the forces against her Perspective changes on such thin margins makes me not care about books like these. 

Again, you miss the point.  Because your hypothetical did not occur, and therefor, some introspection on the part of the democrats and their supporters is only logical. To dismiss this because, 'maybe she would have won, and then maybe it wouldn't matter' is...  Problematic and slightly 'head in sand'sih.

Quote

(Comey, foreign hacking, foreign disinformation, excessive media coverage of emails, sexism, etc).

Comey was not against her.  

There wasn't really any misinformation that I'm aware of, the leaks all appear to be genuine information.  Unless I've missed something?

'Excessive' is in the eye of the beholder.

 

Speaking of Comey, there's a fairly interesting breakdown of his part in this in the new York Times.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/22/us/politics/james-comey-election.html?_r=0

 

Quote

As the F.B.I. investigated Hillary Clinton and the Trump
campaign, James B. Comey tried to keep the bureau out
of politics but plunged it into the center of a bitter election.

 

[Swordfish]

6 minutes ago, TerraPrime said:

It'd be a miracle if the Democratic party has a unified vision and overwhelming cohesion amongst the ranks, considering that it represents roughly half the voting electorate.

 

 

Did you even read the article?

 

Quote

So let's ask ourselves why are we taking the dissent and intra-party struggle as a sign of something wrong, something uncommon? 

Because you lost to Donald Friggin Trump, at least in part due to a complete charley foxtrot on behalf of the leadership of the party?

I dunno.  I'm just spit balling here.

Seems like a party that's been taken behind the woodshed at virtually every level of government might be interested in some introspection, but I guess not. 

 

Quote

Several posters, and I, acknowledge how poor Clinton campagin was. It Still does not exclude those other factors.

So your response was just a non sequitur.  Got it.  Thanks.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

10 minutes ago, Swordfish said:

Sure.  But the article was not about both, and was not an attempt to deflect from other issues.  So I fail to see the relevance here.

Which might lead one to say that the article had blinders on to some degree. Yes, the Clinton campaign was lacking. The DNC's vision was lacking. These things certainly played a part in the outcome of this election. You posted "But Russia, But racism!" at the end of your post. Those things were also large factors whether you choose to ridicule them or not.

[Swordfish]

4 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

Which might lead one to say that the article had blinders on to some degree. Yes, the Clinton campaign was lacking. The DNC's vision was lacking. These things certainly played a part in the outcome of this election. You posted "But Russia, But racism!" at the end of your post. Those things were also large factors whether you choose to ridicule them or not.

Well, sure.  I posted the 'but russia, but racism', because it was pretty predictable where this conversation was gonna go.  

Which is exactly where it went.  Deflection from the actions of the campaign.  

Democrats simply don't want to really talk about the issues in their own house, for some reason.  

'The article had blinders on' is a great example of this deflection.  What is the obligation of whoever wrote the book to focus on every issue involved in the election?  That's silly.  That would be like saying an article about the bombing of dresden has blinders on if it doesn't also discuss in detail the atomic bombing of hiroshima.I mean, they both happened in WWII, right?

 

[Mexal]

2 minutes ago, Swordfish said:

Again, you miss the point.  Because your hypothetical did no occur, and therefor, some introspection on the part of the democrats and their supporters is only logical. To dismiss this bcause, 'maybe she would have won, adn tehn mayeb it wouldn't matter' is...  Problematic and slightly 'head in sand'sih.

Comey was not against her.  

There wasn't really any misinformation that I'm aware of, the leaks all appear to be genuine information.  Unless I've missed something?

No, I completely get the point. I just don't agree that scathing books about a campaign based on such razor thin margins is good reading. Everything looks worse than it is, meaning is given to situations that might not have meant anything at all and all because the people writing the book had a very particular perspective they wanted to tell to align with an end result they already knew. You don't see scathing reports of Trump's campaign because he won, but it was run infinitely worse than Clinton's. I just don't get anything out of these types of books.

As for Comey, there is a very clear effect that his letter 11 days from the election had on the outcome while he was in the middle of a investigating Trump's campaign for collusion with a foreign adversarial power and the different way he handled those two investigations publicly. So no, he wasn't against Clinton specifically but he certainly played a part.

As for disinformation, there was a shitload, it started in 2014 and as the election season progressed, it was ramped up entirely against Clinton. There was even an instance where Trump held up a fake email from Sidney Blumenthal that was actually copied from an article by Kurt Eichenwald and was only reported in Sputnik a few hours before he used it in a rally.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

Just now, Swordfish said:

Well, sure.  I posted the 'but russia, but racism', because it was pretty predictable where this conversation was gonna go.  

Which is exactly where it went.  Deflection from the actions of the campaign.  

Democrats simply don't want to really talk about the issues in their own house, for some reason.  

 

I'm not deflecting those points at all, I'm merely agreeing with many of the posters here that "but Russia, but Racism" are valid factors in the outcome of this particular election. Both concerns are equally true in my estimation. Your footnote suggests that you think otherwise.If you somehow think that Comey, Wikileaks, and Russian hacking didn't have an affect on the result, I don't know what to tell you. 

[Mexal]

21 minutes ago, Swordfish said:

Did you even read the article?

Because you lost to Donald Friggin Trump, at least in part due to a complete charley foxtrot on behalf of the leadership of the party?

I dunno.  I'm just spit balling here.

Seems like a party that's been taken behind the woodshed at virtually every level of government might be interested in some introspection, but I guess not. 

I think they are and have been introspective. I don't think they need a scathing book that's not about introspection but selling how terrible the Clinton campaign was. I'm sure there are legitimate issues in there (Clinton's lack of message being the major one) but suggesting the entire democratic party hasn't introspectively looked at this election or their lack of reach to white middle class voters, even after there was 1000 articles after the election saying that very thing, seems disingenuous to me.

As a side note, I haven't seen anyone blame the entire election on outside factors. I've seen most people say "Clinton ran a terrible campaign, was a terrible candidate but also had x, y, z go against her. All are reasons why she lost but not any single one."

[Swordfish]

1 hour ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

I'm not deflecting those points at all, I'm merely agreeing with many of the posters here that "but Russia, but Racism" are valid factors in the outcome of this particular election. Both concerns are equally true in my estimation. Your footnote suggests that you think otherwise.If you somehow think that Comey, Wikileaks, and Russian hacking didn't have an affect on the result, I don't know what to tell you. 

Sure you are.  

Again, it's possible to discuss particular events that occurred during the election on their own merits without talking about every single event that occurred during the election.

The purpose of bringing up russia, etc in a conversation about the inner workings of the campaign is to downplay the significance of the actions of the campaign.

Do you honestly not believe it is possible to discuss the campaign, and the state of the democratic party, without also talking about Russia, racism, etc?

The thrust of the article(and presumably the book) is this:

Quote

Shattered is what happens when political parties become too disconnected from their voters. 

What is the relevance of russia in that conversation?

[Swordfish]

5 minutes ago, Mexal said:

I think they are and have been introspective. I don't think they need a scathing book that's not about introspection but selling how terrible the Clinton campaign was. 

have you read the book?

[Fragile Bird]

5 minutes ago, Swordfish said:

have you read the book?

Have you read the book?

[Mexal]

7 minutes ago, Swordfish said:

have you read the book?

No but the reviews doesn't make it sound like an introspection of the Democratic party but more an evisceration of Hillary Clinton and her campaign (though I did enjoy the review in the link because of how contrarian it was). Just not a book I'm interested in reading. The articles following the election where they spoke about the issues with the Democratic party, their inability to find a message, their overwhelming focus on social justice and the alienation of middle America who only cared about jobs, that was interesting. This doesn't sound like anything I care about.

Quote

“…the portrait of the Clinton campaign that emerges from these pages is that of a Titanic-like disaster: an epic fail made up of a series of perverse and often avoidable missteps by an out-of-touch candidate and her strife-ridden staff that turned a ‘winnable race’ into ‘another iceberg-seeking campaign ship.” – The New York Times

“…like a Kafka novel – a lunatic bureaucracy devouring itself. But since the ending is the opposite of funny it will likely be consumed as a cautionary tale.” – Rolling Stone

“…the worst blows Clinton suffered were self-inflicted. If the controversies and corruption memes came to define her, they write, it was largely because she never managed to define herself.” – NPR

“Shattered makes indisputably clear that she was unquestionably the worst major presidential candidate in our lifetime… she and her people were incapable of making a good call. About anything.” – The New York Post

“But it wasn’t long until Clinton and her team quickly began blaming everything under the sun – racism, sexism, Russian, the FBI, even Obama – for her loss. She and her family are still out there blaming sexism…Shattered should lay to rest any arguments that anything other than the campaign itself bore the brunt of the responsibility for Clinton’s loss.” – The Denver Post

 

[Swordfish]

3 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Have you read the book?

Nope.  Which is why i mostly commented on the article.

[Swordfish]

5 minutes ago, Mexal said:

No but the reviews doesn't make it sound like an introspection of the Democratic party but more an evisceration of Hillary Clinton and her campaign (though I did enjoy the review in the link because of how contrarian it was). Just not a book I'm interested in reading. The articles following the election where they spoke about the issues with the Democratic party, their inability to find a message, their overwhelming focus on social justice and the alienation of middle America who only cared about jobs, that was interesting. This doesn't sound like anything I care about.

 

What about something like this:

Quote

When Hillary confided to her friend Minyon Moore, “I don’t understand what’s happening with the country. I can’t get my arms around it,” she did something most politicians aren’t willing to do: admit they don’t know something about their own voters. And in fairness to Hillary, she was just as confused as the voters themselves, many of whom picked Trump because they too were unsure about where the world is heading and liked the sound of someone promising to restore us to earlier, more certain times.

Even if Hillary’s actual life has been far more self-interested than she seems to realize, the book repeatedly establishes that her focus was on performing actual public service: helping families, helping children, helping the disadvantaged. Did some of Hillary’s actions—the high-priced speeches, the lavish homes—send the opposite signal? Absolutely. But her motives come off purer than I thought and better than those of most politicians I know.

She’s pragmatic. Anger can fuel a campaign, as it did with Bernie Sanders and Trump, but it’s not a way to govern (as we’re seeing now). “You have every right to be angry,” she says in the book, “but anger is not a plan…venting is not a solution.” She’s right. You can’t govern by bullet point but you also can’t govern by rage.

Her selection of Tim Kaine as her running-mate is evidence of someone focused on governing, on policy, on results. As the book itself says, “Clinton wanted a governing partner, someone who saw the world in a similar way and could help her run the executive branch.” While Kaine offered some potential political upside (modest help in Virginia), most running mates are picked solely because of politics, so the rationale for his selection speaks well of Hillary.

She truly cared about policy, even if she couldn’t explain it well. As the authors write, “She didn’t like taking issues she’d been working on for years and boiling them down into little sound bites. She lived for the complexity.” Mario Cuomo once famously said “You campaign in poetry; you govern in prose.” No one is going to confuse Hillary with the great orators of our time (Obama, Reagan, Bill Clinton) but her focus on substance, policy and details shows her heart is in the right place.

Would you find that more interesting?

 

[Mexal]

1 minute ago, Swordfish said:

What about something like this:

Would you find that more interesting?

Not enough to read the book any time soon. Clinton is the past. I'm more interested in the present and the future. 

[Altherion]

17 minutes ago, Mexal said:

No, I completely get the point. I just don't agree that scathing books about a campaign based on such razor thin margins is good reading.

I don't think this is necessary true. The margins were thin, yes... but why was that the case when by most metrics one campaign appeared to have an overwhelming advantage? Recall that the Clinton campaign raised literally twice as much money as its competitor, had the endorsement of the vast majority of the media, had a much more extensive ground game and so on. It's worth understanding why with all of these advantages, they could only manage razor thin margins and wound up on the wrong side of those to boot.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

22 minutes ago, Swordfish said:

Sure you are.  

Again, it's possible to discuss particular events that occurred during the election on their own merits without talking about every single event that occurred during the election.

The purpose of bringing up russia, etc in a conversation about the inner workings of the campaign is to downplay the significance of the actions of the campaign.

Do you honestly not believe it is possible to discuss the campaign, and teh state of the democratic party, without also talking about Russia, raicsm, etc?

The thrust of the article(and presumably the book) is this:

What is the relevance of russia in that conversation?

Um no, no I'm not. I agree with the thrust of the article. The Clinton campaign made many tactical errors throughout the course of the campaign. Clinton was a wholly unlikable candidate, with arguably more baggage than any Presidential candidate in my lifetime. That said, but Russia, but Racism were also deciding factors. I didn't post an article outlining the importance of Russian interference and racial attitudes in this country affecting the result of this election with the footnote, but E-mails! but Identity Politics! as a footnote. You're the one who deflected here. 

 

/If you didn't want those aspects to be brought up, you probably shouldn't have brought them up, eh?

[Swordfish]

5 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

Um no, no I'm not. I agree with the thrust of the article. The Clinton campaign made many tactical errors throughout the course of the campaign. Clinton was a wholly unlikable candidate, with arguably more baggage than any Presidential candidate in my lifetime. That said, but Russia, but Racism were also deciding factors. I didn't post an article outlining the importance of Russian interference and racial attitudes in this country affecting the result of this election with the footnote, but E-mails! but Identity Politics! as a footnote. You're the one who deflected here. 

If you say so.  i don't see calls for discussion of the performance of the candidate and the campaign every time russia comes up, even though both were deciding factors, but if it's your belief that they can only be discussed together, then i suppose that's you're prerogative.

 

Quote

/If you didn't want those aspects to be brought up, you probably shouldn't have brought them up, eh?

I've already addressed this.

[Mexal]

10 minutes ago, Altherion said:

I don't think this is necessary true. The margins were thin, yes... but why was that the case when by most metrics one campaign appeared to have an overwhelming advantage? Recall that the Clinton campaign raised literally twice as much money as its competitor, had the endorsement of the vast majority of the media, had a much more extensive ground game and so on. It's worth understanding why with all of these advantages, they could only manage razor thin margins and wound up on the wrong side of those to boot.

Lots of reasons which has already been discussed. Money mattered less because the MSM gave Trump free media for every single rally, press conference or interview he participated in. The endorsement of the vast majority of the media means fuck all when the only thing the media actually discusses about you is emails or wikileaks. Clinton was a bad candidate who ran a subpar campaign. It contributed to her loss. I don't need to read the specific examples to hone the point. I just don't care enough as I already understand the broad strokes.