Thursday, June 01, 2017

Good Take, Odd Title

More and more appearance for Hillary Clinton and apparently more people piling on.  I really like Ezra's take though I think the title is a bit odd.  It sounds like he's going to go and talk about how good a candidate she was, and he really doesn't.

Hillary Clinton was a flawed candidate, but that was mostly through no fault of her own.  There were two big fuck-ups that tarnished her badly for me: her vote for the Iraq war and her paid speeches to Wall Street bankers.  Those were only relevant in the primary.  She was a flawed candidate for the general election, not because of those things, but because of years of anti-Clinton (and specifically anti-Hillary Clinton) bullshit that Republicans had been flinging.  None of it was true, but enough stuck in the minds of many voters that one of the more honest politicians we have was regularly rated as less trustworthy than the most dishonest hack we've ever seen.  That isn't her fault, but that should have been a very obvious issue for everyone (including her) going into the election.

There is a weird notion among Democrats that being right and good and competent count for something in a general election.  They should, I agree, but after Reagan and Dubbya and now Trump it should be really fucking clear that being right and good and competent don't count for much.  That's a problem, but it's one that all Democrats should understand well, but quite a few clearly fucking don't.

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