> And ignoring for a second the assumption that a better informed populus would have naturally voted Clinton...
Exactly. There are a bunch of people who knew all about Trump's lies, distortions of reality, character flaws, and so on, and voted for him anyway. Why is that?
Hillary was a deeply flawed candidate. First, she was the establishment candidate. This wasn't a good election to be wearing that mantle. Next, she gave off the vibe that she felt she was entitled to the presidency. There were more than two decades of scandals (never mind how much actual fire there was; after two decades of smoke surrounding her, people were sick of it). Her email servers were a very bad look; it gave the impression that she wanted to hide stuff so it wouldn't come back to haunt her during her presidential run, and it also gave the impression that she thought rules were for other people. The allegations of pay for play with the Clinton Foundation was a continuation of the corruption allegations, but it was very fresh. And for the working class, their financial position mostly got worse under Obama, and Clinton was viewed as a continuation of that.
But sure, blame people voting for Trump on fake news.
(For the record, I'm a conservative who could not in good conscience vote either for Trump or Hillary, but who was cheering for Hillary on election night because I viewed Trump as more dangerous.)
> Clinton actually was the better choice; in fact, technically one of the most qualified candidates in history
Personally speaking, I did not like how she and her colluders ran down the Sanders campaign. Their characterization of his supporters as sexists and racist was fundamentally, profoundly dishonest. They could have addressed his policy proposals, but went the other way.
This led me to understand that this would be what we could expect from her Presidency. Before that, I was open to Clinton.
After her loss, I had been hoping for a Democratic party introspection about the way they had run this campaign and a house cleaning. Instead, we got enablers, diversion and outright lies. A shuffling of the worst actors, but no purge. Extremely disappointing. We still have never had an honest accounting for that debacle, and I remember and distrust every news outlet and commentator that repeated those lies.
I want to be clear that I did not vote for Trump, either. But he was not the worst President in my living memory. That honor goes to the President who lied to the public in order to get us into two (2) ruinous, useless wars and did not adequately prepare successfully for the occupation. Honestly, not having tentacles throughout government is a bonus, to my mind.
So it's your opinion that because Trump is extremely bad, Clinton is immune to criticism? It doesn't matter if she also has problems?
Criticizing Clinton does not necessarily mean support for Trump. They are both terrible candidates, just in different ways. While Russia does seem to be pushing for Trump, criticism of Clinton's ties to Wall Street are another matter.
(That also does not imply some sort of false equivalency. When it's time to vote, a strategic vote for the lesser evil may be necessary, but that doesn't mean Clinton shouldn't be criticized for her own problems.)
> Sam, just so you know, many of your sentences could exchange Trump for Hillary and be exactly what Trump supporters I know say. Especially this one:
> > [Hillary] shows little respect for the Constitution, the Republic, or for human decency, and I fear for national security if [she] becomes our president.
Except one is based on a set of statements made by the candidate and his own campaign, the other is mostly built upon the massive pile of conspiracy theories and mountains-made-from-molehills that constitute the argument against Hillary.
>Said another way: Trump worked to earn votes, Clinton just felt like she deserved them.
Both candidates felt they deserved votes and deserved to win (Donald Trump no less a narcissist or elitist than Hillary Clinton) and both worked to earn their votes.
However, Donald Trump was willing to make promises to working class people he had no capacity or desire to deliver on, and Hillary Clinton more or less ignored them in favor of pandering to the upper middle class and the left. Neither candidates' strategy says anything about their relative honesty or integrity, one just happened to work better than the other.
In a different universe with slightly different conditions, Clinton might easily have won. Remember, she did literally "earn" more votes than Trump (not that it matters as far as the system is concerned.)
But yes, we get it... "Trump good, Clinton bad." Zing.
>2. Start blathering about Hillary's emails, as if that were somehow important.
I am really tired of this twisted version of the relative privation fallacy.
Trump is worse != Hillary was good
Her email situation was, in fact, an issue. Worse than Trump? Absolutely not. But even in context it doesn't belong in "as if that were somehow important" territory. Under normal circumstances (had she been elected) we'd probably still be talking about it.
> The implication here is that somehow Trump conned people into voting for him.
I don't know how you're getting that implication from the sentence you quoted.
> I put the probability precisely equal to Clinton holding the secret to politics and doing really well.
She doesn't hold the secret to politics, she's just incredibly experienced. And, if there is a "secret to politics" it's very much the various things she was accused of: being double-faced, managing bribes, etc. Those things don't make you electable, they're just good at keeping you in power.
Like I said, getting to power and staying in power are very different skillsets.
>> but saying "hillary clinton is guilty of ____" or blatantly misrepresenting facts or lieing? that needs to stop.
> Why does saying that Hillary Clinton is guilty of something need to stop?
That's a too-literal reading of the comment. The implication was clearly that what needs to stop is lies that claim Hillary Clinton is guilty of something she's not.
> Hillary Clinton as far as I can tell still blames facebook primarily for her loss.
And I still blame her for the current state of the world. Her gross incompetence in regards to her campaign and underestimating her opponent has directly lead to human rights violations, the erosure of trust in America from its allies and countless unnecessary deaths in the handling of the pandemic.
She lost to who is likely the dumbest and most incompetent president in history, so what does that make her?
> She just won the popular vote by a large margin with a D next to her name.
So? It's not like we have an unlimited pool of candidates of every possible variation such that we can choose the one that best averages all the views of a party. Consider that we were fairly closet to having Bernie Sanders and not Hillary Clinton be the person in that position. That should illustrate how ridiculous it is to use a single person to stand in for the entire group.
> She ... the only person I had as an alternative to Trump to vote for.
That's irrelevant. There was a discussion about liberalism and conservatism, and someone replied with criticisms about Hillary Clinton instead of liberals in general or liberalism (note this wasn't about Democrats and Republicans, so that D is a red herring). Even if Hillary were more representative of the norm in all mainstream liberal ideas, using her specifically would not be appropriate. As it is, she diverges fairly heavily from traditional liberal ideas in some aspects, which makes it even more of a bad idea.
It seems to me that many people who are not Clinton worked very hard at manufacturing this reputation.
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