31st March 2017, 1:07 PM
Weltall Wrote:You have asserted, repeatedly, that a male candidate with none of her flaws would have done worse.If this is a reference to Bernie, he had other flaws that would have led to his doing worse than Hillary; it's not only about gender. But a candidate with Hillary's same flaws that was male would certainly have done better, and probably would have won, though that FBI thing right before the election hurt a lot. Gender bias is alive and well, unfortunately.
So yeah, if Biden had run and been nominated? He'd probably be president now.
Quote:This is exactly correct.You make multiple assumptions here that are not true. First, Barack Obama was black, yes, but he was also male, and sexism is the most pervasive form of discrimination there is. Consider how black men (officially) got the vote in this country more than 50 years before any women did, among many examples. So just because America elected Obama does not mean that a woman with that same charisma would do equally as well, I don't think they would.
There were a lot of voters out there who would have voted for any other Democrat (male or female). There's no way Bernie Sanders would have lost the four key reliably blue states Hillary lost to Donald Trump.
If America can elect, and comfortably re-elect a black man as president, American history makes it very evident that gender would not stop a candidate who is charismatic and positive as Obama was. Hillary is the opposite of charismatic and her campaign was absolutely not positive or forward-thinking in its messaging to the voters. She lost because she was already unpopular and she is just not a good candidate for public office. People for whom gender is a big deal are not people who would have voted for anyone with a D next to their name anyway.
Additionally, as for Hillary's popularity, actually, Hillary was popular... until she started running for office. People are okay with her when she's in a position, but when a woman tries to reach a higher office? Suddenly her numbers go way down... funny how that works (not really). This is a consistent pattern in her approval ratings, and looking at those numbers is one of the best ways to see how huge of a problem sexism has been for Hillary. You make multiple assumptions here that are not true.
And as for "not positive or forward-thinking to voters", I have no idea what you are talking about, but the whole Democratic policy agenda was EXACTLY those things! Yes, she did also run a lot of negative ads, but both candidates did a lot of that, and Trump had an all-negative message while Hillary had a positive one.
It is true that she's not a great speaker, though, unlike Obama or Bill Clinton. And that did certainly hurt, I agree on that point. She did her best, but will never be a natural great like those two.
Quote:The Democrats need a vision and a message, as they had in 2008. "Republicans are bad and I'm not a Republican" is not a vision and it is a message that literally only worked when the Republican was Todd Akin. And when the party puts more effort into stealing votes from disaffected Republicans than it does cultivating votes from disaffected non-voters who have a clear ideological lean in your direction, it's a message that speaks of monumental blindness."Republicans are bad" was only one element of a much larger campaign. But as for 'changes in reality', if Bernie supporters actually start winning elections outside of places like Vermont then maybe you will have a point, but so far that hasn't happened much. (And Bernie would not have won.)
That's why the Dem establishment needs to go. They are too conservative to be viable in this environment. Not conservative in the ideological sense, but in the sense that they are rigid, deaf to criticism and entirely unwilling to adapt to reality as it changes around them.