Imagine a country on the way to a presidential election.
Presidential candidate A is criticized for lying constantly, trying to overturn the last election, stealing top secret documents from government, being involved in financial fraud, and having sexually abused a woman.
Presidential candidate B is criticized for being 4 years older than candidate A.
Then imagine, that this presidential election is a toss-up, because candidate A is really entertaining to watch on tv.
This is where we are.
@randahl We saw this in 2016. Hillary Clinton was one of the most experienced Presidential candidates in US history, and the bar was incredibly high for her while there was none for Trump.
Was she? I remember her only for the huge blunder of letting the embassy cables be distributed to junior analysts like Manning all over the world, and then trying to shift the blame to Assange.
The Dem Party chose her because of internal party politics. Not because of her qualifications as future President, or her appeal to voters.
@JorgeStolfi @cosettepaneque @randahl yeah, definitely not because of appeal, she was a singularly uncharismatic candidate. I mean that is a stupid reason not to vote for her, just sayin'.
Considering that there were tens of millions of diehard voters on either side, surely there were many millions in the middle of the spectrum, who ended up voting for Trump, or stayed home, just because of that "feature".
@JorgeStolfi @ech @cosettepaneque @randahl That “feature” was a feature of how the media selectively portrayed her.
@Pineywoozle @ech @cosettepaneque @randahl
Was it really? I haven't seen her shine in public speeches or interviews ever -- during, before, or after the campaign.
What were her accomplishments as a State Secretary? One that I recall (besides that blunder of leaking the super-confidential embassy "cables") was her order to the ambassadors to try to collect fingerprints and DNA of foreign leaders in the respective countries. That is, act like spies -- which is totally taboo for ambassadors.
@JorgeStolfi @ech @cosettepaneque @randahl Yes it was. You don’t like her. That’s a you issue. I’ve seen her shine and so have the 3 million more voters than tRump that also gave her the popular vote despite the medias best effort.
@Pineywoozle @JorgeStolfi @cosettepaneque @randahl
You might be right about Jorge, but to the broader point can you link to a speech where she shined in this way? Something inspiring and charismatic? Something that gets people riled up, like the way Trump was getting everyone fired up with his outlandish nonsense?
I mean just read the abstract here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/psq.12490 – this makes the point that as a leader of the then-current regime she was constrained, but still I think a better politician (Palin, Michelle or Barak Obama, Bill, etc) could have overcome that hurdle much better, all else being equal.
FWIW I think Trump lost in 2020 for a somewhat similar reason: during covid he lacked the sort of inspiring, uniting, calming leadership that is helpful during a crisis. (Contrast with Bush after 9/11, who absolutely nailed it.)
(I can't imagine a stupider level of discourse than cheap puns where you corrupt the name of something to tear it down, like writing "DemocRAT" or "REPUGlicans" or whatever. Gah. It's like the trash comment threads on yahoo news from 2003 or something.)
@Pineywoozle @ech @JorgeStolfi @randahl I must agree with Piney. I've been a fan of HRC since I was a teenager in the 1990s, and I always found her inspiring. Perhaps this is a gendered issue. Many women may have been moved by HRC the way many POC were by Obama. No one could genuinely argue that Obama is not charismatic. My point here is not to compare his charisma to hers; it's about what they represented to many people. There was much sadness and anger among women when she lost.
@ech @JorgeStolfi @cosettepaneque @randahl All things could never be equal. The media played on 30 years of lies & she still won the popular vote by millions and lost almost no voters from the primary. That is a statistical anomaly & it’s because we do find her compelling I found her debate speaches inspiring, accurately describing what a disaster tRump would be & so did millions even when the MSM did their same negative dance after.