Fuck Hillary. This whole mess is largely her fucking fault.

She gamed the primary to turn it into a coronation, stacked the DNC with Clinton loyalists, discouraged any serious competition from challenging her, and leveraged a change in campaign finance laws to set up the Clinton Victory Fund kickback scheme to buy herself more endorsements than any candidate in history, all with the intent to avoid another Obama Surprise. As a result Clinton was the only Democratic politician with any real name recognition in the race (three of her opponents weren't even members of the Democratic Party when Hillary first ran for the Senate, and all but one dropped out before the very first primary vote). And Clinton supporters still complained that Sanders shouldn't have even been allowed to run. It was Her Turn, how dare he give democratic voters any other option. Clinton surrogates even attacked women with the nerve to think independently and support someone else as gender traitors.

And she came dangerously close to losing anyway. That should have told you something.

The Clinton campaign circulated a memo before Trump declared listing some "Pied Piper" candidates they thought were unelectable and wanted to encourage the media to pay attention to in order to undermine the GOP. On the list: Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, and Trump. They promoted Trump as a candidate because they didn't think he was a threat. Even after he won the nomination (by walking through the other candidates like they were made out of tissue paper) they didn't take him seriously. Clinton's final speech of her campaign was basically just "Thank God I'm not Trump, can you believe that idiot?" over and over again.

Her campaign took Michigan for granted (despite losing to Sanders there in an upset of over 20 points). She ignored rural Pennsylvania. She didn't do a single campaign appearance in Wisconsin. Obama was playing golf the Saturday before the election because the campaign hadn't scheduled him to do anything. They ignored people on the ground who were warning them they were in trouble and instead dumped millions of dollars on GOTV in Chicago and New Orleans (because they were sure they had the EC in the bag but were afraid they might lose the popular vote). They got so cocky they talked about moving money into Senate races to give her a majority. She failed to come up with a coherent message beyond "it's my turn". The "because I'm a woman" strategy was a complete non-starter, because anyone sympathetic to that was already likely to vote Democratic. Remember the "Change you can believe in, because I'm a black man" campaign? Of course you don't, because whatever flaws Obama has, he's not as stupid as she is. He didn't demand that people vote for him because he was black, he overcame the obstacles he faced and convinced people to vote for him anyway.

The Clinton campaign was overconfident, arrogant, and tone-deaf. She was the most well-funded candidate ever, up against the most disliked candidate in modern history, and she fucking blew it.

This whole Hillary-lost-because-of-misogyny argument is bullshit and a cowardly refusal to face reality. It all hinges on the ludicrous argument that there's a significant number - enough to swing the election - of American voters who are enlightened enough to accept a black President (twice) but are still too sexist to accept a female President.

Have you been awake for the past 8 years? Heard of Black Lives Matter?

Because the people who hate Hillary because she's a woman largely overlap with the people who hate Obama because he's not white, and it's not like those voters stayed home in 2008 and 2012 because the Republican candidates were so terrible. It's not like those voters have been quiet.

You remember all the birther nonsense about how Obama wasn't a real American because he was born in Kenya? That somehow still didn't keep him from beating not one but two Republicans, both of whom had net favorability ratings 20 points higher than Trump. And that's not because "Barack Hussein Obama" was a much better candidate than Clinton, but because racism isn't really a problem any more? That's some privileged white girl bullshit right there.

(You probably don't want to remember the birther stuff, because the Clinton campaign was one of the sources that pushed it back in 2008. Just like I remember hearing plenty from the Clinton camp about Obama Boys - nothing racist about that - and Bernie Bros, but strangely, Hillary Girls was never a thing. Funny that...)

Ever since the Clinton Catastrophe her supporters have blamed everything else - the Russians (never mind that there's still no evidence they hacked any actual voting machines), the alleged Bernie Bros (never mind that Sanders supporters lined up behind Clinton much faster than her PUMAs supported Obama), the FBI (never mind that it was Clinton's own damn fault that the FBI was ever an issue), the Greens (never mind that Jill Stein is herself a woman, people must have chosen her over Clinton out of misogyny). It couldn't possibly be the candidate or her shitty campaign.

Hillary has the same problem Bill has, and many of her supporters seem to have inherited it: a pathological inability to accept responsibility for her own mistakes. She was the candidate - it was her job to convince voters to vote for her. She had one job and she didn't fucking do it. Blaming anyone else is like blaming your sherpas because you failed to summit Everest.

I had to listen to smug Clinton supporters for months before the election, going on endlessly like it was a done deal and they were the only ones who really understood how politics worked. Now that you guys blew it I am sick to death of hearing how it wasn't your fault you lost.

Yes. It. Fucking. Was.

Yeah, it's appalling and inexcusable that more that 50% of the country is represented by less than 20% of Congress and not a single President or Vice President in over 240 years. But this is not how we fix that problem.

Neither of us will ever change our minds. That's the simple truth.

I'm not trying to change your mind - you seem pretty dead set on taking Hillary's political failings as a personal attack, and who am I to deprive you of being miserable.

But for what it's worth, I don't think the problem is that Hillary lost because of misogyny, I think the problem is that misogyny is the reason we had 23 major party candidates, only two of which were women, and only one of which was a Democrat. I think misogyny is the reason that people who would like to see a female president don't have a realistic option other than Hillary Clinton.

If this were my only reason to be miserable, my life would be fucking rosy.

I'm honestly sorry to hear that.

I think this a little more complex than just "we hate women". If I may offer this as a counterpoint:

https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2017/march/trump-clinton-debates-gender-reversal.html

this is exactly why we should have debates be done via androgynous robots.

You leave Kellyanne Conway out of this

That's a bit of a weird argument, as they took one of the few points where Trump was actually right. That Clinton ever even considered the secretly negotiated and thus anti-democratic TPP is a major and valid criticism of her.

Only for the video excerpt. The whole performance was a lot longer and more comprehensive.

Aiming for Hillary Clinton's win, looking forward curiously to the side benefits of a first woman president, finding her far experienced and capable enough, appreciating the former Clinton years and her lifetime of service to the country, I still didn't like her as a person; she reminded me of a lecturing, pandering mom. That may be considered sexist, but I can't recall that sinking, distrustful, "I'm being manipulated by a powerful and unyielding force which nods and smiles away my naive perspective" feeling from any other female politician: Angela Merkel, Nancy Pelosi, Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, Elizabeth Warren, Claire McCaskill, etc.

Sounds like you were being manipulated by a powerful, unyielding force alright.

*smiles and nods politely*

*sigh*
Been saying this since the election. And while this article, dated the next day, mostly conveys the heartbreak and frustration of that moment, the deliberate policy priorities of the Trump administration and GOP majority drive the misogyny home, bigly.
So yeah, there were plenty of valid reasons to dislike Hillary Clinton as a candidate, even to not vote for her, aside from all the 'baggage' accumulated from long career in public service as a powerful woman (and constant target of particularly aggressive opposition).
But the thing is, much as ill-will as she accumulated by election day, there was absolutely no logical reason to vote for Trump as an alternative to her. The result speaks to a collection of worst impulses of a large bloc of voters, willing to elect a totally inexperienced, unqualified lying narcissist who openly bragged about sexually assaulting women, faced multiple accusations of actual sexual assault, and advocated 'punishing' women seeking abortions. From any reasonable point of view, how could this be so easily dismissed, even justified?
No question, misogyny was a key ingredient in the toxic stew that fueled Trump's rise, and most especially in his defeating his well-qualified, reasonable -but female opponent.

But the thing is, much as ill-will as she accumulated by election day, there was absolutely no logical reason to vote for Trump as an alternative to her.

Many of you keep saying this, and yet the exact same lesser evil arguments that were being made on this very site were being made on right wing sites around the internet with the roles of Trump, Hillary, and third parties being switched. Do you not realize that there are people out there living in entirely different worlds than you?

There's an entire year worth of posts containing arguments against Hillary Clinton on just policies alone. And in quite a number of those posts, eidolon here is calling anybody that isn't on Hillary's side sexist while at that same time misrepresenting Bernie Sanders supporters as only caring about student loans and how they need to stop calling for perfectionism. Somewhere there's even an entire thread of you arguing with kylemcbitch about how the democratic party doesn't need the Bernie supporters to vote for Hillary and how they shouldn't expect any of their concerns to be addressed.

Misogyny surely played a part in Clinton's loss, but so did all of you and the rest of the Democratic party who continued playing the hypocritical sycophants despite her being a candidate who practically has an industry built around exaggerating (whether legitimate or not, though plenty are) her many flaws.

But I'm not even talking about the lesser evil arguments, and I'm not saying there weren't valid reasons to not vote for Clinton. I'm just saying there was no logical reason to vote for Trump. I'm willing to credit the Stein and other alternate candidate voters for at least making a reasoned decision. But how many people pushed the button for Trump because they 'couldn't stand' Hillary? How can anyone argue this was a reasoned, rational decision?

Okay
1. What part of "yours is not the only world view out there" are you having a problem wrapping your head around?
and
2. How is this: But how many people pushed the button for Trump because they 'couldn't stand' Hillary? How can anyone argue this was a reasoned, rational decision? not the lesser evil arguments?

There are many people out there who feel that Trump's business success, his "popularity" in the media, and his willingness to be tough would make him a good president. They live in a different world than you, watch different television, read different periodicals, talk to different people and have different social priorities than you. And on this site, this bastion of liberal thought, there have been conversations asserting that we need to wait for these people to die.

So we can be a better country.

No doubt plenty of people voted for Trump for what they thought were good, justifiable reasons. That's not really the same thing as logical reasons. And 'because he's not Hillary' doesn't count as a logical reason.
Sure, I fully acknowledge the difference in world views. But 'world view' ≠ logic.

What do you think Logical Reasons are, man? None of this is set in stone as right and wrong. Those justifiable reasons I shared up there seem perfectly logical to the people making those arguments. Do you think it's logical to vote for somebody just because they are a woman? I could make a logical argument about history and equality and all that jazz, but that doesn't mean it's any more right than an opposing argument. Logic is built on context.

We're kind of going in circles here (again), aren't we? What seems logical isn't the same as what is logical. If it helps, I'll acknowledge my educated, elitist bias in understanding the basic principles of cause and effect and scientific method, which no doubt many Trump voters may not. To name one obvious easy example, there's climate change. This is a matter of scientific fact, easily observed and demonstrated. Deniers may present a bunch of arguments that seem logical to them, but that doesn't make them factual. Even in politics, there's still such a thing as objective truth, even if it isn't as well-regarded as it once was.
And there's the issue of voting against one's self-interest. Just because someone may be convinced otherwise doesn't make it true.
It's one thing to sympathize with and try to understand the reasons people voted for Trump. But, especially as the administration veers definitively toward the regressive in every respect, that's not the same as defending their decisions as 'reasoned' or 'logical' in any objective way. There seems little doubt now that these folks screwed themselves, whether they want to acknowledge it or not.

I don't think you understand what logic is. It has nothing to do with objective truth and everything to do with the framing of information.

log·i·cal
ˈläjək(ə)l/
adjective
of or according to the rules of logic or formal argument.
"a logical impossibility"
characterized by or capable of clear, sound reasoning.
"the information is displayed in a simple and logical fashion"
synonyms: reasoned, well reasoned, reasonable, rational, left-brained, sound, cogent, well-thought-out, valid; More
(of an action, development, decision, etc.) natural or sensible given the circumstances.
"it is a logical progression from the job before"

But regardless, you've done a wonderful job of distancing yourself from any responsibility I may have put on your shoulders in my earlier comments. Bravo.

Yep, this is pretty much the definition I'm using. 'clear, sound reasoning'.

Plenty of people (many of them happening to be Trump supporters) sincerely believe in God, prayer, angels, afterlife, etc. To them, these beliefs make perfect sense.
Logical? Reasonable?
I guess if you want to say 'to them, sure', then I'll grant you that rhetorical conceit.

Okay, looks like everyone could use a reminder on the limitations of logic and reason:

Yes, you can use logic to come to a reason to vote for Trump. Logic will not tell you that your basic premise is wrong, it will only tell you the consequence of your premise if followed... or to put it succinctly: garbage in, garbage out.

What people don't seem to be realizing here is that what someone might put into logic isn't the same as what you might.

Tag. You're in.

Well if the conceit here is that logic and reason are ultimately subjective principles, OK.
But I might challenge the logic of someone who prays for wealth, finds a dollar on the ground, and then concludes that prayer is an effective means of gaining wealth.
Or maybe the more fitting analogy is someone who prays for wealth solely because some person claiming authority tells them it works, even when it doesn't.
That's what I would call 'faith', and that's what a lot of Trump voters relied on when they pushed that button.

That's leaving the realm of rationality and logic and entering empiricism: that is, experience phenomenon, explain phenomenon, test explanation.

Rationality and empiricism are heavily related, but ultimately do not require each other.

So should I be using the word 'empiricism' instead of 'logic'?
i.e. there was no empirical reason to vote for Trump?
If the question here is just about semantics, I'll concede the point.

Well, yes this is an argument of semantics because this is a conversation on the nature logic.

I would say, your argument should be: "there is no sound reason to vote for Trump over Clinton."

That is still debatable (again, due to the subjective nature of how anyone might rank the importance of any issue comparative to another.) But will likely get no issue from me over it.

I totally disagree. Logic will tell you that what you are putting in is garbage, therefore your conclusion will be garbage. It's like a geometric proof or a trigonometry problem. You fuck up basic math and the answer will be wrong, regardless if you followed all the necessary steps. If someone puts garbage into logic, it's not logic. The limitations you highlight are flaws in human cognition, influenced by emotion. Emotion has no place in logic.

I am afraid you don't understand logic then, and that's not a personal dig. Lots of people don't.

But I assure you, logic will not do what you think it does.

Perhaps a demonstration:

If David "Avacado" Wolfe knows and employs logic and scientific reasoning, then he does not propagate woo; (2) David "Avacado" Wolfe knows and employs logic and scientific reasoning. (3) Therefore, he does not propagate woo. Of course, as is clear, (2) is patently false. However, the inference from (1) and (2) to (3) is valid and thus the argument is valid.

C18H27NO3 you forgot to downmod this one too. I mean, since your standard seems to be "when given detail as to why you are incorrect, downmod."

But I'm not incorrect. And neither are you. Are you done yet? Or are you going to continue this juvenile game?

But you are in fact, incorrect. GIGO is foundational to understanding logic and semantics therein.

I am not trying to troll you, as I said, this is a common misconception I do not hold against anyone. However, I do hold it against people when they can not be corrected.

I think the issue is a 'world' where reality, logic, and facts mean something. The world those people are living in is a lie. That's not to say liberals don't live in their bubble as well. They do, but much of it is based on facts and reality, not some twisted fantastical ideology created in the 19th century employing hyperbole, false equivalencies, red herrings, double standards, and oversimplification of complicated issues, outright lies, misogyny, xenophobia, bigotry, and illusions of grandeur. Now all of it has been legitimized by labeling it "nationalism." Is that rational?

Dumpster didn't have business success. He had his ass pulled from the fire by daddy on multiple occasions, and was born privileged. His business failures are well documented, and he's skipped on paying what he owes. Acting irrationally and pretending to be strong willed to cherry picked "alternate" facts is not "tough." It's stupid and arrogant. His "popularity" has what exactly to do with being president? Is that rational?

Yes. Those people live in a different world. Simply by existing in their minds doesn't make it real. It's not rational nor logical. We have to deal with them. We have to educate them. We have to tolerate them even though they do not tolerate us. They have created the division and do not care to live in a community where compromise is key. Is that rational?

I don't recall Trump saying that women who sought abortions should be punished, but it does sound like him. No wonder the Evangelicals were ga-ga for Trump!

Here y'go. He did quickly walk back this statement, when it was explained to him that this view falls even outside the evangelical right mainstream.
Best part is that not long ago he was pro-choice.

A LOT of people I know only didn't vote for her because of the Democratic Primaries.
They HATED/distrusted Trump but weren't willing to vote against him if it was for her.
Though none of them voted for him either.
These are men and (mainly) women I'm talking about btw.

Oh ... and sooooooooooooooooooooooooo many people I know were viscerally offended by Hillary trying to make the Presidential Race a gender issue .. so there's that to consider too.
Remember this?

i feel you face

I'm not going to say gender wasn't a factor, but Clinton had to lose if the Democratic party is to be saved.

I'm not saying the count was not murdered, but he had to die to make room for a new count.

Execution is the traditional penalty for the crime of accepting a noble title.

I'm totally not misogynistic. I would never have been able to support Hillary for these 2 reasons:

Her idiot war on violent video games, which brought us this gem of a statement, “We need to treat violent video games the way we treat tobacco, alcohol, and pornography".

and the whole Super Predators thing.

I am just glad you can give actual, specific reasons. And none of them were Bengazi.

But her emails.

I don't know. Email - The Archiving was a pretty violent video game...

Yeah.... This election was crazy. The first time she attempted it, I said "The US would sooner have a black man as president than a woman".

And it happened just like that. Everyone was patting themselves on the back because electing Obama was supposed to signify America had changed. Surely, a black man in office is a sign that we are progressive. Right?

Wrong. I said it then and I'll say again. Obama's being elected has only further shown the bigger problem inherit in society. Misogyny.

Hillary didn't win '08 because she did not publicly kowtow to the man, Bill. Same for this recent election. If she would have run both campaigns in such a way as to hint with great exaggeration, that if elected, she would be advised by her husband, BOOM. She would have won. Such is the state of the US.

I lost friends over this election. Not because they voted Trump. They didn't even vote at all...

Progressives were very clear that yet another third way politician like either Clinton would not be acceptable. Clinton refused to listen and handed Trump the presidency.

She was told the same thing eight years ago and refused to listen then, too.

I'm just going to mention this here and now.
If I were forced to vote this past cycle, I would have gone hillary.


And I would have gladly voted for Jello Biafra in 2000. But it just wasn't meant to be.

It would be hard not too. I'm personally thankful I didn't have to mark a ballot in this most recent American election, because it was a choice between two terrible wrongs.

This is exactly the problem. People have difficulty assessing risk and engaging in cost benefit analysis. You highlight the choice between two terrible wrongs but that's where you lose all control of logic. It is plainly NOT a choice between two terrible wrongs. It is a typical false equivalency, something the GOP uses on a daily basis. In addition, anybody who either abstained or voted for dumpster because of the hate piled on Clinton for the last 25 years has cognition problems. Progressive or not.

That isn't why people refused to support Clinton, and you well know it. If she'd won, there wouldn't be an opportunity to run a progressive candidate until at least 2024, and probably not before 2032.

Now they'll be an opportunity in 2020. Her losing was clearly the lesser evil.

I on the other hand am somewhat misogynic. I'm also racist, classist and homophobic.

are you a tank?

Whoa! Yeah!

I think if anyone claimed that sexism wasn't a major factor, they are lying to themselves. However, I think you'll be hard pressed to apply this reasoning to everyone, because while Clinton had the disadvantage due to backwards attitudes towards gender, there was more than enough rope to hang her by that people would have used to hang anyone with.

As with most times politics and reality meet, the answer is somewhere in the middle.

Trump also had tons of rope to be hung with, yet he was not hanged. Clearly, it is not true that anyone would have done it to any candidate. People went out of their way to ignore Trump's faults, and unfortunately that includes a majority of white women. We've been convinced to vote against our own best interests as a collective in an attempt to maintain our personal best interests. We'd rather be the winning loser than see all women win and find out we're not the exception to the rule and secretly a part of the boys' club.

It's fucked up.

Trump wasn't even a consideration. Clinton had to lose to deliver the message that the Democratic party can be progressive, or past tense.

Clinton was essentially a continuation of Obama, and Sanders supporters loved Obama. That makes it hard to say she wasn't very progressive. When Sanders lost, she even adopted much of his platform, showing she was willing to listen to Democrats, even ones who did not vote for her.

When is it enough?

Sanders supporters loved what Obama promised to be, not what he capitulated to.

If you've kissed the Gold Mansachs, I think it's fair to say that you're not acceptable.

Stop buying shit and start lighting shit on fire if you don't like it.

And that is exactly why I said sexism was a huge factor.

Trump should have been hung out right along side her. But that's the problem of the inequity of our system, one of those two people are still going to win in the end.

While you and I certainly agree that Trump was the worst choice, there is enough room here to say there is cause to vote for him if you feel strongly enough on specific issues vs general.

For example, there is nothing wrong with the argument that "I voted for Trump, because I could not in good conscience vote for the candidate who's party undermined faith in the election process."

You can poke holes, such as by pointing out Trump has since claiming millions of people are voting illegally is functionally the same thing (because it is.) Or that the Republicans undermined the election through gerrymandering, but then you will at best have created a non-voter or 3rd party voter (which according to people here, is the same thing as a Trump voter anyway.)

Take me, for an example. I will openly admit to you that I did not vote for Hillary Clinton out of outright bias against something not her fault: her husband's policies and how they effected people in my own life.

I am happy she lost. I am not happy Trump won.

But that is the system we got, isn't it? The same problem with the system is the problem with the argument: lack of nuance.

I am the uneducated white person this article is talking about. Do you honestly believe I think I am being left behind because I am white, or that I am afraid of minorities in charge of things?

Or to put it more towards the statement of the article posted here... do you think I have overlooked Trump's failings, or given him a pass on things I shouldn't have vis-a-vis misogyny? Granted you and I have had our differences, but I'd hope you don't think I hate women.

There are plenty of people that do. Of course there are. But if your argument is "Misogynists are fine by Americans. Women in power are not" you're going to have the problem that many, many people, didn't like either candidate. You can't assume the values of a person based on a popular vote alone.

I didn't vote for Trump, I also didn't vote for Hillary. I know people in my same position (can't vote for a Clinton, deeply personal reasons) that only voted Trump because Hillary looked like she would win. They didn't agree with a single thing Trump had to say, loathed him immensely, but felt they owed it to someone important to them not let her have it without a fight.

So long we keep talking in blanket statements like this, the longer it is going to take to fix.

For example, there is nothing wrong with the argument that "I voted for Trump, because I could not in good conscience vote for the candidate who's party undermined faith in the election process."

Sanders only won in caucus states. Caucuses are far less representative of the people than open primaries. Clinton won the open primaries. Where is this shit about her stealing the primaries coming from? It boggles the mind. And of course, there is everything wrong with that argument because Trump had definite (past and ongoing) relations with Putin, who admits to releasing Clinton-targeted information in an effort to get Trump elected. How can anyone who cares about undermining the democratic process think Trump was the lesser of two evils? Especially when he did not win the popular vote on top of all of that? This argument is insane.

But that is the system we got, isn't it? The same problem with the system is the problem with the argument: lack of nuance.

You know who else has systems with many parties? The Philippines, It allowed for a vote split that left all the sane people arguing over many candidates, and allowed a minority of crazy people to elect Duterte. The same thing nearly happened in France with Le Pen. People didn't like his opponent either, they were left with a Trump/Clinton choice in their eyes, but they chose Clinton. Le Pen even ran on the idea of kicking out all the foreigners. This idea that additional parties will prevent us from electing maniacs is outright wrong. While we may only have two parties, we had over a dozen primary candidates for the GOP, competing to determine what "Republican" would mean. Now when it comes to the House and Senate, yes, additional parties might be relevant, but for the Presidential election, the primaries give you a wide range of candidates who sort themselves as generally left or generally right and then you get to elect a candidate based on how left or how right you want to go.

You can't assume the values of a person based on a popular vote alone.

This is true. I base it on general pattern in society, proven studies of extreme bias, and my own lifetime experiences. While not everyone hated Clinton for being a powerful woman, lots of people did, and it certainly made it easy for lots more to just not like her and never need to justify why that was, never have to critically examine their own perceptions. We are all more sexist than we like to admit, even progressive feminists can be sexist against women because it is so deeply ingrained in our culture.

So long we keep talking in blanket statements like this, the longer it is going to take to fix.

As long as we live in a sexist, racist society, which is our society summed up in a blanket statement, it will only ever be fixed for white men.

Trump isn't the lesser of two evils.

Progressives were very clear that Clinton was not acceptable. You chose to play chicken, and now your country is on fire and that is entirely your fault.

I am a progressive and I was happy with Clinton. You can't purport to speak for all progressives. Sanders had a very white, young, male contingent of voters. I wasn't playing chicken, I'm a woman who has believed in Clinton for over a decade and wanted to see her elected to office because I found her competent and thought having a woman we can take seriously in the office of President would be a step forward for the country as a whole.

I won't claim to speak for all progressives, but no, if Clinton was acceptable to you, then you are not a progressive.

We told you no, quite clearly. We drew a line in the sand and told you that if you crossed it, we were opponents.

You chose to cross it. That's on you. We told you we would not swerve. You chose to play chicken.

Clinton was the most progressive candidate in decades. Was she progressive enough? For a lot of uncompromising folks, obviously not. But here's the thing people learn as they grow up- life is compromise. Sure, stand by your ideals but if you're not flexible you'll end up disappointed, if not broken and bitter.
Here's the practical problem uncompromising progressives face, at least for the time being- most voters simply don't share that view. The 'Bernie or bust' contingent will argue this point till their uncompromising heads explode, but ultimately, this is the simple reason why he lost the primary, by double digits.

Well put.

It's great to push for one's own philosophy to better our society and government (I prefer we experiment and try very progressive policies just like how Bernie wants to do), but to think that in a population of 242 million adults in the US you're going to get your way even a good deal of the time in national government is delusional.

Bernie, when asked about whether he'd be able to successfully push his progressive policies as president alone answered no. He admitted that he would need a complete revolution everywhere else from the bottom all the way to the top - house to senate and a groundswell of people. He admitted this numerous times. And he certainly couldn't promise that as he would admit as well.

Can you even imagine if Bernie became president and we had a republican house, senate, and most governships being republican? They'd eat him alive. You know how they talk about Carter? This would be that times a million. You think those people would even allow this dude to govern for 1 minute without McCarthyism returning?

At the end of the day, Clinton would've gotten a lot more progressive policies passed than Trump. Is that even still debatable? The Supreme court by itself is huge. Did people think Trump is some progressive populist? It's clear from what is happening that he is a happy stooge for those hardcore government hating republicans. What's worse is that more than half of his supporters are probably going to get fucked by him and republicans, but they'll still support him and the party. So yeah, Clinton is the better person to lead the government.

Unless someone proves/convinces to me that this will lead to some progressive utopia, which I'd be very happy with mind you, I'm not convinced this was a great move.

What's depressing is that the likely political stalemate or watered-down compromises that would have resulted from either a Clinton or Sanders presidency would have been infinitely preferable to the actual achievements likely to occur under the Trump presidency.
And while it's true that the one potentially positive result of the Trump regime is a newly energized, maybe more effective, progressive movement- even if it translates to eventual electoral victories, what real price must be paid in the interim for these gains?
How much real damage will need to be undone before real progress can be achieved?

Most progressive policies are viewed as being socialist. Half of what Bernie vomited was basically wealth redistribution and the reduction of capitalism's influence on a few basic components of society and industry. That shit is never gonna fly with any conservative voter. I'd expect a lot more blowback to progressivism than what dumpster and the GOP is getting now. I'm thinking violence and attacks on liberal establishments, people, and organizations. Conservatives are more likely to go to extremes to make sure they win. Compromise isn't an option.

I don't take quite as grim a view. Despite setbacks like Trump, I'd like to think we are slowly, inexorably moving more in the direction of a more progressive society. This has been the overall trend over the last century +.

That's what I thought, and generally agree. But I fear we are a bit delusional. I said this to family and friends before the election : If dumpster wins, it will show the world what kind of country we live in. Racist, sexist, and xenophobic. Enough to bring victory to an incompetent, narcissistic, asshole. They wanted someone uniquely unqualified. It was a fork in the road, and this country chose the wrong way. This country has not moved past racism and sexism, as much as we'd like to think. And this election just proved it. These are stains on our society that won't easily be cleaned. This much has proven itself to be true.

Well there's no question we're a deeply divided country, and that itself is a persistent obstacle to progress.

No, Obama, for all his faults, was at least somewhat more progressive. He had never tried to ban video games or call anyone a superpredator.

But if that is the case, then the Democratic party is an opponent of progressives, and should be fought just as hard as Republicans.

I'm not comparing overall progressive records, which is actually open to debate. I'm talking specifically about Clinton's 2016 campaign platform.

From your link:

Party platforms are unenforceable message documents that are generally ignored almost as quickly as they're written.

The difference between the party platform and the candidate's is that the candidate is actually held accountable for campaign promises. But Clinton did in fact adopt much of the party platform, and even went further by including tidbits like debt-free college tuition, Medicare expansion and public option for the ACA.
Not that it matters now, of course.

Do you really think Clinton would have done those things? If you do, I think we'll just have to agree to disagree about her.

I think she would have tried, at least. But at the very least she would have been a far better and more progressive president than what we ended up with. Now we're going backwards at full speed.

There's where we disagree, then. She would have tried her best to represent her constituency at Goldman Sachs. Anything else would just have been smokescreen, and she wouldn't have done anything counter to their interests unless absolutely forced.

The disagreement is moot. We'll never know.

I'm pretty confident.

You might even say that based on her habit of changing views whenever politically convenient and her history of pandering towards Wall Street, that you've come to a logical conclusion.

YEEEEAAAAHHHH!!!!!

Thank Dog. The reality check would have made your head explode.

Yeah, the way things turned out is so much better.

Yup, that's exactly what I'm saying.

The difference between the party platform and the candidate's is that the candidate is actually held accountable for campaign promises.

You? Saying that? Ha!

I've said this before, must be your Alzheimer's: progressive policies actually poll very well with voters. The problem isn't the policies, it's the politics.

And she wasn't the most progressive candidate at all - she's to the right of Obama (who's borderline at best) on multiple key issues. She had the most progressive platform, because she needed to throw a bone to the Sanders voters (and even then her representatives fought the Sanders reps the whole way). That's down to the traction he got in the primaries and had nothing to do with Clinton.

Foobar mansplains progressivism.

eidolon doesn't own progressivism, and foobar is right.

Clinton backed NAFTA and welfare "reform" and the DOMA, sabotaged the Children's Defense Fund, is on the record voluntarily suggesting she'd support a constitutional amendment limiting abortion rights (the one issue you'd think she wouldn't pander on), didn't back gay marriage until it was a done deal, refused to admit hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis was a mistake until it cost her the 2008 nomination, and bears responsibility for the Syrian refugee crisis and the failed Libyan state/terrorist training ground. If she's a progressive then Donald Trump is a Marxist.

I look forward to your Manifesto.

There's nothing radical about pointing out that somone who spends Christmas vacations with war-criminal-at-large Henry Kissinger and regards him as a cherished mentor has no business calling herself a progressive.

Do you have a list of approved progressives and/or fake progressives?

How about this list: Vietnam, Cambodia, Timor-Leste, Chile. Or are you going to argue now that supporting the violent overthrow of a democratically elected government and replacing it with a brutal military dictatorship is a progressive value?

And which of these things is Hillary Clinton responsible for?

It's a serious question. I'm curious as to the size of the pool of true progressives deserving of support.

Who gave you the right to draw a line the sand and you alone? Do I have an equal right to draw a line? Perhaps you were the one playing chicken and now you want to blame me because you got hit by a freight train.

Everyone has that right. Quite a lot of people exercised it with regard to Clinton, and you chose to ignore it.

Now you've got to accept the consequences.

"We" and "opponents".

Is that how you treat your friends, too?

But, I'll say this: this is how conservatives acted. And that led to Donald Trump. And now they're angry at the Obamacare repeal and are saying things like "we need to vote our super, hardcore conservatives out and put in EVEN MORE hardcore conservatives." Purity tests stink imo.

Question for you: Do you think this will lead to a progressive politics after Trump or are you just glad to firebomb our political and governmental structure?

All of that seems to be working pretty well for conservatives.

Sanders only won in caucus states. Caucuses are far less representative of the people than open primaries. Clinton won the open primaries...

That's just it, it's not a statement about Sanders losing, it's a statement on the activities of the DNC proper. You make the same mistake most people do: assuming people upset with a principle is actual upset with results.

You know who else has systems with many parties? The Philippines, It allowed for a vote split that left all the sane people arguing over many candidates, and allowed a minority of crazy people to elect Duterte.

Sure, but that's not exactly a response to the point. My point wasn't that there needs to be third parties, it's that because they are not viable in our system you are forced to make a choice between head and heart, and you can find fault with either. The point I was making is that blanket statements aren't wrong, Hillary Clinton lost because of sexism. I fundamentally believe that. The issue is because enough people were sexist to have an impact, painting everyone with that brush on the opposite side of you a failure to understand interpersonal nuance.

This is true. I base it on general pattern in society, proven studies of extreme bias, and my own lifetime experiences. While not everyone hated Clinton for being a powerful woman, lots of people did, and it certainly made it easy for lots more to just not like her and never need to justify why that was, never have to critically examine their own perceptions. We are all more sexist than we like to admit, even progressive feminists can be sexist against women because it is so deeply ingrained in our culture.

You will find no major disagreement here. But I do have to point out the thing your fundamentally railing against you are guilty of yourself. "it certainly made it easy for lots more to just not like her and never need to justify why that was, never have to critically examine their own perceptions" correct. However, this article is literally the same thing, it is making it easy for you to not have to justify possible nuance so that existing perception is upheld.

As long as we live in a sexist, racist society, which is our society summed up in a blanket statement, it will only ever be fixed for white men.

Okay. See, my goal in this life isn't to provide people a pathway to the abuse white men have dumped on them, even if they deserve it (and let be honest, a lot of them do.) It's to remove those abuses at all. To me, this system isn't "fixed" for white men, except in the projorative meaning of the term. If white men enjoy a system stacked in their favor, then the system is broken. I'd apply that same logic to any group you'd like to put in place of "white men" as well.

We don't live in a sexist and racist society. We live with sexists and racists who like ourselves, can have a say in law, order, and government in general. So long as we continue to misunderstand the issue like this, yeah, we are going to keep letting those sexists and racists run circles around us.

A society which practices sexism and racism perpetuated by our laws and court system isn't a sexist, racist society?

Can I not typify a society by the behaviors it carries out as a collective? If not, does "society" even exist? The singular noun implies a collective.

But you see, if you do that you have to apply that to everyone. In which case, you now have a society which is a paradox: both racist and sexist and not racist and sexist.

Society is the aggregated beliefs of the population. Going by that logic, you can't help but come to the same conclusion I did, even if you come at it the way you just did. I just cut to the point on how to avoid giving credence to paradox. It's either both sexist and racist and not sexist and racist, or due to the malleability of our society it's neither of those things and subject to change.

No. I fight racism and sexism in part by recognizing my own racism and sexism. No one is pure. Not even when it comes to their own disadvantaged group.

That's good, but not at all my point. I also accept have racist and sexist views (or the potential for them) due to things well outside my control, like habits picked up without thought or colloquialisms with horrifying origins that I am not aware of.

But that's not the same thing, is it?

Sanders only won in caucus states.

Except for New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Vermont, Michigan (remember Michigan?), Wisconsin (remember Wisconsin?), Rhode Island, Indiana, West Virginia, Oregon, Montana, and Democrats Abroad (not to mention coming very close in Massachusetts, Illinois, Missouri, New Mexico and South Dakota)... but hey, reality has never stopped you from smearing Sanders before.

I think caucuses are a messy, inefficient process that should probably be eliminated, but caucuses favor the candidate who generates more enthusiasm, primaries (and early voting) favor the candidates with more name recognition.

And the eagerness of Clinton supporters to dismiss caucus states and erase the will of those voters does not reflect well on them or their respect for democracy.

For example, there is nothing wrong with the argument that "I voted for Trump, because I could not in good conscience vote for the candidate who's party undermined faith in the election process."

There's a lot wrong with that argument. It's the other party who has been making voting more difficult or impossible for minorities, students, poor folks, anybody who might not vote republican. Not to mention the gerrymandering which lets the minority of voters elect the majority of congress.