Assessing Responsibilty...

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ASSOCIATED PRESS

Hillary Clinton’s campaign had basic assumptions about key battleground states that turned out painfully wrong.


When all is said and done the largest responsibility for the election of tRump the narcissist rests with the Clinton campaign itself. Whether it be arrogance bred of over confidence or a simple lack of energy on the part of the candidate herself is anyone's guess. Regardless of reasons results remain the same and our nation is the biggest loser.

WASHINGTON ― In the closing weeks of the presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton’s staff in key Midwest states sent out alarms to their headquarters in Brooklyn. They were facing a problematic shortage of paid canvassers to help turn out the vote.

For months, the Clinton campaign had banked on a wide army of volunteer organizers to help corral independents and Democratic leaners and re-energize a base not particularly enthused about the election. But they were volunteers. And as anecdotal data came back to offices in key battlegrounds, concern mounted that leadership had skimped on a critical campaign function.

“It was arrogance, arrogance that they were going to win. That this was all wrapped up,” a senior battleground state operative told The Huffington Post.

Several theories have been proffered to explain just what went wrong for the Clinton campaign in an election that virtually everyone expected the Democratic nominee to win. But lost in the discussion is a simple explanation, one that was re-emphasized to HuffPost in interviews with several high-ranking officials and state-based organizers: The Clinton campaign was harmed by its own neglect.

In Michigan alone, a senior battleground state operative told HuffPost that the state party and local officials were running at roughly one-tenth the paid canvasser capacity that Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) had when he ran for president in 2004. Desperate for more human capital, the state party and local officials ended up raising $300,000 themselves to pay 500 people to help canvass in the election’s closing weeks. By that point, however, they were operating in the dark. One organizer said that in a precinct in Flint, they were sent to a burned down trailer park. No one had taken it off the list of places to visit because no one had been there until the final weekend. Clinton lost the state by 12,000 votes.

A similar situation unfolded in Wisconsin. According to several operatives there, the campaign’s state office and local officials scrambled to raise nearly $1 million for efforts to get out the vote in the closing weeks. Brooklyn headquarters had balked at funding it themselves, arguing that the state already had a decent-sized footprint because of the labor-backed super PAC For Our Future and pointing out that Clinton had never trailed in a single poll in Wisconsin.

The campaign’s state office argued additionally for prominent African-American surrogates to help in Milwaukee. “There are only so many times you can get folks excited about Chelsea Clinton,” explained one Wisconsin Democrat. But President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama didn’t come. Nor did Hillary Clinton after the July Democratic convention. She would go on to lose the state, hampered by lower turnout in precisely the place that had operatives worried. Clinton got 289,000 votes in Milwaukee County compared to the 328,000 that Obama won in 2012.
“They had staff on the ground and lots of volunteers, but they weren’t running a massive program because they thought they were up 6-7 points,” said the aforementioned senior battleground state operative.

SKIP

As Democrats begin to repair their party and learn from the shortcomings of the Clinton campaign, one of the primary arguments being made is that candidates have to show up if they expect to win. Obama said as much in a recent press conference when he tied his success in Iowa to the sheer number of stops he made in the state while campaigning. And the data strongly suggests that this was a vulnerability for Clinton. As the Washington Post reported, Clinton’s campaign and outside groups supporting it aired more television ads in Omaha during the closing weeks than in Michigan and Wisconsin combined. And as NBC News reported, during the final 100 days of the election, Trump made 133 visits to Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina, Michigan and Wisconsin while Clinton made 87.

On the margins as well, campaign operatives say the Clinton campaign’s failure to have a footprint did real harm. In Pennsylvania, for example, the campaign had a healthy canvassing operation and was flush with volunteers, many of whom poured in from New York City and Washington, D.C. But according to one longtime grassroots campaign operative who was involved in the 2016 cycle, leadership was focused predominantly on turning out their own voters and not on persuading others to come on board.

This was a perfectly logical strategic decision, considering the massive voter registration advantage that Democrats enjoy in the state. But it meant that the Clinton campaign wasn’t able to anticipate the surge in Trump support in the rural areas because they weren’t having conversations with voters there.
Read the complete article HERE.










Comments

  1. Aw, c'mon. Clinton could've beaten any of the Republicans. She lost to Trump, a thing of it's own. If the Dems had nominated Sanders, Sanders would have won handily, and he would have brought a lot of Dems unto the Hill, too. Clinton was the worst possible candidate against a populist insurgency, as Mr. Garrison said on a recent South Park, "Why'd it have to be her?" The Dems had a real chance, and they blew it. They are such political cowards.

    JMJ

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I agree. Sanders campaigns/campaigned like he is 19 and HRC campaigned like she was 91.

      Delete
    2. Sander was a very attractive candidate. But, IMO, he would have been branded as socialist..the kiss of
      death considering the unwashed millions.

      Delete
  2. "When all is said and done the largest responsibility for the election of tRump the narcissist rests with the Clinton campaign itself."

    Absolutely!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Almost half of all registered voters did not vote. The remaining half divided their votes between two leading candidates. Clinton received a plurality of the popular vote; Trump won the Electoral College, which decided the outcome for the second time in 16 years. Roughly 72% of the electorate is now disenfranchised.

    Anti-establishment populism brings angry and disaffected voters to the polls; apathy and obstacles to voting keep others away. However, low voter turnout is the end of the story, not the beginning.

    Clinton may not have been the most inspiring candidate on record, but there is more to this story. MUCH MORE! Tt is a BIG mistake to discount voter suppression efforts in 24 states taken over by the Tea Party insurgency. Consider:

    Trump margin of victory in Michigan: 13,107
    Michigan purge list: 449,922

    Trump margin of victory in Arizona: 85,257
    Arizona purge list: 270,824

    Trump margin of victory in North Carolina: 77,008
    North Carolina purge list: 589,393

    Years of legislative deadlock and gridlock, obstruction, and government shutdowns (at taxpayer expense) represent a calculated and cynical attempt to deny the sitting president a record of accomplishment. When government ceases to work, the saboteurs win by default, and voter suppression completes the coup d'etat.

    We are witnessing the demise of American democracy.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. As you know America has never been a true democracy (O)CT(O)PUS, rather it is and has always been a representative democracy , or if you prefer, a democratic REPUBLIC . Our founders were afraid of pure democracy and for good reason. Pure democracy would quickly devolve into anarchy and destroy itself. The same is true of big L libertarianism.

      Delete
  4. Former Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton ( And I repeat FORMER) thought that she had the election in the bag. She thought she was going to completely erase her bitter disappointment from 2008, when she didn’t even make it to the election’s final stage.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Now is the time that the Trump dupes will gloat. Later many will be bitterly disappointed as well. "Know it all" obviously does not know he was had. Sad.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Maybe Mr. Know It All is a Wall Street Banker. In that case he's ecstatic. If not, he's ben duped.

    ReplyDelete

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