How to Blow an Election — in Five Easy Steps

[Geee]

National Review

Counting the ways, and Comey is not among them.

Hillary Clinton recently took “full responsibility” for her 2016 loss. Only she didn’t. Instead of explaining what the historian Thucydides once called the “truest causes” (aitiai), she went on to list at least three pretexts (prophases) for her defeat: sexism, FBI director James Comey, and the purported Russian hacking of her unsecured e-mail server and the John Podesta e-mail trove.
Clinton’s accusations also raise the larger question of why a presidential candidate wins or loses an election.

 

In general, there seem to be five hinges of fate: personality, positions on the issues, the general political atmosphere of the era, the quality of the campaign, and sudden and unforeseen outside events such as depression, scandal, or war. Even a biased media or lots of money pales in comparison.
The Pretexts
We can fairly dismiss Clinton’s pretexts.
Take sexism. Hillary Clinton found her sex an advantage in being elected to the U.S. Senate from New York. For a generation, among the most powerful and successful figures in U.S. politics were three progressive, multimillionaire, Bay Area women who, in a most non-diverse fashion, lived within 50 miles of one another: Barbara Boxer, Diane Feinstein, and Nancy Pelosi.
From 1997 to 2013 women of both parties were in charge of U.S. foreign policy as secretary of state, for twelve out of 16 years. One could make the argument that “the first female president” was an advantageous campaigning point, not a drawback; it was certainly designed to bookend Barack Obama’s successful trumpeting of being the first African-American president.
Blaming a deer-in-the-headlights FBI director James Comey is equally problematic. His passive-aggressive pronouncements irrationally first exonerated her, then did not, then did again. Faulting the FBI for her own likely felonious behavior of sending and receiving classified communications on an unsecured server (or of Bill Clinton’s trying to leverage Attorney General Loretta Lynch on an airport tarmac) is sort of like blaming the defeat at Pearl Harbor on the Japanese — true, but hardly the whole story given America’s responsibility for its own unpreparedness.

[Valin]

Geee

Quote

Her personality, in far different ways, was as polarizing as Trump’s. But Trump was far better as a TV showman, given his long stint on reality TV. Hillary’s voice, facial expressions, and comportment were not winning. Even on the rare occasions that she told the truth, she seemed more insincere than Trump, even when he was spinning a yarn.

(Snip)

 

Clinton surrounded herself with Pajama Boy whizz kids who looked and sounded as if they were on vacation from DuPont Circle in D.C., or Manhattan’s Upper West Side (and who appeared as Stanley and Livingston explorers to the natives of southern Michigan or eastern Pennsylvania). Meanwhile, Trump advisers, such as Kelly Ann Conway and Steven Bannon, acted and talked like they had been around the proverbial American block.
 

 

In other word (politics aside) as a candidate she....well Sucks she's not a good campaigner, and it should be added those around her were not very good at running a campaign.

 

I would also note Every Presidential Election (primary & general) is Different..different issues, different moods of the voters.

[Valin]

Dear Hillary Clinton and all the slacked jawed mouth breathing morons who supported her

 

[nickydog]

They're not going to get over it because they loath Donald Trump.  They just cannot accept that such a man is now living in the White House and is our president.  If Jeb Bush, or Scott Walker, or Marco Rubio had won the nomination and then won the election the slack-jawed, mouth breathing morons who supported Hillary might have more easily gotten over it.