Damon Linker Asks Why Clinton Supporters Cannot Accept The Truth About Her Loss

Partisan Democrats remain unable to face reality regarding why Hillary Clinton lost, blaming this on James Comey, Russia, or other things which they claim were beyond Clinton’s control. This is despite running against a candidate as terrible as Donald Trump, who would probably lost by ten points against anyone other than Clinton. Their recently filed lawsuit would he laughable if not for its attack on freedom of the press. In light of this, Damon Linker asks, Why can’t liberals accept the truth about Hillary’s 2016 failure? Linker wrote:

Like traumatized soldiers after a devastating and unanticipated defeat on the battlefield, a certain kind of partisan Democrat is still struggling with President Trump’s (absurdly narrow) victory over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. Just witness the furious reaction occasioned by a New York Times excerpt from Amy Chozick’s new book about Clinton’s defeat. Because Chozick dared to write that Clinton lost “the most winnable presidential election in modern history,” she (and others, like myself, who’ve made similar claims) inspired a tidal wave of criticism.

After summarizing the excuses made by Clinton and her supporters, Linker concluded:

…Clinton was the worst possible person to answer the angry accusations of a populist insurgency from either the protectionist right or the socialist left. She was too much a contented representative and beneficiary of the very political and economic establishments against which Trump directed his fire. She was the Davos candidate, the woman who defied the advice of her handlers to accept six-figure speaking fees from investment banks at events where she wooed rooms full of potential donors by dreaming of a world of open borders — a world in which the last remaining businesses to pay a decent wage in the Rust Belt would be given the green light to flee in pursuit of ever-higher profits.

To counter that Trump-the-corrupt-real-estate-mogul is just as much a member of the nation’s economic elite misses the political point entirely. A populist defines himself by those he attacks, and Trump attacked those in power. Who did Clinton attack? The “deplorable” voters who were tempted to vote for Trump — and she did it, of course, at a big-ticket fundraiser, before a room full of wealthy liberal donors.

Maybe, given the realities of polarization, negative partisanship, and certain fundamentals at play in 2016, no Democrat would have won against Trump in a landslide. But I’m quite sure a different Democrat — a Democrat who didn’t so badly misjudge the political moment and squander her many advantages, and who wasn’t incapable of taking a stand on behalf of those many Americans who feel they’ve been left behind by the prevailing policies of the past generation — could have won convincingly, decisively.

Until the party demonstrates a willingness to learn from its mistakes, it will run the considerable risk of repeating them.

Clinton was out-flanked on the left by Trump not only on trade. She also suffered from her far right wing views on foreign policy and interventionism.

Democrats do need to accept reality, as opposed to ignoring the mood of the electorate–as they also did in 2010 and 2014 leading to Democratic losses. Rather than accepting why they lost and correcting the problems, they engage in a sick McCarthyism, attacking those who do point out their mistakes. Rather than embrace potential new voters brought in by Bernie Sanders, they attack the left, have purged progressives from the DNC, and attack more liberal and progressive candidates who are more in tune with the voters, and probably more electable.

4 Comments

  1. 1
    Bert Wolfe says:

    Hillary Clinton and her campaign aides began spreading the false notion that she lost the 2016 presidential election because of Russian computer hacking practically from the moment she conceded defeat to Donald Trump.  The REAL reason she lost is because she came into the race with an overweening sense of “entitlement” to the job, but unable to articulate a compelling reason why she should be elected; because she took far too much for granted, and ultimately ran an inept, incompetent campaign.
    Hillary’s defenders, blindly loyal to both a fault and the end, point out that she won the popular vote by over 3 million votes.  Unfortunately for Hillary, most of those 3 million votes were concentrated in CALIFORNIA, when she desperately needed them in the battleground States of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin in order to win where it ultimately counted, in the Electoral College.  Hillary barely campaigned in these battleground States, and by effectively conceding them to Trump, she effectively defeated herself!  Hillary has no one to blame for her election loss but HERSELF!

  2. 2
    Pat Sharp says:

     Why can’t liberals accept the truth about Hillary’s 2016 failure? ???????? Damen Linker???????

    We LIBERALS wanted Bernie Sanders NOT Hillary………………………..!

     

  3. 3
    Z54 says:

    The DNC is virtually broke, so how are they going to pay for this lawsuit against Trump, Wikileaks and Russia? Hope like hell they win? And if they don't win, who in the hell would be stupid enough to give them money? Let the Democrats and their party, wallow in the cesspool of their continuous losses, while workers and the poor of this country start a new party, a party that will put workers and the poor over the wealthy moocher class!

  4. 4
    Giovanna X says:

    But they're not going to learn the lesson. Those who do leave the corrupt party, so the Democrats will continue to shrink, ever more irrelevant, until they finally join the Whigs and the Anti-Masonic Party in the dustbin of history.

     

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