2016 Postmortem

The only what-if scenario I came up with was to support showing how screwed up our Elector College system is ... and it is.

And you're right, some of us have learned nothing ... because you still have many people around here that are still under the delusion that if we had just nominated "The Savior" Bernie Sanders, everything would be roses right now. Here is a clue for you ... we still would have lost the House and the Senate and Sanders had no way in hell of winning the White House. Sure, he would have picked up the purity crowd on the far left, but he would have lost as many, if not more on the right side of the voting base that did vote for Clinton. The net result, Sanders would have lost and then you would have the Clinton supporters saying the same thing the BS cheerleaders are now about how the Democrats should have gone with "my candidate". Also, we still have far too many people that are willing to accept right wing talking points and framing like the BS cheerleaders did about Clinton. We need to stop that ... now.

So let's look at some real facts ... Clinton picked up as many votes as Obama did in 2012 ... the problem really wasn't Clinton. One of the problems is the US is far more racist, misogynistic, homophobic and bigoted than we'd like to admit. 2016 was the last gasp of the old straight white man trying desperately to hold onto power. Trump received millions more votes than either Romney or McCain and he certainly didn't get those votes because he's more qualified to be President. And talking about how Clinton got more votes than tRump isn't about how "she really won" .. it's about how tRump DOESN'T HAVE A MANDATE, which is how the RepubliCONs will try to frame the election. And like I said, we need to stop allowing right wing framing to go unchallenged.

More facts .. even though the Democrats didn't get the majority in the House or the Senate, they did gain seats in both. That is a positive. How many times in a Presidential election has the winning party lost seats in both chambers? It's very, very rare. The party in power usually only loses seats in Congress during the mid-terms. And the mid-terms are going to be challenging (if not brutal) for Democrats in 2018 in the Senate. Democrats historically tend not to go to the polls in as great of numbers in the mid-terms and they have far more seats to protect. The Democrats have 23 seat up for elections, 2 Independents that caucus with the Democrats and only 8 Republicans ... and some of those Democrats are going to have a tough time of it.

There are a lot of reasons why Clinton lost the election and changing just one of them probably wouldn't have been enough to have given her the election. Personally, I believe the biggest issues were Comey and the bigotry of the Republicans and how it fired them up. And once Comey dropped the nothingburger that caused a shitstorm, the Clinton campaign should have been more focused on the swing states that the Comey announcement put back into play. They did go back to them ... but in hindsight, it's clear they didn't do enough.

And as long as people like you continue to whine and complain about how unfair Sanders is still be treated while still pushing right wing talking points about Clinton, we're not going to get anywhere. People like you were part of the problem during the election and you seem to be determined to continue to be part of the problem today ... congratulations.