What the fuck happened?

 I see a lot of blame being tossed at various parties for how the election was fucked so royally, everything from the DNC stealing the nomination for Clinton to her failure to connect with the middle class white voter.

There is... an element of truth to all the criticisms, fact is there is a lot that could have been done differently but I don't know that it would have made a difference. While I would have preferred Bernie Sanders to be the candidate, I feel like anyone who categorically says "he would have won" is probably deluding themselves a little bit. I mean, if Hillary Clinton, essentially a Reagan Republican with a more liberal domestic agenda, lost the middle class white voter, I am not particularly sure that  somebody who proudly carries the socialist label would have done better, and at least for a little while longer you can't lose that demographic.

We also learned that particular demographic is more awful and ignorant than almost anyone had previously thought.

Vice President Biden said in an interview recently that he wishes he had kept talking about Clinton rather than attacking Trump, I think that this criticism might be closer to the truth than most of the others.

The DNC and Clinton campaign learned lessons from watching the Republican primary that it turns out, didn't translate as well as one would like to the general election, namely in the primary the vast field of candidates basically ignored Trump and neglected their opposition research to the point where for a major portion of the campaign he didn't really have anyone seriously contesting him outside of the debates, and even in those opposition was pretty weak. The Democrats surely must have decided not to make that same mistake and rolled out hundreds of attack ads during the campaign season against Trump, they were extremely well made, usually pretty short, with powerful messages and imagery.

And they were basically ignored.

Supporters watched them sure, but the opposition didn't, and the undecided voter largely didn't either it seems, that or they took the overwhelming number of anti-Trump attack ads, combined it with their vague recall that they are supposed to hate the Clinton's because of reasons, and decided that anyone doing so much to discredit one person is obviously untrustworthy and they should look into this Trump guy.

By look into I of course mean blindly voting for and saying "jobs" or "Benghazi" when asked why.

Meantime the public never really got a good luck at why they should have trusted Clinton, I know that the polls turned out terribly for everyone this year, but after the conventions they showed Clinton with a significant edge over Trump, this I believe was in large part because the nation was able to see exactly what the candidates were, the DNC was a love fest, outside of die hard Bernouts on the first day or so it was all about talking about Clinton and her accomplishments, with personal stories from respected people humanizing her and making her seem... nice for really the first time in the campaign, at least, the first time that got real national coverage. Meanwhile the RNC was a hate filled trainwreck, and the public reacted to it.

But the Democrats let the conversation be turned around again, attacks on Clinton were coordinated through the media rather than advertising, which is why her getting pneumonia led to a huge drop in the polls in September, and their own advertising stepped farther away from her and talked more about him, which meant that there was virtually no positive media about Clinton for a while, just "balanced" Trump coverage, blatant programs and panels attacking Clinton, and anti-Trump advertising.

So there's the thing, the progressives are now in the witch hunt phase of losing, which means basically accusing everyone else of it being their fault, but really it is everyone's fault in a way. Virtually every criticism of the campaign from day one has merit, but I feel like if the messaging was their, and the media coverage was even partly equitable, then Clinton probably would have won despite everything. Even despite James Comey being an enormous tool a week before the election.

In a way we can be grateful I suppose, debriefing and figuring out what went wrong is always useful, and every mistake that was made needs to be corrected, particularly the DNC colluding with Clinton for the nomination, but the idea that "if only this one thing" is a load of bull, now the question is how do we recover? The GOP did an autopsy of their failures in 2012 which they proceeded to ignore and go full fascist instead this time around, it worked for them but America has always had a tendency towards authoritarianism, can the Democrats perform a real autopsy of the failures of this year and can they make any real change in time for the midterms or 2020?

Guess we have to find out, fuck me this is gonna suck.

Oh, also, two days, boycott the inauguration, attend a protest, let me know if you need a ride to or from.