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> How do we reconcile the fact that she completely blew this election? We don't reconcile them, because while not unrelated, they also aren't tightly correlate

• rdtsc 10y ago
  > Experienced and qualified people fail at stuff pretty regularly. Everyone fails. But this was not a simple tactical fail, this is a strategic type long sequence of failures. > "Experienced and qualified" don't guarantee success in an election (or anything else for that matter). What good are those things for then? I would imagine such a long experience at being a politician should translate into the ability to manage an election, understanding and communicating the issues to the constituents, seeing what the voters want, and so on.
  • dpark 10y ago
    > But this was not a simple tactical fail, this is a strategic type long sequence of failures. Really? Because from what I saw, the biggest failure from Hillary was the email scandal, and of course the failure to actually get elected. I didn't see sequence of failures. If anything, Trump had a much bigger sequence of failures, from the tax leaks, to the Trump University fraud, to belittling a former Miss Universe, to the pussy grabbing comments and more. He got elected nonetheless because he managed to sell a message people wanted to hear. > What good are those things for then? I would imagine such a long experience at being a politician should translate into the ability to manage an election, understanding and communicating the issues to the constituents, seeing what the voters want, and so on. Those things are helpful, in the same way that being smart is helpful if you're starting a company. But smart people start failing companies all the time and experienced politicians lose elections all the time, too.
    • rdtsc 10y ago
      > Really? Because from what I saw, the biggest failure from Hillary was the email scandal, I would say the sequence of failures is not understanding what voters were looking for. That didn't happen as a singular event. That happened at first, then later, it happen probably up until she canceled the fireworks show for celebration party. As a politician, knowing what the voters she (hopefully!) planned to represent wanted, should have been one of the top qualification requirements, would you say? Losing the Rust belt was a major strategic failure. I can understand if it was down to a few electoral votes, could then argue it was random, but it was 60 votes. > he managed to sell a message people wanted to hear. But she's been in politics with all that experience. Out of all the people shouldn't she be the one who can sell people what they want to hear? Maybe the idea is that she has a higher integrity than Trump and wouldn't want to do that? > biggest failure from Hillary was the email scandal, Email scandal was not one thing. The contents of the emails show sequence of failures. > If anything, Trump had a much bigger sequence of failures Exactly, it was terrible, and she still couldn't win. That is just baffling to me. > Those things are helpful, in the same way that being smart is helpful if you're starting a company. But smart people start failing companies all the time and experienced politicians lose elections all the time, too That's a fair point I agree with that in general.
      • dpark 10y ago
        I'm not clear where you're going with all this. Clearly Clinton lost. Clearly she made mistakes. That's indisputable. But based on the fact that the populace elected Trump, I'm not sure there's anything Clinton actually could have done to win. What Trump had was a message that apparently appealed to a very large section of the population (plus a xenophobe outreach campaign that built him a base to get through the primaries), and even if Clinton wanted to sell that message, I don't believe she could have, because she actually has a track record that the message clearly doesn't align with. You seem to be convinced that experience and qualifications necessarily lead to winning elections, and therefore Clinton's loss proves that she has neither. But this is fundamentally untrue. Many times voters have chosen someone with less experience and weaker qualifications. I'd argue that Clinton was more qualified and more experienced than Obama when he beat her in the primaries. McCain was arguably more qualified and certainly more experienced when Obama beat him in the general election, too. He won because at the time voters preferred his message and his vision.