inflatable dalek wrote:God bless the land of the free.
It's an awkward system, but I don't think it's inherently any worse than one where a party can get complete control of the government by winning <40% of the popular vote, like happened the last time around in both of our countries.
inflatable dalek wrote:Yeah, I suppse what's so odd about it, her mistakes/EVILS just seem par for the course for US politics (is there anyone whose held high office who isn't a bit dodgy?, hell, I like Obama but he got back in despite some major screw ups) so the bile she got always seemed wildly disproportionate.
Clinton had three major public perception hurdles lined up against her, and I don't think she cleared any of them.
The first is that the Republicans have been digging up dirt on her for nearly thirty years now. She was a big part of her husband's campaign to be president, and governor before that. And after Bill's career ended she was a senator for eight years, then ran for president herself (and got stomped by Obama in the primaries), and secretary of state for four more, and then ran for president again. That's a long-ass time to build up your character assassination files on someone, even if they aren't especially dirtier than the average politician. From Benghazi to the emails to Whitewater to her role in covering up Bill's sexcapades, it's easy to cherry-pick and make her look like Hitler when she's been living under a bright spotlight since the 1970s.
(As an aside, I really think the groping accusations against Trump would have done him in against any other candidate. But it's really hard to make that stick when Hillary is married to a serial sex abuser, and she expended tons of energy in the 80s and 90s trying to make those accusations against her husband "go away".)
Then there's also the whole "dynasty" thing that Brend mentioned. People really seemed to turn on both her and Jeb when it seemed, early on, that it would turn into a Bush vs. Clinton showdown when those families have held the White House for five of the last seven terms. Obama was an outsider who ran on a platform of hope and change and won because people were sick of the constant lies, warmongering and bullshit from DC after the Bush/Cheney years. But over eight years he accomplished almost nothing because the "establishment" refused to work with him, whether it was Dems or the GOP in control of Congress. I don't think it's surprising that a lot of people were turned off by a Clinton, when they've been "a part of the problem" for two decades now (of course the real problem is that the US's founders deliberately made it as hard as possible to get anything done because they didn't trust a strong federal government, but try getting people to care about that when their job just got sent overseas).
And then on top of that, Hillary just has no charisma at all. It's like trying to get people excited to vote for Cartoon Shockwave as president. No matter how smart and competent she is, it's not going to happen.
Honestly the Democrats really should have known better than to nominate her, especially after how thoroughly Obama dismantled her as a candidate in the '08 primaries ("She'll say anything, and change nothing" still resonates to this day, and for good reason). The only reason things were even close was that the Republican party got hijacked by a clown who couldn't keep himself from spouting incendiary nonsense.