Joe Trippi: Everybody can point to something that went wrong and theyre right

[portlander23]

Dems grapple with lessons from Clinton disaster
Niall Stanage
The Hill

Trippi also saw a danger for the party, in that virtually any explanation for why Clinton lost is plausible, given the narrowness of the margin.

“Everybody can point to something that went wrong — and they’re right,” he said. “It makes it impossible to know what the party really needs to do.

Adding another explosive ingredient to the mix, The Washington Post reported Friday that the CIA now believes Russia intervened in the election to help Trump win. The story clearly has some distance left to run.

Meanwhile, the immediate direction of the Democratic Party is further complicated because it has no obvious leader with the exception of President Obama, who will leave office in less than six weeks. At the Democratic National Committee — an organization already tainted by leaked emails suggesting its staff helped Clinton over Sanders during the primary — interim chairwoman Donna Brazile will soon leave office, with at least three candidates seeking to replace her. The Clinton political machine, a major force in the party since President Bill Clinton’s rise in the early 90s, is fading into obsolescence in the wake of the shock election result.

Even the competition to replace Brazile at the DNC shows the different directions in which the party could shift. The early front-runner, Rep. Keith Ellison (Minn.), supported Sanders during the primary and has made clear that he thinks a shift to the left is in order — in part to offer the clearest possible contrast to the GOP.

Clinton's narrow defeat really is the worst possible outcome. If she'd won, we wouldn't be having these conversations. If she'd lost by a larger margin, progressives would have a clear mandate to step in. As of right now, it looks like the progressives are going to have to battle it out with the third way old guard.

[frazzled]

1. The myths roll on

No, Joe, this is not true:

At the Democratic National Committee — an organization already tainted by leaked emails suggesting its staff helped Clinton over Sanders during the primary —

As we all know, no emails showed that the DNC staff helped Clinton over Sanders. The emails that were leaked were all from May--AFTER the point at which Sanders, by then trailing by large numbers in both the popular vote and delegates, had no path whatsoever to secure the nomination (short of flipping all the super delegates to his side, an impossible and patently undemocratic strategy). It was at that point that a few staffers exchanged emails about ideas to get him to move on, though nothing came of them. They were just musings among individuals. And they were understandable: there should have been real worries about how Sanders' quixotic, scorched-earth campaign continuation was beginning to harm Democratic efforts across the board. Which they did in the end--promulgating harmful untruths and exaggerations, and ultimately depressing Democratic votes even as Donald Trump was able to quote Bernie Sanders by name in attacks on "crooked Hillary.&quot . That's one of the things that went wrong with this election, and it is just as correct (if not more so) as any other factor, as Trippi states.

But no, Joe, the myth of the DNC "rigging" the primaries was patently false and proven so.

[portlander23]

2. Not just a river in Egypt

[frazzled]

7. As John F. Kennedy said

The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived and dishonest--but the myth--persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.

Try thinking about the facts, and not clinging to the myths.

[LexVegas]

3. You're not a progressive...which begs the question....

[R B Garr]

5. Yes, interesting observation.... nt

[JTFrog]

6. It's all about keeping us divided.

After all, it worked wonders for the GE.

[SidDithers]

8. Nailed it...nt

Sid

[R B Garr]

4. Reality: You lost, and you took us all down with you

Fighting Democrats isn't even an option anymore, as if it ever should have been. Now you deal with the results of your choices, and Donald Trump was the reality of that choice. He is who you will be fighting.