2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Lots of traditionally alienated and disengaged people turned out for Sanders in the primaries [View all]marylandblue
(12,344 posts)... we failed with her, and we should have seen it coming. America wants outsiders as President. Obama was an outsider, Bill Clinton was an outsider, Ronald Reagan was an outsider. They defeated people who had been in Washington much longer they they had been, people with more experience and better resumes. Now we had the biggest insider vs. the biggest outsider of all, and guess who won? The outsider. Bernie wasn't an actual outsider, but since he was a socialist firebrand, he could run as one. Sure they had plenty of opposition research on him, but did anyone care about the mountain of oppo research on Trump? They knew he was a lying, racist, kleptocratic pig and voted for him anyway.
So let's not point out the horribly banal, like, we don't know what would have happened if... of course we don't! But we imagine and think about who we want next time. And I hope we don't run another insider. Let Trump be the insider next time, and let's run a very progressive populist who can fire up the people who stayed home or THOUGHT they wanted Trump.