It Was Third Parties That Sunk Clinton

[applegrove]

It Was Third Parties That Sunk Clinton

July 29, 2019 at 8:24 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard 1 Comment

https://politicalwire.com/2019/07/29/it-was-third-parties-that-sunk-clinton/

"SNIP.....

Stuart Rothenberg: “For all the talk about why Donald Trump was elected president while losing the popular vote and how he could win again, one of the least discussed results of the 2016 election offers valuable lessons for Democrats.”

“An astounding 7.8 million voters cast their presidential ballots for someone other than Trump or Hillary Clinton. The two biggest third-party vote-getters were Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson (almost 4.5 million votes) and the Green Party’s Jill Stein (1.5 million voters). But others received almost another 1.9 million votes as well.”

“Libertarians and Greens may try to convince you that this reflects growing support for their parties. It doesn’t. Their strong showing was due to the unpopularity of the two major-party nominees.”

......SNIP"

[ProudLib72]

1. Have we learned a valuable lesson about Jill Stein?

The unpopularity of HRC was due to the disinformation campaign run by Putin.

[radical noodle]

20. Not only Putin

There was also disinformation coming from the GOP and the far left. We all saw what was happening. We were innundated with it here.

[SunSeeker]

2. Yup, Libertarians and Greens, Putin's useful idiots.

[WhiteTara]

8. or willing participants.

[JI7]

13. certainly in the case of Jill Stein

[SunSeeker]

18. Well there's that too. nt

[Wellstone ruled]

19. Bingo,your answer is the

right one.

[msongs]

3. it was dems who stayed home in WI, MI, and PA that sunk Clinton IMO nt

[DeminPennswoods]

12. Dems did not stay home in PA

Dems swept all the state offices, Governor, Atty General, Auditor General, Treasurer. In fact, Josh Shapiro who was elected Atty Genl, got more votes than any other Dem in the state. If Clinton had matched Shapiro's votes in just a few counties, 10 I believe I counted, she'd have won the state. Dems need to admit that 40 years of relentless attacks on both the Clintons and Hillary not having the same campaign charisma as Bill hurt her with voters. Some voters simply did not like or trust her. She didn't campaign in the state enough to win over at least a portion of those voters.

[radical noodle]

21. Yet she had high favorability ratings

as Secretary of State and after leaving the office. Gee, I wonder what happened?

[Bettie]

22. 25+ Years of negative marketing

most adults can not recall a time when the Clintons (either one or both) were not under investigation/suspicion of something.

A constant drumbeat in the background of "not trustworthy" makes a difference long term. So, it doesn't take all that much to tweak that subconscious belief, just enough to put the doubt in there.

It took my husband asking me WHY I distrusted her and I came up with nothing but a vague sense of unease (and she was too centerish for me, but hey, that's the case with most mainstream politicians). Why? Because marketing works, it changes and creates perceptions/biases and we're frequently (usually) unaware of them. It takes actively thinking about why we feel a certain way to dispel it.

When she was Sec. Of State, she was acting on a public stage in a way that eclipsed those background messages for a lot of people, at least short-term.

But, she was built up by the right as this scary woman.

And even with that, she probably actually did win. Even with all of the years of investigations and accusations, they had to cheat to pull it off.

So, she's either the smartest criminal mastermind in history or she's never done any of the crap they threw at her. The second is significantly more likely than the first.

[DeminPennswoods]

23. Thank you for the excellent explanation

using your own personal experience.

[Rhiannon12866]

25. I remember CNN back in 2008 asking the question on the screen

"Is Hillary Clinton too liberal and too angry??" I remember yelling at the TV. With that and the time they switched from Senator John Kerry speaking live before the Senate to some RWer on tape "for balance," they said. I pretty much turned them off for good after that.

[Kurt V.]

4. trump drew on an inside straight. nearly impossible twice.

[customerserviceguy]

6. This time

he has the advantages of incumbency, and they are powerful. An incumbent losing a re-election bid is much more of an exception than the rule for the past century or so.

[BeyondGeography]

5. "Their strong showing was due to the unpopularity of the two major-party nominees."

Ding, ding, ding.

[Voltaire2]

7. Maybe but that pathetic article did nothing

to prove that was true.

Actually as the Libertarian vote was 3x the Green Party vote, and assuming Libertarian votes are more likely from Republican leaning voters and Green votes are more likely from Democratic leaning voters, it was a net gain for Clinton, at least as far as the popular vote count.

The article did not do the state by state analysis that would establish which electiors where switched by the third party votes.

[progressoid]

28. Exactly.

[abqtommy]

9. The election was rigged/fraudulent.

No further analysis is needed or welcomed by me.

[empedocles]

10. Something missing in this thread . . .

[applegrove]

11. Criticism of that actress who was the most vocal Stein supporter? Susan Saradon?

[empedocles]

14. that's one! there is more . . .

[applegrove]

16. Russians?

[delisen]

15. No mention of Russia's role in 2016 even after Mueller Testimony

We are over 2 and 3/4 years past the time time when everyone should have known about the extensive Russian interference in our election of 2016.

This is what has made me begin to question many of the political commentators, even those who are not Republicans. I have seen so many jump immediately to false narratives about 2016 and then hang on to that narrative they have chosen-even as facts emerge that do not support it. They seem instead to double down, to want to win the narrative-building even if their narrative turns out to be false or full of holes.

From an incomplete Wikipedia article:
Goddard is quoted in Making it in the Political Blogosphere on why he created the site: "I do it for the same people who, going back a dozen years, always wanted that political page. So, in a practical sense, it’s for people who’re very similar to me, who like politics to the same degree that I do and also enjoy it almost as a game. While some people might read the sports page first every day, there’s a whole group of people who read Political Wire first every day, because that’s something that gets them going in the morning. Those people, I find, are professionally employed in politics or public affairs. They work either in political offices or on campaigns, or are elected and appointed officials themselves. In many cases they’re journalists who cover politics and, obviously, there are also the political junkies out there who just find it interesting."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Wire

Two phrases stand out in the above: "people like me" and "enjoy it almost as a game.

Unfortunately my life, that of my children and the lives of millions of us are in severe danger because of "the game"
and those who identify more with that or with people like themselves than they do with the rest of us.

[EleanorR]

17. No, it was information warfare by the russians

Read Kathleen Hall Jamieson's book.

Her case is based on a growing body of knowledge about the electronic warfare waged by Russian trolls and hackers—whom she terms “discourse saboteurs”—and on five decades’ worth of academic studies about what kinds of persuasion can influence voters, and under what circumstances. Democracies around the world, she told me, have begun to realize that subverting an election doesn’t require tampering with voting machines. Extensive studies of past campaigns, Jamieson said, have demonstrated that “you can affect people, who then change their decision, and that alters the outcome.” She continued, “I’m not arguing that Russians pulled the voting levers. I’m arguing that they persuaded enough people to either vote a certain way or not vote at all.”

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/01/how-russia-helped-to-swing-the-election-for-trump

[JI7]

24. Does it mention that Jill Stein was a Putin Troll ? these things are not disconnected .

[onetexan]

26. Not this again

Why rehash it again? foreign agents stole the damn election for the Idiot. End of story.

[underpants]

27. No, it was the media

To the point about third party candidates, don't discount that the media was declaring the race OVER more than a month out. Many people felt like they didn't need to vote (ridiculously low turnout) or that they could throw a bone or cast a joke vote for a third party candidate. Side note - "Bernie Bros" in Wisconsin especially not voting could very easily have decided that state.

Trump got an astounding amount of free advertising. Constant. Non stop. Full speeches. He actually released a statement prior to getting the nomination when his primary funds were low that he would rely on the media and not have to advertise. Hillary was rarely on TV. When she was her Numbers ballooned. Most of the coverage went from Trump's pro wrestling act rallies to talking about how people weren't sure they could trust Hillary. That played directly into the GOPs theme.

Our media is a drama show. That gets ratings and sells ad space. No one watches a one horse race.

[progressoid]

29. OFFS. This shit again?

Here's a little thing that every candidate and strategist knows (or should know), there have always been third party voters and there will always be third party voters. It's baked into the system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_third_party_performances_in_United_States_presidential_elections

It's like saying, "I like the sun and the moon. But every once in a while, a comet disrupts the sky. Can we do something about those pesky comets?"

NO! They exist. Deal with it.

[LArider]

30. The article

hit the nail on the head with this:

Their strong showing was due to the unpopularity of the two major-party nominees

[mcar]

31. Yep