In light of Hillary Clinton's new book, What Happened, being released unto the public this week, every cable news personality and their dog have echoed its title, asking one another, "So, what really did happen?" and "Who's to blame for what happened?" The responses have typically been fairly predictable, with Republicans blaming Clinton and Clinton die-hards placing the onus of the blame on James Comey and Bernie Sanders. While it's extremely common and perfectly understandable for both sides to try and find the ultimate scapegoat for the end result, as is often the case, reality dictates that blame should be properly spread among multiple sources.
I'm sorry, but all this deflection of blame is getting to be tiresome. It's about time each and every person responsible for what happened on election day 10 months ago admit to such and learn from it, so the cycle doesn't repeat itself in the future.
Hillary Clinton: There's no doubt about; she deserves some of the blame for her defeat last November. The Clinton team seemed to take a victory for granted, place things in cruise control, opt to play defense over offense, neglect to visit rust-belt states as a result, and suffered the consequences. The Clinton team had been involved in politics for far too long to possess this mentality and act in a similar fashion. No matter what the polls might suggest, polls don't decide elections, and due to that, no state can be guaranteed. While they were worrying about Ohio and Florida, they were losing Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
James Comey: It's true, James Comey's reopening of the email investigation came at the worst possible time for the Clinton team. It's also true that this turn of events appeared to slow Clinton's momentum in the polls. But again, while this may all be true, Hillary Clinton led Trump in the polls on election day, won the popular vote by 3 million, yet lost the electoral vote, so I have trouble believing Comey is solely to fault for the end result. While he certainly played a role, he can't be seen as the lone scapegoat.
Bernie Sanders: While I can understand some Democrats faulting James Comey for the November election loss, I have trouble understanding them blaming Bernie Sanders. Yes, it's true, some die-hard Sanders supporters, due to their candidate not becoming the party's nominee, opted to stay home on election day. It's also true that Sanders himself wasn't coy about criticizing Ms. Clinton until she became the party's nominee. However, none of this was new. Remember in 2008 when similar interactions occurred between Clinton and Barack Obama? After each and every such interaction, the media was quick to ask, "How can the two camps come together?" Many Clinton supporters said they'd never be able to vote for Obama and many Obama supporters said the same thing about Clinton. Yet, last I heard, Barack Obama won, not only one presidential election, but two of them. The die-hard supporters for each and every candidate are far outnumbered by the base of a party and undecided independent voters. If Democratic candidates solely focused on the fringe of the party, they'd never win, so on the flip-side, blaming that same demographic for a nominee's defeat makes no logical sense.
Electoral College/Voter Suppression: I can't argue with this much. Granted, the electoral college is how we've elected our presidents since the dawn of time it seems, but that doesn't make it right, and doesn't negate the fact it was largely responsible for Hillary Clinton's defeat in last November's election. Approximately 3 million more people voted for Hillary Clinton than Donald Trump on November 8th of last year. In what other contest can a person lose by 3 million yet be able to rightfully declare themselves the winner? Yeah, I have a feeling it's going to take a while to come up with a valid answer for that as well. For those who continue to defend the electoral college, claiming it provides equality to all states and means large cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago don't ultimately decide the election, I'm sorry, but you're wrong. Wyoming, the least-populated state in the country, has a population of 585,501 people. On election day, that state is worth 3 electoral votes. If you do the math, that's 1 electoral vote per 195,167 people. If we applied that same math across all states, California, the most-populated state, would be worth 197 electoral votes, almost four times the number it's worth now, which is 55. So, if anything, the electoral college's benefit weighs heavily in the favor of rural, lesser populated areas. If we truly wanted equality, the math would be pretty simple - 1 person, 1 vote.
The Media: In my humble opinion, the media bears more blame than Hillary Clinton, James Comey, and Bernie Sanders (perhaps combined). The media was double-trouble for Hillary Clinton's run for president. First, there's the conservative media. For roughly 20 years, various conservative media outlets have viciously attacked the former First Lady, spread false stories about her, and demonized her more than Freddy Krueger demonized himself. The right-leaning cable news network Fox News debuted in '96, when Secretary Clinton's husband, Bill, was in the Oval Office. If there's one thing we learned about Fox News in its early stages of development, it was they hated the Clintons. Right-wing talk radio began taking off at that same time as well, with Rush Limbaugh leading the way. Right-leaning websites joined the parade, as they spread unverified rumors about Ms. Clinton, told their readers the mainstream news was liberally biased and therefore couldn't be trusted, and through all this, many conservatives became brainwashed, seeing truth for fiction and vice versa. All of this played a huge factor in Hillary Clinton's low approval ratings leading up to election day. Hey, even if such media outlets bashed Gandhi for 20+ years, chances are, when all was said and done, his approval numbers would be in the crapper as well. Then there was the mainstream media. I've always found it to be ironically humorous that Donald Trump and his most avid supporters spend so much time bashing the mainstream media as biased against them when, if anything, they helped Trump get elected. While they'll likely never admit to this, I think a big reason why the mainstream media has been coming out so strongly against Trump and his administration since the election is that they feel guilty about him winning. Let's not beat around the bush here, the mainstream media treated the two nominees completely differently. Hillary Clinton had been involved in politics for multiple decades, so having been through such an election cycle before, the media came out gunning for her from the outset. With Donald Trump, however, since he had never been involved in such a thing, the media tended to hit him with styrofoam kids gloves. If these reporters had been cops trying to find out who was guilty of a murder, while they'd shine the light on Ms. Clinton in a dark, un-air-conditioned room, with Halloween-ish music playing in the background, asking for specifics on where she had been on a particular night, they would have started clapping as they provided Mr. Trump with a sucker and asked what his favorite color was. For far too long, the mainstream media didn't take Donald Trump's candidacy seriously. They saw him as a joke, treated him as such, and didn't display any sense of journalistic integrity until it was too late.
There are many other groups who deserve blame as well, namely the people who stayed at home instead of voting on November 8th of last year. While some see Hillary Clinton as deflecting blame with her recent book, What Happened, I sincerely hope, after accurately reflecting upon what all transpired leading up to election day of last year, all groups responsible for the outcome admit to being at fault, learn from it, and make certain such a God-awful result never takes place again.
I'm sorry, but all this deflection of blame is getting to be tiresome. It's about time each and every person responsible for what happened on election day 10 months ago admit to such and learn from it, so the cycle doesn't repeat itself in the future.
Hillary Clinton: There's no doubt about; she deserves some of the blame for her defeat last November. The Clinton team seemed to take a victory for granted, place things in cruise control, opt to play defense over offense, neglect to visit rust-belt states as a result, and suffered the consequences. The Clinton team had been involved in politics for far too long to possess this mentality and act in a similar fashion. No matter what the polls might suggest, polls don't decide elections, and due to that, no state can be guaranteed. While they were worrying about Ohio and Florida, they were losing Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
James Comey: It's true, James Comey's reopening of the email investigation came at the worst possible time for the Clinton team. It's also true that this turn of events appeared to slow Clinton's momentum in the polls. But again, while this may all be true, Hillary Clinton led Trump in the polls on election day, won the popular vote by 3 million, yet lost the electoral vote, so I have trouble believing Comey is solely to fault for the end result. While he certainly played a role, he can't be seen as the lone scapegoat.
Bernie Sanders: While I can understand some Democrats faulting James Comey for the November election loss, I have trouble understanding them blaming Bernie Sanders. Yes, it's true, some die-hard Sanders supporters, due to their candidate not becoming the party's nominee, opted to stay home on election day. It's also true that Sanders himself wasn't coy about criticizing Ms. Clinton until she became the party's nominee. However, none of this was new. Remember in 2008 when similar interactions occurred between Clinton and Barack Obama? After each and every such interaction, the media was quick to ask, "How can the two camps come together?" Many Clinton supporters said they'd never be able to vote for Obama and many Obama supporters said the same thing about Clinton. Yet, last I heard, Barack Obama won, not only one presidential election, but two of them. The die-hard supporters for each and every candidate are far outnumbered by the base of a party and undecided independent voters. If Democratic candidates solely focused on the fringe of the party, they'd never win, so on the flip-side, blaming that same demographic for a nominee's defeat makes no logical sense.
Electoral College/Voter Suppression: I can't argue with this much. Granted, the electoral college is how we've elected our presidents since the dawn of time it seems, but that doesn't make it right, and doesn't negate the fact it was largely responsible for Hillary Clinton's defeat in last November's election. Approximately 3 million more people voted for Hillary Clinton than Donald Trump on November 8th of last year. In what other contest can a person lose by 3 million yet be able to rightfully declare themselves the winner? Yeah, I have a feeling it's going to take a while to come up with a valid answer for that as well. For those who continue to defend the electoral college, claiming it provides equality to all states and means large cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago don't ultimately decide the election, I'm sorry, but you're wrong. Wyoming, the least-populated state in the country, has a population of 585,501 people. On election day, that state is worth 3 electoral votes. If you do the math, that's 1 electoral vote per 195,167 people. If we applied that same math across all states, California, the most-populated state, would be worth 197 electoral votes, almost four times the number it's worth now, which is 55. So, if anything, the electoral college's benefit weighs heavily in the favor of rural, lesser populated areas. If we truly wanted equality, the math would be pretty simple - 1 person, 1 vote.
The Media: In my humble opinion, the media bears more blame than Hillary Clinton, James Comey, and Bernie Sanders (perhaps combined). The media was double-trouble for Hillary Clinton's run for president. First, there's the conservative media. For roughly 20 years, various conservative media outlets have viciously attacked the former First Lady, spread false stories about her, and demonized her more than Freddy Krueger demonized himself. The right-leaning cable news network Fox News debuted in '96, when Secretary Clinton's husband, Bill, was in the Oval Office. If there's one thing we learned about Fox News in its early stages of development, it was they hated the Clintons. Right-wing talk radio began taking off at that same time as well, with Rush Limbaugh leading the way. Right-leaning websites joined the parade, as they spread unverified rumors about Ms. Clinton, told their readers the mainstream news was liberally biased and therefore couldn't be trusted, and through all this, many conservatives became brainwashed, seeing truth for fiction and vice versa. All of this played a huge factor in Hillary Clinton's low approval ratings leading up to election day. Hey, even if such media outlets bashed Gandhi for 20+ years, chances are, when all was said and done, his approval numbers would be in the crapper as well. Then there was the mainstream media. I've always found it to be ironically humorous that Donald Trump and his most avid supporters spend so much time bashing the mainstream media as biased against them when, if anything, they helped Trump get elected. While they'll likely never admit to this, I think a big reason why the mainstream media has been coming out so strongly against Trump and his administration since the election is that they feel guilty about him winning. Let's not beat around the bush here, the mainstream media treated the two nominees completely differently. Hillary Clinton had been involved in politics for multiple decades, so having been through such an election cycle before, the media came out gunning for her from the outset. With Donald Trump, however, since he had never been involved in such a thing, the media tended to hit him with styrofoam kids gloves. If these reporters had been cops trying to find out who was guilty of a murder, while they'd shine the light on Ms. Clinton in a dark, un-air-conditioned room, with Halloween-ish music playing in the background, asking for specifics on where she had been on a particular night, they would have started clapping as they provided Mr. Trump with a sucker and asked what his favorite color was. For far too long, the mainstream media didn't take Donald Trump's candidacy seriously. They saw him as a joke, treated him as such, and didn't display any sense of journalistic integrity until it was too late.
There are many other groups who deserve blame as well, namely the people who stayed at home instead of voting on November 8th of last year. While some see Hillary Clinton as deflecting blame with her recent book, What Happened, I sincerely hope, after accurately reflecting upon what all transpired leading up to election day of last year, all groups responsible for the outcome admit to being at fault, learn from it, and make certain such a God-awful result never takes place again.
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