A wise man once wrote a wise TV show with a wise character, who once wisely said, “If liberals are so fuckin’ smart, how come they lose so goddamn always?” It’s a question on the minds of many after the abrupt defeat of Hillary Clinton at the hands of President-elect Donald Trump. Not only did Trump win almost every swing state, but he also managed to tap into the democratic strongholds of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, as well as help secure the Senate and House for the Republicans. It’s a feat not lost on voters, who’ve already begun churning out explanations, chief among them that Sen. Bernie Sanders wouldn’t have let this happen. Indeed, the states that swung for Trump were exactly the industry laden states where Sanders had momentum. So, why then didn’t the Democratic National Committee choose to fight populist with populist?
Clinton has consistently been ranked as one of the least popular politicians in Washington. Whether her ardent supporters want to agree to the validity of the accusations of corruption, those concerns were very much at play in this election. Among all of this, the creeping answer appears to be that the committee failed to be what it throws in the face of conservatives: progressive.
After ties were severed between CNN and Donna Brazile over allegations that she leaked debate questions to the Clinton campaign twice, the committee saw fit to appoint her as interim chairwoman. This was not even a month after Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned over emails that revealed she too was biased in favor of the Clinton campaign. In a series of poor judgments, Clinton felt it necessary to offer Wasserman Schultz refuge with an appointment to her own campaign. To many, this was a clear pattern of cronyism. It cast a shadow over the Clinton campaign just as the general election kicked off, and further exacerbated divides from a bitter primary. But even in the wake of Nov. 8, it appears that the committee hasn’t learned any lesson.
On Nov. 10, the Democratic Party held its first meeting following the election. After such a sweeping failure of the Democrats to channel the working class of America’s Rust Belt, one would assume that the staff meeting would take the opportunity to orient the party platform in a new direction, with new leadership. Instead, Brazile once more took the stage to pander to the status quo. Eventually, a staffer only identified as “Zach,” stood up and lambasted Brazile over her failings, and was promptly booed from the room. The leaked incident doesn’t bode well for the Democrats. Instead of shifting gears from wedge issues and identity politics to acknowledging the disenfranchisement of working-class voters, they seem content to stay the course. Unfortunately, this critique isn’t new.
It’s been revealed that Bill Clinton argued openly at campaign headquarters in favor of outreach toward white working-class voters in rural areas, but was dismissed by campaign director Robby Mook. One of the many white working-class districts Hillary Clinton lost in Michigan was Macomb County, where President Obama had won with an 8.6 percent lead in 2008 and a 4 percent lead in 2012. With an election season heavily focused on the forgotten workers of the Rust Belt as a byproduct of the North American Free Trade Agreement , Clinton’s feigned shift from calling the Trans-Pacific Partnership the “gold standard” of trade deals, to suddenly being against free trade, was immediately seen for the pandering it was.
In the coming months, Clinton’s campaign staffers will try to throw the blame at everything and everyone but themselves. The truth, though, is that they didn’t lose because of sexism or xenophobia. They lost because Wasserman Schultz was a colluding committee official who was unable to stay neutral in the primary process, Mook was an incompetent campaign director who ignored the advice of a twice-elected former president and Clinton was a terrible candidate who couldn’t energize her base. As opposed to adjusting from defeat, the committee propped up Brazile. She will continue to hold the interim chair position until March. After then, it’s up to truly progressive staffers and voters to force the committee’s hand and cultivate leadership that can rebound and refocus on the lessons learned this season. If they can’t do that, then the midterm election in 2018 will be another staggering defeat.
Kyle Rempfer is a sophomore government & politics and Russian major. He can be reached at krempfer@terpmail.umd.edu.
