Thread by @frodofied

Every candidate has flaws, Hillary has plenty. Every campaign makes mistakes, even those that win. And it's ridiculous to argue otherwise.

But that's not the point.

Let's talk about all the ways people talk about how Al Gore fucked up 2000 or John Kerry 2004.

1/

https://twitter.com/davidgballard/status/1112808013763698693

People don't have those conversations because blame for the loss in 2000 was almost immediately shifted, and rightly so, to the Supreme Court, and, they Swift Boated Kerry, am I right? Oh, and Americans don't like to shift Administrative gears in the middle of a war.

2/

There are very few conversations people have about why any Presidential candidate loses an election. Because in a contest of two there is always a loser. It's ok, therefore, for men to lose an election. They've been doing it for over 200 years.

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But when loss is talked about at all it is usually attributed to factors outside of a male candidate's explicit control like the economy, or the cyclical nature of electoral party politics.

One exception, notably, is John McCain's 2008 campaign.

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When people talk about McCain's 2008 campaign they almost always reference his selection of Sarah Palin for running mate as the reason for his loss.

Again, the onus is passed passively onto Palin who, as everyone knows, has at least one tning in common with Hillary Clinton.

5/

Conversations about 2016 are at there core and at their periphery always centered around how Hillary Clinton fucked up, or how her campaign (here, always, they still mean Clinton herself) fucked up.

These arguments are not only deeply misiogynistic, they are ahistorical.

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In fact, if one does a forensic level analysis of presidential campaigns across the contemporary era I doubt you'd find a better example of a "losing" campaign that shouldered less blame for a loss than Clinton's.

But to arrive at this fact requires the use of logic.

7/

But logic has never been the friend of misogyny nor of racism, nor of homophobia, nor of any 'ism."

Stepping away from 2016, and taking the longview, it's impossible not to stand in horrified awe of the systemic nature of the male dominated resistance to Clinton's candidacy.

8/

That resistance, which was obvious, identifiable, and, in many cases, long planned was the work of many counter culture far right groups and was deeply tied to the white supremacist movement. It was a resistance not only to Clinton'e candidacy but also a reaction to Obama.

9/

Thus, two of the world's great social sins, misogyny & racism, came together to postpone the inevitable.

And they accomplished what they planned. Hillary Clinton did not take the Oath of Office in Jan 2017. A man who was; and remains, inferior to her in every sense did.

10/

Why I get angry when I listen to men like @PeteButtigieg offer up post-game quarterbacking about all of the things Hillary Clinton did wrong is that no one ever talks about all of the things she actually got right, or how hard she fought.

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No one talks about what they themselves got wrong, or about what the results actually say about us as a nation in the 21st century. No one at all wants to discuss all of blame the media should rightly shoulder, nor of Russia.
Or Sanders.
Or Wikileaks.
Or the far left.

12/

Gerrymandering is never talked about, and voter intimidation and election tampering remain untouchable. And also forget about fake Benghazi or email scandals.

Nothing to see there.

It was all so much and yet so many work to brush these inconvenient truths under rug swept.

13/

No one is willing to say out loud what Hillary Clinton herself knew all along: they were never going to let her win.

To this day, after everything that's happened and all we've learned, many still believe it is more important to shame the woman than tell the truth.

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I laugh when people, with serious faces, say things like "But she went to Arizona instead of Wisconsin."

Really? Are you for real?

Wisconsin hadn't voted for a Republican since Reagan. EVERY SINGLE WISCONSIN POLL up to election day had Clinton leading six to ten points.

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By contrast, In the closing days of the campaign, some polls put Clinton within their margin of error, clearly within striking distance of Trump in Arizona.

Clinton's campaign could only make decisions based the data available to them.

And they did.

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How can you possibly argue with a straight face that given the actual facts, that Clinton should have went to a state that had supported Democrats for thirty five years and where she was routing her opponent in the polls instead of a state that looked ripe for picking up?

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You can't.

You don't get to lecture from hindsight. Clinton, nor any member of her excellent team, was fucking psychic.

At close range nearly all of the major criticisms of Clinton's 2016 campaign can be easily dismantled in such a manner.

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So when men like @PeteButtigieg decide to chime in with these tired tropes it does piss me off because it proves that no one has learned a fucking thing. It means that nothing has been checked and nothing has been balanced.

There has been no reckoning.

19/

Find me a candidate courageous enough to say fuck that. One who can be brave enough to talk about how Clinton tried to warn us and how hard she fought and you will have found a candidate I could support without reservation.

#SheWon
#ImStillWithHer