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Liberals must accept that beating Trump was never going to be easy, or they'll lose to him again
NBC's THINK ^ | May 3, 2018 | Scott Lemieux

Posted on 05/05/2018 11:20:27 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet

Nearly two years after the election of President Donald Trump, a comforting, yet dangerous, fantasy pervades liberal thought about the 2016 race: That Hillary Clinton not only could’ve won, had she made modestly different choices and that, by all rights, nearly any other Democrat could’ve beaten Trump. As New York Times reporter Amy Chozick (echoing numerous other pundits) describes it in her new book about the campaign, it should have been a cakewalk — the “most winnable” race ever

This is a comforting thought for Democrats in the Trump era, because it means that, if they merely run a different candidate in 2020, then victory is essentially assured. But it’s actually a dangerous fallacy: Donald Trump was and is an unusual candidate with a lot of unprecedented liabilities, for certain, but he also had some real strengths. Beating him as an incumbent president will require facing the latter head-on, not simply fixating on the former.

The idea that beating Trump should have been easy took hold because it seems intuitively right to some people — even today, it can be hard for educated liberals to take the idea of President Donald J. Trump seriously.

Any election decided by the kind of razor-thin margins the 2016 presidential election was, by definition, winnable by either candidate.....

(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...


TOPICS: Campaign News; Issues; Parties; State and Local
KEYWORDS: 2020; 2020demprimary; democrats; hillary2016; trump; trump2016; trump2020
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They still don't know what happened to them.
1 posted on 05/05/2018 11:20:27 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

And they never will.


2 posted on 05/05/2018 11:22:23 AM PDT by Wolfie
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

3 posted on 05/05/2018 11:31:53 AM PDT by HangnJudge
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

“Scott Lemieux is a lecturer in the Department of Political Science at the University of Washington”

All racis’, all the time he is.

When was the last time the French elected a POC?


4 posted on 05/05/2018 11:33:57 AM PDT by Paladin2
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

8 percent swing in white millenials towards Trump, and an 8 percent swing in blacks towards Trump in the last few weeks, if the sources are accurate. We are many months out still, but if those numbers hold...


5 posted on 05/05/2018 11:34:50 AM PDT by Luircin
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

You really should be able to win an election when you’ve rigged it.

Then again, when rigging elections, no one questions a close one... But they get awefully curious during blow outs when you have very few supporters


6 posted on 05/05/2018 11:43:34 AM PDT by sten (fighting tyranny never goes out of style)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

They have forced Trump to sign the Omnibus bill, but still want more.


7 posted on 05/05/2018 11:46:11 AM PDT by granada
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
Trump rose to prominence in Republican politics by popularizing racist conspiracy theories, including the false claim that Barack Obama was not born in the United States

And believing this is not going to help the Democrats at all. It is just as much bs as their other fantasies. Trump set up an end to the controversy in order to get it out of the way because it was hurting conservatives. He demanded a birth certificate and declared himself satisfied when the obvious forgery was presented on line. That ended it publicly and got it off the heads of conservatives. He identified the practical problem, which was the legitimacy of Hussein's reign but the damage the argument was doing to America and he fixed it.

8 posted on 05/05/2018 11:50:45 AM PDT by arthurus
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Liberals a$$ must be real sore from getting it kicked all the time.


9 posted on 05/05/2018 11:52:23 AM PDT by Vaduz (women and children to be impacIQ of chimpsted the most.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
YOU ARE STILL CRYING WOLF (About Trump “Racism”)

(which points out that white racism would not win any election in the US today, because there just aren’t enough white racists to win elections.)

In reality, of course, the South was racist before it began switching from Democrat to Republican. And in reality the entire country was racist and anti-Semitic as recently as the FDR era. The Democrat Party switched from being openly racist (can you say, “George Wallace”?) to being patronizing to blacks. The Republican Party was founded on opposition to slavery as an institution (originally only resting its expansion out of the South) and passed the 13th and 14th Amendments. But the reality, again, is that the Republican 13th and 14th Amendments did not obliterate the social consequences of “previous conditions of servitude” instantaneously, and did not aspire to.

The Republican position is that blacks can and will seek their own level as individuals, and time (and only time) will ultimately make “previous conditions of servitude” irrelevant. The Democrat position is twofold:

  1. that the government can and should instantaneously make “previous conditions of servitude”(not to mention sex or just about any characteristic by which people can be sorted into categories) irrelevant. But,

  2. the Democrat Party is to be judged by its stated intentions only without reference to what actually happens when Democrats have political power.

10 posted on 05/05/2018 11:53:44 AM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion (Presses can be 'associated,' or presses can be independent. Demand independent presses.)
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To: granada

He wanted and needed the military spending. Won’t happen again


11 posted on 05/05/2018 11:56:56 AM PDT by Nifster (I see puppy dogs in the clouds)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet; SpinnerWebb
Nearly two years after the election of President Donald Trump

Sorry to burst your math impaired bubble Scottie ... but it'll only be a year and a half on Tuesday. It just seems longer because ...

It sucks to be you

12 posted on 05/05/2018 11:57:35 AM PDT by tx_eggman (Liberalism is only possible in that moment when a man chooses Barabas over Christ.)
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To: arthurus

Trump is the least racist leader in the country today because he doesn’t defer to racist identity politics. In the twisted worldview of the left, that makes him a blatant racist.


13 posted on 05/05/2018 11:59:16 AM PDT by Behind the Blue Wall
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To: Vaduz
Liberals a$$ must be real sore from getting it kicked all the time.

Kicked?

14 posted on 05/05/2018 12:00:55 PM PDT by Jeff Chandler (President Trump divides Americans . . . from anti-Americans.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet; All

Liberals cannot erase eight years of lawless Obama.


15 posted on 05/05/2018 12:08:04 PM PDT by Amendment10
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
That Hillary Clinton not only could’ve won, had she made modestly different choices and that, by all rights, nearly any other Democrat could’ve beaten Trump.

They are still living in fantasy land if they still believe that! I don't think ANY democrat could have beaten Trump.

16 posted on 05/05/2018 12:09:41 PM PDT by painter ( Isaiah: �Woe to those who call evil good and good evil,")
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
1. Trump is lily white.
No one has been subjected to such scrutiny, and they have been able to find NOTHING!

2. Trump is brilliant.
Trump has outsmarted them at every turn.

17 posted on 05/05/2018 12:11:21 PM PDT by Savage Beast (MAGA!!!!!)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
1. Trump is lily white.
No one has been subjected to such scrutiny, and they have been able to find NOTHING!

2. Trump is brilliant.
Trump has outsmarted them at every turn.

18 posted on 05/05/2018 12:11:47 PM PDT by Savage Beast (MAGA!!!!!)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

From the LA Times

“McCain’s mishaps in the cockpit
Three early crashes drew Navy scrutiny. A review of his record reveals a cocky flier, prone to test the limits.”

Hope this last place grad of Annapolis is not planning on flying off the planet. The Navy can’t afford to lose another plane.


19 posted on 05/05/2018 12:15:05 PM PDT by chuckee
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To: Behind the Blue Wall

I think you just nailed it, FRiend.


20 posted on 05/05/2018 12:21:51 PM PDT by Nothingburger
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