2016 Postmortem

There is always a chance of losing an election. We have a divided country. The problem in this current election is that we ended up with a compromised candidate in a way that models the fractures within our own party which seem to be coming to a head.

Gore, Kerry, Dukakis, Mondale were disliked by the Republicans and might not have been first choices of everyone in the Democratic Party. However, it was not quite as fractured as now and I suggest it because we are putting up a candidate that is compromised and divisive in a ways that these others were not.

The closest is the PUMAs from 2008 but Obama and Hillary are somewhat close policy wise. Our party is somewhat fractured and the party ended up with a candidate that exacerbates these fractures. It was predictable. Half of the party has been telling the other half that by picking a non-establishment senator who was predicted initially to be no more than an issue generator as we marched to a Hillary early primary. I am writing to the half who is not listening in the hope that if she ends up losing they might learn that it was not the voters it was Hillary as a candidate and that we, as a party, need to learn from that rather than think well its just the voters.

We can hope she is able to defeat Trump to at least prevent Trump from being president. It will not fix the fractures but at least Trump will be defeated. If she is defeated, the people who pushed her and advocated for her against people who were warning that her baggage makes her unelectable actually learn something and do not do it again.