My favorite comment about the 2016 election to date comes from Thomas Frank, author of What’s the Matter With Kansas?, in the Guardian:
Maybe it’s time to consider whether there’s something about shrill self-righteousness, shouted from a position of high social status, that turns people away.
BTW, here’s his summary of Sec. Clinton’s media support:
With the same arguments repeated over and over, two or three times a day, with nuance and contrary views all deleted, the act of opening the newspaper started to feel like tuning in to a Cold War propaganda station. Here’s what it consisted of:
- Hillary was virtually without flaws. She was a peerless leader clad in saintly white, a super-lawyer, a caring benefactor of women and children, a warrior for social justice.
- Her scandals weren’t real.
- The economy was doing well / America was already great.
- Working-class people weren’t supporting Trump.
- And if they were, it was only because they were botched humans. Racism was the only conceivable reason for lining up with the Republican candidate.
I sincerely hope Democrats start considering some of those things as they reflect on the 2016 election. Magic 8 Ball says “Outlook not so good”.
I think he’s over-stating the level of nuance in the media coverage of HRC’s campaign.
I will confess to cutting way back on media coverage this year, though. But I’m still curious about something. I know what Trump’s big policy positions were (curtail immigration, especially the illegal sort; put the emphasis on America when doing international trade deals; a return to a more Jacksonian foreign policy, perhaps with what Andy calls a more transactional approach), but I have no idea what Hillary’s big positions were, other than wanting more jihadi refugees brought to America. Was she actually _for_ anything, other than herself?
The week before the election, I watched all of the SNL opening skits on Trump/Clintion. The Trump skewering was funny, though one is tempted to mention low-hanging fruit. But aside from a couple of cracks about her not answering questions about e-mail and her health, she was played as a youthful pixie whose most common contribution to comedy was a knowing glance at the camera that she doesn’t need to do much of anything, because “get a load of this guy.”