We Serve No Whine Before Its Time

The latest whine about the outcome of the 2016 presidential election comes from Rebecca Traister in New York Magazine:

And now, the women and people of color who made up Clinton’s base and were the most enthusiastic supporters of her campaign, the ones who have the most to lose under the Trump administration, have found themselves on the receiving end of the lion’s share of the blame for our recent national cataclysm.

[…]

It is unconscionable, this know-better recrimination, directed at the very people who just put the most work and energy into defeating Trumpism, coming from those who will be made least vulnerable by Trump’s ascension.

Clinton’s erstwhile primary opponent, Bernie Sanders, seemed to amplify Lilla’s message on his book tour this week by recommending that Democrats embrace the working class and “Ditch Identity Politics,” according to one headline. In fact, the headline was overblown: Sanders did not say we should dump identity politics, and affirmatively noted that “we should bring more and more women into the political process” and that “we need 50 women in the Senate!”

But Sanders did say something telling. Asked by a young woman who described herself as wanting to become “the second Latina senator in U.S. history” for tips, Sanders offered not advice, or even acknowledgment of the particular roadblocks — sexism, racism, fundraising, party support — she might encounter. What he offered instead was an insulting reaction to what he assumed must motivate her ambition: an argument based purely on identity. Noting that she “would not like” what he was about to say, he scolded her that it was “not enough” to say, “Hey, I’m a Latina, vote for me”; that it was “not good enough for somebody to say, ‘I’m a woman! Vote for me!’ No, that’s not good enough.” Never mind that nobody has ever made that argument for a female or minority candidate except in the fevered imaginations of Hillary haters. It is clear that this is what Sanders hears when someone describes a desire to overcome representational inequality in politics: an infantile, politically unsophisticated, feather-brained appeal to narcissistic self-advancement.

I don’t blame “Hillary Clinton’s base” for her loss in the election. I blame them for her candidacy. It was blind loyalty to Hillary Clinton at the expense of the Democratic Party.

In grossly oversimplified form, the electorate is presently 30% Republican, 30% Democratic, and 40% independent. You can’t win national elections just by turning out Democrats, let alone a single person’s “base”.

That Hillary Clinton couldn’t trounce Trump handily is proof positive that she was the wrong candidate at the wrong time. Look in the mirror, people.