2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: If you don't think Bernie and his campaign and his supporters basically calling Hillary [View all]PatsFan87
(368 posts)Isn't the whole purpose of a primary to set yourself apart from your opponent? Isn't the whole purpose to make your case as to why you are a better option than the person standing next to you? It looks a little pathetic criticizing Bernie for having the audacity to criticize the "chosen one." He handled her with kid's gloves as far as I'm concerned. He could have went IN on her emails. Instead, he protected her and took it off the table during the primary. He was consistently asked by the media to comment on Bill's sex life, emails, Benghazi witch hunt, so they could get a soundbite and he always shut it down and kept it to the real issues. Let's not forget Barack and Hillary went at each other in 2008- Rezko, Board of Wal Mart, "I can't tell who I'm running against", "change you can xerox", "shame on you Barack Obama", 3 AM ad. Hillary went on to support and campaign for Obama just as Bernie went on to support and campaign for Hillary. It didn't hurt Obama because he was a good candidate and didn't have tons of baggage. The real problem is that Hillary had a lot of red flags: very high unfavorable ratings, low trustworthy numbers, independents favoring Bernie over her in the open primaries, she had a lot of battle scars/baggage some deserved and some not, she never released the transcripts to her paid speeches, she gave DWS an honorary position in her 50-state program (really bad optics that only played into the whole rigged system thing)... and Democrats didn't seem to care. I see a lot of people saying "Hillary had a message how didn't people see it?" It appears as though a chunk of people could never get down to the real issues because there was always another sensational "issue" to focus on. The message matters but so does the messenger.