Hillary's Misplaced Claims as to Why She Lost

In a recent interview, Hillary Clinton stated that she lost the election because of Comey, Wikileaks, and misogyny.  Yes, that right,  misogyny.  Not because she was simply a bad candidate.

In the case of FBI Director Comey, she need only look inward to find a justification for his investigation into her conducting classified State Department business on a private email server in her home.  Comey was just the messenger who eventually cleared her.  And, many still think she was wrongly cleared of what should have been considered a crime.

Then, there's the Wikileaks dumping of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) hacked emails. If she wants to blame anyone, she should blame her own Democratic party.  The DNC was warned months in advance that there could be hacking of that server.  The whole incident could have been minimized if the DNC had acted quickly to block any hacking.  Instead they waited months to do so.

Then, there's this bull about misogyny.   Clearly, she wants the world to believe that she lost because this country is sexist, and she was a victim.  The only problem is that, except for college educated white women, she substantially lost the women's vote.  This conclusion is based on a post election analysis by the website FiveThirtyEight.com.  For example, among white women without a college degree, she only garnered 34% of the vote compared to 62% for Trump.  And, even among college degreed white woman her win margin was only 51% to 45%.

The simple fact is that Hillary lost because she was a bad candidate with the wrong message for America.  To many, she was just another 4-year iteration of the Obama presidency. For myself and others, it was President Obama that created the Trump victory.

References:

Hillary Clinton blames Comey, WikiLeaks and 'misogyny' for 2016 loss: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/04/07/hillary-clinton-blames-comey-wikileaks-and-misogyny-for-2016-loss.html

FBI Chief Jim Comey Clears Hillary Clinton—and Puts Himself in the Crosshairs: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/11/06/fbi-director-james-comey-clears-hillary-clinton-on-new-emails.html

CNN: Sources: US officials warned DNC of hack months before the party acted: http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/25/politics/democratic-convention-dnc-emails-russia/

Clinton Couldn’t Win Over White Women: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/clinton-couldnt-win-over-white-women/

Why did Hillary Clinton lose? Simple. She ran a bad campaign: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-hillary-clinton-lost-bad-campaign-perspec-20161114-story.html

CNN's SE Cupp: Hillary Was 'Singularly Terrible Candidate' For Dems: http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/se-cup-hillary-clinton-democrats-bad-candidate/2016/11/09/id/758076/

And the worst candidate of 2016 was ... Hillary Clinton: http://www.stltoday.com/news/national/govt-and-politics/and-the-worst-candidate-of-was-hillary-clinton/collection_f8f936de-1636-5546-9f08-e1290b573934.html

My Take On The Romney Veep-Stakes

With Mitt Romney well on his way to the Republican nomination, the media and pundits have been busily trying to predict who his running mate will be.

At the top of everyone's list is Florida's U.S. Senator, Marco Rubio.  The thinking is that he could help Romney win Florida and help reel in some of the much needed Hispanic votes.  But, to me, Rubio is young with limited experience. What Romney needs more than the Hispanic votes, themselves, is to present a ticket that is stronger and more capable in all aspects than Obama-Biden.

The rest of the people on the so-called short list are almost all persons with domestic, budgetary, and state governance experience.  Basically, all or in part, somewhat weaker copies of Romney himself on an overall basis. But, the job of being President is not just limited to domestic responsibilities; and, an obvious weakness on Romney's part is the fact that he lacks foreign policy experience.  I think the strongest ticket that Romney could present to America is one that is solid in its ability to handle both domestic and foreign policy issues.

In my opinion, that pick would be George W. Bush's former Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice. First of all, Rice was extremely popular while Secretary of State; always polling higher than every other top politician in Washington.  She's fairly current on world affairs; having only left her job in 2009 when Obama and Hillary Clinton took office. For that reason, she has personally interacted with most of the existing world leaders.  And, as an obvious bonus, she is both black and a woman; two other areas of known weakness for Romney.  As the former Provost at Stanford, she actually has some administrative experience.  As far as domestic policy and the economy is concerned, she is a Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover institute.  She is also a professor at Stanford's Graduate School of Business and a director of that university's Global Center for Business and the Economy.

Probably, her greatest weakness as a Republican is her position on abortion; saying in an interview that she is mildly pro-choice.   While she is definitely against late-term abortion and abortion without parental notification, she understands that abortion is the law of the land and she believes the conversation should be shifted away from trying to overturn Roe v. Wade and, instead, aimed at highlighting the psychological impact that a mother goes through when having an abortion. But, I know very well that some would refuse to vote for a ticket with her on it because such  a vote would compromise the religious stand on abortion.  How much of an impact that would be, I just don't know.

Anyway, that's my pick for VP.  And, one has to wonder that, if Romney did pick Condoleeza, would Obama then counter that by dumping Biden and choosing, instead, Hillary Clinton as his running mate.

Mitt Romney's Gender Gap Problem?

In 1980, Ronald Reagan won handily over Jimmy Carter by 10 percentage points; 51% to 41%.  This was despite the fact that exit polling showed that women, by a spread of 7 percentage points,  overwhelmingly voted for the loser in that contest. So, decidedly, it was a lopsided men's vote that did Carter in.

Right now, pundits and media are making a lot out of the fact that Mitt Romney is lagging behind Barack Obama when it comes to the women's vote; as if this so-called "Gender Gap" never existed before. The reality is that every Republican candidate for president has had to face the same lack of women voters.  That's because, over the years, Democrats have been successful in catering to women's needs and fears by providing one new social or safety net program after another. This election year is no different with Obama targeting the women's vote with "free" contraception. Yet, in modern times, Republicans have managed to win this nation's top job fifty percent of the time. And, in each case where a Republican won, it was the men  who became the deciding factor.

One thing we know from the Carter/Reagan match-up is that men break late for one candidate or the other. In 1980, right up to the election, most polls had Carter in the lead.  Yet, when was all said and done, Carter lost by a landslide.  That may be because men, with their alpha dog mentality, saw Carter as being the weaker of the two candidates.

I personally think that this year's election will be a repeat of the Carter loss; with men breaking decidedly for Romney on the day of the election.  And, like the 1980 election, the women's vote will be less important than how men view the electoral match-up. Obama is "a" weak, not-able-to-get-things-done leader; just like Carter. The classic male mentality rejects such weakness.  Men don't want hear constant excuses and blame for things not getting done; and, that's all Obama does.  Whereas, Romney has a proven track record of accomplishment.  To me, all this talk of the gender gap is an attempt by Obama-loyalists to psych Americans into believing the Romney can't win because he doesn't have the women's vote.  But, we know from history that's just not true. That's why I think that, barring any major misstep by Romney, Obama is likely to follow in Carter's footsteps as a one-term president.