I have a niece who supported Sanders, and then lined up solidly behind Clinton when she won the nomination, and has been screaming about misogyny ever since. So what does that tell us?

Nothing, really.

There’s all kinds.

PA Ram wrote:

That meant more to a lot of women than I can ever understand–that symbol. And Hillary played it for all it was worth. So there were women who willfully put on blinders for this election because…the symbol of a woman in the white house meant everything.

I believe that this is true. And I think because so many women invested themselves emotionally in the symbolism of Hillary, that her defeat could only be explained through the prism of centuries of chauvinism represented in that glass ceiling. She was easily the most qualified person ever to run for president (just going by her resume), and she ran against the most offensive lout ever to run. To her supporters, nothing explains the defeat as obviously as misogyny.

Now what Hillary supporters just fail to distinguish is the high negatives that Clinton had irrespective of her gender. (And before I go one pixel further, I acknowledge that misogyny WAS an aspect of her defeat, certainly amongst the Trump supporters). In a year when the Main Message voters were sending was “The establishment isn’t working for us, and we’re pissed at being shafted,” Hillary stood as the most obvious representation of the establishment.

Furthermore, the evolution of her positions on issues corresponded with the public’s evolution – on gay marriage, the Iraq War, XL Pipeline, minimum wage, etc. – and she was perceived to be the prototypical windsock politician who carefully crafted her message to what people wanted to hear. That was reinforced by her concealed speeches to Wall Street, and leaks from her campaign. So here she was, a person who is so calculating in her message that she is more algorithm than human being. The one constant in her political life was her own ambition. She ran for president in 2008 and lost petulantly, only to regroup and spend the next 8 years preparing for another run, clearing the field of competition before it started, and using her time to pad her resume.

Her very campaign slogan – designed to emphasize her appeal as a woman – was “I’m with her.”

Not “I’m with Clinton,” or “I’m with progress,” or “I’m with America.”

I Am With HER. It not only played the gender card heavily, it also – crucially – reinforced her own singular ambition – a key negative.

Contrast her slogan with “Make America Great Again,” and “A Future to Believe In.” Bernie kept emphasizing “All of us.”

So Hillary’s slogan is about Hillary. It may be one of the worst campaign slogans of all time. It might as well have been, “It’s all about ME!” or “It’s MY turn, dammit! (and did I mention I’m a woman?”)

As far as the division in the party goes, though, I don’t think it will be an impediment in the long run because I can’t see either Hillary or Bernie running again. And I think the divide is heavily invested in those symbolic camps. Neither side will ever forgive the other, but I think their rallying point is in transition to something or someone else which will dissolve those barriers.

waterfield wrote:

Zooey: By “winning” I don’t mean in the debate sense. To me I’m thinking you say blah blah blah (in an argumentative sense) and she responds-“Well I hadn’t looked at it like that-I suppose your right”. I mean isn’t that really why we argue? We hope at some point the person we are trying to convince is in fact convinced. Otherwise by arguing just to argue we are just being as ass. My point is that will NEVER happen on FB or even here-because we really don’t “know” who the other person really is. How did they come to be who they are, etc.? We “think” we know but we really don’t. However, when we “argue” with “friends” it’s a lot easier to say ‘”you might be right”, etc. Our ego is less involved. With strangers its like an electronic fist fight.

Yeah, well, as I said, “winning” wasn’t really on my mind. Sometimes I hope that I can plant a seed, or sew a doubt under the foundation of a bad idea. Sometimes I am clarifying my own ideas, perhaps modifying my own thinking, or my expression of it. It’s a conversation. It contains a challenge, too, that has a competitive element in it, but that’s what sharpens the shape of the ideas. And, as others have pointed out, there are sometimes bystanders who may have their own thoughts sharpened by it. I mean…part of the reason I brought this here, as I said, is that I thought it contained some stuff that was worth salvaging off the scrap heap, and Joemad above said he was going to steal the Obama/black frame of reference. So…that IS a win for me. An idea got crystallized, and shared in terms that are usable in other conversations with people.

You know. The goal was never to convince Sally to become a Berner. We’ve all known each other for better than a decade, and had tens of thousands of arguments and sub-arguments, and wholesale conversion of someone else’s thinking isn’t a common outcome, as you noted. And I know that, and wasn’t trying to do that. At the same time, we have had several testimonials from people who have flat out said that their views of things shifted over time because of reading this board.

In any event, it’s all we got. Discussion. Debate. Exchanging perspectives. What else can we do?

nittany ram wrote:

She deleted the thread because you ‘sank her battleship’ with that last salvo about how Bernie would do more for women than Hillary. She had no answer for that. I think you may have influenced some hearts and minds with your responses before the exchange was removed. Nicely done.

I think the comparison to Obama/#BlackLivesMatter is a killer because it shows how hollow symbolic victories are. There was just nowhere for her to go at that point. The only way Clinton was better for women was in terms of the feeling of a Moral Victory, and I had already completely stripped that emperor. And the final line that said, “You may hate me, but I still love you” was probably a knife twist that finished the job off. After writing that post, with my finger poised over the Enter key, I realized I had just written what the kids call a “mic drop.” But killing her off wasn’t my intention. I would have preferred the exchange to continue in an effort to open her up a bit, but in retrospect – re-reading her posts from the beginning – there was never any chance of that with HER. She is a True Believer, and those types of people can’t change their minds on anything without threatening their personal identities. Her attitude towards the Party, and Clinton, and the heretic Berners is a matter of Faith. Science gets deleted and blocked.

And it’s questionable how many people even saw that post. This is the part where I ask myself if it’s worth it. How much time and energy did I put into that exchange that day (and am STILL putting into it by thinking about it now) in relation to how much difference it could possibly make. I mean…thanks for the “you may have influenced some hearts and minds with your responses,” but…really?

I dunno. Maybe. We will never know how far ripples will extend from the stones we throw into the pond, I guess.

Bash on, regardless.

“But while we keep looking for his hidden agenda, it’s our growing addiction to the spectacle of his car-wreck presidency that is the real threat. He is already making idiots and accomplices of us all, bringing out the worst in each of us, making us dumber just by watching. Even if Trump never learns to govern, after four years of this we will forget what civilization ever looked like – and it will be programming, not policy, that will have changed the world.”

That is a scary conclusion, and one I can’t disagree with.

Yep.

“For Trump and his inner circle to name Perry to any Cabinet post at all felt like trolling, like a football team wrapping the mascot in packing tape and mailing him to Canada. But to send someone you’re on record calling an idiot to run the nation’s nuclear arsenal, that doesn’t fit easily in any bucket: mischief, evil, incompetence – it’s even a little extreme for nihilism.”