11.21.2016 10:09 AM

Ch-ch-changes: why the best candidates sometimes lose

My take, in today’s Hill Times:

Warren Kinsella, a former assistant to Mr. Chrétien and now a Hill Times columnist, said sexism played a role in both Ms. Clinton’s and Ms. Chow’s defeats, and that the campaigns of Mr. Martin and Mr. Prentice were simply “badly run.” However, he said it’s always a number of factors that lead to these star candidates losing rather than just one thing.

He said with all the noted situations of favoured candidates losing, there was a longing for change among the electorate, and they weren’t seen as the ones who were going to bring that change.

“When people want change, you’d better not be seen as the candidate of the status quo,” Mr. Kinsella said in an email. “Voters will embrace the change candidate every time, even if it’s radical change, as in the case of the shockingTrump win.”

10 Comments

  1. godot10 says:

    Hillary lost to Trump in the votes of white women, and white working class women. And Hillary was able to only win 51% of white college educated women. To say that sexism played a role is stretching it.

  2. Ronald O'Dowd says:

    Warren,

    With HRC 1.7 million votes ahead, I don’t view this as a real change election.

    I see it instead as a complete war room failure in crafting a seduction message specifically directed at the Rust Belt and an inadequate GOTV machine in those same states.

    • Warren says:

      Yep. I would have scared the shit out of people on how this guy is going to start a war.

      Because he is.

      • The Doctor says:

        It’s gob-smacking that Stephen Bannon was bragging in an interview the other day that we’re in an historical, game-changing moment akin to the 1930s. Because as I recall, the 1930s were not a particularly happy time for the Western world. Particularly the way they ended.

        • godot10 says:

          The Fourth Turning — by Strauss and Howe

          https://www.amazon.com/Fourth-Turning-American-Prophecy-Rendezvous/dp/0767900464

          If one subscribes to this generational proposition, Trump would be the next Grey Champion, like FDR, Lincoln, and Franklin. Grey Champions are both loved (by some) and despised (by some) forever.

          History rhymes. I think someone once said there is nothing new under the sun.

          Or alternatively, one could go the Dickens route…

          “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times……..in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”

  3. dave constable says:

    Looks pretty tough to modify the voting system stateside: a lot of hurdles to go through federally and state by state. But here is discussion on the internet about the Electoral College and its present usefulness.

    Here in the empty north, we have a sharp comment by Raj on Canadian Huff Post about what the federal Minister of Democratic Reform is saying about public feedback thus far.

    • dave constable says:

      “…there is discussion on the internet…”

      (Be sure to read what you have typed before posting. Help your readers understand.)

  4. patrick says:

    Neither were the best candidates.
    Olivia Chow lost because once she was no longer riding on her husbands coat tails she was found to be dull, uninspiring, unimaginative and an unable to justify a reason to vote for her.
    Hillary lost for multiple reasons. First, because her character, her actions, her politics have been assaulted for the last two decades by a core of republicans who loathe the Clintons.I don’t know many who cold survive such battles. Further she exemplified the entrenched elite who have promised much and failed continuously to represent a large swath of a struggling, bitter population. And, in retrospect, she lost the election when she called them “deplorables”. Any other candidate and Hillary would have lost by a landslide of votes. It was only because Trump is, was, will be, such a horror that Hillary won the popular vote.
    Sexism had little to do with either loss, except for a small percentage of the truly deplorable.

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