Trump Did Not Win It, Clinton Lost It

James Dancey warned that if Clinton did not change her tune that she would lose. Now he looks at why it was her own campaign that undermined her. 

It was the morning after the election, whereas many people were waking up; I was just about to go to sleep, after watching Trump embarrass Hillary in many marginal states I thought it was best for me to call it a night. I had spent the previous hours of darkness speaking to many Americans, Clinton and Trump supporting and seeing the gradual change in reaction as the results came in. Clinton, who had spent 8 years waiting for the opportunity to run for President since the last attempt had once again failed, this time she had not lost to the charismatic, personable Obama, but to the aggressive, polarising, controversial Trump.

Trump was terrible, some of his actions reprehensible, and his self- control left much to be desired, he was entangled in multiple scandals for the many problematic words he had proclaimed. With all the allegations of narcissism, sexism and racism coming in, many people would ask how he could win. I’d like to ask how Hillary let him win.

In one of my previous publications about how Clinton has a terrible tendency to talk down to the public, I wrote that if she did not change her tune she would lose. She didn’t, and she lost. This was clearly reflected in the discourse, but there were other matters at hand that she also fumbled on greatly. The emails didn’t help, it was exposed that she had cheated during the Democratic debates with leaked questions, and was involved in the DNC which doomed Bernie Sanders into the barrel of should’ve been leaders.

So, that’s pretty bad, but it’s no worse than what Trump has done, why did it damage her reputation so much more than her Republican counterpart’s? Clinton had created this image, that she was this clean, honourable, righteous advocate for social justice, the scandals painted her as this crooked, establishment figure focused solely on self-interest. This specific representation of her undermined the character she had originally displayed to the public, which destroys the trust that they would in her. This can be contrasted in Trump, who always flaunted himself as this aggressive, impolite chauvinist, so a lot of what the media criticised him for didn’t really wash. The media played an important role in feeding Trump’s narrative, that there was this big, bad establishment exclusively driven to prevent this avant-garde insurgent from attaining the keys to the White House. Clinton’s campaign ads also played into Trump’s narrative, always looking for reasons to not vote Trump rather than reasons to vote Clinton.

However, none of this would’ve mattered if the Democrats had fielded a better candidate, Clinton still won the popular vote (albeit by a very small margin), and a majority of the US population are by no means pro-Trump. Nonetheless, Bernie was waiting in the wings, he would’ve motivated and inspired many Americans with his cross-party and swing state appeal (he has been an Independent senator for Vermont) and the polls had him as absolutely trouncing Trump, yet the Democrats decided to take a risk with their corporatist puppet and lost.

I endorsed neither Clinton, nor Trump, from my perspective they were both terrible in their own unique ways. Nevertheless, I could see a Trump win coming from a mile away, people are tired of Hillary’s brand of stale, cliché politics, and her dangerously low charisma. They might as well have propped her corpse up on the podium and no-one would’ve noticed. They should’ve heeded the warnings from Brexit, people are tired of being told what to do and how to do it, and now the American people will live with the implications from a tired, washed-out elite’s myopic decisions.