Who is really to blame for 2016?. Hillary Clinton’s loss in 2016 was a…
By: Katharine Diana
Tags: 2016 Election, Politics, Republican Party, Democrats

Hillary Clinton’s loss in 2016 was a shock to pollsters, political scientists, and the common man alike. Republicans now held a government trifecta, a rare occurrence, last happening in 2007 under the Bush administration. This leads us to question; Why did this happen? Many distressed democrats chalk it up to interference from foreign powers. While there may be some truth to that theory, a light examination of the 2016 presidential election reveals that the decimation of a blue wave was a fault of our own.

The corruption of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) is starting to become more apparent, especially as the party relocates more and more left, and the pretense of progress just doesn’t cut it anymore. Despite left-leaning politics becoming more popular amongst the public, liberals are finding it difficult to shift the official party out of a centrist rut that planted itself in the ‘90s.

At face-value, people see the Democratic and Republican party at opposite ends of a spectrum, when in actuality, they’re more alike than different. In the ’80s and ’90s, Republican campaigns were winning elections as a result of corporate cash fuel. The Democrats, on the other hand, watched as their labor base fell apart at the seams. In order to succeed, the DNC moved their politics to the right and began the inflow of corporate cash.

Bill Clinton won the presidential election of 1992, and began his spree of right-winging; Disqualifying most low-income Americans from welfare support (PRWORA), shipping a million jobs to Mexico under the guise of free trade (NAFTA), deregulating the banks (repealing Glass-Steagall Act), and solidifying the illegality of same-sex marriage (DOMA). With a right-ward shift in the DNC, we begin seeing the liberal establishment convert as well, spouting center-conservative articles. Throughout the last 25 years, we’ve seen more right-moderate content, such as the mocking of movements like Occupy Wall Street or the censorship of an Op-Ed that criticized the administration’s policy towards Iran post-9/11.

Media arguably plays the most extensive role in setting the political climate of our country. It is the way in which information is spread, twisted, interpreted. The chaos that we consider to be normal is due in part to a shift in the Overton window, a spot on a political spectrum that is seen to be acceptable by the general public. I believe this shift to be mostly cultivated by democrats and the liberal establishment, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and most notably CNN.

Vox News explored CNN’s contribution to the shift of the Overton window to the right with their presentation of pro vs. anti-trump conservative debates. This not only gives conservatives a larger platform but one on a democratic biased station, which extends their reach beyond the typical traditional FOX viewer. The anti-trump conservative actually begins to seem reasonable compared to the Trump supporter. Whether or not this is an issue with you is your own thing. However, the point still stands that liberal viewers are subconsciously becoming more and more comfortable with the constant right-wing ideas and, therefore, more complacent with their implementation in our society.

An example of this would be the public view on the late Senator John McCain. As most know, McCain was the Republican nominee and opponent to Barack Obama in the 2008 Presidential election. From my limited memory as a 5-year-old, I would always hear the demonization of Senator McCain for his conservative values and how they would shape our country post-Bush administration. While 17-year-old me isn’t necessarily vying to defend him, it is interesting to see the recasting of our attitudes toward him. We see him as a good man, a war hero, someone who loved his country and just wanted to lead it a little differently than democrats would’ve liked. This is our Overton window shift. The Trump administration’s radicalism has become the norm, and in turn, the Republicans of the 2000s are suddenly not so bad.

This rightward drift is also due in part to asymmetrical polarization, the divergence of political attitudes to ideological extremes. Throughout time, both Democrats and Republicans in Congress have moved away from the center of the spectrum. However, the Republican Party has moved much farther to the extreme than Democrats, making this polarization specifically asymmetrical. And the funny thing is, it is the Democratic party that is cultivating this trend. We continuously see compromise after compromise under the guise of bipartisanship while the Republicans continue to dig their heels in. While I certainly don’t condone radical partisanship, there needs to be some reciprocal resistance from the Democrats unless we want to continue being doormats by no fault but our own.

One of the toughest aspects that comes with this polarization is the increased commonality of Filibustering, a legislative procedure in which members of Congress will debate over a proposal to delay or entirely prevent a decision on said proposal. Rather than placing full blame on Republicans, although they certainly deserve it, it is vital to acknowledge the very democrat that gave them this power. In 2013, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid used the nuclear option to eliminate the 60-vote rule on executive branch nominations and federal judicial appointments, meaning that it would only take a simple majority of 51 senators to make a decision. Democrats held power in Congress at that time.

In order to understand the illogical nature of this nuclear option, it is necessary to look into why Congress had the 60-vote rule implemented in the first place. Despite my previous mini-rant on how compromise has damaged the progress of Democrats in Congress, I must clarify that compromise is necessary from BOTH sides in a well-functioning government. The 60-vote rule meant that, in most cases, compromises would be made in order to appeal to members of Congress on the other end of the aisle. With a simple majority of 51, whichever party dominates Congress at any given time is basically handed an invitation to go haywire, which is now the radical right. Republicans are becoming more ideological, and their easy access to filibustering enables them to be less willing to work with Democrats, shutting out any progress in this country.

In 2016, post-death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, President Obama named Merrick Garland to fill his seat on the bench. Mitch McConnell infamously led the Republican-dominated Congress in denying the pick. Not because Garland was a liberal. In fact, he was your typical run-of-the-mill centrist. McConnell and other Republicans just didn’t want the chair filled by any Obama appointee. This was made very clear in a speech given by McConnell that year: “One of my proudest moments was when I looked Barack Obama in the eye, and I said, ‘Mr. President, you will not fill the Supreme Court vacancy.’”

This is yet another example in which Democrats have cultivated their own destruction. We constantly position ourselves as pushovers by giving them opportunities to overpower us, and we continuously provide them with a platform in which they can sway public opinion on conservative ideals in public office, even subconsciously. This is related to the 2016 presidential election because we see the Republicans moving ideologically to where their base is. The Democrats are staying on the course defined by Bill Clinton’s Democratic party when the majority of contemporary Democrats don’t identify with those values anymore. Democratic voters want a candidate to get excited about. Instead, we are spoon-fed the same boring candidate who incites little to no change every four years, whereas the Republican party, to their credit, is evolving with their base.

While a lot of this can be easily chalked-up to incompetence, we must acknowledge the involvement of the DNC and their corruption in the 2016 democratic primary. This will directly relate to what I personally believe to be the most significant reason Hillary Clinton lost the presidential election.

My first conscious taste of corporatism in politics occurred when I watched the documentary Fahrenheit 11/9 by documentarian Michael Moore. In a specific part of his film, he targets the meddling of the DNC in the democratic nomination, explicitly using the state of West Virginia to convey his point. Bernie Sanders won every county in West Virginia, look it up! All 55 counties in West Virginia voted for Bernie Sanders, awarding him 18 pledged delegates with the remaining 11 going to Clinton. Then comes time for the Democratic National Convention roll call where the West Virginia Democratic Party tells the American people this lie: 19 votes for Clinton and 18 for Senator Sanders.

The West Virginia Democratic Party decided to alter the results of their primaries. Legality of unpledged delegates aside, drastically changing election results to favor a corporate frontrunner, is unethical, to say the least. This was the DNC’s biggest mistake in the race for the presidential bid. It is worth noting that this occurred in several states, including Indiana, Michigan, Montana, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont, etc. They flagrantly ignored the will of the people, and with that came consequences. This was such a betrayal to Sanders voters, a large portion of them straight up left the Democratic Party and didn’t come back. And who could blame them? This operation just tells people to stay home. Their vote doesn’t matter in the primary, so why would it in November? According to the Official 2016 Presidential General Election Results by the Federal Election Commission, about 66 Million Americans voted for Clinton, 63 Million voted for Trump, and 100 Million didn’t vote at all, and it’s hard to deny the DNC’s contribution to that.

We’re starting to see this meddling from the DNC in our upcoming election. I find the incredibly coincidentally timed drop-outs of Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar as well as forcing post-candidates to endorse to be a sign of the DNC choosing their frontrunner, Joe “Malarkey” Biden. We saw it in 2016, and we’re seeing it now. The liberal establishment is so opposed to Senator Sanders that they’re literally rigging elections against him. Regardless of whether you support Sanders or not, this is a matter of honesty. The candidate with the most votes SHOULD be the winner of an election. We have to look at this information and realize that our election process, even on the liberal side, is dishonest beyond belief and start looking into how to hold the people in charge accountable so they don’t screw us over like they’ve been doing the last 30-to-god knows how many years.

If we plan to have any form of success in November, we should learn from our tired tactics and stop repeating the very mistakes that handed us Trump. The combination of a shift in the Overton window, the increase of asymmetrical polarization, and corporate intervention in our elections is what I believe to be the biggest factor in Hillary Clinton’s loss and what will likely be the reason for Joe Biden’s defeat if he is the nominee. If the DNC carries out their interference in the Democratic primaries, we will see another four years of Trump and a once united party in shambles.