> In general, making the case against someone else rather than the affirmative case for yourself doesn't work. It's reaction versus action.
Well that's blatantly false.
That was Trump's entire campaign. All I've heard all year was "Benghazi", "emails" and "crooked", all of which were just rephrasing of the same thing, repeated in perpetuum. It most definitely worked.
Well your problem is you are using the wrong news sources then. I'm not even American and I know at the very least that Trump started out with a very bombastic and completely un-Republican plan that immediately got the people's attention.
He promised huge tax cuts, a reformed health care system which is more accessible and tariffs that brought back manufacturing jobs. He promised a lot of other things but I'm mentioning what attracted the working class towards him.
That's one piece of the puzzle though. I wouldn't say he won only on that platform. He also won on platforms of change, law and order, and a return to old school America. I personally thought it was a disgusting campaign that used fear mongering and hate to vilify numerous parts of the nation, but I would not say his only platform was "don't vote for Hillary". But for Hillary I would definitely say the opposite was her strongest message, perhaps even her only one.
Anecdotally I think I have to agree with you. Most of my friends are the sort of college educated millennials that voted overwhelmingly for Clinton but even when talking about her there seemed to be a social stigma to saying that Clinton is a good candidate. She made a very good case for being the lesser of two evils but it seems that she failed to convince even many of her supporters that she was actually good.
The best argument I heard for her was that she was the most uniquely qualified for the job. She had experience at both the congressional and executive levels, plus she was the first lady for 8 years to boot. That was the argument my girlfriend gave me every time we talked about it and I respected it. But that message got lost when you dug too deep. There were a lot of mistakes made during her time as senator and secretary of state and so they never pressed on the experience platform much. It hurt her quite a bit in the long run.
> All I've heard all year was "Benghazi", "emails" and "crooked"
It's true, that's all you heard, but that's not all that he was saying and the part that you didn't hear ... that's why he won. Those who voted for him heard a different message, one specific to their economic circumstances. It's always the economy. And while the aggregate macro picture looks good, we are going through some major shifts underneath those numbers.
You're in a bubble. No worries, we all are, I think New York Times had that "Clinton win probability" meter at >90% for many many months. It slipped to >80% or so on election day.
I've come to realize that all their statistics foo is just peddled propaganda in opaque packaging. Utterly worthless.
Yeah, I had a lot of faith in that opaque package (more specifically 538's than the NYT, and at least he was "only" giving Clinton a 73% chance) and I'm left wondering why. Even if Nate's model was right and we just landed in the 27% side of things... what good would faith in the model do me in the end?
Well that's blatantly false.
That was Trump's entire campaign. All I've heard all year was "Benghazi", "emails" and "crooked", all of which were just rephrasing of the same thing, repeated in perpetuum. It most definitely worked.