Election 2016: It took a lot of numbers-crunching, but Democratic Party pooh-bahs say they now know why Hillary Clinton lost: Many of the "base" voters she counted on in Blue States didn't show up, and switched to Donald Trump instead. It took them nearly six months to figure out the blindingly obvious, but it still doesn't get at the truth.
The findings of a poll and focus groups conducted by Priorities USA for the Democratic Party advisory firm Global Strategy Group were devastating not just for Hillary Clinton, but for Democrats as a whole: It found that many former supporters of President Obama flipped and voted for Donald Trump instead of Hillary Clinton.
For Democrats, it should be disquieting that the findings completely contradict their own carefully-managed self-image as champions of the underdog: Some 50% of those who voted for Obama and then defected to Trump said their incomes are lagging behind the cost of living, while another 31% said they were just treading water, the Washington Post's The Plum Line blog noted.
Most devastating of all, 42% of these former Obama voters who moved over to vote GOP said congressional Democrats' economic policies favor the rich. That compares with 21% who said the same thing about Trump.
In short, to many Americans now living through economic tough times, the Democrats have become the party of the rich and the connected. Some 77% in the poll said that Trump's policies would help all classes of Americans, vs. just 58% for congressional Democrats.
Even so, that leaves out one key point that appeared nowhere in the Democratic Party analysis that we saw that is, the Democratic Party has veered sharply leftward in recent years. They easily capture the bright Blue population centers on both coasts, but increasingly have trouble capturing the middle, both geographically and metaphorically.
As a mid-2015 Gallup Poll noted, 47% of Democrats identified as "social liberal and economic moderate/liberal." That compares with just 39% identifying that way in 2008, and just 30% in 2001. Centrists in the party have been marginalized.
As 2016 Democratic presidential candidate James Webb, himself a centrist, complained in early February, the party has shifted "very far to the left" in recent years due to its "focus on identity politics." This, he said, has diminished a "key part of their base."
Even Chris Matthews, the liberal MSNBC host and former aide to liberal icon Tip O'Neill, admitted last weekend on NBC's "Meet the Press" that the party had shifted too far left in recent years. "A lot of it's cultural, not just economics," he said.
As we point out in a separate editorial today, the Democrats seem to have developed a "tolerance" problem. As in, Democrats can't tolerate any disagreement whatsoever.
This has led to major losses for the Democrats in recent years. During President Obama's two terms, Democrats lost 9 U.S. Senate seats, 62 House seats, 12 governorships and a shocking 958 state legislative seats.
Far from the base leaving the party, as the Priorities USA poll suggests, the party is leaving the base.
That can be seen in those the party pushes forward as its leaders and "stars," including socialist Bernie Sanders, far-left former professor Elizabeth Warren, and Democratic National Committee Chairman Thomas Perez, another far-lefty who has all but declared war on the Democratic Party's centrist and conservative wings.
Here's where Hillary Clinton comes in: 30% of those queried in the poll said they voted against Clinton, rather than voted for Trump. What she was selling, even some Democrats didn't want to buy.
So maybe they were being kind, or perhaps they just fear Hillary, but the party's insiders now saying Hillary's "base" didn't show up sounds like a cop-out. Yes, the Democratic Party has big problems. But as the saying goes, a fish rots from the head down. Rather than run as a centrist alternative to Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton's me-too leftism left many centrist Democrats cold.
When Hillary emerged from semi-seclusion in early April to discuss her epic defeat, she blamed a number of things for her loss: The FBI reopening its investigation into her emails; WikiLeaks issuing stolen emails; something she called the "weaponization of information"; the media; sexism and "misogyny." It was a long list.
But, as the Washington Examiner has pointed out, she named and blamed everything except herself.
The Democrats chose someone as the standard-bearer of their party who had a very low likability quotient with average voters to begin with. Pushed by theleftward drift of her own party, she adopted an equally far-left election platform of higher taxes, more regulation, and imposing a liberal cultural agenda across the nation.
The result: She alienated key Democratic-base voters, and lost a race that many said was impossible for her to lose.
Hillary Clinton was not "most qualified person ever" to run for the presidency, as some deluded Clinton supporters and the media propagandized. Her record at the State Department and with the various scandals email server, Benghazi, pay-for-play show how wrong that idea is.
So maybe she should be congratulated: Given her sharp turn to the left last year and lack of genuine qualifications, it's surprising she did as well as she did.
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The Real Reasons Why Hillary Clinton Lost In 2016 - Investor's Business Daily