President Obama Takes Partial Blame For Clinton Loss
The Democratic Party is still reeling from President-elect Donald Trump’s victory.
It’s something that many in both the Republican Party and the Democrats, along with a lot of political analysts, weren’t expecting. Since the election, many have pointed the finger as to who is to blame and how the Democrats failed to not only win the presidency but also failed to take back the Senate in the process.
It seems the current leader of the Democrats, President Obama, has some thoughts on how the Democrats failed and he also took some of the blame for the election results. He also tried to deflect as much of the blame away from Hillary Clinton in the process. Some of the Democrats had pinned the lackluster result on the Clinton campaign.
“You’ve got a situation where they’re not only entire states but also big chunks of states where, if we’re not showing up, if we’re not in there making an argument, then we’re going to lose,” Obama told NPR. “And we can lose badly, and that’s what happened in this election.”
One of the biggest issues with how the Democrats went about such areas as the Midwest or the Rust Belt is how they conceded territory to the Republicans that they expected to lose. Which seems odd considering how Clinton’s ground game, and the Democrats, appeared to be a lot larger than Trump’s. Clinton’s team had Obama only travel to certain battleground states, which Clinton still ended up losing. Obama had other options such as campaigning in Iowa, as he had done during his campaigns.
Obama also said that the Democrats ceded too much territory and didn’t start campaigning well in his early days of office. He shifted some of the blame to himself but he feels that the Democrats need a new strategy if they are going to make a bid in 2018 and 2020 elections.
He also gave a lot of credit to Trump and his ability to attract a lot of attention. Trump has been known to take the media cycle by storm. A good example is after his announcement of Rex Tillman as a potential Secretary of State candidate; he met with Kanye West to “talk about life.” West was recently hospitalized and quit his tour.
“In that scrum, in that swirl, you know, Donald Trump and his celebrity and his ability to garner attention and obviously tap into a lot of the anxieties and fears that some voters have, I think, definitely made a difference,” he said. “If we don’t, you know, do some hard reflection — all of us — on how that happens, then we’re like a body that is already weakened and then becomes more vulnerable to foreign viruses, becomes more vulnerable to manipulation and demagoguery and that’s something that I’m also going to be thinking a lot about in my afterlife, my post-presidency.”