Democratic election post-mortem and peek ahead

I've already commented on the ways Hillary Clinton shot herself in the foot, with extended notes on how Clintonistas making it worse were part of the problem, and how their continued denialism over the election loss being her and their fault only is making things worse.

Let's look at a few details.

Clinton drew fewer votes than Obama 2012, let alone Obama 2008. There was a clear enthusiasm gap.

More specifically, she dropped 5 percentage points among blacks and 6 percent among Hispanics, despite Trump's known history of racism and many of his supporters' rhetoric.

Let that sink in again. Black and Hispanic voters — especially young ones — were that unenthusiastic about her. I'll make a quick venture that the resurrection of her old "super predators" didn't help with young blacks, even if Bernie Sanders couldn't get more of them in primaries. I think young Hispanics saw her "abuela" as fake, if they're politically active.

And, more registered Democrats voted GOP than the other way around, despite her explicit appeal to national-level GOP mandarins.

Let that sink in again.

That surely goes to the issue of trust, along with her email server and related issues.

The enthusiasm and turnout gap were huge. Clinton's turnout dropped 10 full percentage points from Obama 2012. (At the same time, Trump's fell off 2 percentage points from Mitt Romney, further reflecting general public disgust with both major-party candidates.)

That alone explains Pat Toomey holding on to his Pennsylvania Senate seat, and comes close by itself as an explainer for Ron Johnson doing the same in Wisconsin. Those two would have made a Senate tie, with victory to the Democrats from a winning vice-presidential tiebreaker. It was likely a factor, but not the only one, in Missouri's Blunt and North Carolina's Burr being re-elected.

Yet another issue for Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Donna Brazile and the other DNC insider hacks to think about.

Speaking of, pseudo-progressive Howard Dean, now a lobbying shill for Big Pharma, wants to run the shop. Howard the Duck would be better.

Add in that the new Senate Minority Leader is Chuck Schumer. He's somewhat less skillful a political infighter than Harry Reid. Worse, he's a blatant friend of the banksters and pretty much writes blank checks to even the most ardent Zionists in Israel.

On the House side, if she stays in charge, Nancy Pelosi is a generic West Coast version of neoliberalism

Next, 2018.

Dems face more potential Senate losses. There's 23 Dems plus two Dem-caucusing independents (Bernie Sanders as one) up for re-election vs. just 8 Republicans. I don't expect a bloodbath, but a drop of 2-3 seats, per Wikipedia's list, is possible.

(I called that right on the Senate; the Dems lost two seats. I wasn't expecting quite the success they had in the House, but I didn't know Trump would go down the tariffs road and hurt himself in red states. My full analysis is here.

Then, a first peak at 2020.

Who will the Dems run for president? (Note: I now have a 2020 Democratic oddsmaking and personal "like" analysis up to read.)

Their Senate bench is pretty thin. The likes of an Amy Klobuchar are establishmentarian centrist-liberals. Kirsten Gillibrand would definitely not float my boat.

There is Elizabeth Warren, but outside of her signature work on CFPA, she's not really outside the Democratic mainstream on domestic issues. And, she's totally, 110 percent in the tank for Israel. No way I would stop voting third-party for her, myself.

The young pseudo-Turks may push Cory Booker to forego 2020 Senate re-election. Please. The "new Obama" would be worse than the first.

What about Dem governors?

In California, Gov. Moonbeam has become more neolib since trying for the prize in 1976. John Hickenlooper in Colorado is as bland as oatmeal and too soft on fracking for more progressive Dems, let alone non-Dems, among other things. Twitter's already featuring a spin-boom for Andrew Cuomo, a man with muck already on his hands who could be indicted by then for all we know. Oregon's Kate Brown would certainly have an identity appeal, but I know little about her politics.

Minnesota's Mark Dayton seems competent, and certainly on the more liberal edge of the party (voted against the Iraq War in the Senate), but left DC after just one Senate term, fed up.

And, that's about it.

The chance to win will be there, I think. I expect a recession, sometime around or shortly after the midterm elections.

Of course, the superdelegates who not only went in the tank for Clinton this year, but stayed there because "it was her turn" show the national Dem establishment is pretty much ratfucked anyway. As Jim Newell puts it, they "enabled" (as in the spouse of an alcoholic enabled) Clinton.