No, Hillary Didn't Lose Because of "Ignoring" Bernie

There's a new article floating around where a bunch of BernOuts from 2016 basically say the Clinton campaign ignored them, and it cost her the Rust Belt. As the story goes, they had ideas, armies of volunteers, and messages that would have worked for Hillary Clinton in the Rust Belt, if her campaign had only picked up the phone and listened. That's the story they're sticking with, at least.

On the one hand, they're right. HFA should have picked up more of their calls, embraced their volunteers, and yes, went to the Rust Belt states and talked more about some of the issues Bernie ran on, like stopping TPP. It certainly would not have hurt her, and considering how close she lost these states, there's at least some plausible chance that it could have changed things.

On the other hand, this is all BS. Look, if you believe the Deplorables would have voted for someone with Bernie Sanders profile, you're sorely mistaken. These voters don't care about policy. No issue would have moved them. They were voting their own version of identity politics. Once we come to grips with the idea that this wasn't about policy, moving forward is easy.

If it were all about policies, if talking about TPP, minimum wage, and other progressive policies, Russ Feingold would be on his way back to the Senate. He's not. While Zephyr Teachout's race was in Upstate New York (not unlike much of Pennsylvania), she also lost running on progressive economic policies. Amendment 69, Medicare for All, lost in Colorado, despite Hillary winning there. The fact is, the results in 2016 don't support the notion that running on Bernie's policies would have been a winner.

Then, there's the fact that 2016 didn't happen in a bubble- many of the results in the Rust Belt line up with trends we've been seeing. Western Pennsylvania has been turning red for years around Pittsburgh, should we now think Hillary only failed because of not talking about trade enough, as opposed to long-term demographic trends? This election in those states was predictable. Could we claw these states back by "speaking their language?" Maybe. The evidence isn't all that promising though. Short of bringing "Blue Dogs" back into the party, or running more white guys in these states, I'm not really sure we can stop what just happened. The only defense I can really see working is a more robust and less cautious identity politics, to try and bring more votes out of urban and inner-suburban areas.

None of this is to say that I think HFA acted right in this case. The Hillary Campaign should have embraced these folks, if for no other reason than to kill the narrative that they were arrogant and out of touch. It might even have marginally helped, and she really only needed marginally in some cases. Let's stop pretending though that if Hillary had talked about TPP and Medicare-for-All more, she would have won Wisconsin. Russ Feingold can tell you that's garbage.