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In the name of copping to mistakes, I will say, I assumed at the beginning of this race that the right would be able to do to ANY candidate what it did to Hillary. But it has really failed to touch Biden. I don't fully get it. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-biden-campaign-message/2020/10/14/846c82b6-0e2b-11eb-b1e8-16b59b92b36d_story.html?wpisrc=nl_politics
So is the explanation:
A) Hillary had unique vulnerabilities.
B) It was misogyny -- they woulda slimed Warren too.
C) Biden has unique strengths.
D) The RW slime machine is losing its touch.
Or some mix?
A) Hillary had unique vulnerabilities.
B) It was misogyny -- they woulda slimed Warren too.
C) Biden has unique strengths.
D) The RW slime machine is losing its touch.
Or some mix?
Obviously one can't run such experiments, but it would sure be interesting to re-run the campaign w/ Warren (to see whether they could Hillary her or whether the 20yr headstart on Hillary was crucial) or a different old white man (to see how much teflon is unique to Biden).
Of all the explanations being tossed around in this thread, the notion that the media or the public have enduringly *learned* something strikes me as ... the least plausible of all. 
One more thought. The RW slime machine is very obviously trying to run the same playbook on AOC that they did on Hillary: Identify a threat early & devote years to cementing a narrative. Whether/how that works will be an interesting indication of whether anything has changed.
One more one more thought. On the question of Hillary's vs. AOC's responses to RW smears, I don't think we can overstate how utterly shitty the media situation was in the 1990s when they started in on Hillary. There was no netroots, no social media, no real LW media ...
She had no help, no recourse. EVERYTHING was filtered through a few (thoroughly white/male/misogynist) media outlets. She was left on her own to try to fight this utterly unwinnable game. AOC has a lot more resources at her disposal, a lot more left infrastructure. Which is good!
I tried to capture the can't-win, hall-of-mirrors situation Clinton was trapped in here: https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/9/15/16306158/hillary-clinton-hall-of-mirrors
It's darkly ironic in retrospect, but BOTH Hillary's "coal gaffe" AND her "deplorables" gaffe were isolated phrases yanked out of contexts in which she was *explicitly trying to reach out to & sympathize with Trump voters*.
All right, last one in this thread, I promise. Here is my extremely pissed off, extremely anguished, extremely comprehensive attempt to tell the full story of WTF happened in the 2016 election: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/30/13631532/everything-mattered-2016-presidential-election
