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I've already written elsewhere that a lot of people are talking about the war the way
theysome people were talking about Trump's 2016 victory. "Of course Trump was going to win, the writing was on the wall." "Of course Ukraine was not going to fall, the writing was on the wall."None of this was obvious. Both Putin and Clinton squandered their advantage, but both almost won. A few more corrupt Ukrainian officials, or a luckier Gostomel airport opertion, or a narrower front, or Zelenskiy dying or fleeing - a lot of things could've turned the tide.
The bigger fault of Putin's plan is betting everything on a single outcome: the special military operation will trigger an overwhelming and quick regime change. Zero contingency plans. And I'm not talking about foreseeing the whole fiasco.
what if your army gets bogged down sieging the cities?
what if the Ukrainian army doesn't surrender?
what if Ukraine abandons the left bank and leaves actually competent insurgents behind your lines?
what if anything happens that turns your quick SMO into a slog? The response from the US to your posturing has been "bring it on" so far, are you sure you can weather their response?
Who even claimed that?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/09/hillary-clinton-election-president-loss
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2017/09/20/why-hillary-clinton-lost/
https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-hillary-clinton-lost-bad-campaign-perspec-20161114-story.html
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/readersreact/la-ol-le-kamala-harris-hillary-clinton-20190126-story.html
All deride Hillary's supposedly obvious and massive flaws as a candidate, while ignoring that she was inches from winning. Massively flawed candidates don't end up there. Massively flawed soccer teams don't lose on penalties in the world cup final, they fail to qualify for the tournament at all. Hillary was a hugely talented presidential candidate who ran a very effective campaign (especially behind the scenes and within the establishment) who lost to another hugely talented political/media savant.
2nd place finishers are always underrated in today's culture.
I find it entirely normal that journalists try to come up with all sorts of explanations for an election outcome that was relatively surprising. So the arguments in these articles don't strike me as anything extraordinary. But they aren't the equivalent of the revisionist narrative, to the extent that it even exists, that "Trump was going to win anyway".
Yes, inches from winning against someone universally derided as a laughingstock! That's hardly an argument against her being deeply flawed.
I guess we disagree here. If political skill is a concept that exists, Trump has it. He KOed Republican primary challengers like he was prime Tyson, one after another. He built a base of enthusiasm like nothing we've seen before or since.
Obama. Just like Trump, Obama's cult of personality hollowed out the infrastructure of the party he hijacked, upending more "establishment"-connected figures left, right, and center. Also like Trump, Obama's coalition was not associated with any particular policy innovations, but generally was based on vibes ("he's young! Slim! Black! At home in celebrity culture!") that eventually settled into having most relevance in culture war issues that the candidate himself historically flip-flopped on (Trump on abortion, Obama on gay marriage). The parallel isn't exact, but it's a lot stronger than it seems like it should be on the face of the matter.
Maybe it's a perspective thing, but I don't recall Obama ever having Trumpian levels of support. The biggest thing with Trump was the grassroots nature of his support, which maybe Obama never had the chance to form because the media loved him so much. Trump supporters made their own billboards for him. Obama never had that kind of spontaneous outpouring of faith, outside of the Black community.
My experience is that Obama's support among the people was equivalent to Trump's, but that Obama also had the media fawning over him, which amplified the personal charisma to legendary proportions. I say this as someone who voted for Obama when I first turned eighteen, so I was in the enthusiastic youth cohort.
Huh, maybe I just missed it in context. I found Obama's supporters to be more issue bound than Trump's have been, but I was young so who knows really.
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