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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 disagree with your Hillary point, in that I disagree with your evaluation of how hard it is to do what she did. Given how sloped the media and social media environment is, my prior is that any Democrat that doesn't win in a landslide is a schmuck.
Sure, but the primary accomplishment is beating a bunch of other Democrats. Beating them so bad, so conclusively, they didn't even show up. Hillary was a football team so fucking good that the whole rest of the division said "2016 is more of a rebuilding season for us."
Did you see who was available? They said that because it was literally true. Basically everyone's been bemoaning what Obama did the the DNC's bench since 2014.
Elsewhere in the thread, other replies insulting Trump and refuting my claim that he was a good politician, argue that the 2016 Republican primary challengers were all chuckleheads too. At some point, we have to accept that somebody somewhere is good at winning elections, after all people keep doing it. If all the mainstream Rs and Ds were really this bad at politics, the weirdo 3rd parties we all support might actually win on occasion.
Jeb was pretty uniquely bad, and had gobbled the institutional support, which made the rest of the field weird. In the end the other problem was Ted Cruz was the Trump challenger the people wanted, but none of the institutions wanted to try that until way too late.
John, My Father was a Postman, Kasich basically ego'd Trump to a smooth victory instead of what could have been an interesting match.
Highly on brand for Cruz to be disliked by those who actually work with him:
HRC didn't face those fights, because she dealt with them in advance behind closed doors. Through carrots or sticks, off camera, she prevented the pompous assholes with (D) next to their name in the senate from showing up to derail her candidacy. That's what made her unopposed coronation as the D nominee such a signal victory and mark of political talent, she lined up all that support behind her in advance without a fight. Where Barack or Kerry or Mittens had to fight tooth and nail to get the nomination from a dozen other equally ambitious candidates.
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