Clinton's post-mortem: Today's news for November 11th

Politico:

Clinton aides blame loss on everything but themselves

Sexism. The media. James Comey.

On a call with surrogates Thursday afternoon, top advisers John Podesta and Jennifer Palmieri pinned blame for Hillary Clinton’s loss on a host of uncontrollable headwinds that ultimately felled a well-run campaign that executed a sensible strategy, and a soldier of a candidate who appealed to the broadest coalition of voters in the country.

They shot down questions about whether they should have run a more populist campaign with a greater appeal to angry white voters, pointing to exit polls that showed Clinton beat Trump on the issue of the economy. They explained that internal polling from May showed that attacking Trump on the issue of temperament was a more effective message.

They get the shark for that:

Especially in light of this:

There was little the Clinton operatives could do about the “scandals” they inherited when they signed up to work for the former secretary of state. But Clinton allies are also faulting the campaign for failing to develop a credible message for downscale white voters, arguing she could have won by a larger margin on the economy.

And some began pointing fingers at the young campaign manager, Robby Mook, who spearheaded a strategy supported by the senior campaign team that included only limited outreach to those voters — a theory of the case that Bill Clinton had railed against for months, wondering aloud at meetings why the campaign was not making more of an attempt to even ask that population for its votes. It’s not that there was none: Clinton’s post-convention bus tour took her through Youngstown, Ohio, as well as Pittsburgh and Harrisburg, where she tried to eat into Trump’s margins with his base. In Scranton and Harrisburg, the campaign aired a commercial that featured a David Letterman clip of Trump admitting to outsourcing manufacturing of the products and clothes that bore his logo. And at campaign stops in Ohio, Clinton talked about Trump’s reliance on Chinese steel.

But in general, Bill Clinton’s viewpoint of fighting for the working class white voters was often dismissed with a hand wave by senior members of the team as a personal vendetta to win back the voters who elected him, from a talented but aging politician who simply refused to accept the new Democratic map. At a meeting ahead of the convention at which aides presented to both Clintons the “Stronger Together” framework for the general election, senior strategist Joel Benenson told the former president bluntly that the voters from West Virginia were never coming back to his party.

For all of the Hillary campaign's mistakes, this is the biggest. Here they had the greatest politician alive today in their camp, and they ignore him. It doesn't matter if you are running for president or dog-catcher, if Bill Clinton offers you political advice, you take it to heart. Bill is THE political zen master, capable of coming back from every bad thing that ever happened to any of his campaigns, and Hillary's campaign was a cesspool of never-ending bad news.

The lesson for other campaigns: Don't believe the crap you're shoveling. Don't confuse your campaign's message with political strategy. You control the message, and not the other way around.

Speaking of the Clintons...

New York Post:

Chelsea Clinton being groomed to run for Congress

While some pundits are declaring the Clinton political dynasty dead, sources tell us that it is far from over. Chelsea Clinton is being groomed for the New York seat held by Rep. Nita Lowey.

Chelsea could run for the seat in NYC’s 17th Congressional District once Lowey, a 79-year-old respected career politician with nearly 30 years in office, decides to retire, we have exclusively learned.

Lowey’s district includes parts of Rockland and Westchester counties and, conveniently, Chappaqua, the Clinton family home base.

In August, Hillary and Bill Clinton purchased a home next door to their primary residence in Chappaqua for $1.16 million, which is intended for Chelsea, her husband, Marc Mezvinsky, and their two children, Charlotte and Aidan.

While Chelsea currently lives, and is registered to vote, in Manhattan, she could easily make Chappaqua her legal residence in order to run for Lowey’s seat when it becomes vacant.

Before you groan at this, it should be noted that it was Chelsea who tried to root out corruption in the Clinton Foundation. While the concept of an honest Clinton defies belief, she might be it. If so, she should pursue a political career. With her father's political mastery, and her mother's attention to detail, her pedigree could be very formidable.

In other news...

Oregon Live:

After Donald Trump victory, Oregonians submit ballot proposal to secede from the union

Two days after Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, two Portlanders have submitted a petition for a 2018 ballot initiative to have Oregon secede from the United States.

On Thursday morning, Jennifer Rollins, a lawyer, and Christian Trejbal, a writer, filed the Oregon Secession Act.

"Oregonian values are no longer the values held by the rest of the United States," Trejbal said over the phone Thursday.

Those values? "Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness," Trejbal said, "plus equality." 

While everyone should support Oregon's right to secede, what exactly do they mean by "equality"? Nobody will question that everyone deserves equal rights and opportunity.

But what about equal results?

Too often the Left uses results to measure opportunity, and that doesn't work. Not everyone applies themselves in equal ways in order to gain equal results.

However, if the new Oregon country decides to use equal results as a standard measure for equality, expect their country to look a lot like the old Soviet Union. Dasvidania, suckers.

Speaking of Trump...

Bloomberg:

How Trump Could Walk Away From Decades of Climate Deals

It took more than two decades for nations around the world to forge an agreement to save the planet from global warming. Within one year, Donald Trump could leave it in tatters.

Trump, who has said climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese, has vowed to “cancel” the Paris agreement brought into force this year by more than 190 other countries. While he can’t rip up the entire accord, the real-estate tycoon and reality-television star-turned president elect has several options for pulling the U.S. out.

Global warming? You mean that hoax which says mankind is responsible for global warming? The hoax perpetrated by Left-leaning scientists looking for big government grants to support their phony research? The hoax supported by scientifically-ignorant elitists in government and business? The hoax which completely ignores the impact of that big glowing ball in the sky as the source of all warming on this planet? Trump wants to leave the silly agreements made by the elitists?

Just one question: How soon can he make this happen?

Trump has at least four options. First is to exit the Paris deal, which was signed in December. Yet, the exit clause of the agreement means the U.S would still be bound by it until 2020. Trump must now wait three years to formally submit his intention to withdraw and then another year before the U.S. can exit. 

There is a quicker way. Schmidt of the NRDC referred to it as “the nuclear option,” which would allow the U.S. to leave by early 2018. That would entail withdrawing from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, a treaty that established the entire process. 

That deal was unanimously adopted by the U.S. Senate and signed in 1992 by President George H.W. Bush. Trump could pull the U.S. out with one year’s notice, Dan Bodansky, an Arizona State University law professor who studies international environmental agreements, said in an interview. 

While faster, that option would raise the diplomatic stakes. 

“It will negatively impact his ability to get the co-operation of other world leaders on issues he cares about such as trade and terrorism,” said Alden Meyer, director of strategy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group in Washington. “Climate change has become a geopolitical issue of the top order.”

Meyer doesn't state how the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change relates to trade and terrorism. It just does.

Quack.

Other things Trump can do:

Trump could dispose of the accord by sending it to the Senate, where it would be dead on arrival in the hands of Republican lawmakers, said Myron Ebell, a director at the Washington-based Competitive Enterprise Institute. When President Barack Obama’s administration negotiated the Paris deal, his envoys avoided structuring it as a traditional treaty, bypassing the need for approval from two-thirds of the U.S. Senate.

“There has been a tradition of shared power in the Constitution,” said Ebell, who has also pushed for the U.S. to stop funding UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. “President Obama has broken that precedent. So it seems to me the Senate can also break the precedent and simply take it up now.”

Finally, Trump could simply ignore the U.S.’s climate goal under the Paris agreement. He could kill Obama’s Clean Power Plan. And he could refuse to take any steps to reduce emissions. There is nothing in the agreement that would penalize the U.S. for flouting its commitments. 

How about "all of the above", as quickly as possible?