2016 Postmortem

didn't give enough attention to her economic plans. Instead, she went "all in" on Trump's personal deplorables, calculating wrongly that Americans would do the sensible thing. In so doing, she underestimated, as did the DNC, her own deficiencies.

The media played a role, but they didn't trumpet Hillary's economic plans in part because Hillary herself did not. Had she weighted her speeches far less heavily on anti-Trumpism (and far more on her economic vision and ideas to achieve them), the media attention to economic plans would likely have followed. Scapegoating the media isn't in itself the answer. We've got to be more open minded about this if we hope to turn the tide in the future.

Hillary also had the problem of not being highly inspiring in her discussing her economic goals and vision. While reasonable and realistic, "incrementalism" -- a term she herself used to describe her preferred approach to economic policy -- does not inspire a following. You didn't see Trump talking about doing things along the margins. Who won that debate?