Liar, liar, pants on fire. This is a dumb lie aimed at the people who sit in their coastal enclaves and would rather have a coronary than actually live in Missouri. I, however, do live here☆ and I had no idea that the ad about ties even existed.
The ad about paid maternity leave ran a bazillion times. But here’s the problem. People who want that leave were already Dem voters. The ones who voted against Clinton don’t want the leave. They want the kind of life where they’d never need it.
When Hillary said “I’ll fight for paid family leave”, the people in question heard her say, “I will fight to destroy the only way of life you consider worthwhile.” Also, using “family leave” instead of “maternity” is anathema in these parts.
Not everybody values the same things as you do. Not everybody wants to live the same life.
People, I know it’s tempting to chalk up the loss to some mistake in the campaign minutiae. But this loss isn’t about that. 60 million people in this country actively don’t want the ideas you offer. 90 million don’t want these ideas passively. If you fixate on “It’s Hillary’s fault”, you’ll keep losing. The Congress has been Republican for years. Governorships have been getting redder and redder. Is that because of Hillary, too?
It’s the messaging that’s the problem, not the wrapper, even though the wrapper is imperfect, too.
☆ My local paper and TV are all from MO.
Clarissa's Blog 
The ad about paid maternity leave ran a bazillion times. But here’s the problem. People who want that leave were already Dem voters. The ones who voted against Clinton don’t want the leave. They want the kind of life where they’d never need it.
When Hillary said “I’ll fight for paid family leave”, the people in question heard her say, “I will fight to destroy the only way of life you consider worthwhile.” Also, using “family leave” instead of “maternity” is anathema in these parts.
Leaving aside the differences between family leave and maternity leave, what makes this kind of life possible is a wage on which a breadwinner can support an entire household and save, which obviates much of the need for any kind of family/maternity leave.
If you really want that, you don’t vote for the candidate who says “wages are too high.”
If you really want some kind of life where “leave” isn’t necessary, you don’t have policies and rhetoric and preaching that says that a nuclear family is the only kind of family.
This thinking is reflected in many corporate policies in which only your children and your spouse count as family and in-laws and your siblings are not. When my mother was super ill to the point of being bedridden, my aunt hopped on an international flight to help us. When my grandfather was sick in hospital with the illness that killed him, my parents got on a plane. Most Americans, even if they can afford it and have the time, don’t do this kind of thing. Can you imagine most Americans carving out space for their in-laws (aka your kids’ grandparents)? Good luck finding a house or building a house with a mother-in-law apartment even if you can afford it, it’s barred in many places. You cannot hold the attitude that “my little family is an island that needs a giant house” or “my grandkids are not my problem” and then think “the very existence of maternity/paternity leave is an attack on my values”. It’s absurd.
These reasons are surface. Most people decide who they want to vote for first and then find reasons to justify it. The more educated and/or smarter the person, the more complex the rationalization. I don’t know what the “real reason” that she lost MO.
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“Most people decide who they want to vote for first and then find reasons to justify it. The more educated and/or smarter the person, the more complex the rationalization”
I basically agree except that I think you underestimate the rationalization powers of people with less education.
The bottom line question that competing candidates inspire: Who do you want to be? and/or Who do you want to be around?
Who wants to be Hillary Clinton? Who of the readers here would really like to get to know her (as friends)?
I don’t think there’s a single reason she lost, I think it’s a bunch of little things that added up, some of which were preventable and some of which weren’t.
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I agree that there is no single reason. But the dearth of family leave ads is definitely not it.
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