"Let's see if we can get a Biden sequel going in, if not, maybe we can use other existing IP, like a Kennedy. What other things are popular now? Women! Oof, Hillary in 2016, though, that underperformed at the box office..."
Also, the narrative that Hillary Clinton somehow failed spectacularly is a retrofiction. She got millions more votes than Trump, it just didn't actually matter because she didn't campaign well enough in the correct states.
If the Democrats had run any candidate less flawed than Hillary, they would have won in 2016.
No, its not. Trump was, on most indicators of strength prior to the election, either the weakest or second weakest general election candidate in the history of the kind of indicators from which you could judge this, with Clinton as his only close competition (Trump’s negatives across the electoratrs were higher, but Clinton’s were nearly as high and by all indications firmer). Losing to Trump was, itself, a monumental underperformance.
> She got millions more votes than Trump, it just didn't actually matter because she didn't campaign well enough in the correct states.
Yes, well, getting the right votes are part of campaign performance. Yes, it sucks that the US has a bad and undemocratic system of Presidential elections, but that’s a known part of the system that campaigns address from day one.
(That said, concluding from Hillary’s performance as a uniquely bad general election candidate for reasons that were apparent long before the election that have nothing to do with her gender that there is a general weakness of women as candidates, as suggested upthread, would be a mistake.)
And I really don't think Trump is all that weak a candidate. He might have faced a bit of reluctance in 2016, but didn't he get the 2nd most votes of any presidential candidate ever in 2020? 1st ever being Biden? And now he's cruising to presumably his third major party nomination. He might not be exactly conventionally popular, but I would not call whatever he is weak.
What the heck are our priorities here?
