Quote Originally Posted by Montmorency View Post
If people, especially conservatives, already hated Hillary Clinton, I don't think adopting more left-wing positions would have changed their minds.
We're talking about liberals here.
You have to keep in mind that policies - specific policies - are largely irrelevant to campaigns. The image is what matters. And even with her poor image, Clinton pulled in at least an average result. To diminish this, you would have to argue that Trump was especially hurt by his own actions, rather than helped. The latter is less sanguine to imagine, but it's probably the case. Merely dismissing Trump as a "bad" candidate is to make a similar mistake as you accuse Clinton and the liberal establishment of making.
I have to strongly disagree. What was Trump's image before the campaign? What was Sander's?

Sanders was an unknown Mr. Burns look-alike, with no charisma and no influence outside Vermont. He had no image prior to the campaign.

What was Sanders going to do if he were elected? Everyone could answer in a single sentence.

Now give me an answer in a single sentence was Hilary going to do.

Surveys showed that Hillary would struggle against any Republican candidate.

So while each of us might want to a various extent different, more left-wing policy prescriptions to have been incorporated into her platform, there's no reason to believe it would have helped rather than hindered her actual election performance.
Hillary was more of a conservative than a liberal candidate. While I'm don't have the data to back up my claims, a gut feeling tells me she would have performed better if she were willing to adopt liberal issues sincerely, rather when presented with no other choice.

I agree, but I don't think she is arrogant, just too politically correct in her thinking. By politically correct, I mean that she didn't want to consider and vocalize the worst case that Trump was actually an electoral match for her, because if true (and the polls showed it to be true) it would oblige her to really examine and polemicize how we as a country have to measure and handle the "deplorable" element of the electorate. If the worst of America is a huge demographic and really really bad after all, it shatters American exceptionalism, which the Clintons are strong believers in.
Again we disagree, because that's exactly what the effect was. By presenting Trump as a worse candidate, instead of herself as a better candidate, she did just that.

Definitely disagree. There were certainly no exciting contrasts between the generic Republican candidates and Clinton herself. Trump's advantage was motivating non-voters and conservative independents - the respective party bases fell in line otherwise.
Again, look at the polls. Kasich was ahead, Paul Ryan was ahead, Cruz (a slime that he is) was close or ahead while he was in the race... She would have struggled in all those hypothetical match-ups. The only Republican candidate she was consistently beating was Trump.