5 Lessons Joe Biden should have learned from Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss

In the summer of 2016, the Hillary Clinton campaign was confident. Despite the pesky level of support shown for Bernie Sanders, Clinton’s team still foresaw a successful Democratic National Convention in August followed by winning the presidency in November. As Jon Stewart pointed out this week on “The Daily Show,” voters are fed up with the “arthritic status quo” and “suffering gerontocracy,” which has thus far been “unable or unwilling to respond in any way to the concerns of voters.” Shortly after the debate, DNC leader Jaime Harrison claimed that the "hand-wringing" over Biden was “coming from the media” and “not the people.” This after anyone with eyeballs could see that Biden wasn’t fit to run and also after poll after poll showed Biden did not have strong voter support. So, voters just no longer trust it when it “claims to be fighting for working people claims to be on the side of the victims of the corporate capitalist system” because it is incessantly siding with the victimizers and refusing to name the victimizers of oligarchy.” The party just doesn’t “have a coherent message that makes sense to people.” Now with Biden, party leaders claim that this is a matter of loyalty to Biden, missing the point that voters just don’t trust the party itself. The good news, though, is that Biden’s disturbing debate performance creates an opportunity to seek a better option in a race he is set to lose otherwise.