Thomas Frank, the author and journalist, has argued that Hillary Clinton's defeat in the US presidential election was a disaster for liberalism and the world, and that her candidacy was fundamentally flawed. Writing in a column, Frank said Clinton was exactly the wrong candidate for an angry, populist moment, offering 'fine-tuning when the country wanted to take a sledgehammer to the machine'.
Frank acknowledged that Trump ran one of the 'lousiest presidential campaigns ever', citing a fractured party, a fiasco convention, a lack of ground game, and offensives against women, Hispanics, Muslims, disabled people, and even fellow conservatives. Yet despite these failures, Trump won, and Frank said the scale of the defeat for Clinton, who was widely described as the best-qualified candidate of all time, was shocking.
He said the Democratic leadership chose Clinton because it was 'her turn' and because her victory would have moved insiders up a notch, not because she was likely to win. Frank noted that Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders would probably have beaten Trump, but neither would have served the interests of party insiders. He also highlighted known vulnerabilities in Clinton's candidacy, including her closeness to banks, her fondness for war, her vulnerability on trade, the private email server, and the Clinton Foundation, which he said was suspected of being 'sketchy'.
Frank argued that by selecting such a nominee while calling Trump a right-wing monster, Democrats courted disbelief. 'If Trump is a fascist, as liberals often said, Democrats should have put in their strongest player to stop him, not a party hack they'd chosen because it was her turn,' he wrote.
He predicted that Trump's presidency will be a disaster, with settling scores, picking fights with other countries, and unleashing deportation police. Frank concluded that regardless of Trump's pledges to drain the swamp or renegotiate Nafta, 'we aren't going to win anything' and will all soon have cause to regret his ascension.
