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The Democratic establishment appears to not be learning any lessons. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Donald Trump is one of the least popular politicians in the history of the United States. Yet, Trump is still more popular than Hillary Clinton. Let that sink in.

According to the latest Bloomberg National Poll, Trump has a net favorability of 41% whereas Clinton has a net favorability of 39%. If Democrats are to escape the political wilderness, they will have to leave Clinton and her brand of politics in the woods.

Now, there is no doubt that Clinton has suffered sexist double standards just as Barack Obama encountered racist double standards. Trump labeled her Crooked Hillary and his supporters rallied around the chant Lock her up. Rich in hypocrisy, Trump has continued to attack Clinton for her emails even though his son has proven to have done much worse.

Nevertheless, it would be wrong to pin all of Clintons unpopularity on sexism and the conspiracies of the extreme right. The Bloomberg poll demonstrates that more than one-fifth of Clinton supporters say they now have an unfavorable view of her. Based on follow-up interviews with poll participants, many Clinton voters expressed that their negative feelings were not simply due to her losing but were about the Democratic partys positioning for the future.

Even though Clinton has blamed everyone but herself, it is clear that her campaigns failure to galvanize voter turnout was one of the biggest reasons why Trump won. Her checkered record on progressive policies, bland centrist message and the Democrats presumption that Trumps nomination sealed their victory probably did not help.

Clinton has largely kept a low profile since the election, occasionally sending Twitter barbs in Trumps direction. The best case scenario for Democrats is for Clinton and her family to stay away. The wise thing for the party to do is to abandon the failed Third Way centrist politics that she and her husband have come to exemplify.

Even so, the Democratic establishment appears to not be learning any lessons. Kamala Harris, the first-term California senator rumored to be a frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, recently mingled with top Clinton donors and supporters in the Hamptons. Apparently tying rising talent to the infrastructure of a politician less popular than Trump is the game plan for moving forward.

Playing mostly defense against Trump and talking a lot about Russia, the Democratic establishment has struggled to develop an alternative message that Americans find attractive. According to a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll, only 37% of the country believes Democrats stand for something. Even the new sticker options for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee are depressingly shallow. Some of the slogans read: Make Congress Blue Again and I Mean, Have You Seen The Other Guys?

Although the establishment comes across as unimaginative and clueless, it is not as if Democrats lack other options. Bernie Sanders has become and remains the most popular politician in the whole country. His bold and progressive populist campaign may have lost out to Clinton in the primaries, but it may reflect a more viable blueprint for the future. The question is whether Clinton loyalists will put aside their purity politics and be pragmatic enough to change the direction of the party.

Looking across the pond, Jeremy Corbyns Labour Party provides another example to learn from. Dismissed by Blairite centrists in his own party, Corbyn not only over-performed in the general election, he rewrote British politics.

As Matthew Yglesias argued in Vox, Corbyns electoral map looks a lot like Clintons; not only did he inspire young voters in a similar way to how Sanders did here, Corbyn ran on a bold policy agenda. In an age in which voters are characterized as irrational creatures who dont vote because of policy, YouGov found that the top reason supporters backed Labour was because of the partys social democratic manifesto.

Democrats have become a tale of two wings. If the Clintonite establishment wing comes across as hopelessly uninspiring, the Berniecrat progressive wing has appeared energetic and full of ideas. Consider the #PeoplesPlatform sponsored this week by Sanders Our Revolution alongside other organizations, such as Democratic Socialists of America, Womens March and Fight for 15. This platform which Americans can sign a petition for urges Democrats in Congress to support bills, such as Medicare for All, Free College Tuition, Voting Rights and Criminal Justice and Immigrant Rights.

Certainly, Democrats might not win all of these progressive measures in Congress. But fighting for these measures would not only shift the political terrain, it would attract Americans desperately looking for a positive alternative to the Republicans.

Clinton did not provide a true alternative to the status quo. Democrats should look elsewhere for a blueprint forward and leave her politics far behind. Remaining attached to her would be political madness. The majority of Americans know it.

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Hillary Clinton is more unpopular than Donald Trump. Let that sink in - The Guardian

Hillary Clinton is even less popular now than when she was running for president.

Just 39 percent of Americans view Clinton favorably, according to a Bloomberg national poll conducted last week and released on Monday. A year ago, when Clinton was the presumptive Democratic nominee, her favorability was at 43 percent. The former secretary of state is viewed slightly more negatively than President Donald Trump, who has historically low poll numbers for a president this early in his administration.

That puts Clinton at odds with every losing presidential candidate since 1992. Except for Clinton, the defeated candidate saw an increase in favorability ratings after Election Day, according to Gallup data.

The Bloomberg poll didnt get into reasons for Clintons decline in favorability. But there is, of course, one thing that sets her apart from the pack of failed candidates: Clinton is a woman.

In follow-up interviews, Bloomberg poll respondents said their negative feelings about Clinton had nothing to do with her loss. Instead, they emphasized how unlikable they consider Clinton echoing the opinions of many voters during the 2016 campaign.

She did not feel authentic or genuine to me, Chris Leininger, 29, an insurance agent from Fountain Valley, California, told Bloomberg. She was hard to like.

Thats neither an unusual nor a surprising sentiment. Women with strong ambitions and opinions typically take a likability hit, Colleen Ammerman, director of Harvard Business Schools Gender Initiative, told HuffPost.

A mountain of research on women leaders has found that the idea of a powerful woman runs counter to most peoples expectations for whats considered feminine quiet, supportive, nurturing and definitely not ambitious.

The disconnect puts female leaders in whats known as the double-bind strong bosses are penalized for not acting like women, and those who lean the other way and try to display more characteristically feminine traits are penalized for being weak leaders.

Clintons probably the best-known example of this phenomenon. Shes been criticized for being too loud, but also for smiling too much.

In the past, Clintons favorability ratings tended to go up when she was not actively running for office. In December 2012, when she was secretary of state, 70 percent of Americans viewed Clinton positively,according to Bloomberg.

But since her loss in November, Clinton has stayed in the public eye and has continued to voice her opinions. Thats likely stoked anxiety and discomfort among Americans, Ammerman said.

Clinton opened up about why she thinks she lost to Trump in an interview in April with New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, and again in May in an interview with CNNs Christiane Amanpour at a conference.

Clinton said she took personal responsibility for her defeat, but also cited the last-minute announcement from then-FBI Director James Comey of a reopened investigation into her emails as a decisive factor in Trumps victory. Shes not the only one whos cited Comeys letter as a potent October surprise leading to her loss.

Yet the comments were met with rage and disbelief from certain corners, writes Rebecca Traister in New York magazine.

Heres how Gersh Kuntzman put it in the Daily News: Hey, Hillary Clinton, shut the f up and go away already.

New York Times politics reporter Glenn Thrush tweeted mea culpa-not so much. Countless others rage-tweeted at Clinton the audacity of her trying to analyze her loss.

Ammerman said there was an element of gendered backlash in the response. Clintons willingness to be vocal about being ambitious and wanting to win did little to endear her to the Americans already uncomfortable with a woman audacious enough to want to be president.

Its hard not to see the sexism in the response, though certainly many of these men arent aware of it. The idea that she shouldnt mention the Comey letter when the entire nation and the most respected statisticians are considering its impact is so strange, Amanpour told Traister later. If she were a man, would she be allowed to mention it? As a woman, I am offended by the double standards applied here. Everyone shrieks that Hillary was a bad candidate, but was Trump a good candidate?

You could argue that we live in a highly polarized time, and perhaps thats why public opinion has not bounced back in Clintons favor. But other Democrats havent taken a popularity hit. In fact, former President Barack Obama and Vice President Biden have both seen their favorability ratings rise since November in Bloombergs polling.

Most losing presidential candidates have an easier time and a more generous reception from the public. Former Massachusetts Gov.Mitt Romney, who largely disappeared from view after he lost the 2012 presidential election, saw a 4-point increase in favorability after his defeat. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz) stayed in the public eye as a senator after his presidential loss in 2008, and his numbers shot up significantly. Before the election, 50 percent of Americans viewed him favorably. After he lost to Obama, McCains favorability rose to 64 percent.

To be sure, none of those men lost to Trump, an inexperienced and incompetent political leader feared and disliked by a bipartisan array of people. And, as Traister pointed out, its easy and natural to blame the whole Trump thing on Clinton, rather than to dissect the myriad other reasons for his rise.

Its painful to re-litigate the election for a lot of people though Trump certainly keeps trying and maybe that contributes to the feeling of wanting Clinton to just disappear.

Having lived through the 2000 election, I dont remember this level of vitriol and blame leveled at Al Gore arguably as stiff and awkward a presidential candidate as Clinton. Indeed, just seven years after his loss to George W. Bush at a time when the country was struggling under that administration Gore won a Nobel Peace Prize.

Theres more to the Clinton negativity than Trump backlash, as this Bloomberg poll makes clear.

One poll respondent, 46-year-old Robert Taylor, voted for Clinton and said in a followup interview that he doesnt blame her for Trump.

I think my negativity about her would be there whether Trump was elected or not, he said.

The Bloomberg poll was conducted by Selzer & Co. It surveyed 1,001 adults from July 8 to July 12, using live interviewers to reach both landlines and cellphones.

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Why Hillary Clinton Is Really Unpopular Again - HuffPost

Former Secretary of State and 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks during BookExpo 2017 at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center on June 1, 2017 in New York City. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is less popular than President Trump , according to findings from a new poll .

The Bloomberg poll , released Tuesday, found that just 39% of Americans view Clinton favorably, while 41% view Trump favorably. That two-point difference falls within the survey's margin of error, which was plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

Former President Obama, by comparison, was viewed favorably by 61% of respondents, according to the poll.

"Theres growing discontent with Hillary Clinton even as she has largely stayed out of the spotlight," pollster J. Ann Selzer, who oversaw the survey, told Bloomberg. "Its not a pox on the Democratic house because numbers for other Democrats are good."

The poll found that Clinton's current favorability rating is the second-lowest it has been since 2009, when Bloomberg began tracking her. In September 2015, her favorability hit a low of 38%.

Trump's approval ratings have continued to reach record lows , compared to other U.S. presidents at this point in their tenures. Even as he faces a variety of challenges in his presidencyincluding the failure of the Republican health care bill and investigations into Russian meddling in the electionTrump has continued to criticize Clinton and her campaign, rehashing old debates and raising questions about Clinton's primary victory over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Clinton, who is working on a new book that will address her presidential campaign, has spoken out in several interviews and speeches since losing the election. She also launched a Political Action Committee dedicated to promoting liberal causes and candidates.

The poll of 1,001 adults by phone was conducted between July 8 and 12.

Excerpt from:
Hillary Clinton is Less Popular Than President Trump, Poll Finds - TIME

In recent years, there has been an interesting trend in international relations research: a renewed focus on the role that individual leaders play in foreign policy outcomes. This runs counter to traditional international relations scholarship, whichargues that the system imposes powerful structural constraints on individual leaderbehavior.Over the past decade, however, an increasing number of scholars have focused on the first image, suggesting multiple ways in which individual foreign policy leaders affect their countrys approach to international relations.

Donald Trumps electoral college victory in November has accelerated this research even further. At a minimum, he has sounded different from, say, a garden-variety Republican on a number of fronts. But if Hillary Clinton had won 100,000 more votes in the salient states, would things be all that different? This kind of counterfactual analysis is also a crucial part of political science and foreign policy analysis.

Over the weekend, the New York Posts John Podhoretz argued that neither American politics nor public policy would be all that different if Clinton had won:

The astonishing answer, if you really think it through, is: not all that different when it comes to policy.

Lets face it: With the exception of the Supreme Courtappointment and confirmation of Neil M. Gorsuch, Trump has astoundingly little in the accomplishments column especially for a president whose party controls both houses of Congress.

What would the Republicans have done in the Hillary era so far? They would have sought to stymie her, or challenge her.

We would have been awash in a scandal narrative that would not be quite as breathless or bonkers as the Trump White House helps to generate but would have been disturbing and unpleasant.

Moreover, the questions raised about the unprecedented nature of the Trump presidency would have been raised by the dynastic Clinton White House, featuring a candidate who got elected despite her e-mail scandals and the spouse who was only the second president in history to have been impeached.

Read the whole thing. Podhoretz is not Clintons biggest fan, and yet almost everything in his column rings true. The thing is, whats not in the column matters as well.

He is largely correct about what President Hillary Clinton could have accomplished with a Republican Congress. Surely, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) would have made his No. 1 goal similar to what it was in 2010: defeating Clinton in 2020. Indeed, in this scenario, there are ways in which the current moment would be more fraught with tension, as Clinton would have had to work hard to get Congress to pass a clean debt-ceiling increase and fund the government. We might still get that with Trump, but the probability would have been higher with Clinton.

And surely Podhoretz is also correct that Congress would have tried to hamstring Clinton with investigation after investigation. Remember this story from October 2016, in which Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) bragged about having two years of investigations prepped for Clinton?

Its a target-rich environment, the Republican said in an interview in Salt Lake Citys suburbs. Even before we get to Day One, weve got two years worth of material already lined up. She has four years of history at the State Department, and it aint good.

Even in this calendar year, Chaffetz seemed primed to go after Clinton.

So yes, there are a lot of ways in which 2017 wouldnt look all that different with Clinton in the White House. Podhoretz, however, omitted the most obvious areas where Clinton and Trump would differ: the areas of politics andpolicy where a president exerts the most unconstrained influence.

Focus on the rhetoric first. I seriously doubt that Clinton would publicly characterizethe mainstream media as the enemy of the American people or tweet insults directed at critical commentators or requestpublic effusions of praise from her cabinet or just generally act ridiculous in the public eye. To be fair, Podhoretz acknowledges this, noting that Hillary is many things, and many not good things, but she is not a sower of chaos or the subject of infighting so constant that no one can even catch a breath before one weird story is displaced by another. Shes far too boring for that. Still, this is not an insignificant difference.

The more important differences are in the policies where the executive ranch wields the greatest authority. I am pretty sure that a Justice Department under Clinton would not have taken a sledgehammer to Obamas legacyon incarceration, voting rights, and private prisons. AClinton administration would not engage in the kind of deregulation that, say, Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruittwould. A Clinton administration would not issue a dumb, self-defeating travel ban on seven Muslim-majority countries. A Clinton administration would not solicit bids to build a wall along U.S.-Mexico.

More generally, however, Clinton would be conducting foreign policy rather differently. She would not have withdrawn from either the Paris climate accord or the Trans-Pacific Partnership (I know she opposed the latter during the campaign, but the far more likely option is that she would have sought to negotiate additional side deals akin to how her husband dealt with NAFTA). There would be no underhanded GCC effort to embargo Qatar, because Clinton would never have been so stupid as to have given the Saudis and Emiratis a blank check to do so.

The nation under Clinton would not be contemplating the start of the dumbest trade war in this century. European allies would not be talking about the need to go it alone.Asian allies would not talk about the need to cut the tag with the United States. The likelihood of a competent secretary of state doing his or her job seems much higher than odds of the current one doing anything constructive. There would be no ongoingbeclowning of the executive branch. And no one would be worried about the sudden collapse of American soft power, because it wouldnt be collapsing.

If Clinton were president right now, American foreign policy would not have deviated too much from the prior status quo. She would have made America Boring Again. And given how this year has actually gone, I would take that outcome every day of the week and twice on Sundays.

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Would 2017 look the same under President Hillary Clinton? - Washington Post

You wont find a bigger supporter of Hillary Clinton than me. Sure, I stumped for Barack Obama in 2008, and for Bernie Sanders during the 2016 primary, but I have always been steadfast in my belief that Hillary Rodham Clinton had the judgment and experience to be Commander-in-Chief of the United States (unless there were some technical way in which Bernie Sanders could still pull it off).

So it is as one of Clintons biggest supporters that I say to her now: your work here is done. It is time for Hillary Clinton to disappear from our magazine covers and our television screens, and gracefully retire from public life. Ideally, taking all other women with her.

This is about moving forward, and how are we supposed to do that when were hamstrung by symbols of past failures, like Hillary Clinton, or Geraldine from human resources, who makes a federal case out of every bad joke around the water cooler? Lets save the investigating for private e-mail servers, O.K., Geraldine? There are still a lot of unanswered questions there.

The Trump Presidency isnt a slow-motion car crash. Its happening at light speed, every day. How are we supposed to combat this existential threat when were constantly interrupted by the rejected message of a previous candidate? And how am I supposed to formulate my thoughts when my wife is constantly interrupting to ask what Im thinking? Its a political Catch-22 that can only be reconciled by Hillary returning to the Chappaqua woods, along with my wife, and her friend Sarah with the weird laugh, who apparently doesnt have her own apartment where she can watch The Good Fight.

And dont get me started on Chelsea. Yes, shes a highly educated, well-spoken young woman with a lifelong front-row seat to politics and governance. As a private citizen of this democracy, she has every right to run for office. But should she? The last thing we need is to keep the Clinton dynasty on life support. Like my grandmother, selfishly clinging to a fortune she cannot enjoy, with one foot in the grave and the other in a tub of Epsom salt. The Newport house should be mine, Nana. The Newport house belongs to America now.

I can hear you formulating your outrage. But, I assure you, this is not a gendered opinion. No recent failed Presidential candidate has ever had such a prominent public role post-election, with the possible exceptions of Al Gore, who produced and starred in an Oscar-winning documentary; Senator John McCain, who is a constant television presence; and Mitt Romney, whoyou gotta admitseemed like a pretty good dude in that Netflix movie. Just an awkward guy from a political family who had no logical career move other than President at that point in his life. Sure, he lacked charisma in public, but you saw the real him around his family. Unlike Hillary Clinton, a calculating technocrat, who, it must be admitted, selfishly plotted a takeover of the Presidency for decades.

I hate her.

And it is with deep admiration and respect for her decades of public service that I request that she, and all the other women, disappear from sight somewhere far away from me. But nowhere fun, like a screening of Wonder Woman. Im picturing someplace boring, like some kind of knitting camp, or a farm that makes kombucha and then keeps it there. (Elizabeth Warren, of course, can stay.)

The point is, well never move ahead as a nation if we keep following a failed candidate. Its time to think about Sanders 2020.

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It's Time for Hillary Clinton to Gracefully Bow Out of Public Life, Along with All Other Women - The New Yorker