"Hillary Clinton’s campaign ran TV ads that had less to do with policy than any other presidential candidate in the past four presidential races, according to a new study published on Monday by the Wesleyan Media Project.
Clinton’s team spent a whopping $1 billion on the election in all — about twice what Donald Trump’s campaign spent. Clinton spent $72 million on television ads in the final weeks alone.
But only 25 percent of advertising supporting her campaign went after Trump on policy grounds, the researchers found. By comparison, every other presidential candidate going back to at least 2000 devoted more than 40 percent of his or her advertising to policy-based attacks. None spent nearly as much time going after an opponent’s personality as Clinton’s ads did."
"In stark contrast to any prior presidential cycle for which we have Kantar Media/CMAG data, the Clinton campaign overwhelmingly chose to focus on Trump’s personality and fitness for office (in a sense, doubling down on the news media’s focus), leaving very little room for discussion in advertising of the reasons why Clinton herself was the better choice."
Full article from Vox
Link to the study
So this information begs the question: Why did the Clinton campaign focus so heavily on personal attacks instead of her own policy positions?
My guess would be because the policy positions that liberals and progressives actually support are incompatible with her campaigns establishment donors interests. Support for the TPP, universal college, legalizing recreational marijuana, reinstating strict regulations for the financial industry, etc., are all positions corporate America and Wall Street do not want.
Platitudes, empty rhetoric, identity politics, and demonization of Trump and his supporters was the only card her campaign had to play. The same thing applies to every establishment Democrat who accepts corporate funding in the future. Unless this changes, Democrats will continue to lose elections because they have nothing of actual substance to offer their base of voters except "TRUMP BAD!". The Democratic leadership currently has no vision and they are continuing to double down on the exact same mistakes that lost them the election.