Headscratchers / Election

• Outside of the posters and getting a pedophile fired, what did Tracy do to earn her status as villain, especially in McAllister's eyes? And really, it's only the latter that gets him to kick-start the actual plot. Ignoring the terrible assumption that Tracy must be sleeping her way to the top, he's willing to cover his friend grooming a minor to keep the illusion. It doesn't help that he's starting to fantasize about her himself, along with him trying to emotionally take advantage of his friend's ex-wife, while still married.
  • I don't think the movie was trying to depict Tracy as the villain; the movie takes pains to make none of the characters clear heroes or villains. (In a narrative sense Tracy may be the main antagonist in the story, but that doesn't automatically make her the villain.) One of the overarching themes is McAllister's hypocrisy, where he condemns her for things for which he's equally or more guilty. That said, I think you are letting Tracy off the hook for serious character flaws. She holds her ambition above all values; she believes she's uniquely deserving of the goals she seeks and that anyone who stands in her way has no right to be there. Look at the way she reacts just to having an opponent in the election. The poster incident isn't some one-off mistake, it's a reflection of her character, where she will do pretty much anything in pursuit of her goals, and the fact that she gets away with the crime will probably encourage her to move further down the road of ruthless corruption going forward. It's also simplistic to suggest that in her relationship with the teacher she was purely the victim being taken advantage of, and even if you reach that conclusion on the grounds that she was underage (albeit just barely), the end of the movie does seem to imply that as an adult she is indeed sleeping her way to the top.
  • It's not necessarily that Tracy is that bad, but that she gets away with all of the bad things that happen through the lens of the movie. Through our #metoo lens, it seems to be the teacher's fault about the sleeping with a student, but from a bystander in 1999 whose friend got screwed over while Tracey gets to go about her life, it's a little easier to see why they'd rightly or wrongly dislike her. It's also implied that the narrator has a lot of his own baggage.
  • Arguably, that's the whole point, and Jim is actually a Villain Protagonist. When you zoom out on it, it's the story of a man who hasn't accomplished much, so he sets out to ruin the life of a smart, ambitious teenage girl from an underprivileged background, and fails spectacularly while she goes on to bigger and better things.

• Where is the implication that Tracy was still sleeping her way to the top at Georgetown?
  • Your average intern would not get to ride with the boss in his limousine. To be fair, most congressmembers don't have limousines either (and didn't in 1999, when this troper lived in DC), but that's beside the point. The point is, at a point in her career where most people would be answering phones and stuffing envelopes, Tracy is enjoying the prestige of a staffer with years of seniority and experience. Odds are she did something less than ethical to get there.
  • Except that there's never been any evidence that Tracy wanted to "sleep her way to the top". In her relationship with Dave, she didn't set out to seduce him for an easy A; not only did he pursue her, she genuinely believed they were in love. If she and the Congressman at the end of the movie are having an inappropriate relationship, then even if she's gotten cynical (and who could blame her) and is doing it for her own benefit, the politician is still offering her these perks so he can get his dick wet with a much younger and more vulnerable person.