Quote Originally Posted by drone View Post
The following are FiveThirtyEight's discussion points. I will be judging them on the Wah scale.
  • Russian hacking of Podesta/DNC - The DNC security she has no control over, but with the collusion between her and the DNC through the primary she did. IT security really needs to be a key priority of any campaign these days, so on Podesta's pwnage: Waaaah! Which leads us to the next...
  • Comey letter/emails - With as much experience with classified info as she had, all of this would have been avoided if she had just obeyed the law as SecState. Waaaaaaaah!
  • Anger/resentment of the populace - As part of the establishment that had been screwing over working class Democrats for years, Waaaaaaaaaaaah!
  • Trump's media coverage - He was entertaining, to say the least, but the GOP establishment has more of a beef with the media than her about this. Waaah!
  • Faux News - Fox has been after her for years. She didn't expect this? Waaah!
  • Sexism - Probably a somewhat viable excuse, but Obama faced a similar situation and prevailed. Waah!
  • 3 consecutive terms - See anger/resentment above. It is expected to want change after 8 years, so maybe not run as "more of the same"? Waaaaaah!
  • Too much Clinton - Not really seeing this one having much effect anyway. Meh.
  • Bernie - Bernie was actually paying attention to the problems with anger/resentment from above, and was just pointing out what any opponent would. Waaaaaaaaah!
  • The Midwest - See anger/resentment above. Waaaaaaah!


She expected herself to be anointed as the first female POTUS, regardless of her sleaze filled background, and got beat by the most disliked presidential candidate in history. She didn't put the work in to convince people to vote for her, she just expected people would over Trump. So she lost.
I disagree with the sentiment in the way you evaluate her person, but the important thing is that we separate why we personally dislike Clinton with with why the elections results were what they were.

Quote Originally Posted by FiveThirtyEight
In practice what probably happened was: The environment was pretty neutral or maybe slightly negative for a Democratic candidate. Clinton was a below-average candidate, but not terrible. Trump was also a below-average candidate, but his weaknesses weren’t as much of a liability as the media assumed. All of those worked out to Clinton winning the popular vote, but only narrowly. And Trump benefited from the Electoral College, of course.
She ran a party-consensus campaign that garnered a party-line vote (as did Trump's) in the election. Setting aside external factors now, the primary difference in effectiveness between campaigns is arguably that Clinton inspired abstention, while Trump inspired traditional non-voters (i.e. elements of the white far-right) to come to the polls. This shadow demographic gave Trump the edge he needed. It's at that point where you can fairly argue on where she failed to boost overall turnout for her party or other minutiae.