"Let's cut the crap about why Hillary lost"

Funny, not a single non-white face

From Kevin Drum:

Hillary Clinton was running for a third Democratic term with an OK but not great economy. Most models predicted a roughly 50-50 race. In the end, despite everything, she still outperformed the models and won the popular vote by 2 percent. The Comey letter cost her 2-3 percent, and the other stuff probably cost her another couple of points. Without those things, she wins in a landslide and cruises into the White House.

So she's right. I guess everyone wants her to be the captain going down with her ship, but that's stupid. She accurately described why she lost.

But still, what about all the stuff she screwed up? There wasn't that much, really, but sure, there are a few things:

The Goldman Sachs speeches were dumb.

The private email server was dumb.

The "deplorables" comment was dumb

But look: no candidate is perfect and every campaign has stuff like that. It comes with the territory. And despite all that, Clinton had a comfortable 7-point lead by the end of September. Those things couldn't have been the reason for her loss since they were all well known by then. After that, she crushed Trump in all three debates and was all set to win.

So why didn't she? The answer is pretty simple: despite running a pretty good campaign, she got walloped by things that decidedly don't come with the territory: Russian interference via the WikiLeaks drip; an indefensible letter released by the FBI director; and a press corps that treated the Comey letter like the OJ trial. She got slammed late in the game, and had no time to recover.

That's just what happened...

Rob's comment:

I agree. Hillary's "deplorables" comment wasn't smart politically, but it was true about the Republican Party and apparently even some Democrats:

"You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right?" Clinton said. "The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic—you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up."

The truth revealed by the 2016 election: there are a lot of people like that---and a lot more than half of Republicans, for that matter. No matter how "forgotten" and oppressed people feel---and I think that's mostly bullshit---it's simply not acceptable to vote for someone for President who brags about assaulting women, who mocks the handicapped, who stiffs workers and contractors, who is a pathological liar and a racist. 

Those voting for Trump are not just "deplorable"; they are contemptible. When you listen to them talk in interviews, it's obvious they are also ignorant and stupid. By electing Trump, they've done a lot of damage to the country. And we're supposed to "reach out" to those assholes?

See also Who’s Afraid of a Clinton Voter?