2016 Postmortem

Do you want an honest opinion?

Hillary Clinton (along with John Kerry, Joe Biden, and many others) forever lost my vote in Democratic primaries in October 2002 when they voted to give GW Bush authority to invade Iraq, and Secretary Clinton apparently hadn't learned the unintended consequences of regime change when she promoted the overthrow of Gadhafi in Libya. Although Hillary is not responsible for the actions of her husband, she is nevertheless linked to Bill's signing of NAFTA and financial deregulation that repealed Glass Steagall. It didn't help that she was paid large fees to deliver private speeches to Wall Street execs, or that she called TPP the "gold standard" of trade agreements before it became apparent that was a political liability.

In an election which had a significant backlash against the Washington establishment, we nominated a Washington establishment politician.

I don't know if Bernie Sanders or Martin O'Malley would have won this election, but everything I cited above were inherent disadvantages for Hillary Clinton.

I am in no way discounting everything else from decades of smears with fake scandals to Russian hacking to Comey's meddling to GOP voter suppression to the corporate media that put TV ratings ahead of journalistic responsibility to the fact she won the popular vote by millions. Hillary Clinton is many orders of magnitude more fit to be president than the vile demagogue who tapped into a perverse populism with racist dog whistles and pathological lies.

I put the primary behind me when it was over and voted for Hillary Clinton in the general election.

I posted this reply because you asked questions to which I assumed you invited answers, but mostly because I think it would be a grave mistake to insist we had the perfect candidate with the perfect message and therefore shouldn't do an objective postmortem. I understand the emotions (every day I experience a mixture of rage/grief/dread) but we should always do our best to honestly evaluate our candidates and work to improve our Democratic Party -- especially in the wake of a catastrophic defeat.

The question is how best to move forward, but the past is prologue and there are always lessons to be learned.

Just to be clear:
I do NOT advocate in any way shape or form pandering to deplorables.