WTF happened to Hillary? 12 reasons she lost.

As a political agnostic, I’m not wed to any candidate, party or ideology. My beliefs are based on what my gut tells me is right. I generally agree with the Democrats on social issues. I tend to prefer Republican economic policy.

Like many Americans, I detested the candidates both political parties put up this year.  Unlike most, who held their noses and voted for the one they disliked the least, I voted for a third party candidate to send a message to both parties not to nominate candidates like Hillary or Trump in the future. I’m not proud of that, by the way.

That said, I’m fascinated by how many Clinton supporters – especially those in the media but many of my friends as well – claim they genuinely can’t understand why Trump won because I can and it should be obvious to anyone who followed the election closely. In no particular order, here are a dozen reasons why.

1. The smugness of social media users:  Conservative Facebook and Twitter users posted countless memes and stories attacking Hillary. Bad enough. But liberal users sunk even lower, posting memes and stories attacking Trump supporters, questioning their intelligence. Despicable. You can disagree with someone’s choices but never, ever, call that person stupid. In a democracy, everyone is entitled to his or her opinion and vote. Earlier this year, I was still considering both Trump and Hillary. The vile posts of Hillary supporters implying the stupidity of those who supported Trump would have, if there hadn’t been a third-party choice, helped drive me to Trump. I happen to think those kind of messages drove hundreds of thousands of voters away from Hillary.

2. She ignored something her husband got right: During Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign, James Carville, his campaign manager, posted a sign, “It’s the economy, stupid!” to remind him, every day, of the one thing most important to voters. Hillary essentially ignored that message – political suicide in a country where the average wage has remained flat for a decade. Many Americans, particularly millennials, can’t get economic traction and are understandably upset about it. Clinton’s convoluted economic plan promised basically more of the SOS that has given us an economy that isn’t growing. Trump’s economic plan was understandable – cut taxes and end the trade deals that took away jobs and sent them to other countries.

3. She over-relied on women: Hillary understandably wanted to make history by becoming the first woman president – I felt sorry for her during her concession speech when she was talking about the glass ceiling some other woman will someday break – and, by God, she almost made it, but she assumed women would vote for her for that reason alone. Bad decision. If any other well-qualified Democratic woman, and there are many, had run against a candidate as flawed as Trump, we’d almost surely have our first female president-elect. Americans have twice elected an African-American president, they wouldn’t have thought twice about voting for any woman other than Hillary. But she came loaded with too much baggage and a long record of questionable decisions that would have hurt any male, female or transgender candidate.

4. Americans are tired of Clintons and Bushes: For 28 of the last 35 years, a Bush or Clinton has either occupied the Oval Office or the office right down the hall. George H.W. Bush was VP from 1981 to 1989, and president from then until 1993. Bill Clinton was president from 1993 until 2001, followed by Bush II until 2009. In 1776, America declared itself free of its royal masters. Nobody is entitled to the presidency or to any office because they are related to political royalty. If Hillary would have won two terms, a person born in 1981 would have lived under a Bush or Clinton presidency or vice-presidency for 36 of his or her 44 years by the time she left office. Enough already. Note to George Bush III and Chelsea: Don’t even think about it.

5. Wikileaks made a splash: Though the mainstream media did a good job of burying them, leaked emails proving that Hillary’s campaign schemed to marginalize Bernie Sanders and, especially, recent emails revealing how CNN commentator and current DNC Chair Donna Brazile forwarded debate questions to Hillary, cost her votes. Did Hillary get those messages from Brazile? She never denied it, one more nail in the coffin of a candidate who was already distrusted.  

6. The public saw through manufactured mass hysteria about Trump: I saw a Facebook comment under an online news story today declaring Trump a “lying, fascist, racist, xeonophonic (sic) sexual predator.” Over the last few months I’ve seen hundreds – thousands – of similar comments. Many of them, it turns out, were written by trolls paid by a Super Pac to discredit anything Trump-related. The sheer volume of these clearly orchestrated, hysterical-sounding comments became annoying after a while. Let’s examine these claims one by one.

Lying: Yes, Trump is a liar. So is Hillary. All politicians lie and Americans know it. Fascist: A fascist is an authoritarian who imposes a right wing agenda. Trump has promised to do just that. Does anyone honestly believe that if Hillary had won and had a cooperative Congress, that she wouldn’t have been authoritarian in imposing her left wing agenda, as Obama was during the first two years of his first term? Mussolini was a fascist. A president who starts acting like one, thanks to our system of checks and balances, will be shut down fast. Racist: Yeah, Trump seems to be one. No way around it. Xeonophobic: A xenophobe is scared of people from other countries but let’s put it in context. Most Americans, even those who don’t want to admit it, are scared of people from fundamental Islamic countries, specifically young men from fundamental Islamic countries who overstay their visas and fly first class. If you aren’t, you are naïve. As for his opinion of Mexicans, see what I said about his racism. Sexual predator: All the hilaria about “pussy grabbing” was something to distract Americans from Bill Clinton's sexual escapades Trump was emphasizing at the time. There isn’t a straight man in America who hasn’t said something akin to what Trump told Billy Bush, and everyone knows it. While Trump made remarks about women’s appearances, he owned beauty pageants that are about … women’s appearances. And yes, he said vile things about Rosie O’Donnell but lots of people don’t fault him for that because she is every bit as objectionable to many people as he is. As for his raping a 13-year-old twenty-some years ago, that charge was dropped. It stretches credibility to believe a narcissistic billionaire obsessed with his public persona would rape a child. It may sound good when you’re a PAC-funded think tank looking for ways to stir up anti-Trump hysteria but the charge wasn’t believable to most.

7. Questions about the Clinton Foundation: Last year, before it lost all credibility (see point 13, below), The New York Times revealed how the Clinton Foundation, in return for a large contribution, facilitated the sale of a large percentage of our country’s uranium to Kazakhstan, an Islamic country. Some right wing news sites have claimed TCF collected millions for Haitian earthquake victims but didn’t fully distribute it, which didn’t help the foundation’s claims it is totally above board. Wikileaks earlier this week revealed an email from Bill Clinton’s former BFF Doug Band implying that Chelsea’s wedding and extravagant lifestyle were funded in part by the foundation. Etc. Etc.

The Clintons have become enormously rich – wealthier than might be expected from their hefty book royalties and speaking fees. If you are a politician who says you believe government’s job is to take care of the disadvantaged, what do you need with your own foundation then, if not to enrich and/or promote yourself? While the foundation clearly did and does some good, that was a question in many people’s minds and Trump ran commercials to keep it top-of-mind.

8. The private server controversy: As Bernie Sanders said during a primary debate, let's give that a rest. Everyone has an opinion and nobody knows for sure, other than Hillary and her closest aides (some of whom took the fifth, which didn’t help) whether or not she intentionally violated the law for nefarious purposes. The FBI’s bizarre investigation, including the announcement a few weeks ago that it was back on, certainly cost her votes and may well have done her in once and for all.

9. The Democratic party no longer serves its primary constituency: Democrats, traditionally, have been been known as the party that takes care of working people. They haven’t done a good job lately. Yes, President Obama hasn’t had a cooperative Congress to pass his budget proposals but the party has focused, instead, on issues like transgender bathrooms. If you work on an assembly line and are worried about your job moving to Mexico as a result of NAFTA, a trade deal Hillary’s husband created, you don’t give a damn about picayune stuff like that. The fact that Hillary showcased at her convention mothers of African-Americans shot by cops – some of whom, it has been proven, fired in self-defense – apparently didn’t get her the African-American votes she had counted on and wound up pissing off lots of people, including white cops and their families who voted for her opponent. I could go on and on but, as Hillary herself once said, what difference would it make?

10. Hillary's hypocrisy: Trump said offensive and inappropriate things about women. Saying she knew voters didn’t want their children exposed to messages like that, Hillary spent big time on commercials bringing them into living rooms where millions of impressionable children were watching. Claiming she was against women being considered sex objects and that she wanted girls to know they didn't need to compromise their principles to be successful, Hillary hung with Beyonce, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga and Jennifer Lopez prancing half-naked across stages, urging their fans to vote for her. Trump invited some of the women who had accused Bill Clinton of sexually abusing them to sit together at a debate, effectively exposing her claim that she was an advocate for abused women. Asserting repeatedly that she was in the corner of the poor and middle class, Clinton refused to release transcripts of her remarks to Goldman Sachs for which she received $250,000, an incomprehensible sum to voters trying to scrape by, who couldn't help but wonder exactly what she told Wall Street fat cats. If the Goldman folks hadn't thought she was on their side, why would they have invited her in the first place?

11. She embraced Obamacare: My wife and I this year paid $25,800 for a silver Blue Cross/Blue Shield health care plan that came with a deductible of $13,500. Had we needed to, we would have had to lay out $39,300 before insurance paid a penny of our health costs. At 64, our rates are among the very highest in the nation, but millions of other Americans of all ages are getting socked with health costs they can’t afford as a result of the badly-named and ill-conceived Affordable Care Act. Trump was very clear that he plans to repeal it and replace it with something better (though he has been vague about specifics). Hillary said she would keep it and implied he was threatening to leave Americans without health care they can’t afford anyway, so they voted for the candidate who promised to fix it. 

12. She preached inclusion but practiced exclusion: In every debate and every appearance, Hillary promised that she would be a president for women, LGBTs, African-Americans, and Latinos. But there’s one significant constituency she excluded: White men. I am so, so embarrassed to admit this but I am one. I didn't ask to be born this way, I honest-to-God didn't, and I blame my father for that. He was one, too. So are all four of my descendants. (OK, two of them are in diapers but they’ll be men someday.) The fact of the matter is, there are millions of hard-working, dedicated, white male Americans who have never spray-painted hate graffiti or intentionally oppressed anybody. If you’re not one of us, try, if you can, to put yourself in our place. You’re listening to a politician who specifically promises to represent everybody … but you. Would you be happy to vote for that politician knowing how she feels about you and your ilk? Not very likely. How hard would it have been to add, “And to you men out there in the audience, I’m pulling for you, too. Everyone’s going to have equal opportunities to succeed when I’m president.” But she pointedly didn’t. And who does she have to blame for that? Herself.

These are a dozen of the reasons Hillary lost the election. And here is a bonus, one more reason that, in my considered opinion, is the most important of all.

13. God-awful journalism: Virtually every newspaper, network, magazine and web site went out of its way to make Trump look bad as their way of making Hillary look good. Amazingly, they thought nobody would pick up on it because, of course, they would never report it themselves. For instance, the Hillary-shilling New York Times wouldn’t run a story about anti-Trump bias at, say, CNN or the Washington Post. Would it? No, and it pissed Americans off big-time so they voted against the media’s anointed candidate. Voters didn’t need to read Breitbart or Drudge to see how the deck was stacked – the reporting was that bad. Americans love an underdog and the media was so biased in Hillary’s favor that they actually created votes for her opponent.

If, after reading this far, you still can’t understand why anyone voted for Trump, try to remember that you and the media will have four years to hold his feet to the fire, to insist that he consider your point of view, and, especially, to demand that he live up to the standards we Americans expect from our presidents.

I’m not holding my breath and you shouldn’t either but we should all hope for the best.