That's about 50% of what I've been reading today (the other 50% has been mourning / panicking / raging stuff). The trick here is that there is (like in most things in Real Life) no easy, simple, finger-pointable-at factor, but a load of things that led to the result. Lots to blame, and lots of lessons to learn — and, thus, Democrats will spend more time arguing about it than fixing it.
My compiled list:
The Electoral College — Clinton won (narrowly) the popular vote. She lost the presidency because we still have a system designed for 18th Century transportation and communication technology. Unfortunately that system only gets really criticized by the side that loses, so it's not likely to change any time soon.
James Comey & the FBI — It's certainly possible to show an immediate downward spiral in polling data for both Clinton and the Dem Senate candidates as soon as Comey unnecessarily announced that they had found a new batch of emails to sift through. While his 11th Hour announce that, just kidding, there was nothing new to see there arrested that movement, it was too little, too late.
The Two-Decade-Plus-Long Concerted GOP Smear Campaign against the Clintons — Never has an individual (Hillary Clinton) been investigated by so many congressional committees. Never has so much smoke turned out to be not only lacking fire, but to have been produced by off-stage smoke machines. Why was Hillary Clinton considered so untrustworthy by so many potential supporters? Because that's the mantra that's been chanted by so many conservative pundits and pols for so long that like not being able to think of Bill Hickock without immediately thinking "Wild".
I won't say that Clinton was blameless in behavior or attitude around all of this. But at least some part of that was a provoked reaction toward secrecy by that very smear campaign.
The Abandonment of the Blue Collar Worker — A lot of Trump support came from people who felt economically abandoned, for a variety of reasons. As one of my friends (definitely not a Trump supporter) put it: 'The blue collar and working poor have been screwed for 30+ years, cut out of the prosperity at the higher end. Immigration of more low wage workers really does increase downward pressure on their wages, while lowering costs for their employers.
Both the mainstream Democrats and GOP continue to say that more immigration is good. Telling those getting poorer, "We've been screwing you for decades and we will continue to screw you. It's good for America. Suck it up."' And those folk — mostly white, mostly not college educated — turned out for Trump, not because they liked him, but because he said he'd change things and Clinton really didn't. One can argue whether their perceptions are accurate, but they were real.
Trade Treaties — From Bill Clinton's NAFTA to the TPP that Hillary Clinton (initially) supported, a lot of folk blamed (rightly or wrongly) the decline of American manufacturing jobs, etc., on big free trade pacts. Trump came out against them.
The dismantling of the labor movement — The GOP has been battling against unions for many decades. Their strength has been so broken that they simply can't rally the numbers for the Democrats — and their former or would-be members are the ones who turned out for Trump, as noted above.
Clinton's corporatist / Wall Street ties — See above. While it's ludicrous for billionaire real estate tycoon Donald Trump to be running as a supporter of the little guy, he was easily able to sell the image (as it's grounded in reality) of Clinton as part of the Wall Street monied interests who have socked to to the little guy — who has then ironically created a executive/legislative monopoly for a party who are even more part of the Wall Street monied interests.
The Great Recession — Obama entered office in the middle of an economic shit-storm, and was remarkably successful in pulling the country out of it. But, again, the recovery was slow and the benefits not always equally distributed — see above. It's not fair to blame Obama for that, or, by extension, Clinton, but that's what happened.
Whites. And Men. — A significant majority of whites, and of white men in particular, voted for Trump. Whether it was identity with the issues above, or growing fear of demographic changes around immigrants and non-white populations, or whatever, Trump is largely the President of White Men.
White Women, too — Racial factors or economic factors or both managed to trump Trump's boorish reputation toward women, as well as the opportunity to elect a white woman to the White House. While women overall favored Clinton by a substantial number, enough White Women differed from that to have an impact.
Non-Whites — With some notable local exceptions, minority turnout for Clinton was significantly down from 2008 and 2012. Part of that may have been lack of enthusiasm about Clinton herself (see above). Part of that may have been voter suppression efforts (see below).
Christians, esp. Evangelicals — Despite Trump putting on a regular display of about every one of the Seven Deadly Sins, evangelical Christians seemed to flock to him, primarily (as far as I can glean) because he promised to fight against abortion (and, secondarily, those uppity gays). Non-Evangelical Christians also tended to favor Trump, especially White Catholics (Hispanic Catholics were the opposite).
Deplorables — It's unfair to say that the explicitly Deplorable (alt-Right, etc.) vote was a huge factor — but while not all Trump voters were Deplorables, it seems that most of the virulently racist, sexist, Christianist types were Trump supporters. Just ask David Duke.
Of the various regrets I have about the election result, it is that these yahoos will now feel themselves justified and, in fact, mainstream and empowered to act on their deplorable desires.
The Media (et al) who didn't take Trump seriously — Everyone thought Trump was a joke. Everyone thought he wouldn't get anywhere. They thought that through the primaries. They thought that during the main campaign. They thought that right up to the election. And they ignored the fact that he had substantial support, and where that support was coming from, and how that support didn't think that their candidate being laughed at (rather than being confronted in his zaniness, his policy incoherence, etc.) was a reason to switch their votes.
The GOP — One can blame the GOP for stoking the fires of anger and resentment that drove the Trump success. One can blame the GOP for the decades-long smear campaign. One can blame the GOP for stifling the recovery from the Great Recession, or for being unwilling to do anything to fix the ACA, both of which were used by Trump to great effect. One can blame individual Republicans for first lambasting Trump, then accepting him as nominee, then turning on him, then turning back to him. It would be nice to think that the GOP might do a bit of soul-searching as to how they ended up with a Donald Trump as their standard-bearer, but, hey, they "won," so don't expect that any time soon.
It would also be nice to think that this is going to come home to roost at the mid-term elections. We'll see.
Voter Suppression — One can blame the GOP for this as well. While some minority turn-out fall-offs were due to enthusiasm issues, some were very distinctly traceable to GOP efforts on the state level to reduce access to the polls, to impose tight voter ID regulations, etc.
The Democratic Party — While accusations of the DNC fixing things for Clinton over Sanders are wildly overblown, the general sense of "coronation" around Clinton's primary candidacy rightfully rankled. That's not necessarily Clinton's fault — she's done her best to cultivate those relationships over time, which is kind of hard to criticize her for — but the party (in particular chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz) mishandled the Bernie Sanders challenge badly, which impacted the enthusiasm of the more progressive elements of the Dems.
The Bernie-or-Busters — These were the folk who refused to support Clinton (and instead actively attacked her), and refused to sign on to defeat Trump (by declining to vote, or by going with the Greens or Libertarians), all this even though their man was now campaigning for Clinton, and all because they felt they had been slighted by the DNC or that their candidate had the primaries stolen or because she didn't match their ideal of ideological purity so "let's just watch the world burn as we send a 'message' to the DNC" … these folk arguably deserve everything that happens to them under a Trump regime. Enjoy that message.
Russia — The impact of Russian state-based or instructed hackers turned out to be less direct than anticipated, which makes it impact harder to judge. The vast majority of material hacked from DNC servers and released through WikiLeaks was dreadfully mundane. But airing the sausage-making of any political organization has a subtle effect on, again, enthusiasm.
Julian Assange – The WikiLeaks founder apparently intensely dislikes Clinton for a variety of reasons, and so was happy to publish whatever was being fed, even if it was only about a single party and would thus have an unbalanced impact on the election. Information can be important, but unbalanced information is highly deceptive.
There are probably more, but that will do for a long first start.
Some references:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/08/us/politics/election-exit-polls.html
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/08/us/elections/exit-poll-analysis.html
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/behind-trumps-victory-divisions-by-race-gender-education/
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/how-the-faithful-voted-a-preliminary-2016-analysis/
Behind Trump’s victory: Divisions by race, gender, education
Donald Trump’s win followed a campaign that revealed deep divisions that were as wide and in some cases wider than in previous elections.
Huh.
So none actually blaming her or the horrible campaign she ran?
None blaming the DNC and its inability to read the electorate?
Amusing.
A few others that occurred to me overnight:
Donald Trump — Which should go without saying, but needs to be said. Whatever reason he had for getting into the race, he found a winning wave and rode it all the way to victory.
Hillary Clinton — Beyond the smear campaigns, beyond the smoke-without-fire faux scandals ginned up by her opponents, Clinton needs to take some responsibility here. Even where there was no legal wrong-doing, even where there were other justifications, she took the calculated gamble in acting in ways that didn't pass the "beyond reproach" test. They might not have been anything that anyone else wasn't doing (or worse), but when you know you are in the spotlight (fairly or unfairly), you have to behave differently.
And, yes, it was in part about her being a woman, and in part about her deciding to not let the bastards win by causing her to back off. But the combination of their tactics and her tone-deafness to how it looked gave just enough cover for folk to say, "Well, Trump is an awful guy, but Hillary is a crook."
Bernie Sanders — I don't agree with everything Sanders campaigned on, but his unabashed espousing of progressive, even socialist (well, duh) ideals, was a needed breath of fresh air. I only blame him for starting a movement that he could no longer control when he wanted them to redirect their anger to the real menace.
Democrats — Trump won with roughly the same number of votes as Romney lost with. As noted above, voter suppression played some role in this. But the bottom line is that a lot of folk didn't vote for president who could have. They made the explicit decision that they wouldn't or couldn't vote for Clinton, even if it meant Trump might win. Well, it did.
Americans — 47% of the eligible voters didn't vote. And, yes, that's largely in part because so many people were turned off of the system as a whole with two candidates with high "unfavorablity" ratings. Fine. But it's a reminder that lack of action is an action itself. You still had a choice. You still have to live with the result.
—-This post overall is less temperate / more blunt than it could be, or than I think I usually am, but I'm channeling a lot of my frustration over this election into it.
Bottom line: Trump didn't win because magical election fairies annointed him with pixie president oil. Nor was it all because of some grand conspiracy, or because of a ravening wave of sexist zombies, or because Hillary Clinton "stole" the primaries. He won because of decisions and actions that a variety of people made, in anger or frustration or greed — or because it seemed the right thing to do at the time. For example, minorities didn't turn out for Clinton the way they did for Obama — chalking that up solely to unfavorability ratings, or voter suppression, or disenchantment with the Democrats, or laziness, or anything else not only oversimplifies matters, but it just leads to internal arguments.
Ignoring any of those factors means we can't learn from them. And we need to learn from all of them.
+Stan Pedzick So I was typing while you were, during which I added in Clinton. I did include the DNC above, and to the extent that they both failed to address the also-mentioned "blue collar" issues (also mentioned), yes, they take a share of the credit/blame.
Jerrymandering.
All by itself it probably accounts for an electoral loss vs a popular win.
Oops. “Gerrymandering”.
Hillary just ran the flat out most incompetent campaign in modern electoral history. She had a seemingly insurmountable advantage in money. She had a seemingly insurmountable advantage in "ground game" organization. She had a seemingly insurmountable advantage in demographics. She had the power of the "Bully Pulpit" behind her.
And she lost.
Pointing fingers every which direction besides at how the built in advantages were squandered is pretty much an exercise in futility.
+The Bruce, Mile High It was "incompetent" (and clear unsuccessful) for reasons, though. What I saw of her campaign, of her speeches, of the campaigning of all the ones thought fought with her, was (to me, of course) pretty good.
The reasons her campaign didn't work — in terms of being, perhaps, the wrong candidate at the wrong time — are what the "finger-pointing" was about. Failing to grapple sufficiently with the economic displacement that Trump (and Sanders, from a different tack) did is certainly one area. But the other areas can't be ignored as factors.
Indeed, the very perception that she had the money, the organization, the prominent supporters, and the apparent demographics appears to be a part of what made her look like the establishment candidate. That countered much of those advantages. Throw in a much-ado-about-nothing late October Surprise from the FBI that threw her momentum into reverse and energized the Trump supporters before being walked back just a few days before the election, and add in the other factors I raised, and it seems simplistic to say that it was just an "incompetent campaign."
Clinton has a part in this. But it's far from the whole, or even biggest, part of the picture.
From what I can tell, if you got rid of the College and went for Single Transferable Vote, Trump would have had a decisive win, because the Green vote was smaller than the Libertarian vote.
Sure, they bungled things on multiple fronts to squander their advantages (and no, the money and organization were not mere "perceptions"). But it still sounds to me like you're creating a tale of woe from outside forces. Very echo chamber.
Shit happens to individual lives as well as to campaigns. You can't control the uncontrollable, but you can control your reactions to those.
Relatively late in the campaign, her organization was smugly wasting resources on places like Texas. They were then caught flat footed when the Comey news came out. Given her advantages and the extraordinarily high negatives of Trump (and his constant shooting himself in the foot and numerous other bungles indicative of an inexperienced organization on that side of the equation), and the fact that she had the money to buy the best polling data and analysts to advise her on trends (and writers to craft messages for those traditionally Democratic leaning yet disaffected this cycle groups you cite), her campaign should have been in a position to weather that storm by that point or at the very least had better responses by then since she'd been dealing with the mess of her own making for over a year by then.
So, no, I'm not being "simplistic." I'm just observing that to have had the resources to have thrown the best minds at all those individual aspects of the crash and burn the you yourself identify is pretty much a definitive example of incompetence.