Hillary Clinton was running against the tide of history; for the last 80 years, in every election in which a party has sought a 3rd term, the WH’s party’s nominee has won a lower share of the two-party vote, lower all-party vote, and lower electoral college vote. FDR fell in 1940 from 1936, in 1960 Nixon fell from Ike '56, in 1968 HHH fell from LBJ’s landslide, and even in 1988, Bush Sr. won by a lot smaller margin in both electoral and popular than Reagan did 8 years before, as Gore fell in pop margin and electoral total from Clinton four years before. Ditto McCain in 2008. Hillary had an uphill climb for anyone. Yet unlike McCain, HHH, Nixon '60, and Dewey, Hillary got the most votes. Even tho this time is an instance of pop/electoral split, its still relatively rare: 58 US elections have only 5 sub-plurality winners in 240 years. 2 in the last 125 years.
She has had a hostile media forever that held her to higher ethical standards than anyone else. She is a natural moderate in a party that Barack Obama moved far to the left in cultural issues. She did not force Obama to move his party so far left on issues like transgender bathrooms, Washington Redskins, nor did she force his surrogates and media cheerleaders to make “white privilege” talk to the political mainstream, nor did she tell Obama to butt into Trayvon/Zimmerman. Bill Clinton stayed out of OJ: given the American public was divided on Trayvon/Zimmerman and it was kind of he said/she said with no video tape, he should’ve kept mum. I think gay marriage was the right thing; but societies don’t like fast change, and after gay marriage, Obama shoulda hit the breaks on such social issues, and hit them hard; democracy has consequences and backlash.
Exit polls had Trump besting Hillary on the terrorism question as badly as Bush did Kerry in 2004. Hillary used the term “Islamic extremism” in the 2000s; she didn’t force Obama to call Fort Hood “workplace violence,” she was long out of office for Obama’s Iran $150 billion giveaway that is highly unpopular in polls; she didn’t force Obama to do the refugee thing, which had substantial resistance, even resistance among 47 Congressional Dems last year. She didn’t force Obama to put daylight between America and a very popular ally.
Obama said he wanted to “transform” America to the left like Reagan did to the right. Only Obama forgot that he could win because he got a level of black turnout to come out for him at levels that only occur when a black is on the ticket, and appealed to younger liberal voters because he is the diversity that they’ve been fed in schools for decades. The media also claimed he was “scandal free,” nevermind Solyndra and Fast/Furious. Obama got his party to go along because yes, he is likeable and charismatic, but also they convinced themselves that the demographics were changing too fast for Republicans. Obama may have done better than Hillary with WWCs in 2012 than Hillary in 2016, but his performance in 2012 was a downward move from 2008; Hillary merely continued HIS trend. He and his party forgot that whites are still the majority of America, and the majority of rural and exurban inhabitants. In America, as elsewhere, rural people are more conservative and traditional. And they vote.
Obama did a bad job addressing movements like Occupy and BLM. By not calling out Occupy, he let the far-left take over the grassroots of his party, and foist Bernie Sanders to weaken Hillary. With BLM, he coulda had a Sister Souljah moment. Both movements had some good arguments; it was up to Obama to address the good arguments but disavow the extreme elements and do it hard. Why didn’t Obama come down on safe spaces bit harder? By not doing so, he let the Dem-leaning youth voters move the party to a place Hillary had no choice but to court to get them to vote in 2016.
Obama was very wreckless with his political capital; when he got re-elected by less than he got initially elected, a first for a re-election to a 2nd term since 1916, he should’ve known better than to potentially screw his successor over. Every POTUS given a second term after 1916 until 2012 got a higher two-party vote, higher all-party vote, and higher electoral vote the second time, except him. Did Hillary run the best campaign? No. But Obama’s ideological zeal and what he turned the Democratic Party to is in part to blame for the election of Donald J. Trump.
