[toomuchtodo]

Clinton and her machine threw the only candidate who could beat Trump under the bus. She deserves her loss, and should apologize to the American people for prioritizing her selfish ambition over the good of the country.

Hopefully the Democrats learn about running someone electable before 2018. I have already prepared my donation fund for Bernie Sanders' or Tulsi Gabbard's 2020 presidential race (and I'll not vote again in 4 years if the Dems run yet another establishment candidate, learn your lesson already).

Your chance for your opinion to matter was when the primaries took place. Don't save your outrage for after it doesn't go the way you wanted.

[roywiggins]

More Democrats voted and caucused for her than for Bernie. I don't know where the notion that his nomination was stolen comes from other than maybe Trump himself.

[toomuchtodo]

Independents, needed to win the general, were not permitted to participate in several major Democratic primaries. Those Independents did not go for Clinton (clearly). Nor did Millennials, who also sat out for Clinton.

If you need people outside your party to vote for you, you don't restrict caucusing to just your party. Otherwise, you get the proverbial brick in the face. Must be a terrible legacy to lose to the person that makes up Trump in front of the entire world, that people said to themselves "Yes, he's a bigot, a xenophobe, a sexist; but he's not Clinton" as they voted.

@fatbird: I'm unsure why we're still arguing about this. Clinton lost because she did not have enough support, period.

[phlakaton]

Independent here from California. I absolutely voted for Clinton over Sanders, and I assure you my conscience is clear about it.

[fatbird]

Primary rules aren't decided on a case-by-case, election by election basis, and they're not a strategic tool for positioning oneself for the general campaign. They're an internal process that is supposed to be consistent and knowable beforehand--and the reason Obama was able to upset Hillary in 2008 was because his campaign bothered to learn the rules for all 50 primaries/caucuses, while hers didn't.

[MichaelGG]

No it comes from Wikileaks, which showed emails with the DNC trying to damage Bernie.

[zimzam]

Of course they were: Bernie wasn't a Democrat until he ran for the nomination, why would they want to help an outsider become head of the party (aka the nominee?)

[roywiggins]

And it's not like we don't have an example of a candidate that rode popular outrage to a comfortable nomination victory with the entire weight of the party elites trying to sink him. It's clearly not that hard if you find the right message and the time is right.

But then nobody hacked the RNC's emails. Who knows what's in those.

[zaroth]

Surely someone hacked the RNC's emails. They just didn't chose to share them with Wikileaks!

[user837387]

That is your opinion and you are entitled to it but I disagree. Put Hillary in a balance with Trump and by far she is the better candidate. When people are willing to believe in the Father of Lies, even after you show them recorded evidence, they are a lost cause. It is really hard to cure willful ignorance. Hillary has also lied, I admit it, but it is not even on the same league of Trump.

The Democrats' fault (and mine too) was in believing that people of the United States were better than this.

Up to this point I used to honestly believe that justice always prevailed, some how. That the morality of the people of the United States was strong. Stupid, idealistic, naive me. I really hurts my heart but at least my eyes have been opened. You can do almost anything you want, lie with impunity, grab woman by the pus*y, assault them, defraud people, etc. etc. and as long as you have money and good connections it is very likely you will get away with it.

It is a hard pill to swallow, but at least I've learned my lesson and will live accordingly.

And of course, if the republicans again destroy the economy like Bush did in 2008 everybody will comeback crying to the Democrats to fix it and then blame them for everything once things are going OK again.

[toomuchtodo]

> Put Hillary in a balance with Trump and by far she is the better candidate

Then why am I dealing with "President-elect" Donald Trump?

> The Democrats' fault (and mine too) was in believing that people of the United States were better than this.

Nooooooo, your fault was not understanding what millions of Americans are going through that would force them to vote for the opponent. The blame lies solely with that mindset.

You expected people to put social issues ahead of their anxiety over economic survival. How ignorant is that idea? If you do not reflect, if you do not get comfortable with the idea of compromise and understanding those who did not vote the way you wanted, you will be doomed to fail.

With age comes wisdom.

[fatbird]

> Then why am I dealing with "President-elect" Donald Trump?

Because the candidate who LOST the popular vote won the electoral college, so his fewer votes were better allocated, as it turned out. He won fair and square, but it's beyond idiotic to pretend that nominating Hillary was somehow a gift of the presidency to Trump. According to insiders, even Trump thought he was losing going into election night.

[user837387]

>>Then why am I dealing with "President-elect" Donald Trump?

Because half the people of the United States are hypocrites with no strong moral compass. It is not politically correct to say it but it is true. I didn't think so before this but I know so now.

>>Nooooooo, your fault was not understanding what millions of Americans are going through that would force them to vote for the opponent. The blame lies solely with that mindset.

That is a lie. A good chunk of the trump supporters are actually well off. [1]

[1] http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-mythology-of-trumps-...

[toomuchtodo]

> Because half the people of the United States are hypocrites with no strong moral compass. It is not politically correct to say it but it is true. I didn't think so before this but I know so now.

Prepare to lose a lot of battles in your life with this mindset.

EDIT (because HN throttling and I can't reply):

Don't waste the opportunity to grow as a person from this if it so strongly effects you. You don't say "fuck half of America, I'm right and they're wrong." You say, "Half of America voted for this person, this person who I strongly disagree with. Why? What motivated this? What can we do in the future to work together to ensure a better outcome?"

You ask questions. You collaborate. You compromise. In that order.

[lotharbot]

This is so important.

One of the reasons Trump won is that a lot of people in this country feel like they're being smugly dismissed every time they open their mouths. That the "elites" have no interest in getting to know them, understanding their problems, or building a society that is inclusive of them. They're used to being lectured by people who don't even know them, who think their entire community is insignificant and irrelevant and backwards and stupid. They're used to being called "white trash" and worse, just for existing.

I'm #NeverTrump. He's a horrible human being. I wish he had never sniffed the presidency. I fear for the safety of my transgender friends. But Trump won't be stopped if we lie to ourselves about why people support him, if we tell comforting but false stories about how everyone who supports him is just stupid, racist, sexist, or self-hating. The only way to stop him is to understand why we weren't able to stop him this time, which means understanding what the people who voted for him want that the "establishment" is failing to take seriously.

[kem]

So, just to be clear, I agree with you completely, one hundred percent. But in the last couple of days, reflecting on the phenomenon you're observing, and trying to figure out why I become so frustrated, I've realized you could flip that around completely, with very negligible edits:

"... a lot of people in this country feel like they're being smugly dismissed every time they open their mouths. That the 'white trash' have no interest in getting to know them, understanding their problems, or building a society that is inclusive of them. They're used to being lectured by people who don't even know them, who think their entire community is insignificant and irrelevant and backwards and stupid. They're used to being called 'elites' and worse, just for existing."

The smugness of the liberal establishment bothers me, and is one reason I didn't vote for Clinton. But I find myself a recipient on the opposite end of that bigotry line all the time also. Not sure what to do with that observation, but it's very salient to me. Explaining it doesn't make it ok, I suppose, or something along those lines.

[user837387]

I do not understand your logic. Why? The more you know the better. And this is something that I did not know before. As I already mentioned before, I was stupid and idealistic. This experience has made me a lot more cynical.

It has probably made me a bit worse of a person, unfortunately.

Trump has proven that you can say anything and as long as you have power or you tell people what they want to hear it does not matter so what are you talking about?

[dleslie]

Your replies echo everything that is wrong within the DNC.

Get off your high horse and give some respect to the electorate, and accept that you backed a loser.

[noobermin]

Here's an olive branch, it's a linear combination. Look at the numbers, yes a large portion supported Trump out of desperation, but Clinton got 6M votes less than Obama. That says it all, people couldn't be motivated to vote.

Please, for our sake that we can rebuild in 2020 from what little we have left of our country, do look around and realize that the DNC had alot to do with why Trump won.

[imron]

> Because half the people of the United States are hypocrites with no strong moral compass.

Listen to Donald Trump's acceptance speech: https://youtu.be/-smetnW-k28?t=275

I prefer to believe that half of the people of the United States want to come together to build a better nation.

Edit: Hello downvoters. At almost the very top of his speech Trump specifically said he was reaching out to people who didn't support him, for guidance and help in unifying and improving the country.

Trump's prepared to work with you on unity, are you prepared to work with him? For better or worse dismissing him will not get your views heard, neither will calling him and his supporters names.

Sanders issued a statement saying “To the degree that Mr. Trump is serious about pursuing policies that improve the lives of working families in this country, I and other progressives are prepared to work with him. To the degree that he pursues racist, sexist, xenophobic and anti-environment policies, we will vigorously oppose him.”

Obama and Hillary said, let's give him a chance and wait and see.

That does not seem unreasonable.

I'm sure there are at least a handful of Trump policies that you can support and agree with (see for example his ethics in government reform policy).

[bobwaycott]

I know it's pedantic, but barely half the eligible electorate bothered to vote. And half of them elected Trump. We have no idea what the other half were doing or thinking, and can only guess they did not feel compelled to participate.

[mc32]

Wait, aren't these the ones dems derided as uneducated non-college degreed voters? So, now that the election is over, we call them middle class? It's little wonder they felt disenfranchised and ridiculed and voted for the victor, including a number of democrats [1]

[1]http://iowapublicradio.org/post/app-saw-trump-winning-swing-...

[bobwaycott]

Barely half the country bothered to vote. Half of that number voted Trump. So, 25% of the country determined the next 4 years.

[zaroth]

About 100,000 votes in the right states could have changed the entire outcome, right? But that doesn't really mean just 100,000 people who didn't vote for Hillary determined that Trump would win.

We vote for who we want, if we choose to vote at all. The next 4 years will be determined by a lot more than just this one vote. Political activism is a constant finger on the scales.

[oldmanjay]

Okay, let's stipulate that anyone with an opinion that differs from yours has no moral compass. What next? Do we disenfranchise them? Kill them? Sterilize them and their children and wait it out?

Your attitude is disgusting on a number of levels, but my favorite one is how it leads to nothing useful at all.

[FireBeyond]

"Hillary has also lied, I admit it, but it is not even on the same league of Trump."

Come on, even as a liberal - when DWS resigned from the DNC for ethics violations related to the primaries, it was what ... thirty six hours before the Hillary Campaign announced that she was working on the campaign.

That was a "fuck you, we're corrupt and you can't do anything about it".

And in case there remained any doubt, we saw the same thing repeated with Donna Brazile. Fed debate questions to Hillary beforehand, left DNC ... to work for Hillary.

[dleslie]

It is now objectively true that Clinton could not beat Trump; it is time to accept that the candidate you backed was not a winning choice.

[kristjansson]

She won the popular vote, and lost the decisive states (MI, PA, WI) by 12, 68, and 27 thousand votes respectively. She did not beat Trump, but she could have, had anything gone even slightly differently.

[leesalminen]

> Up to this point I used to honestly believe that justice always prevailed, some how.

How one could arrive at this opinion after reviewing the entirely of recorded human history is beyond me.

[user837387]

I do know our history. And I could explain my reasoning, but the short story is that I was being an idealist and an idiot. That is how.

[toomuchtodo]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3Ou5uFFn8Q