We didn’t lose for a zillion reasons. We lost for one reason.
The Clinton campaign chose not to campaign in the critical Rust Belt states that Donald Trump absolutely had to have to squeak out an electoral college win.
NOTHING ELSE is remotely as important. Because:
1) It was so close in those states that even a tiny effort would have made the winning difference. We didn’t even TRY. That was an unforced error on the part of overpaid consultant Robbie Mook.
2) Everybody knew Trump needed those states. John King was on CNN almost every night with his magic electoral college board where he could flip states red or blue and back again to find combinations that would win it for Trump. It always depended on the Rust Belt. So there’s no “Nobody could have possibly foreseen...” excuse possible.
3) Mook wasted time and money in the last days in red states that Hillary didn’t need and had little chance of winning. Why? Beats the shit out of me. That’s how we lost the election. We won the national vote by a whopping 2%, so those other reasons, like email servers and Comey and Bernie Bros and Boris and Natasha DIDN’T MAKE THE DIFFERENCE. We WON the national vote by 2%. We could have won the national vote by 20% and it wouldn’t have helped if we still failed to follow a simple, plain, dumb strategy of winning enough electoral votes.
and
4) Trump was repulsive. Trump was all kinds of things. But at least his strategist Kellyanne Conway took CNN seriously enough to TRY doing what she clearly needed to do to have even a sliver of a chance. And she won. Because we had our thumb up our ass. We didn’t even fight back.
If you’re looking for a moral to the story, look no further than Aesop’s The Turtle and the Hare. The Turtle won because even though he was a pussy-grabbing degenerate, he headed for the finishing line.
All the other commentary on why we lost pales in significance to this. Most of the other excuse making seems to be politically motivated. For instance, I, as somebody who supported Bernie in the primaries, would like to blame it on Hillary in some way, or her political message. I DID try to last November while things were still hot. But it was wrong. Hillary, and all of us by extension, were all badly served by dumb, arrogant, overpaid campaign strategists.
We don’t need to divide ourselves over this, nor descend into scapegoating. The simple explanation is the explanation, and everything else is dross.