Thoughts from Clive Crook:
two things seem to loom large. First, that Hillary Clinton was an objectively bad candidate. Second, that having chosen so poorly, Democrats came up with yet more ways to repel a large segment of the electorate. If I’d been asked to advise them on how to lose an election to a manifestly unqualified opponent, I’m not sure I could have been much help: They had it covered.
From the outset, many voters were clearly fed up with Washington and all its works. Up and down the country, the political establishment was cordially detested. Step forward, Hillary Clinton, wife of an ex-president, champion of the downtrodden, somehow wealthy, trailing scandals, friends in all the right places, anointed after a rigged nomination — in short, the complete representative of politics as usual. Yet if Clinton was a bad candidate, Trump was so much worse. Even many of his supporters acknowledge his unfitness. And remember, the election was close. Something else (aside from the design of the Electoral College) was needed to put Trump in the White House.
The crucial extra ingredient, I think, was the way the case against Trump was framed. Clinton’s goal should have been to detach a slice of his support. The best way for her to do that, issue by issue, would have been to acknowledge the particle of truth in his claims, if any, and say why her approach to the problem was better. Instead, she and her supporters refused to grant the validity of any part of Trump’s pitch. Even that wasn’t enough. Trump was a racist and a fascist, they said. Support him, and you’re no better: Either that, or you’re an idiot for failing to see it.
Apparently it takes more than four years of college to understand this: You don’t get people to see things your way by calling them idiots and racists, or sorting them into baskets of deplorables and pitiables (deserving of sympathy for their moral and intellectual failings). If you can’t manage genuine respect for the people whose votes you want, at least try to fake it.
I don’t really want to concern troll Democrats and give them good advice, but really, if you want to believe that this was about racism and misogyny, you just keep telling yourself that. And you just keep continuing to become electorally irrelevant:
[Late-evening update]
Lefties’ arrogance elected Trump. It’s the classic Greek tragedy of hubris, as exemplified by Obama’s upraised chin and Greek columns, and then the fall. As Glenn says, it was (ironically, but not surprising to people who have long seen the projection of the Left) a culture of hate. And as I said, the best reason to vote Trump (besides the fact that he, unlike her, could be impeached) was to issue a giant EFF YOU to the Left, and the media. But I repeat myself.