The deplorable comment. The next day I went to work and talked with the other lib here and said she just lost the election.

It was when the Comey letter showed up. Up until then, I thought it was close but winnable. After the 10 days of speculation and gibberish between the arrival of the letter and the confirmation that there was nothing to see, I got the sinking feeling that there wasn’t enough time for her to battle back.

When (not yet) 45 made the comment about John McCain and my red state still gave him the thumbs up. At least that’s when I knew he could really pull it off. Seeing the lukewarm-at-best response to Clinton in the final weeks only solidified that to me.

About a month before the election I was listening to the POTUS channel (Sirius) and a woman called in from NYC - she was a Hillary supporter, but her *liberal* husband wouldn’t vote for Hillary because she’s a woman. The caller said she didn’t think her husband was a sexist asshole, but whatdoyaknow?! I thought ‘how…

Except Clinton beat him about the head with those *exact same things*, and nobody seemed to care. And again, Clinton won among those who are supposed to have all of this economic anxiety; it was middle-class and wealthier whites that really swung towards Trump. You’re saying a fiery pro-labor liberal would have…

DING DING DING

It was always too close for comfort for me. Like leaving the umbrella at home because the weatherman said there was “only” a 30% chance of rain, so many people were fundamentally confused about what the polling was saying about the race that they all agreed it was the polling that WAS wrong after it was all over.

It always seemed like a possibility to me. Late summer, especially, it seemed like an extremely real possibility after the “grab ‘em by the pussy” video SOMEHOW didn’t just completely obliterate Trump’s campaign. And seeing that Trump’s and Clinton’s favorability ratings were both net negative—and something like the…

I had a sense of low-grade dread when I saw Trump’s numbers creeping back up even after pussygate. But in hindsight, the massive upset in the Michigan primary should have been a fucking huge warning sign that things were about to go tits up.

Three moments:

I think that when the divisions in the democratic party were still alive and kicking after the convention, and Bernie supporters were still making noise I had this passing (horrifying) feeling she wasn’t gonna win. I distinctly remember sitting at my kitchen table looking at 538's numbers for that day or that week or…

My heart sank when Comey made his announcement about investigating additional emails. I just felt like fate had it out for her. But I honestly believed she’d pull through until election night. When Florida’s results started rolling in. Fucking Florida.

Okay this confuses me. I’ve heard people say she should have picked a pro-labor, anti-free trade person in order to pick up the “Bernie” crowd; except then people turn around and insist it wasn’t independents/far-left people who “lost” Clinton the presidency, it was college-educated white folks that should have been…

I got nervous when I never heard from her campaign. I live in a swing state, have been active in politics (including running a canvassing operation for Obama), and actually was a statewide delegate for Bernie. And yet I never got a single call from her campaign asking me to volunteer or even vote.

I was shocked that she lost, but upon reflection, two things stuck out to me:

No matter how much I joked about how Trump had “no chance,” I knew deep down that he did for the simple reason that it’s mainstream and “cool” to not like Hillary. We can debate how she lost all we want, but the simple fact is that she’s a deeply uncool and unlikable woman. Unlikable men sometimes get a chance (look…

This goes hand in hand with the “didn’t have a clear message problem.” Dems in general have spent years campaigning to the center with the attitude that their base has nowhere else to go, and it finally caught up to them in a huge way.

I got the feeling when she announced Tim Kaine as her VP. This was the time to pick a firebrand pro-labor, anti-free trade person and she didn’t. At that moment, my “Oh Shit” alarm went off.

Partial disclosure- I ran a major swing state for a major endorser/coordinator (edited to cut identiying info), I was worried at times during the primaries especially after NH and Michigan. In the general I was certain we’d lost as soon as the Comey letter hit while I was driving to a closing event (edited again).

I remember talking about this here on Jezebel back in October but I kinda knew post-Labor Day, because I would look at the polls every single time Trump said or did something outrageous and Hillary would get an eight, nine, ten point lead over him but within days, her numbers fell back down to Earth and she would end…