Did Hillary Clinton lose because she was forced too far to the Left?

[davsand]

60. I truly think the platform was not the issue.

I will go to my grave believing the platform was fine (popular vote winner, after all) but that the loss was both due to Russian interference and a deeply personal negative factor going in. EVERY single person I have talked to or have heard talk about that election has been talking about either a manufactured attack on her that they believed to be true or some historical event that had nothing to do with her ability to do the job. There was a lot of crap flying in the press (assisted by the GOP, of course) and we all knew it. We talked about it here.

We also talked here at DU and in other places about the outright hate and personal distaste for Clinton that was running around out there. Again, I will say that every person I've talked to that voted for the orange assailant has mentioned NOT the platform of the Clinton campaign, but their own personal dislike for her for some offense--real or fictional. My own mom (she's 87) was vehement in her disdain for the woman that did not divorce Bill for hosing the intern. Seriously. My mom mentioned it several times over. (This is not to say she liked Sanders either. He was "The Socialist.&quot My mom hated Hillary before she ever opened her mouth on the campaign trail, and I don't think my mom was alone in that feeling.

The talking heads spent a fair amount of time talking about "likeability" in that campaign--do you remember that? It was a very real problem, but none of us really saw it because he was SO spectacularly dreadful we couldn't get our heads around the idea that anybody would think he was preferable. I'm not sure SHE even realized how bad it was--and lord knows that lady has lived with the haters for a long time. If anybody could have seen it, I'd think it was her.

Now, here's the part of all this that is critical to the whole mess. HAD anybody realized just how deep the chasm was, I think it could have been dealt with. I think the PR could have been poured on, and everything would have been fine. As it was, nobody realized it, and that left the door open and it left a vulnerability for the hackers to nudge a few votes in key places. It left the door open for the entire Comey issue as well. It was a sort of an "imperfect storm" and the platform was not the problem.

YMMV.

Laura