2016 Postmortem

...more easily associated with "evil," as in "the lesser evil is still evil." Simply because she's been around for so long and her husband's administration produced some anger-inducing legislation.

And I think the 25+ years of vicious right wing slander leached into the consciousness of some who would have otherwise voted for Clinton.

I personally know of millennials who simply don't grasp how much worse off we'll be with Trump. As I wrote in an essay about a week after the election:

Regarding the notion that there’s no real difference between the two major parties, consider the following:

1) a Clinton Administration wouldn't foment hatred or attempt to roll back progress made in the area of civil rights (Mike Pence is virulently opposed to LGBTQ rights)

2) a Clinton Admin wouldn't nominate horrifyingly right wing justices, who could spell disaster for women's rights, for the Supreme Court

3) a Clinton Admin wouldn't try to privatize Social Security, Medicare, public infrastructure and so on

4) a Clinton Admin wouldn’t attempt to do away with the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act

5) a Clinton Admin would push for alternative energy investment, maintain the US's position in the Paris Climate Treaty and wouldn’t consider scientific consensus (on climate change, on vaccinations, on evolution) to be a “hoax”

6) a Clinton Admin wouldn’t scrap the Iran nuclear deal

7) a Clinton Admin would have worked to improve upon the Affordable Care Act, which has insured millions who would not otherwise be insured at all (a public option would go a long way toward addressing rising costs)

8) a Clinton Admin would have attempted to lower the cost of college tuition

9) a Clinton Admin would advocate for sensible gun control policy (and against NRA obfuscation that falsely convinces people gun control advocates want to ban all guns)

10) a Clinton Admin would raise taxes on those making obscene amounts of money, often while producing nothing of value

11) a Clinton Admin would have used the bully pulpit to push for paid family leave, affordable child care and equal pay for women

12) a Clinton Admin likely would keep with President Obama’s policy of offering clemency to nonviolent drug offenders (the Obama Admin has offered clemency to more such individuals than the previous 11 administrations combined)

And I wrote all of that prior to knowing who Trump would be nominating for various departments. Those nominations (for AG, EPA, State, Education, Energy, etc.) are truly frightening.