Why We Lost the Presidential Election of 2016 (and yes, we really did)

So the dust has cleared and only the radical and ignorant and Russia are happy with the results.  Oh, stop it, don't get up all in arms, even Vladimir Putin told his media he was happy with the results and that only Trump and he {Putin} thought he would win.  So just...shut it.  Own it.  Embrace it.  You are a traitor.  At least go all out and be proud of it!

First, let's get this clear.  We lost.  Regardless of the why.  Regardless of "what could have been." The cold hard facts are that we lost.  So what if Russia got involved.  I watch enough football to know that if your team lost it was not because the ref got a call wrong.  You should have handled your business to the point that a bad call doesn't cost you the game.  Russia. Bernie. Comey. FBI. Trump. KKK. Religious Right Wing Nuts.  Blame it all you want on these things, and no doubt, they all played a part in the final results but the bottom line is we lost. Like it or not, Donald Trump will be the President of the United States.  But as we stress eat and freak out watching this circus of an administration come together, we have to get a clear understanding of what brought us that loss with hopes that we might rectify what went wrong.

To begin with the Democrats lost because they were playing the wrong game.  If we actually had a fair and democratic process then the Democrats won by a landslide.  However, that is not what we have here.  We have an antiquated system in which the cows in Kansas have more of a vote than I do in South Carolina. Let us be clear, the last time the Republican candidate won the popular vote was in 2004 when we were in the middle of a war time period and the President of 9/11, George W. Bush, won his second term.  Before that it was 1988.  Yeah.  1988.  The Republicans will not likely win the popular vote ever again because they refuse to move with the American people and as America moves forward a portion of the country that votes conservative Republican continue to stay stubbornly stagnant or, in some cases, move backwards. The Republicans have to resort to gerrymandering, voter intimidation, tampering with the votes, misdirection on voter fraud, the Electoral College and, yes, foreign aid to win an election.  The Republican right wing nut jobs will NEVER again own the soul of America.  Almost 3 million votes made that clear in this election.  But we don't win by the popular vote.  Because the truth is that all votes are not equal.  We were playing the Popular Vote game while Trump was playing the Electoral College Vote game...and guess which game gets you into the White House.

Hint: Not the one we were playing.

Second, Democrats lost sight of the problem that was brewing in the rust belt. The problem was not, as conservatives would try to tell you, that people were disillusioned with President Obama and his policies and that the people in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania were clamoring for Trump to come save them.  The real problem, for the Democrats, in these states was that these states were HUGE Bernie states.  The Russian hack and leaks were aimed at the Bernie supporters in those states.  They didn't need to leak anything illegal, anything that would get Hillary in jail or investigated.  They just needed to piss of just enough Bernie supporters so as to get them to either vote for Trump/against Hillary, vote third party or not vote at all.  And they achieved that.  Yes, sorry treasonous Republicans, the Russians DID win you the election just not how everybody is screaming it.  They won it by carefully targeting the Bernie Bots and playing them against Hillary to swing just that one percentage point they needed to get their Puppet Candidate the votes he needed, or at least take away just enough votes from Hillary.

Third, Democrats lost because we have played on the defense for too long.  Simple as that.  While the GOP actively blocked everything that Obama tried to do, while they successfully attacked Hillary on multiple fronts, while their right wing hate radio persistently galvanized their base and while the right decisively dominated the conversation on the supposedly "left wing" liberal media the left cringed and whined and complained and bitched but did absolutely nothing.  We have allowed the right to dominate the conversation on every level in every forum except, maybe, social media.  We have to stop playing on the defense.  We have to stop playing by the niceties while demanding the right to "stop that!" They are not going to stop it.  They are going to doggedly pursue playing dirty and underhanded because it is the ONLY way they can win power. And POWER is all that means ANYTHING to them.  They do not believe in tact or respect.  They call that "political correctness" with a sneer.  But they want to and demand that we play by those rules because we made them and we want them to. Enough of that.  I am done with being nice.

Finally, and most importantly, WE. HAVE. TO. FIGHT. AT. THE. LOCAL. LEVEL.

This is where they have absolutely creamed us.  We care about the presidential elections every four years and we get out and we vote and we win big...in the popular vote.  But we lose where it counts.  On the local level.  They own the Governors.  They own the mayor ships. They own the state legislatures.  They gerrymander like we have NEVER seen before.  They manipulate the rules.  They intimidate the voters and get away with it.  They are KILLING us at the local level.  And that is how they ultimately won the election of 2016.  They decide what votes are questionable and so they throw away 75,000 votes that just happened to primarily come from Democratic strongholds in states they won that gave them the presidency. This where we HAVE to make a difference.  This is where we HAVE to wake up to the lattes and make a monumental change.  We have to get back to local politics.  I challenge you...contact your local party headquarters via email, Facebook or Twitter and volunteer.  The fight starts now.

No surrender.
No compromise.
No peace.
No unity.

This is war.