Terrifying, but the dems kind of brought it on themselves. A nominee who was actually likeable probably would've wiped the floor with Trump.
As for likable, Hillary has been the most admired woman in America, 14 years straight. Trump ran the most negative fact free campaign ever to overcome her likability.
The democratic nominee always had an uphill battle against a base of R's motivated for "Change", for the same reason that the party in power tends to fall behind during the midterms.
Surely, after last night, citing polls is the least convincing way to argue about hypothetical election outcomes.
I think the polls were so off this election cycle because Sanders lost the primary. Without him, Democrats lost their only chance to connect with voters that that are liberal but don't always vote based on social issues like abortion, gay marriage, etc (which are, along with minorities and unions, the bread and butter of the Democratic party).
Obviously this years polling was a disaster but Sanders' hypothetical matchup polls are by far the weakest argument for why he should have been the nominee.
This was a contributing factor but Democrats voted. If Democratic voters are as gullible as you're making us out to be then we deserved to lose. Democrats are a center left party. Bernie is progressive which is a little further left. Democrats voted.
1) The super delegate system that gave HRC a 500 delegate lead before the primaries started. (Watched millions of redditors turn on the DNC over this)
2) The media picking a horse before the primary started, and making it so painfully obvious that it was a slap to the face for Bernie supporters, this made it really challenging to take the media seriously on their Trump bashing (because they did it to Bernie too)
3) Day of primary voter manipulation and questionable practices (illegal) by the Clintons and their support teams.
That said I still find the idea of looking at Trump for the next 4 years as president really depressing, but hopefully this teaches the democrats a lesson, choose the impassioned base over the candidate who thinks it's their turn.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_of_the_Democratic_Pa...
The media is not the DNC.
Day of primary doesn't add up to 3.7 million votes.
I voted for Bernie and I'm damn proud of that vote.
She got 60 million people to vote for her. It's not a surprise that some people liked her. The problem is that many people hated her. Winning that title doesn't disprove that in any way.
Dragging her down into the ditch was the only thing Trump could do. He couldn't run on his business record (terrible) or personal character (worthless). He had only one path and that was to go negative against someone he'd praised over and over.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/10/trump-files-many...
And it worked for him.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/clinton_favora...
I don't think that gutter campaign would have worked against someone who the Republicans hadn't spent two decades preparing for.
Fact is that Hillary is a well thought of Yale law grad, partner, Walmart board member, First Lady, Senator and Secretary of State.
The only thing that will beat that is a gutter campaign.
You keep talking about the gutter campaign. What's your point there? Blame Republicans for running an effective campaign tailored to the weaknesses of their opponent?
http://www.gallup.com/poll/187922/clinton-admired-woman-reco...
In fact, using your own cite, if you run that back to 2015 and before and she has net favorables. The only thing you've shown is that negative advertising works.
Take a poll on Michelle Obama vs Hillary.
I seem to recall a great amount of distaste to her, even coming from other Democrats (including Obama's and Biden's campaigns), in the 2008 election. Most liberals I knew disliked or even detested Hillary back then, and now detest her more now.
I could think of hundreds more American women who deserve the title "most admired".
There was an orchestrated effort to portray Hillary as un-likeable and an out-of-touch elite. I remember this starting roughly with the Benghazi hearings, which is I think when it seemed like she was the likely Democratic candidate and politically worth attacking personally.
There was also an orchestrated phenomenon to portray many of the DNC backers of Hillary as unlikeable and an out-of-touch elite, which I think was quite legitimate, but rubbed off on the candidate herself.
(And, I suspect, there was an un-orchestrated phenomenon where Hillary happened to be less likeable than the very likeable Bernie. Which isn't to say that Hillary is un-likeable in any absolute sense.)