Nov 12, 2016 4 min read

How could the Democratic Party possibly have seen this coming?

The answer: very easily.

It wasn’t all that long ago that conventional wisdom held pretty much any living, breathing politician worth his or her salt could easily dispatch the reality TV host and businessman Donald Trump in an election.

First, it was Republican politicians who found out the fallacy of this belief as Trump soldiered through the primary process, leaving such big names as Scott Walker, Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz and John Kasich in his wake.

It no doubt helped Trump that there were more than a dozen others seeking the GOP nomination. His core voters delivered him primary victory after primary victory, sometimes with as little as 30-some percent of the vote, while the rest of the flailing crew of candidates divvied up the crumbs and fell further and further behind in the delegate count.

Eventually, the field was winnowed, but by the time Cruz and Kasich were able to more directly challenge “The Donald,” it was too late. He continued to pile up delegates and eventually had the number required to lock up the nomination before the Republican convention in July.

Democrats were in their glory. This was going to be a cakewalk. Trump alienated so many people with his bigotry, xenophobia and misogyny he couldn’t possibly win in November. He was a terrible candidate, they thought, so terrible he also would destroy his party’s hopes of holding onto control of the Senate. Just one problem: The Democrats also had a terrible candidate.

Hillary Clinton has her supporters, millions of them across this land, but she also has more baggage than one of those big carts you see at the airport.

You might think the Democratic Party would see the giant target painted on the back of Clinton’s pantsuit and seek out a candidate not reviled and distrusted by a wide swath of the electorate, including many Democrats. Au contraire! The vast majority of Democrat power brokers, moneyed interests and superdelegates lined up behind Clinton before even a single primary vote had been cast.

That served to scare off others who might otherwise have considered a run – perhaps Sen. Elizabeth Warren or Vice President Joe Biden – and left only Bernie Sanders to do battle with Clinton. And do battle, he did. It should have been clear to Democrats if Clinton had that much trouble fending off a challenge from a man on the extreme left of the party (and he’s not even a Democrat), she might be the wrong person to send up against a populist outsider with a huge following.

But no. The Democratic powers-that-be schemed against Sanders to derail his challenge, and the superdelegates stayed firmly in Clinton’s corner. Their convention was the Clinton coronation they had been planning for a year, or perhaps much longer.

Democrats can blame vast right-wing conspiracies, the actions of FBI chief James Comey, Wikileaks, Jill Stein, Gary Johnson, the Russians or any other bogeyman, but the fact is, they put all their chips on the table in a bet on a candidate who never seemed to be able to generate much enthusiasm beyond the true believers. For all her obvious competencies and steadiness, she’s never been seen as dripping with charisma, and she doubled down on that by choosing a folksy but drab running mate, rather than someone who might have been able to motivate undecided and independent voters, or voters from a particular bloc.

Ultimately, the presidential election of 2016 was a “change” election, one in which a massive number of Americans decided they were, in the words of “Network” newsman Howard Beale, “mad as hell and not going to take this anymore.” And the Democrats sent forth a candidate who offered more of the same. The results should not have been as surprising as they seemingly were to many.