seahawk wrote:But they only won because the Democrats did run with one of the worst candidates imaginable.
I'd dispute that characterization even if she wasn't my favorite candidate. But let's leave that aside for now, because as awful as the current situation is, we didn't suddenly arrive at it in 2016.
Conservatives decided to rip-up the world that had worked really well for us starting as early as 1968, first by appealing to the alienated component of the former New Deal coalition - Rural White Conservatives who above all viewed racial superiority as their number one issue. The alliance between the New Dealers and the Dixiecrats was always a tense one, and as soon as the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts were passed they bolted right into the arms of Republicans, courtesy of folks like Harry Dent and later Lee Atwater, who used dog whistle politics to attract them. It's why St. Reagan's 1980 campaign began at the Neshoba County Fair with a speech about "states rights," which has always been code for White Supremacy.
Along the way they picked up radical Religious Zealots like Paul Weyrich and Jerry Falwell and Ralph Reed, who cloak White and Christian supremacy in the language of scripture.
They also picked up folks like Arthur Laffer, who gave us the "trickle down" theory, and deregulators (who, to be fair, existed on both sides of the aisle from around 1976 to 2008) too. We've been saddled with the effects of Trickle Down and Debt spending ever since - problems which are always exacerbated by Conservative control. We simply don't have the resources to run the country properly anymore and every time we try, we're greeted with a "we're taxed so much" by one of the least taxed populations in any industrialized country. Nobody likes taxes. But nobody in Germany would exchange their excellent roads and universal healthcare for a hundred extra euros at the end of the month.
Then came the scorched earth tactics of Newt Gingrich, and then voter suppression, and finally, the total reluctance to govern the country if a Democrat were President, or possibly if a Person of Color were President. Instead of trying to work together to get part of what they wanted, Conservatives decided the President was from Kenya and also a communist/marxist/fantasy whatever.
Deregulation gave us 2008.
Finally, there was the stealing of a Supreme Court Seat, and further voter suppression, and the suppression of any attempt to do something about foreign meddling in our elections.
All at the hands of American Conservatives.
It's way beyond Clinton Vs. Trump.