via GIPHY
I can't believe I'm finally writing this but why not? Hillary is so tone-deaf to how she lost, I don't need to read her book to understand how Trump was able to beat her with or without Russian assistance.
Let's just look at the county where I work which is quintessential rural North Carolina and increasingly representative of rural America.
At the end of the post, you will find the results of the last six elections going back to 2000.
EXCEPT for Bush's re-election year in 2004 (which you will notice was VERY close), the DEMOCRAT has carried the county by at least a "clear majority."
UNTIL this past election.
That's right. A county that clearly went for Gore in 2000, Obama TWICE (with even an increase in votes for his re-election), CLEARLY rejected Hillary Clinton.
Now before you turn this into a Clinton thing. Be clear: Bill Clinton CLOBBERED Bush in 1992 in Bladen with 55% of the vote and then repeated that statistic against Dole in 1996.
No, this is clearly a Hillary Clinton thing. Nearly 1,000 people that voted for Obama said "no" to Hillary in 2016. Now Trump MIGHT have picked up most of them with his nearly 800 vote increase over Mitt Romney as the Republican, but that still left a large number of voters who just did not vote for either. As of June 2017 in Bladen County, of 22,599 registered voters, 13,247 are Democrats and only 3,478 are Republicans. However, there are 5,835 unaffiliated voters. Wow, that is a huge crossover.
Unless Democrats learn the lesson of Obama-fatigue and Hillary-decline this election, we are likely to see another Trump four years.
2000
| Gore | 54.0% | 5,889 | ||
| Bush | 45.6% | 4,977 | ||
2004
| Kerry | 49.6% | 6,109 | ||
| Bush | 50.1% | 6,174 | ||
2008
| Obama | 50.7% | 7,853 | ||
| McCain | 48.7% | 7,532 | ||
2012
| Obama | 50.5% | 8,062 | ||
| Romney | 48.6% | 7,748 | ||
2016
| Clinton | 44.4% | 7,058 | ||
| Trump | 53.8% | 8,550 | ||