Why didn't the First Family's vigorous campaigning for Hillary Clinton seem to do any good?

For her to lose to Trump when everything appeared to be in her favour, wow, she must be fucking hated.

Barack and Hillary were and are arch enemies ever since he stole her Presidency 8 years ago. Plus all Barack and Michelle stumped about was Trump’s faults and not Hillary’s pluses…because she did not have any credible pluses. Voters are actually more aware than CNN will give credence to.

@ucme nailed it

I heard she won the popular vote. I didn’t confirm it but I heard it from a trusted person. If that’s true, the electoral college system is a failure in my opinion.

So I guess if he won the popular vote it is a success.

I think it did do good in terms of energizing Democratic support for a candidate who wasn’t very charismatic herself. It’s not as though Democratic turnout was lacking, and it probably would have been worse without the spark contributed by the Obamas.

But it may have also had the perverse effect of pushing the buttons in the psyches of that segment of the electorate that has been wired to resent all things Obama. Eight years of painting Obama as the swarthy usurper wound up the spring of white resentment, and that spring uncoiled yesterday.

@Jaxk

Well if the idea behind elections is that the people choose their leaders, but the reality is that the electoral college actually decides the outcome, then doesn’t the electoral collage kinda strip away the choice from the people?

@Darth_Algar – We don’t have a pure democracy but rather a representative democracy, a Republic. We choose the representatives and they represent us. The Electoral College works the same way and is intended to reduce the likelihood of a tyranny of the majority. This particular election was a good example in that the race was between urban and rural areas. Both deserve a voice but a system based on pure popular vote would ignore the rural areas while focussing on the high population urban areas. There are drawbacks either way and the ‘Winner take all’ system employed in most states amplifies the disparity.

Be that as it may it gives an already highly disenfranchised and ambivalent populace the impression that their vote really doesn’t matter and that they really don’t have a say. The idea that we pick our leaders is pounded into our heads practically from birth. Yet twice in the last 16 years the electoral system has basically turned that into “nah, actually you don’t”. It’s not hard for people to walk away from that with the sense of “why fucking bother?’. It may be time to reconsider the electoral system (and the winner-take-all system, for that matter).

My theory is that it is a two-fold answer. First the people wanted change, any change, and the Democratic leadership went with more of the same-ol’same-ol’ and no amount of trumpeting could convince people that she represented anything but continuation. Had they gone with Sanders or anyone who was not Clinton a party stalwart their campaigning would have been more effective and secondly because Clinton was not someone the vast majority voted “for” but instead the votes for her were “against” Trump and, basically there was no amount of lipstick the Obamas could put on that pig that would make it any more presentable.

People in general are fed up with Obama and his style of politics, of doing things. Hillary looked like so much more of the same so she was cast aside.

Trump said the system was rigged. Maybe he was actually informing or warning us. He didn’t say how it was rigged. Perhaps it wouldn’t have mattered if Jesus had come out for Clinton.