listen, i think it's a little unfair to assign all of this to racism. some of it, sure. most of it is actually entirely legit. i'm a hard leftist, and i was thinking a lot of the same things at the time about not really knowing who this guy was, who he was really working for or what we were going to get. his policy statements seemed to be entirely in contradiction with the media narrative. on the other hand, hillary was a known commodity, with decades of identifiable policy goals.

now, as a hard leftist, i wouldn't have considered voting republican. and, the truth is i probably wouldn't have been able to convince myself to actually vote for hillary, either, despite cheering her on as the lesser evil from the sidelines up here in canada. but, i certainly wouldn't have voted for obama, as i realized from the get-go that he was very right-wing. and hindsight has demonstrated that these concerns were legitimate. hillary supported single-payer healthcare, for example. i think she would have taken a far more progressive approach on a number of things, and may have even had a less aggressive foreign policy (although i know a lot of this is coming from the military, and the commander-in-chief is largely a figurehead nowadays). judging by bill's obstructionism on a few things, i don't think she's as "captured", either.

it's not quite an adlai stevenson circumstance, but i think it's rather apparent that the wrong choice was made. and, i think history will largely uphold that. obama was an unknown, and the result has been a conservative in disguise that's been a real disaster for progressive voters.

it's a legitimate question for historians to analyze, and one they'll be analyzing for a long time: how did americans make such a clearly wrong decision? and, by any objective basis, it's a wrong decision. there's a lot of excuses. hillary won the popular vote. obama was the establishment, wall street candidate. etc. but it's still a serious question that needs to be grappled with, and no doubt will be for a very long time...