THIS Is Why Hillary Clinton Lost.

Keeping my screams to myself

This morning, the guy who owns my neighborhood coffee shop was talking smack about Trump. We were jovially bantering over my hemp latte, just Seattle neighbors doing what we do. Then, he dropped this bombshell: “I couldn’t vote for Hillary, though, so I just didn’t vote.”

I thought I was going to scream.

I know. The election is far over. I should just get over it right? Let it go.

But I can’t. That’s because the person who assumed control of the White House doesn’t belong there, and because of him, real people — immigrants, women, families, anyone who gets sick — are hurting and scared.

Hillary Clinton lost the Electoral College, and therefore by outdated rules, she lost the Presidency. People are still trying to tell me it was because she was a weaker candidate or she didn’t spend enough time in Wisconsin or she shouldn’t have focused so much on “identity politics” or something else.

There are two reasons that stand out to me as to why she lost, and two reasons only:

1. Voter suppression and the dismantling of the federal Voting Rights Act. The 2016 election was the first election in 50 years without the protections passed into law by the historical Voting Rights Act of 1965. That law, signed by Lyndon B. Johnson, guaranteed protections against efforts to discourage people of color from voting and ensured any change affecting voting in states known for discrimination would have to be approved by federal courts or the U.S. Attorney General. What changes occurred since the Roberts Supreme Court dismantled portions of the Voting Rights Act in 2013? Many Republican-led states passed discriminatory measures that kept people of color, seniors, and young people — often Democrats — from voting. Counties across North Carolina slashed their early voting options, like Charlotee’s Mecklenberg County, which went from 22 early voting locations in 2012 to just 10 in 2016. In Wisconsin — where Trump won by only 30,000 votes — voter ID laws passed that restricted up to 300,000 people from voting. In Florida, more than 1.5 million people with felony records were restricted from voting because of laws created after the Civil War to keep Black people from gaining political power. All of these laws would have been held to the scrutiny of the federal government under the 1965 law. Likely, they would not have held up under examination for their claims of “preventing voter fraud,” which is a narrative perpetuated as regularly and as falsely as Santa Claus.
2. Russian Information Warfare and the Republicans’ Collusion with The Kremlin In Order to Sway Our Elections. Every day there is a new thread woven that connects the dots from Vladimir Putin and his allies to the Trump administration and many members of his Cabinet. Paul Manafort worked to aid Putin before he was trying to get Trump elected. General Michael Flynn was caught speaking with the Russian ambassador about sanctions and then misleading the public. Attorney General Jeff Sessions was caught lying to the American people about his communications with Russia. And now House Intelligence Committee member Rep. Adam Schiff is saying “there is more than circumstantial evidence of collusion between Russia and the President”. But what did Russia do directly to influence our election — and the bigger question, why? The what is mostly known. The dump of DNC emails hacked by the Russians and the Wikileaks dump of Hillary’s emails largely linked to Russian sources are part of it. Just this morning I was listening to Rachel Maddow’s podcast and was embroiled to also learn that nearly 20 percent of Twitter and Facebook users posting during the Election were anti-Hillary Clinton Russian sponsored bots, many of them infiltrating pro-Bernie Sanders pages to the dismay of numbers of Bernie organizers. Why would the Russians commit this kind of Information Warfare against us? After being embarrassed by Hillary Clinton during the 2011 anti-Putin protests, Putin saw a way to get back at her by electing a pupit to ensure Ukraine protections were taken out of the GOP platform (which Trump did), NATO was discredited (good boy, Trump), and that Russia would once again be a powerful world force like it’s 1949 and they’ve just developed the nuclear bomb.

All in all, this goes to say — the next White dude who tells me that he “just couldn’t vote for Hillary” because she’s “just as bad,” I am going to yell: “CONGRATS ON BEING DUPED BY REPUBLICAN/RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA. YOU’D MAKE A GREAT NAZI.”

(Editor’s Note: My partner wants me to add “misogyny” as one of the reasons Clinton lost, as this kind of propaganda wouldn’t work against a man. Colin’s probably right.)