Who is to blame.

[Tonus]

Yeah, I think that there are multiple reasons for it, not just one single thing that led to a Trump victory. But people prefer simple problems with simple solutions, and the pundits have been pointing this way and that at what they insist is the one single reason. Maybe this is why history repeats itself. I think that there were several things that led to the result we got:

1- Hillary was a poor candidate because she was seen as an establishment crony who could be easily attacked by the GOP and who had the e-mail server issue hanging over her head.

2- Bernie Sanders further weakened her by running a tough campaign that lasted almost to the end and pushed her further left on some positions. Time she could have spent attacking Trump was instead spent trying to find a way to defend herself without hitting back too hard at Sanders.

3- The superdelegates became an issue that was used to reinforce the notion of Clinton as an insider and power-broker benefitting from a rigged system.

4- The GOP decided to invite Trump to run as a Republican to avoid a third party candidacy, expecting that he would fizzle out quickly, but instead he benefitted as several GOP candidates imploded. The candidates they probably had the most hope for flamed out shockingly early (Bush, Rubio).

5- Everyone underestimated the effect that Trump's devil-may-care populism would have. Reagan wasn't as brash or obnoxious as Trump, but he tapped into the same feeling in the electorate that they were being taken for granted when they were the real heroes of the nation. Trump's "make America great again" resonated in the same way that Reagan's promise to get government out of the way of the people did.

6- The DNC could not rally Obama/Sanders voters to the polls, but Trump voters showed up. Updated totals indicate that Clinton got almost as many votes as Obama in 2012, but still around 5-6 million fewer than in 2008. Trump got about 1.5 million more than Romney and 2.5 million more than McCain. It wasn't just that Trump did better among minorities-- it's not difficult to do better than the low percentages that previous Republican candidates got. Many more Americans came out to vote for Trump, and a massive number of 2008 Obama voters stayed home for the second straight election.

7- The media was more interested in poking fun at Trump instead of demanding clarity on his positions and deconstructing them. They went so overboard on racism and sexism coverage that he was able to use it to paint them as being part of the 'rigged system' that was trying to get Clinton elected. Since no one thought he had a chance, there was no desire to take him seriously, and the coverage remained a circus of allegations and denigrations that hid the lack of any political experience or know-how on his part.