Donald Trump pulled off a stunning upset victory over Hillary Clinton on Tuesday night, rallying what he called the “forgotten men and women of our country” to win states such as Pennsylvania and Michigan that had not voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 1988.

But Democrats had a simpler answer for why Clinton lost. As one Democratic strategist close to Clinton told The Post, it all came down to “one word: Comey.” Too bad for Democrats there are zero electoral votes in the State of Denial. FBI Director James Comey didn’t use a private e-mail server to conduct official State Department business and put 110 classified e-mails on that unsecured server. Comey didn’t fail to turn over some 14,900 e-mails to the FBI after assuring Americans that “I turned over everything I was obligated to turn over.”

Comey didn’t lie to the American people about Benghazi, publicly blaming the attacks on “inflammatory material posted on the Internet.” Comey didn’t tell Democratic voters he was against free-trade deals, but then tell Brazilian bankers that his dream was for “hemispheric . . . open trade and open borders.”

Comey didn’t have a foundation that accepted millions of dollars in donations from foreign governments during his tenure as secretary of state. He didn’t give, as I wrote last month, “special treatment to Clinton Foundation donors after the Haiti quake, asking for them to be identified as ‘FOBs’ (friends of Bill Clinton) or ‘WJC VIPs’ (William Jefferson Clinton VIPs).”

Why did Hillary Clinton lose? Not because of Comey. She lost because exit polls showed that 54 percent of voters believe she is “corrupt.”

To the elites in Washington, her corruption was apparently no big deal, at least not compared with their horror at the prospect of a Trump presidency. But Americans correctly saw her corruption as corrosive to our democracy.

This election was a popular repudiation of Clinton’s corruption and deceit — and she owns that. But there is one person besides herself whom she can blame: President Obama. Because while Clinton may have lost to Donald Trump, it was Obama who created him.

Three days after his inauguration, when Obama met with congressional leaders to discuss his proposed economic stimulus.

Republican leaders gave him a list of modest proposals for the bill. Obama dismissed them, telling the assembled Republicans that “elections have consequences” and “I won.” Backed by the largest congressional majorities in decades, he proceeded to push the largest spending bill in history through Congress with almost entirely Democratic votes.

He later did the same with ObamaCare — ramming it though over the objections of the American people and every single Republican in Congress and selling his bill with a series of lies — that Americans could keep their doctors and their health plans.

This helped produce the Tea Party revolt that put the House in GOP hands in 2010.

Then in 2014, Republicans took control of the Senate.

But losing his congressional majorities didn’t chasten Obama. Instead, he doubled down, declaring he would use his “pen and a phone” to impose his agenda through a raft of executive orders.

When Obama couldn’t pass his Dream Act to provide amnesty for some not here legally, he tried to impose it on the American people though unlawful executive action — only to have it overturned by the Supreme Court.

He reached a horrible nuclear deal with Iran and refused to send it to Congress for a straight up-or-down vote.

He also showed contempt for Americans who disagreed with him — dismissing them as “bitter” people who “cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them.” Clinton echoed Obama’s contempt, dismissing half of Trump supporters as a “basket of deplorables.”

This contempt, combined with Obama’s imperious efforts to force big-government liberalism on an unwilling nation, created a backlash in the form of Donald J. Trump. Trump ran against Obama’s signature polices — promising to repeal ObamaCare and scrap the Iran deal.

In other words, Trump tapped into dissatisfaction with Obama on both the right and the left.

He championed the forgotten Americans whom Obama and Clinton dismissed. They responded by electing him decisively.

Sorry, Democrats, you can’t blame that on James Comey.



Special to the Washington Post.