Like every presidential election that liberals lose, years later we’re still hearing about how unfair it all was. Of course, the favorite complaint of liberals this time around is “Russia did it!” Even if you accept for the sake of argument that Russia wanted Trump to win and hacked John Podesta’s email (and neither of those assertions may be true), buying some inconsequential Facebook ads for both sides and revealing the contents of John Podesta’s emails (none of which turned into truly major stories) wasn’t exactly a game changer.

Liberals also noted that Hillary would have won had the election been decided by the popular vote. This is like noting that if football games were decided by passing yards instead of the score, the Patriots would have beaten the Eagles in the Super Bowl. It doesn’t work that way, by design. We’ve also heard complaints that Bernie Sanders is responsible, presumably for daring to run against Hillary at all and we can’t forget “sexism.” That’s always a liberal rallying cry.

Moreover, it is impossible to overemphasize that, other than a few true believers, almost all of the political professionals (myself included) thought Hillary would win. In fact, if you believe Michael Wolff’s book, Fire and Fury, even the Trump campaign thought it was going to lose – and no wonder.

Just look at these numbers from June of 2016,

In the latest ABC News poll, Trump’s unfavorable ratings among all Americans have hit 70 percent; and 77 percent of women view him unfavorably. His favorable rating among his base of white men is 46 percent, down from 54 percent in last month’s ABC News poll. Only 47 percent of self-identified conservatives view him favorably, down from 58 percent in May.

On top of that, Trump’s campaign staff were widely considered to be mediocre because the best staffers didn’t want to be associated with him back then. His get-out-the-vote and data operations were weak. The Billy Bush “Grab ’em by the p*ssy” tape was about as good as it gets for an October surprise and… he still EASILY beat Hillary Clinton.

How? Well, a big part of it seems to be because Hillary Clinton was the worst candidate ever run by a major party in American history. Why?

1. Unlikable

If you just apply the “Whom would you rather go to a ballgame with?” test to elections, it explains the winner of every presidential election at least back to Nixon and arguably even longer. In Hillary’s case, her own husband probably wouldn’t put her on a list of people he’d want to go to a ballgame with. Hillary combined being the most hated Democrat in the country for Republicans with being completely uninspiring to her own party. In the year of the outsider when even Ted Cruz was too “establishment” (LOL) for Republicans and Bernie Sanders was getting traction, Clinton was the ultimate insider. She has none of her husband’s charisma, rather famously referred to Republicans as her “enemies” as well as “deplorables” during the campaign, and her agenda could have been fairly summed up as, “I am a woman and therefore, I should be president!”

2. Sickness

Most people had no idea what was wrong with Hillary Clinton, but pretty clearly SOMETHING was physically wrong with her. Of course, since Hillary lies like a lying liar who just invented a lying machine for an Olympic lie-off, no one believed any of her lame excuses. She had multiple falls, was constantly coughing, and was rather famously dragged into a van like a sack of potatoes after a 9/11 memorial service. The presidency is a high-energy, difficult, stressful position and, quite frankly, she didn’t seem like she was physically up to the job.

3. Unaccomplished

Like Obama before her, Hillary was not qualified to be president. She married the right guy, parlayed that into a short and largely irrelevant tenure in the Senate, lost a presidential campaign, and then had a short, well-below-average run as secretary of state. There was absolutely nothing in her background that should have made anyone think, “Wow! With her accomplishments, she would make a great president.” In fact, one of the more hilarious things conservatives did early in the campaign was to put Hillary Clinton supporters in front of a camera and then ask them to talk about Hillary‘s accomplishments. Almost inevitably they blurted out some “You go, girl” platitude because none of them could come up with anything.

4. The email scandal

One of the great ironies of Hillary’s campaign is that the email issue that bedeviled her whole campaign was known to everyone through the Democratic primaries. Every voter who pulled the lever for her knew she might be facing serious legal troubles down the road. The FBI investigation of Clinton started in JULY of 2015 and it was widely believed to be serious. After all, there are people who have gone to jail for being less careless with classified information than Hillary Clinton. In fact, the general assumption most Republicans (myself included) make is that if Hillary hadn’t been treated as “above the law” by James Comey, she’d be in jail today for what she did. So, yes, she deserved those “lock her up” chants and James Comey didn’t hurt her campaign so much as gave her a huge break. After all, it’s hard to show up at campaign rallies if you’re sitting in prison.

5. Baggage

https://youtu.be/YynIy92uQ9I

Hillary Clinton had a baggage train behind her as long as the Mississippi River and luckily for Trump, it almost perfectly canceled out his weaknesses. You don’t like how Trump treats some women? Then, I have two words for you: Bill Clinton. Did you have a problem with some of Trump’s business practices? Well, let me refer you to Whitewater, The Clinton Foundation, and what many people believed were credible bribery allegations traced back to Hillary’s time as secretary of state. Do you think Trump can be dishonest? Well, remember when Hillary claimed she landed under sniper fire in Bosnia even though the scariest thing that happened was a young girl handing her flowers? Every scandal from her husband’s time in office (and there were many of them) was hanging around her neck like an albatross. Other than perhaps Anthony Weiner (WHO WAS ACTUALLY TIED TO HER CAMPAIGN through Huma Abedin), there wasn’t a more scandal-plagued Democrat they could have run.