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Hillary Clinton didn’t just win the popular vote. She won it by a substantial margin.

By the time all the ballots are counted, she seems likely to be ahead by more than 2 million votes and more than 1.5 percentage points, according to my Times colleague Nate Cohn. She will have won by a wider percentage margin than not only Al Gore in 2000 but also Richard Nixon in 1968 and John F. Kennedy in 1960.

These comparisons — and I know they’re painful for many people to hear — highlight a dilemma for the suddenly bereft Democratic Party.