"Oh we have a madman in the presidency because the Democrats forced Hillary on us"

[karynnj]

21. What is even meant by "the Democrats forced Hillary on us"?

It is pretty clear that Hillary worked to get most powerful Democrats behind her almost from the point where she stepped down as Secretary of State - or even before that. This is NOT unfair, or something unethical, immoral etc ... All of the important people who supported her supported her because they thought she was a good choice - and it says something that they knew her.

It is true that that overwhelming support very early on could have precluded many from running. Yet, this was the choice of those potential opponents. In fact, many strong candidates, not favored in a particular year - either because someone else is a strong front runner for the nomination or because Democrats winning that year was unlikely - opt to wait their time, especially if they are young enough. ( Obama was an exception to that.)

It is very possibly true that Obama agreed to both make HRC SoS and his preferred successor to get support of both Clintons in 2008 and 2012. If true, it was a choice he likely made because he thought it improved his chances to both win and to accomplish the goals that he had. However, that would make sense ONLY if HRC was likely to do a good job, which she did. (In fact, in Kerry's oped last week in the NYU, he gives an example of Obama's foreign policy that I wish she would have used last year. He wrote of how when Russia invaded Georgia at the end of the Bush years, Bush objected, but could do nothing. When Russia invaded Ukraine, because we had improved relations especially in Europe, sanctions on Russia stopped them from going further. Hillary did speak of repairing the relationships damaged, but this example shows how that strengthened our ability to react. (It also counters the idea that Russia was stronger under Obama, than under Bush.)

Getting back to "forced on us" -- HRC won the nomination because she won the primaries. You can second guess whether someone who did not run might have come in and won a big enough share of both her votes and Bernie's votes to win the nomination -- and then ran better against Trump.

As you state, though, this was a clear choice -- probably the clearest choice since Johnson/Goldwater! One statistic that stands out is that Trump won a large percent of the people who had unfavorable opinions on HRC and Trump. This suggests that these were mostly Republicans who voted for party, the Supreme Court or simply for change.

Another Democrat might have sensed they needed to shore up the union/working class/white/rust belt or managed to gracefully tamp down the divisive identity issues without minimizing the underlying issues. However, the difficulty of being heard once the Republican echo chamber dominated what people in many areas heard can not be overstated. That it gave convenient scapegoats to people concerned that they were falling very short on their expectations to live the life their parents and grandparents could was very attractive -- casting the blame away from them and giving an easy solution - elect Trump. What we do know is that reason, careful studies, graphs showing all economic statistics improving do not work here, partly because they suggest that things have gotten better which does not match their own dissatisfaction. (In retrospect, Trump playing I can't get no satisfaction - over the Rolling Stones object was likely a better choice than I thought - as it likely provided a refrain for his supporters.)