2016 Postmortem

You could just as easily say that Republicans are a regional party, a rural America party, because they only won 4 coastal states and did poorly in parts of the country with large populations.

Hillary won by a significant popular vote margin and if 100,000 more people had voted for Hillary in the Rust Belt then we would be singing about how everything is peachy.

100,000 votes may cost a single election, but they do not indicate that we are doomed forever any more than Al Gore's close loss meant we were doomed forever.

Should we pay more attention to the rust belt? As long as we do not neglect our social issues and minorities, I'm okay with it. The obvious answer is to actually campaign there more often. Very little advertising was put into Wisconsin and Michigan was left out of the first round of ad buys. Clinton didn't campaign in Wisconsin. Why? Polls miscalculated our odds. Now we know better. We now know to focus more GOTV efforts and campaign time in the rust belt.

Anyone who is trying to make this look like the end of the Democratic party has an agenda. Just a month ago we were talking about the end of the Republican party. Reality doesn't change that fast. The truth is, neither parties were really at their end. It's all hyperbole.