OPINION:
With the 2016 presidential election now more than 40 days in our rearview mirror, the Democratic Party continues to play its version of political whack-a-mole with excuses of how and why Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump. When a good football coach talks to the press after a loss, he doesn’t blame his offensive coordinator, special teams coach, list of injured players, or the referees. He takes the heat himself.
The Democrats, from the top down, including President Obama and Mrs. Clinton herself, have tried to hit every ’mole’ on the board as to how this happened. We’ve heard them cite numerous reasons: James Comey, unfair media coverage, Wikileaks, Mrs. Clinton won more popular votes than Mr. Trump. The latest is that Russians did Mrs. Clinton in. The old my-dog-ate-my-ballots bit won’t work, although Mrs. Clinton did sign onto recount efforts.
The left never says that if Mrs. Clinton hadn’t used a private server during her tenure as secretary of State, there would have been no FBI investigation. Maybe the media would have been more friendly if Mrs. Clinton had held a real press conference now and then, or if she had visited Wisconsin instead of fundraising in Hollywood and New York. The list of reasons for her loss is long.
Donald Trump won 306 electoral college votes, including in the Democratic strongholds of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. He was a better (if flawed) candidate than Mrs. Clinton and ran a much better campaign than she did. Still, I bet Mrs. Clinton and her Democratic friends will continue to make excuses even as they watch Mr. Trump take the oath of office.
RANDALL STEPHENS
Falls Church
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