Even if you’re not a fan of Trump, Putin, or Kellyanne Conway, you’ve got to admit they have a point when it comes to the demoralized Clinton campaign team and the stream of excuses that have been dribbling out from them.  It’s Putin’s fault, it’s Comey’s fault, it’s Assange’s fault. It’s everyone’s fault but their own.

Quit whining and making excuses!  You focused on the wrong things in the campaign and took your eye off the goal — getting enough electoral votes to win.

Sure, the Comey announcement was vindictive and unprofessional, and it was maliciously timed to do maximum damage — but it wouldn’t have been a problem if you didn’t have that stupid private email server in the first place.  No one has ever been able to give a compelling, cogent answer explaining why it was a good idea for you to set it up — because there is none.  The best your supporters can say is “Others did it too.” or “It’s not as bad as things that Trump did.”

Well, leadership is avoiding stupid things that are wrong at the time and can have serious adverse consequences down the road.  So what if your IT people said it was a good idea. (And why not rely on the government IT people in the first place?  Perhaps the State Dept. knows a thing or two about secure communications.)  Did no instinct tell you, “No, this doesn’t seem right.  As a top level government official in a highly sensitive position, I should follow proper government protocols.”?

So what if Colin Powell said, or implied that it might be a good idea.  He’s the guy who told the U.N. flat out that Iraq had nuclear weapons.  Maybe the good judgment he exercised earlier in his career had long-since vanished.

In fact, it seems fairly clear that the reason you didn’t just use the State Dept. server was so that you, not the government, would have control over your emails, and you, not the government would decide which ones needed to be preserved and archived as official government records.  “Trust me, we’re turning over all the ones that are relevant.”  Did you really think that would go over any better than it ultimately did?

And to continue the Iraq analogy, even though Hussein didn’t, in fact, have nuclear weapons, he sure acted like a guy who did.  And even if you didn’t have something nefarious to hide in your emails, you sure acted like someone who did.

You were done in by your own hubris — the belief that the normal rules don’t apply to you, and you don’t trust anyone but your loyal inner circle.  How ironic is that, given the Podesta emails and the fact that Huma forwarded emails to a computer she shared with the low-life Anthony Weiner!

Your notorious penchant for privacy contributed to your undoing.  So enjoy the fact that some government bureaucrat did not take the first cut at determining what emails the public should have access to.  Was it really worth it?  Does it give you solace?  “I blew the election, but at least I didn’t let some GS-13 pore through my emails without my staff screening them first!”  Excellent!!

In any event, a critical element of leadership is adapting to unforeseen circumstances, not being knocked out when the unexpected happens.  A campaign, like life, is unfair.  Deal with it — don’t whine and complain about how tough it is.

And speaking of hubris, where did you get off promoting — or at least condoning –that stupid canard that you were the most qualified person ever to run for President?

You were the First Lady (that is, the wife of the President), a two-term Senator, and the Secretary of State.

Just as a frame of reference, consider how that stacks up next to:

• George Washington – As Commander-in-Chief of the  Continental Army, won a seemingly unwinnable war that secured the colonies’ freedom from England, President of the Constitution Convention that produced the U.S. Constitution; a key figure in establishing the country,
• John Adams – Delegate to the First and Second Continental Congresses., diplomat to France and Holland, minister to England; primary author of the Massachusetts Constitution; played a key role in the colonies breaking away from England and establishing the USA; served as the nation’s first Vice President for 8 years.
• Thomas Jefferson – Principal author of the Declaration of Independence that heralded the colonies’ split from England; Delegate to the Second Continental Congress; Member of the Virginia House of Delegates, where he helped establish the Virginia State Constitution; Governor of Virginia, Minister to France, First Secretary of State; Second Vice President of the United States.
• James Madison – Founding Father, principal architect of the U.S. Constitution, including drafting the Bill of Rights; Member of the Virginia House of Delegates; Member of the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention.  One of three principal authors of the Federalist Papers promoting ratification of the Constitution; member of the U.S. House of representatives; Secretary of State under Jefferson, where he supervised the Louisiana purchase to double the size of the nation.
• Dwight Eisenhower Supreme Commander of Allied forces that defeated Hitler and Mussolini in Europe allowing Western Civilization to continue.  Built and maintained coalition of key allied forces through military and political savvy during nearly apocalyptic conditions; First Supreme Commander of NATO; Army Chief of Staff.

Instead of ludicrously overstating your legitimate qualifications, why didn’t you develop a clear campaign message that was more than “Trump sucks!”  and “I may be unlikeable, but I am better than him!”  Kellyanne Conway may be insufferable, but she is very smart, and she saw that your positive positions were buried in reams of policy papers that no one would ever read, and your campaign to the people was “I’m a woman, and I’m not Trump!”  That is something to excite the voters.

Also, given the fact that you were fighting the impression that you are elitist, why on earth did you and your minions label Trump as “misogynist” and “xenophobic”?  That really connected with the blue collar crowd!  Who besides your Ivy League friends would even know what those words mean, much less talk that way?  You couldn’t just say sexist and anti-immigrant, (and therefore anti-American)??!  That would have gotten your message across clearly and effectively.

Oh, and yes, you did win the popular vote by a lot.  The popular vote is nice.  But aside from driving Trump crazy, what did that get you?  Are you the President?  Is the Republican Congress (and thanks for helping elect a Republican Senate, by the way) going to give him less deference because voters in a few big states overwhelmingly voted for you?  Even if a lot of the legislators weren’t from those states that went for Trump (who carried them into office, by the way), they don’t care that you carried a couple of big states by huge margins.

You knew, or should have known, going into the campaign that the electoral vote was the key.  Oddly, you were the one with the supposedly battle-tested campaign staff, who knew the rules (you surely knew the super-delegate rules for the nomination; how could the Electoral College rules be too obscure for you?), knew how to campaign strategically, and had the ground team to carry it out.  Instead, you were lured into believing that amassing a massive war chest of campaign funds would ensure victory.  How’d that strategy work out for Jeb Bush?  Didn’t you notice?

Having campaign funds is not a bad thing — as long as you use them strategically to get what you need — enough popular votes to win enough electoral votes.  If anyone had said mid-campaign that one of the candidates would chase the fool’s gold of popular votes while the other would campaign strategically to ensure an electoral college win, the “smart” money would have been on you to be strategic and on Trump to chase the chimera of the popular vote.  Guess the smart money wasn’t so smart.

Regardless of your feelings about their substantive policies, it is clear that Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway and Reince Priebus were brilliant strategists — the Karl Roves of today.  Or someone perhaps you can relate to better — James Carville.  (And by the way, how could you forget “It’s the economy, Stupid!”?)  Reports that you disregarded Bill Clinton’s advice to focus on a message of hope for blue collar voters are especially disturbing.

Bill may be a schmuck of a husband (shades of Trump!), but the deal you seemingly made with the devil was you’d stay with him through the Lewinsky and other scandals, and he would help you become president.  You upheld your end of the bargain, and he upheld his — or at least he tried too.  Say what you will about Bill, he knows how to connect with voters, and he knows how to get the votes he needs.  Ignoring blue collar workers — or worse, calling half of them deplorables — also helped to do you in.  And just as Al Gore wouldn’t have Bill campaign extensively for him, and wound up losing as a result, your ignoring Bill’s advice in favor of your mook of a campaign manager was disastrous.  Turns out, Bill wasn’t a dinosaur.  He knew what he was talking about.  And Robby Mook wasn’t a brilliant, modern campaign strategist.  He was simply overmatched.

And now the entire nation will pay for your lazy, careless ways.  Thank you so much!