I thought it was, "if you nominate a candidate against whom a successfull multidecade smear campaign has been run, turnout among the people that are otherwise likely to vote for your party will be dangerously depressed."

Trump was supported by a smaller share of the voting public than the losing candidate in the last Presidential election (about equal to the 2008 loser, and smaller than the losers in 2000 and 2004, as well) -- with less of the eligible population voting at all than in 2012.

> Why was the birther and the racial element so prominent during the Obama years?

The racial element has been a factor in pretty much every US election ever; heck, the stark divisions over racial policy underlies some of the most notorious provisions of the original constitution. It's the single most consistent and enduring political divide in the US. It wold only be noteworthy if it hadn't bee particularly prominent with a black candidate or incumbent in the Presidency.

You must be kidding me. What do you think Trump himself was doing? He is the epitome of an obnoxious screaming asshole, and he won! His approach clearly works.

It's a pity that the Democrats didn't have an anti-Trump on their side. Maybe he could have been the kryptonite that cost Trump the election. As it was, the old polite, wet rag politics that Clinton represented was defeated. (That's not to say that I'd want an anti-Trump as President either, or that I like screaming assholess, as long as they're on the left, but a more confrontational, "tell it like it is" style is clearly what gets media attention and is attractive to a lot of voters.)

In the future, the left needs to be more outspoken and confrontational towards the right, not more compromising and conciliatory as Obama has been, because the latter only leads towards moving the party further to the right.

Instead, the Democrats need to further differentiate themselves from the Republicans, and move further to the left. Otherwise they're going to keep being seen as Republican-lite, and few are going to get excited enough to vote for them (rather merely than voting against an even worse Republican option).

Sadly, given how the Democrats have behaved in the past, it's more likely that as a response to losing to Trump, the Democrats are just going to move even further to the right, in an effort to capture the "independent" vote (who were right-wing enough to vote for Trump this time around) instead of trying to win over the many more people who didn't even bother to vote because they were disillusioned with both the Republicans and Democrats.

Ha. Did you manage to say that with a straight face? What's next? Ask a cat to bark?

To be clear. Not insulting you. I hear ya. I agree. But the request is pointless.

Trump belittled everybody for years.