Wha' Happened?

That we were all privy to John Podesta's emails and internal Clinton campaign documents was one of the most peculiar abominations of the 2016 election. 

How did we see those things?  They were stolen by Russian agents, fed to an organization that exists primarily to subvert the integrity of the United States, and then blithely regurgitated by a profit-driven press.

And I read them.  There were details in there that are still relevant.

One that struck me, because I bothered to read the emails that we...Jesus Mary and Joseph, why did the press do this...were given: The Clinton campaign helped give us Donald Trump.

Oh, not directly.  But because...like the similarly realpolitik Vladimir Putin...the Clinton campaign machine viewed him as the weakest, least competent, most defeatable Republican candidate.

And they needed the worst.

All of the polling during the campaign showed Clinton losing to every other Republican.  As the pollster-shamans read the monkey entrails of our culture, she lost to Cruz and to Rubio, to Kasich and to Bush and to...Jesus...there were so many.

She trailed all of them.  In every poll.

All but one.

That one was Trump.  The best polling showed she had a real shot against Trump, because, Lord have mercy.  What proud, decent American would vote for him?  I mean, really.

People who knew what they were doing and had reliable datasets suggested that she could best him...alone among the Republican candidates...by two percent or so.  It was consistent, solid, and replicable, as reliable as one of those European Model trend lines that we use to track the hurricanes battering our coastline.

What we know is that the Clinton campaign did everything in their power to raise the profile of the weakest and least competent candidate.  They actively responded to him, knowing that their engagement would inflame the Republican base, who had been taught to despise Clinton more than they valued competence and integrity and sanity itself.  By inflaming the base, you raise his profile, and by raising his profile, you increase the chances of getting the candidate you want to oppose.

In that, her campaign's steering efforts were successful.  The Clinton campaign got the opponent that they wanted.  And they beat him, in the popular vote, by precisely the margin the very best polling suggested.

So when the question is asked by the person for whom I voted in the last election: Wha' Happened?

The answer can be, legitimately: you got the opponent you wanted.