It was Hillary's to lose but the D's did have 2 terms which made it tougher. Nonetheless, Trump gave her fodder daily. She lost to Obama when he was hardly known. Nearly lost to an old and little known socialist atheist/Jew. Email scandal. Benghazi. Whitewater. Pay to play laundering / vast personal riches. All the scandals from the 90s. Deplorables. Saying blacks and Muslims can't succeed regardless of circumstance / "professional never do wells".

Her supporters act like she was squeaky clean. When I chatted with them they had hardly no knowledge of her or Bill's checkered past.

I've heard people say she lost because she's a woman. That's like the QB throwing 4 interceptions and saying they lost because the kicker missed a field goal.

that's assuming a lot. maybe trump won, more than anything else, because he was the republican candidate in a year that a two term democrat was sitting in the presidency.

It's fair to say I'm assuming an interpretation that's difficult to prove on its own merit, but the implied counter-interpretation here implies that it was perfectly normal for him to be the republican nominee in the first place, and par for the course. Tides go in, tides go out. You can't explain that.