* he won thanks to 304 electoral votes and ~3,000,000 less popular votes.

Neither candidate was campaigning for a popular vote, they were both campaigning to win the electoral college. Which Trump did because ~63,000,000 Americans decided, purely of their own free will, that he was the better candidate. No matter how much you try to retroactively gerrymander the outcome, both candidates were playing on a level playing field, one of them won and one of them lost. It’s really a testament to democracy that an outsider candidate can prevail over the amount of establishment support Hillary had.

There's so much wrong with this comment. Correct, he received ~63m votes. Hillary received 65.85m votes. He won because our presidential election system is based on an electoral college (which may be debated as a plus or minus). But that also means certain states have a disproportionate amount of representation with respect to their population.

Please don't delude yourself or at least attempt to be honest. Races at the county and state level matter a lot. It matters that outside of a couple of states, the winner take all electoral system can have a significant impact on elections.

Yes, those are the rules that have been established, that both parties are privy to when developing their campaign strategy.

But let's not reduce that to "oh, one person won because people liked them more."

Nobody complains about the electoral college when their candidate wins. But when they do complain about it, you’ll notice they tend to only mention the shortcomings that support their point of view. For instance, you’ll never hear a Democrat talk about all of the Republican votes that are suppressed in the large liberal states.

Both candidates entered a race to win the electoral college. The race was fair and one of them won. You can’t claim some moral victory by counting the popular vote, because every candidate would campaign very differently to contest a popular vote.

I think you’re correct about one thing though, it is an oversimplification to say that people liked him more. It would be more accurate to say that they thought he would be a better president.