I was in college in the run-up to Trump's election. I knew a lot of left-leaning people who were very tired of the neo-liberal status quo, and who were willing to put their time and money into making Obama's promised but undelivered change into something real. And then along came Donald Trump, and, "OMG look how awful he is! Vote Blue No Matter Who!"

It's a sucker's game, and the voters on both sides of the spectrum get taken again and again and again. "Sure, Our Politicians are Bad, but the Other Side's Politicians are Much Worse!" Voting for the lesser evil for decades is just taking the scenic route to Hell as a country.

Meanwhile, no matter who's in charge, there's always just enough votes in Congress for military spending and corporate bailouts, but never enough votes for any sort of significant populist economics or meaningful regulation that might push back against the billionaire/big corporation stranglehold on the country and government. (President Obama, with a working Democratic majority, delivered... a national health care plan designed by the right-libertarian Cato Institute and pioneered at the state level by his Republican opponent Mitt Romney.)

> And then along came Donald Trump, and, "OMG look how awful he is! Vote Blue No Matter Who!"

And that would have been the correct choice. Because he's not just the worst person to be president, he was very clearly, even in 2015, among a small handful of the worst people with any kind of following to ever run for the job (maybe not as bad as David Duke, at least as bad as Lyndon LaRouche).

It's really simple: if there are two candidates with a chance of running for the job and only one of them is very evidently a malignant narcissist, you pick the other one. Regardless of their policies!

Trump was easily identifiable as erratic, self-centred and profoundly dangerous and that has been borne out.

(You'll get no argument from me that Mitt Romney got a raw deal both from timing and from the old school of political rough-and-tumble, especially seeing as he's often to the left of Gavin Newsom)