"I just don't like Hillary..."

[Azathoth]

123. Saw her in person a few times over the years, shook her hand once I think

But was never in a position to sit down and speak with her.

Your description of her fits with what I've heard from others who got to know her personally. In fact, as far as I can remember, I've never heard anyone who didn't have a political axe to grind claim she wasn't pleasant and knowledgeable in person.

But being a smart and charming in one-on-one social situations is not the only thing most people look at when considering presidential candidates. I won't rehash all the serious policy and ethical debates regarding her, as they're in the past and truly insignificant compared ro Trump's unprecedented crime orgy clown show.

But since you concede that she didn't have the charismatic ability to connect with voters through mass communication that her husband did (something that once was impossible to say about her without being accused of Ted Bundy-levels of misogyny), I'll point out just one of the myriad issues that bugged me (and others) about her in 2008: she started her elected career on third base. Yes, lots of millionaires and billionaires attempt to do the same thing, and most of them end up doing nothing but wasting a lot of their own money (*cough* Bloomberg *cough*). But Hillary didn't use her own money, she used her husband's political achievements. And she only ran for two offices: a US Senate seat in one of the bluest states in the Union while her husband still President and controlled the entire national Democratic campaign infrastructure (a win that her supporters read *way* too much into), and the White House (which Hillaryworld had pretty openly admitted was the actual goal from the start). She skipped the part where she first ran for State Assembly, then Congress, then became a governor somewhere, etc. This is important, because not only was the first potential female president on the ballot solely because her husband had gotten her to a place where she could do so (not really a great icon for the history books), but she had also circumvented the natural weeding-out process that keeps people who don't have certain talents from rising to high office (or at least forces them to learn skills to overcome those deficits).

Take AOC. She got swept in as a freshman Congresswoman as part of a wave. And she was a disaster. She didn't have the communication skills, the knowledge of government or policy, or the basics of charisma or good optics for connecting with people outside of a very narrow ideological zone. But now look at her. She's boned up on her knowledge, she has gotten significantly better at delivering interviews and speeches and media stunts, and her penchant for giving Charles Manson-smiles for cameras has suddenly disappeared. She may never be President, but by starting out small and working up she has acquired valuable skills that would be necessary should she try to get elected to higher office. Hillary assumed that because she was smart and knowledgeable and had watched Bill do all this for decades, she could just step in and do it just as well as he did. She couldn't. And while her time as SoS definitely burnished her credentials and added additional gravitas to her candidacy, the nature of the job was not one that helped her strengthen those weaknesses. And by the time she ran again in 2016, the cake was already baked. No one was listening, one way or the other.