Forget the primaries. Let's look at everything from the convention onwards. Hillary gave progressives the middle finger with her choice of VP pick and refusal to budge on most aspects of the Democrat party platform. She had their votes in the bag with the classic "don't let Trump in". Her strategy moving forward was to pivot to the centre and win over moderate republicans with an outrage based campaign.

Hillary complained all the time that she has had a 20 year long smear campaign against her; maybe she should have listened to herself. This fact meant she was toxic to the Republicans she was trying to win over and never really had any chance with them.

This is because for every negative aspect of Trump, there was a counter argument that Hillary wasn't perfect either. Sexism? She covered up for Bill Clinton and slandered people accusing him of being a sexual predator. Racism? She was a big supporter of super predator theory. Lying? It leaked that Hillary has a "public and private position" on policies. Dangerous? Hillary led several foreign interventions and the ears of neocon warmongers.

Plus she accepted and even embraced a few damning character assessments because they were the best case scenarios. She had "poor judgement" voting for the iraq war (not because of the Military Industrial complex or political games with Republicans). She was "extremely careless" with her emails (not avoiding FOI laws to run a pay for play scheme as secretary of state).

Meanwhile in an election based on turnout, the most enthusiastic campaigners just weren't interested or even resented Hillary. A problem perhaps? Nope, it didn't matter because the entire mainstream media was insisting there was no way Trump could win. In fact, the Hillary campaign was insisting they didn't even need their votes; maybe it was safe to protest vote for Jill Stein or a write in or not vote, or even vote Trump to scare her a little.

Of course there was a narrative that could get them on side; Trump really was that bad and Hillary would be far better. But nobody wanted to tell that story. Talk about Hillary's flaws on r/politics and get downvoted and spammed by paid shills. All of her countless celebrity endorsements refused to talk about any of her flaws as well. It leaked later that Hillary wanted to write the script of Bernie's endorsements - does this surprise anyone?

This presentation of a perfect image while refusing to put her flaws in context allowed theories like Pizzagate to fester. She is clearly not the perfect person all her endorsers say she is, so maybe her dark secret is that she runs a pedophile ring. The mainstream media with its relentless endorsement of a pro establishment narrative gave "fake news" strength.

All the while Hillary represented the status quo and the inevitable in a system that wasn't working for many people. For many, uncertainty and chaos were their only hope, and that's exactly what Trump offered. Of course, even for anyone listening closer, Hillary showed herself to be a weathervane on policy, basically coming around to social issues once they had popular support, and following Wall street on economic issues. At least Trump was consistent on TPP and NAFTA, and had a protectionist economic vision; something "different" that might just work.

But the response to Trump supporters was name calling. No attempt to convince you that for your goals, Hillary would be the better vote. Just name calling and shame, from Hillary's key campaign staff and celebrity endorsements. No wonder there were so many shy Trump voters; people who might have been up for a discussion, but instead let their true intentions fester in the dark.

In the end Hillary didn't win a single one of her target states; she got good swings in Georgia, Arizona and Texas but they still went Republican as everyone thought they would. The Republicans got about the same number of votes as the past 2 elections, but the Democrat turnout was surprisingly weak. Maybe they needed more authentic and enthusiastic volunteers convincing their friends and family to vote, but Hillary didn't do anything to win them over.

That's "what happened"