It's not what we want; it's what we don't want

Looking back on the election, it seems that it was mostly won not on what people wanted, but what they did not want. In order—in my opinion—of the most important, here is a list of what a lot of (I can’t say most, because Hillary Clinton actually got more votes) people voted to reject.

1. Muslims. This would not have been a factor without ISIS because of two reasons. First, ISIS simply believes in killing pretty much everyone—including you and me. Second, and most important, these Middle East conflicts caused an uprooting of people fleeing their homes and attempting to immigrate to other countries, including this one. There were lots of Muslims in the U.S. before the Iraq War and for the most part they existed peacefully alongside other segments of the community. But terrorism plus immigration equals fear. Associated with—but very different from—the Muslim issue is the one villainizing Illegal Mexican emigrants. Without the “Muslim threat,” this would have been a non-issue. With them, they were thrown into the “undesirable” category far more than they had been earlier. And of course, there is always racism associated with  minorities.
2. LGBT equality. I remember when Iran’s then-president Ahmadinejad swore to the U.S. press that there were no gays or lesbians in his country. This is the way most of middle-America feels. And why not? When you're gay in a small town, you probably feel the need to keep your head down. At most they thought of it as an aberration or a sickness. The LGBT marriage law forced them to recognize this as a real thing—and a real threat to their perceived values. Yet I think that it was the transgender bathroom issue that pushed them over the edge. It was a head-exploding issue—one that would have made them vote for a monkey over any candidate that the Dems could have put up.
3. Anything to do with President Obama. His presidency forced previously head-down racists to come out of the woodwork like roaches. To these voters, his legacy must be dismantled. All of it. The vote totals for the last three elections point out greatly that black voters came out in droves for him—he garnered the two highest vote totals in American political history, including an almost ridiculous majority of black registered voters. Clinton? Not so much. Her vote total was over 10 million less than Obama’s.
4. A woman President. Any woman. Some might feel that this should be the number 1 issue rather than number 4, but other countries have women in charge of governments. Any woman candidate supporting high levels of immigration and LGBT equality would have been defeated. Yes, Hillary lost partially because of trumped-up scandals, but any other woman would have had some parts of her past blown up into unrecognizability. Or, failing to find anything, something would have been made up.

A couple of interesting sidebars are that 1. Bernie Sanders, who is very vocal in <I>supporting</i> each of these issues, would probably have lost the election because of it—the first three issues trumping the woman-president one. Looking back, I think that only Joe Biden could have kept the Presidency in Democratic  hands. 2. If Donald Trump had been a woman, espousing the same ideas he voiced on the campaign trail, he would still have won.