Do Dems have a losing platform or was Hillary just a bad Candidate?

[Fuzzy Bear]

She won the popular vote

OK, we can use this argument all over again to ignore all other factors that led to Trump's victory, and feel better about ourselves. The fact remains she blew a winnable race, just like Gore had in 2000.

This is literally the worst thing Democrats could do: cling to one reassuring talking point and be just as blind as before the election (except before it was overconfidence).

Of course, this begs the question as to whether or not Trump would have won the popular vote if the focus of this election was on winning the popular vote, and not "Battleground States".

The Electoral College is "the rules" that dictate strategy of "the game".  It's like NFL football; would strategies be different if there were no field goals, or if they had only 3 downs (as the CFL does) rather than 4 downs to make a 1st down?  The electoral college turns our Presidential selection process into 51 separate state elections, and a huge number of these separate elections have foregone conclusions.  This dictates (A) where candidates will expend resources, and (B) what sort of policies the candidates will emphasize.  The issues pertaining to Hispanic Americans, for example, are legitimate issues, worthy of discussion, but they took on even greater significance due to the demography of FL, AZ, CO, NV, and, to some extent, NC, GA, and even TX.  Issues of the environment took on extended importance because of the role these issues play in PA and OH, and (arguably) MN with its coal miners and workers in fossil fuel-related industries.  Clinton rolled up huge majorities in CA because it wasn't even close, and because there were races locally where Democrats were poised to make advances.

What would be the real world differences if the President were chosen by popular vote?  One difference would be where Presidential candidates spent there time.  Yes, Hillary would have been aggressively campaigning in all of CA, but Trump would be there contesting areas like Bakersfield, Orange County, and Republican pockets of CA where people do vote.  Trump would have spent FAR more money and time, and in WV, MO, OK, etc., trying to ramp up majorities in states where his campaign mailed it in.  

In that case, I believe that Trump would have had at least a 50-50 shot at winning the popular vote because that's how the game would have been played.  

[Fuzzy Bear]

The point that candidates would campaign differently in an election decided by a national popular vote is well-taken. I think that it's the best answer to anyone who insists that a PV/EV discrepancy is a meaningful vindication of the losing candidate.

On the other hand, the campaign with a more sophisticated organization, better funding, and a more advanced data apparatus appears to have blown this presidential election pretty thoroughly, so there's some reason to believe that campaign effects just don't matter that much.

The EC undoubtedly affects voter behavior independent of the campaigns as well. How many Johnson voters would have broke for Trump if their states were competitive? It wouldn't take much of a skew toward Trump over Clinton or non-voting to change the result. My best guess is that this would have given Trump a plurality even if the campaigns hadn't conducted themselves any differently under PV rules.

It's also possible that if you reallocated votes from CA to PA, WI, and MI (if you could), Hillary would have won the EV.  In that case, with nothing different, we'd be talking about all of the things Hillary did right and how Trump shot himself in the foot, miscalculated the mood of America, etc.  Robby Mook, and not Kellyanne Conway, would be in the spotlight, and would be the hottest ticket around.  The pollsters would be praised for pointing out how the fundamental structure of the race gave Hillary an insurmountable advantage, just as it did for Obama in 2012, when Romney picked up late momentum.

Think about 1960.  Nixon was 100K votes shy in the popular votes.  A small shift would have given him the EV, with no fewer votes.  Stephen Ambrose wrote, in his biography of Nixon, about how he'd have been viewed if he had won the EV with the election being as narrow in the PV as it was.  In that case, Nixon would have been viewed as young and vital; HE, and not JFK, would have been the 1st President born in the 20th century.  Nixon, and not JFK, would have been viewed as the winner of the debates.  JFK's youth and inexperience would have been viewed as a huge negative.  And Nixon would not have entered office with the kind of bitterness he entered it in 1969.  One of my biggest reservations about Hillary Clinton is that if she were elected, she would have had the same kind of sense of entitlement and vindictiveness that Nixon came in. 

[Fuzzy Bear]

Fuzzy, I don't think your "if the electoral college wasn't in place, Trump still would have won because he would have shifted his campaign strategy to win the popular vote" makes any sense, because Trump had a totally nonsensical campaign strategy where he was pissing away time in Washington DC, etc.

We'll never know if Trump would have won the popular vote if that were how the race was decided.  But I'm sure that Trump would have spent more resources in areas that haven't seen a Presidential campaign in years.  As would Hillary, for that matter.

As for Trump having a totally nonsensical campaign strategy, that's kind of hard to substantiate, given that he won the Presidential election.  He won ugly, but he won, and his coattails pulled a number of vulnerable Republicans out of the fire to victory.  That's usually considered an indication of a smart campaign strategy on its face.