“There’s small choice in rotten apples.”—Shakespeare

I  am really quite tired of re-litigating the last election, and as such I really wish that both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton might respectively come to some reconciliation with reality.

Trump thinks he won the greatest landslide in history, when the fact is that some 70-odd thousand votes in three states provided him a relatively narrow electoral college victory while losing the popular vote, and Clinton seeks a reason for why she lost in every place except where it is rightfully to be found—her mirror.

The latest attempt at revisionist history came last week, when amid the genuine concerns about foreign meddling in domestic presidential politics and potential obstruction of justice, Clinton interjected the asinine when she said, “I take full responsibility for all my decisions, but that’s not why I lost the election.”

Well, madam, in the big picture, yes it is.

I know it is a pretty tough thing to have to come to grips with, Mrs. Clinton, but the fact is that Donald Trump just might be the most uninformed, outrageous and most unstable presidential candidate nominated by the Republican Party in its history and you let him beat you.

Try as she might to avoid it, the presidency of Donald Trump is destined to be Hillary Clinton’s legacy.

Let’s review actual reality for just a minute.

From the time the first term of Barack Obama’s presidency had come to an end, it was a foregone conclusion among all of those who mattered within the Democratic Party that Hillary Clinton—former first lady, former senator, former secretary of state—would be the Democratic Party’s nominee to succeed him in office. There was really quite prevalent talk of her being the “most qualified candidate in history,” which was as patently nonsensical as it was brazen and the conventional wisdom was that she would cruise to first her party’s nomination and then to a quick dispatch of whomever emerged from the wide but not deep pool of Republicans.

Hillary was, purely and simply, the anointed one, America’s first “Madam President” in wating. But a funny thing happened on the way to her coronation.

In a nutshell, people remembered they did not like Hillary Clinton.

Throughout the anointment process, you see, the everybody who’s anybody within the Democratic Party lost track of a very basic fact—before the arrival on the scene of that black guy with the muslim name who had somehow managed to vanquish her four years prior, Hillary Clinton, in virtually every political popularity poll, was consistently viewed as the most divisive political figure in the country.

Despite all of her exposure to it, none of the individual charm and retail political skills of her husband was ever acquired by Hillary. Bill Clinton could interact with a crowd of people and they believed him when he said he felt their pain. Hillary could interact with that same crowd of folks and leave them feeling cold. Those who know her well say she is warm and friendly, but to those who did not know her well, those traits were never transmitted.

So folks didn’t like her, but perhaps more importantly, folks didn’t trust her, either. “Slick Willie” was almost a term of endearment for Bill, but it was as if the phrase “too slick by half” was invented for Hillary. For as much of the electorate that adored the notion of first woman president Hillary, there was as much that simply did not trust her personally.

Strike 1: Didn’t like; Strike 2: Didn’t trust. Strike 3 was a nasty slider that nobody really saw coming: Clinton was ‘the Establishment” manifested in what turned out to be a change election. What she thought was “her vote,” in the Midwest turned out to be what elected Trump.

So yes, the infamous “Comey letter” and the Russian hacking via Wiki-leaking in the final weeks hurt Clinton, but it was not—regardless of her failure to accept it—that which beat her. Hillary Clinton the public persona, is what beat Hillary Clinton the candidate because on top of not being liked or trusted, she ran a “prevent defense” campaign which can and did lose a game seemingly won.

Rue it as she might, deny it as she is, the presidency of Donald Trump is destined to be the legacy of Hillary Clinton—and for that, history is not likely to be kind.

Ray Mosby is editor and publisher of The Deer Creek Pilot in Rolling Fork.