There are many more details to come out of our continuing political saga, soap opera, meltdown, but at this point we have enough details to know what should have been suspected all along: Hillary was a great candidate.

This doesn't mean she didn't make a bunch of mistakes - whom among us has not?

We already knew some of the pressures Hillary faced by being an older woman instead of a young cool male cat like Obama - look at the traction Beto got despite having huge skeletons in his open closet vs. the "what designer clothes do you wear?" she got as Sec'y of State - or the inevitable problems of having a track record in politics vs. the clean slate of a newbie - sausage making turns ugly over decades.

We also knew of the unprecedented moves of calling a presidential candidate in front of Congress to try to derail their candidacy, to subpoena their emails to look for any dirt or slightly controversial phrasing, the FBI's ignoring standard procedure but instead ad libbing a damning condemnation on a closed case, and then late in the campaign publicly opening the case only to quickly shut it down again as an unearned present to her opponent.

We also learned that a rogue cell of New York FBI agents were leaking through Giuliani, which also resulted in various "Hillary will be indicted" speculation picked up by the NY Times, even as they grossly & prematurely publicly quashed the possibility that Trump was or would be investigated over Russian ties [and this pressured Comey to give his 2nd ill-advised notice to Congress which was immediately illegally leaked by Republican congressman Nunes].
 

We knew Hillary's campaign chairman's emails were hacked (but not hers) along with the DNC's, and released by Wikileaks with a steady drip-drip-drip and heavy spin through the last months of the campaign. We now know that Republicans' and varous newspapers' emails were stolen by Russians as well, but not released (whether they were used for extortion is unconfirmed). [we also know Hillary's primary targeting database was temporarily made open & downloaded by her opponent & potentially released to others - details remain unknown]

We knew Hillary's health had been attacked as early as 2014 via Roger Stone's disinfo campaign, in Jan 2016 by Stone's colleague Jerome Corsi, in May by Bernie Sanders' supporter Susan Serandon, but it wasn't until late July 2016 that a full-court press started combining with supposed content in an upcoming Wikileaks selected release of stolen emails - by Assange, by Corsi, by Stone, by Infowars, by Drudge, by Fox which was soon repeated by the rest of the news media - and then Assange released an anodyne email on "decision fatigue" pumped up to a health crisis, followed by a poll asking for audience input on what Hillary might be suffering. [Pretending to be a journalist holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy, Assange faced no legal constraints at that time.]

We also now know Corsi & Stone knew the scandalous "Hillary killed Seth Rich" was false from the beginning, a story that helped instill distrust of Hillary in Bernie supporters during the critical convention unity time, while freeing Wikileaks and Russia of their role in the episode.

We now know the NRA used its connections with Russia to funnel even more illegal money then usual into the pro-Trump campaign, and through the arrest & deal negotiations with Butina and those she recruited, the amount of influence her circle, including the odd participation of British figures like Nigel Farage in Mississippi politics and other states.

We also learned that Cambridge Analytica played a powerful background role in analyzing stolen Facebook data sets to give the Trump campaign an advantage on targeting ads, but over the following year we've learned of the involvement of other suspect actors, including AggregateIQ (a small opaque Canadian firm illegally involved in Brexit as well). And we've step-by-grudging-step learned just how much vast internal support & special API access Facebook gave to both the Trump & the Brexit campaigns (partially assisted by the UK confiscating Facebook's records on their last unhelpful appearance before angry MPs).

And as of yesterday's filing by the Special Counsel we now know for sure that Trump's long-time lawyer under the illegal instructions of candidate Trump illegally paid off 2 of Trump's mistresses to bury a story that would have harmed him in the election - abetting a felony.

But there's so much more - we've learned of 2 long-term Trump Tower-in-Moscow deals still ongoing through 2016 - both the Rozov deal and the oft-ignored Agalarov deal that Seth Abramson keeps focusing on (and it was further revealed that the female Russian "lawyer" at that mysterious June 2016 Mayflower meeting Donald denied knowing about - but his kids attended - was actually a GRU agent). And these were tentative sweetheart deals tied to getting Russian sanctions lifted (saving Russia billions) and helping get revenge against Hillary for an earlier set of sanctions on Russia as SoS. Quid pro quo, something of vast monetary value, enough for Trump to offer Putin a $50 million penthouse.

Meanwhile the press gave Hillary a wicked time over the Clinton Foundation's supposed transgressions, while Trump's Foundation was found to be engaging in self-dealing & illegal practices and shut down by New York state including a criminal investigation, with the board members - all of Trump's kids from Ivana - prohibited from engaging in any similar non-profit work, while the students ripped off in Trump's scam university were already paid off in a multi-million dollar settlement.

But likely the most important point is realizing actors and intelligence from Russia, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Britain and Israel are avowed to have worked together to help Trump in multiple ways by hacking and spreading disinformation, all illegal assistance by foreign parties, much of the quid pro quos already acknowledged with others (like Saudi Arabia's nuclear ambitions) becoming clearer all the time. Many of these details are revealed already in court filings by Mueller & SDNY; more will come out as the full extent of plea and cooperation deals comes out from Michael Flynn, Michael Cohen, George Papadopoulos, Rick Gates, Felix Sater, Maria Butina.

It should be remembered that Rick Gates & Paul Manafort used similar kinds of intrigue against Yulia Tymoshenko to discredit her and put her in jail - the "lock her up" chants were no coincidence.

And none of this addresses voter intimidation & disenfranchisement, and other irregularities in specific key states (such as Scott Walker's mysterious contacts with Russians before the surprising Wisconsin primary). But 2018's damaged vote-rigging North Carolina results, Georgia's corrupt behaving Secretary of State, and the once-again unbelievably incompetent and/or crooked results in Florida give an idea that the thwarted recounts in 2016's tight Midwest states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania might have easily divulged enough malfeasance to reverse the counts.

So after all this - but certainly not the end, but only a scary preliminary accounting *still*, we can recognize that Hillary's popular vote lead of 3 million votes was next to miraculous compared to the obstacles most candidates face.

The idea that Hillary should have easily defeated a crooked & annoying, but quirky & oddly appealing candidate who wiped the GOP slate clean with little effort is a meme that for some reason refuses to die. And knowing to what far-reaching ends he had illegal help in persuading the electorate and shutting down the opposition, we can put to bed the idea that he fairly garnered 50% of the electorate's support - a heavily crafted international propaganda scheme carried out with lots of intelligence assistance and huge amounts of dark money tunneled all over the place (see charges & convictions for Deutsche Bank, Cyprus Bank, et al,) makes a mocker of the contention that Hillary "outspent" Trump.

When Obama was running and while in office, people congratulated him on the poise and lack of drama he exhibited under duress. It's about time we acknowledged the same with Hillary - Hillary Clinton ran an impressive campaign and came very close to winning (including a vast popular vote advantage), except for the massive efforts to steal the election from her.

Because we've maintained this illusion that Clinton was such a bad candidate, we've yet to consider what's proper recompense for the election theft that's happened. Let bygones be bygones? Let Pence assume the Presidency after the slow-mo impeachment? Take it out on future candidates?

Sometimes great isn't good enough; sometimes atrocious isn't bad enough. If we think these latest electoral successes are enough, we haven't addressed the tilted playing field that led to this quandary. We've seen a couple of admired leaders pass on this Fall, but in honoring them, we continue to dishonor the one still among us, the one we keep telling to "just go away", and perhaps, like often with women, to "smile" a bit more - maybe then she'd be more "likable" and "authentic". Let's ask the new Republicans whether that'll make them start playing fair. 2018 should make that answer clear.