Dissatisfied progressives weren't responsible for the loss, the problem was independents

This post got buried as a response 20 posts into a thread on another topic and I was hoping for some discussion on it.

There were Dems who thought Obama compromised too much with the R's, wasn't hard enough on Wall St., was too militaristic with the drones, too slow to come around on gay marriage - but they still turned out and voted for him in 2012 against the greater foe, just like Republicans do.

There appears to have been more of a problem in this election with people lacking enthusiasm for Hillary. She would have helped herself with a more straightforward answer about the email earlier on, so that she seemed more credible. I don't think the problem this election was with disloyal Democrats as much as independents, who (very wrongly, IMO) became convinced that Hillary was as corrupt or more corrupt than Trump and that saw their bad qualities as a trade off.

The media had a lot to do with this, and the legions of fools who see the Washington Post, NY Times as less trustworthy than the BS sources they get online. But, because there was a kernel of truth to Hillary handling her email server inappropriately and she didn't own up to that early, the right was able to piggyback a boatload of narrative on top of it and lots of independent voters bought into that perception.

A "cleaner" Democratic candidate like Biden, would have carried this election easily. I don't think it was about Hillary not being progressive enough and progressives not being enthused. It was the independents who saw a false equivalency of Hillary and Trump both being bad choices.