just always on my hobby horse of "obama '08, even when being cowardly about gay marriage and doing Purple America stuff, did not run a campaign primarily fueled by telling his own supporters 'fuck you and eat shit' and palling around with the most extreme right wing people in the GOP"
I also think the 2016 and 2024 elections showed just how important the catastrophically bad economic situation in 2008 was for Obama's win.
2016 is a difficult election to use as an example for anything because, much as ppl hate to admit it (and as lousy a candidate/shitty human being as she was), clinton won the popular vote by nearly 3 million. 2016 shows one thing: america has a weird-ass electoral system.