Mere pap. If there was a security failure
If? There was a big smoking hole in Lower Manhattan that was a testament to the security failure. Now, understandably, Bush's fans want to blame that on his predecessor (despite the fact the scumbags in the GOP tried to pretend Clinton was just "wagging the dog" when he worked to take Bin Laden out). But we know the timeline well enough.
We know that Bush took office in January 2001. We know that shortly after he took office, the Hart Rudman report came out -- a massive, years-long blue-ribbon, bipartisan analysis laying out crucial, urgent change recommendations to secure the nation against attack (including setting up a centralized homeland security agency, which would have helped to bring disparate pieces of evidence together to give us a clearer picture of threats). We know that Bush shelved that report, doing nothing with it, and instead indicating that at some indeterminate point in the future Cheney would look into the matter. We know that until September of 2001, the president didn't hold even a single principals meeting on terrorism -- despite the fact Clinton had been holding them weekly, as a way to "shake the trees" to keep people mobilized in addressing the threat. We know that Bush ignored the urgent plans put forward by Tenet and Clarke to take the fight to al Qaeda. We know that Bush instead prioritized upper-class tax cuts. We know that he set modern records for vacation time that first year. We know that when he got a presidential briefing telling him that Bin Laden was determined to strike in America, he went on a month-long vacation to his Texas mansion. And we know that only in the ninth month of that run of incredible negligence did the 9/11 attack get carried out.
That's not to say that the security failure wouldn't have happened if we'd had a decent president. It's possible that it would have, even if we'd had a president who'd implemented the Hart-Rudman reforms in a timely way, and had been having weekly meetings on terrorism, and had put in full work days for the month leading up to the attack, and who'd been "running around with his hair on fire" about the imminent threat, the way guys like Tenet and Clarke were. It's possible that the different pieces of evidence we had about what was about to happen still wouldn't have come together in a way that allowed us to identify the plan and stop it. We'll never know, though, because dumbo was asleep at the switch.
The bulk of the 40-plus percent of the U.S. that voted for Trump over the alternative was not, nor is it, brainless or evil.
Nearly every one of them is brainless or evil. There may have been a few who had poor vision and accidentally checked the wrong box, or were temporarily insane, but they're a rounding error in the big picture.
Hillary Clinton says, "I won the places that represent two-thirds of America’s gross domestic product..." -- which means she's ignoring that the places she didn't win have been losing jobs to off-shoring and automation since her husband held office.
As a reminder, those places gained jobs under Clinton, just as they gained jobs under Obama. The job losses occurred under Republican presidencies. Let's take Michigan as an example, since they're one of the ones that went for Trump to throw him the election. Here's what the unemployment rate did under each recent president in Michigan:
GHW Bush +0.9%
Clinton -3.2%
GW Bush +6.5%
Obama -5.9%
Lest you think I'm cherry-picking a single state, here it is for Pennsylvania:
GHW Bush +2.7%
Clinton -3.0%
GW Bush +2.7%
Obama -1.8%
and Wisconsin:
GHW Bush +0.4%
Clinton -0.7%
GW Bush +3.1%
Obama -3.5%
So, for each of those three key states, the pattern was identical: worsening labor markets under the Republicans, improving under the Democrats.
But, sadly, there's a paradoxical effect to these improvements. When times are tough, even racists can be convinced to think about their pocket books ahead of their tribal resentments. And that allows Democrats to win elections after Republicans have trashed the job market. But once things improve, the racists start to take those improvements for granted, and think they have the luxury to vote based on hating "those people" again. So, in a sense you're right that not all those who voted for Trump are brainless or evil. Many of them are brainless AND evil.
I suppose that I should take some satisfaction that they screw themselves while helping people like me, when they vote for Republicans. But they also screw over less fortunate people who were too smart and decent to vote for Republicans, and that's a tragedy.