You may have heard: it's an election year. If you're just hearing it, then you should really reconsider where you're getting your news. The race between Putin's friend Donald and Grandma Nixon looked about over last month; Clinton was averaging 7+ points over Trump in both national and key swing state polls (just in case you're not familiar, that would look something like 44% of the country for Clinton, 37% for Trump and the rest divided amongst Gary Johnson and Jill Stein). That kind of lead was unprecedented in modern times, a bigger lead given the time in the election cycle than Bush had in 2000 and 2004, and even bigger than Obama had in 2008 and 2012. Polling aggregate Five Thirty Eight had Clinton at an 89% chance to win the White House at her peak in August. However here in mid-September, less than 50 days away from the election, the odds look a lot different. National polls have the race at a dead heat, and her odds to win the White House sit at just 60%, a far cry from where she sat at this time last month, and all of this begs the question: can Hillary Clinton lose? For those of you too enamored with nebulous concepts of respect towards a flag and a song, I'm here to tell you that yes she can, and if trends hold, probably will. The reason things have gone south start and end with the candidate herself. Hillary Clinton has some fatal flaws, don't get me wrong, none of them compare to the flaws of one DJ Trump, but they're the reason we might get a racist populist on Pennsylvania ave. Hillary Clinton has never fully supported her base, she's made terrible political moves, and she's surrounded by scandal. These short comings, combined with Trump's new strategy of not insulting Gold Star families, have tipped the election in the other direction.

Let's begin this conversation on where Hillary Clinton should have begun her campaign: the liberal base. The monolith that's voted Democrat since the mid-1960s is less than in love with their candidate. Is it the fact that she championed the war on drugs in the 1990s, disproportionately locking up millions of people of color for two decades? Or perhaps it's the fact that until 2013 she believed that same-sex couples did not have the right to marriage. Maybe it's her ties to Wall Street, the fact that she once identified as a Republican, or that she wants to bomb the hell out of the middle east? Whatever her reason, she's so far out of sync with her base, that a 75-year-old, self-proclaimed socialist from Vermont won 23 states and garnered 13 million votes. The distaste for Clinton from liberals, especially young liberals, has pushed millions of votes, that would typically flow Democrat, toward third party candidates Gary Johnson and Jill Stein, whose candidacies have hurt Clinton far more than they hurt Trump.

Now that we've discussed Clinton's shortcomings as a politician, let's discuss her problems as a candidate. Clinton has made plenty of questionable political moves over the course of this cycle, beginning back in primary season when she shifted out of any questions regarding her speeches to Wall Street, including an interaction where she literally laughed off questions about said speech transcripts.

Furthermore when asked about her email scandal (which we'll discuss here in a moment) Clinton gave an answer so blatantly false and arrogant, that she earned four Pinocchio's from The Washington Post, as well as poll position and hundreds of thousands of votes. Finally just last week, Clinton generalized half of Trump supporters as "a basket of deplorables" effectively cementing millions of votes for Trump, and further characterizing herself as out of touch and uninterested in the views of half the country. Whatever she believes personally, these are terrible political moves -- moves that push away moderates, the far left, and Republicans alike.

Finally, let's touch on scandal, not the TV show ever growing in popularity, but rather the bug that's bit the Clinton's, well, forever. Here's a list of scandals associated with the Clinton's ranging from 1975 to today: Whitewater, Troopergate, Paula Jones, Monica Lewinsky, Travelgate, Vince Foster's suicide, Juanita Broaddrick, The Clinton Foundation, Paid Speeches, Sidney Blumenthal, Foggy Bottom, Benghazi, and of course Emails. Each and every scandal has its own special story; some of them are legitimate, some of them seem at least in part fabricated. However, the former Secretary of State's inability to escape scandal has hindered her ability to sell herself as the trustworthy candidate.

Look, at the end of the day these Hillary Clinton's negatives, although large, still pale in comparison to the problems with Donald Trump. However, her inability to overcome her past, and adapt to be a more tactful and strategic politician shifts her potential White House loss, off the shoulders of the American people, squarly onto her own.