There’s a reason it was so difficult for Hillary and Bill Clinton to come to grips with her loss to Barack Obama; they haven’t been part of a losing election since 1980, when he lost his initial reelection bid for governor of Arkansas. Even in 2000, when Al Gore finally conceded the presidential election to George W. Bush, the Clintons could a) comfort themselves with the thought that Gore had actually won and b) saw Hillary win her Senate seat that November by a 12-point margin. She won in a walk in 2006. So she had triumphed in the only two elections she contested before this year, and since 1980 he had won six straight elections (Arkansas governor in 1982, 1984, 1986, and 1988, and president in 1992 and 1996). They couldn’t believe in the possibility of her defeat because there had been no defeat in their lives for almost 28 years.