I agree, but with a twist. I think Trump was the only candidate she loses to. Her campaign didn't take him seriously, but enough voters in a few states, ones that she didn't bother to visit, did.
The problem for Dems in 2016 was that there were so many in the DNC and out in the field from 2008 who never accepted the idea that the baton had
really been handed on to Obama's generation. He was viewed by the Clintonistas as an upstart when he won the primaries that year. So there was from the get-go a sense of entitlement there, that "her turn" had been wrested from her, and so --"obviously"-- after Obama was re-elected in 2012, the next time out things should pick up where they'd left off in 2008 before Clinton lost those primaries.
I have sometimes wondered what would have happened in 2016 on the Republican side if a blue dog Dem like Jim Webb had stayed in for the Dems that year. It might have switched up how people saw the viable alternatives in the GOP's then huge array. And even though it seemed a year for populists, if there had been a blue dog on the Dem side, then the Rs might have thought more than twice about running with Trump.
A a handful of Dems were tentatively tossing their hats into the ring early, way before Bernie decided to take Clinton on. Bernie might not even have gone for it, if Clinton had had any serious contenders meanwhile. But they were all soon gone when it became clear that Clinton would run. And that was DNC pressure for sure, because anyone looking around at that point (as Bernie was doing) could see that it was indeed shaping up as a year for candidates with appeal to populists whether right or left. Clinton can be a chameleon on her lean, whenever necessary, but she would always have been hard pressed to end up a successful candidate for a populist-leaning electorate. Webb on the other hand being a genuine blue dog, might have appealed to some of the independent voters who simply did not like Hillary Clinton and hadn't liked Obama either.
In a year more favorable to traditional candidates, if the Rs had run John Kasich against Clinton, that could have been an interesting match. But it was in fact a year for candidates who could come off as populist. The eternal question will be whether Bernie could have beat Trump.
As for Senator Cruz...
The most hypocritical Mexican in all of politics.
Well, he isn't Mexican. He's Cuban.
He's.... most recently prior to landing here, Canadian, via the immigration to there of his parents... but ethnically Cruz is part Irish, part Italian, and his dad was Cuban by immigration but ethnically a Canarian (Canary Islanders originally hail from North Africa and Europe).
So Ted is a mutt like a lot of us in the USA, ethnically from various places and with ancestors who made the most of their mobility as necessary. But he's not as friendly as some of the rest of us mutts.
