I feel like the media hasn't quite put together the pieces as to why Hillary lost despite having such a repugnant and unqualified opponent. This is what it looks like to me. What do you guys think?

There were several groups at play during the election who all shared a common self-interest: the smearing of Hillary Clinton. Their combined efforts, even when not explicitly coordinated, resulted in the largest and most successful disinformation campaign in US political history.

Trolls, White Nationalists and other alt-right groups, traditional right-wing groups, Bernie Sanders supporters, the Russian govt, and internet clickbait sites all had a self-interest in making Clinton look bad and either purposely or unwittingly shared hoaxes, rumors, conspiracy theories, and fake news stories about how evil and corrupt Clinton was. The fact that a real FBI investigation was occurring, despite it being about a relatively tame issue, gave an air of legitimacy to the more serious, though fake allegations.

This generated a whole new group of people who were fervently pro-Trump and anti-Clinton just because of this propaganda alone. Then they too began sharing the disinformation, thinking it was real, and this created a vicious cycle that spread and spread. Meanwhile, as a centrist, Clinton doesn't have as passionate of a base as someone on the far left or right would have, and there was not a strong enough force pushing back on the false information.

So at the end of the day, despite all the real things that were bad about Trump, an uninformed electorate was duped into believing that Clinton was "just as bad" or "worse".