Hillary has been much maligned, mostly because she's not a good communicator, she speaks cliche, and badly.
Imagine how popular Obama would be if he was a white man named Brian Jones, he's moderate, middle of the road and a great orator, a disciple of Lincoln.
Hilary's problem is she just sounds bland and formulaic, but she's been pretty effective in every role she's held, she knows how to compromise and get things done, and like Bill and Obama, in her heart, she's a die hard pragmatist, "politics is the art of the possible," type.
I laugh when people say we need change - change to what? Right now there is no consensus according to the media, but if you look closely at polls, most Americans are middle of the road, Bernie represents 40% of 40%, Trump represents 50% of 30%, which is 31% between them, the left wing fringe and the right wing populists. In between you have the moderate Republicans, the Independents and the Middle of the Road Democrats. However, during primary season the fringe captures a lot of party votes and most of the media attention.
I think the real problem is the media and the people are ahistorical, crime is at its lowest level in 30 years, terrorism is mostly a "big event" media thing (and half the acts are just plain crazy people with guns, whether they evoke ISIS or just shoot up a kindergarden for fun or left wing Norwegians on a summer camp), but the odds of dying in a terrorist event is pretty darn small compared to say falling down the steps or driving your car.
Same thing with the economy, people thing "normal" is 1947 to 1973 or even 1982 (after three recessions) to 2005 - but those were abnormal stretches of economic growth - the norm for the US is about 2.5% a year in real growth with a faster growing population than we have today. So 1-2% is "normal." Given the extent of the worldwide financial crisis, we've had a fine recovery, bucking global headwinds.
Police getting shot, well, interesting study by a Black Economics professor at Harvard (winner of the John Bates Clark award to top economist under 40), showing that on the one hand, Blacks aren't shot at a higher rate than other suspects, but they're stopped more often and brutalized more often proportionally, so more police victims are black - on the other hand the murder rate of policeman is no different than the general population - i.e., it's really not that dangerous out there for the men in blue (now sanitation workers, that's a more dangerous profession).
Things just aren't bad out there, in fact, for the most part they're pretty darn good, but there are always pockets of people who are on the short end of history, buggy workers got screwed in 1900, factory workers in 2000, because technology marches onward. The real problem is the erosiion of the social contract, and the source of that is the Republican party's opposition to taxes - so we don't compensate the losers of free trade who make the rest of the country richer because it would require taxing those who benefit from globalization to help those left behind. And we've rigged the education system to favor the children of the upper middle class (rich children don't need help), because education in this world is as much about connections (want to be a silicon valley entreprenur, go to Stanford engineering where you'll meet professors and students with VC contacts) as competence and hard work.
But the world has always been unfair, the rich and powerful have advantages over the rest of us, whether 17th century England, 18th, 19th or 20th century America, or go back to Medieval days, the Rome Empire, the Golden Age of Athens, etc. etc. The utopian vision of the people ruling is fantasy, and the founding fathers did not trust the "people," because the people can easily become "the mob" if there are no "breakers" in the political system to moderate populist impulses. Who speaks for the "people," and which people?