•Democrats have only themselves to blame for losing the presidency to Donald Trump.

They didn’t turn out. About 10,000,000 Democrats who voted for President Obama in 2008 didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016.

We can only guess at the reasons. They didn’t like the candidate the Democratic National Committee came up with. The national liberal media and the polls were saying Clinton would win easily so they thought they didn’t need to vote. Some thought a government shakeup was needed so they decided to vote for Trump. There are many more possibilities.

•I guess we shouldn’t be too surprised by the sometimes-violent protests that have occurred since election night. I suppose there might have been similar protests if Clinton would have won, especially if she ended up going after people’s guns.

But much of the hate was brought on by the candidates themselves. Both candidates had a lot of baggage to begin with, but all they did during that long campaign was talk about how awful the other one was. We were bombarded by the media and online by negative and even false stories about Clinton and Trump. I developed a tremendous dislike for both of them.

As a lifelong Independent, I rely on accurate information to decide who I want to vote for. I had a hard time deciding what was true. I became skeptical of every story.

I didn’t want to settle for the lesser of two evils, so I wrote in Dr. Ben Carson to be my president. During the debates he was the only candidate who showed me he could be a mediator, which is what I feel we need in a president right now.

•I hope the two major parties really look at what happened here. We in the middle are tired of being left out. We hear so much about the far right and the far left, but what about us? We need Congress to learn to talk and compromise. Staying true to their extreme views is not accomplishing anything.

•One of the problems I had with Obama was his use of executive orders. But with Congress not working together, he really didn’t have much choice.

•Which brings me to one of the problems I’m seeing already so close after the election. Many people are vowing not to work with Trump and the GOP on any issue – even if it’s good for our nation. I hope their U.S. lawmakers don’t feel the same way.

Congress needs to get some work done. That takes working together. I know I didn’t vote for Patty Murray and Rick Larsen because I thought they would stonewall the GOP. I voted for them because I know they can compromise for the good of the country. I’ve seen them both do it before.

•The other thing already of concern is the emotional reaction to get rid of the Electoral College in favor of a popular vote.

Our Founding Fathers were geniuses in coming up with the electoral process. Many people don’t understand it. But if you learn about it, it makes so much sense.

In my lifetime, I have lived in Puyallup, Pullman, Port Angeles, Everett, Olympia and Marysville. Many times, in every community, I have heard people say that they feel like their vote doesn’t count because King County is so big that what it says goes statewide. That’s not just in Eastern Washington, it’s over here, too.

That’s what would happen if a popular vote decided presidential elections. People in the big cities would decide what was best for everyone else in the country. That would not be good because issues in big cities are different than those in suburban or rural areas. People in those areas would think, “My vote doesn’t count,” discouraging them from participating in the process.

One possible solution would be instead of giving all of the electoral votes to the popular-vote winner in each state, divvy them up according to the percentage of votes that each candidate gets. I don’t know if that work, but at least it would be a middle ground.

-Steve Powell is the managing editor of The Marysville Globe and The Arlington Times.