I didn't cast a "protest vote".  Your last line says it all."hope you folks learned a lesson". It is the democratic establishment that should have learned a lesson, but apparently didn't. I was a member of the democratic party and I was a Sanders delegate. During the local caucus I heard several people agree that Sanders was the better candidate but they "had" to support Clinton. She was "proven" blah, blah, blah and they had to nominate her in order to defeat trump. How did that work out? After the election, I went to a local democratic party meeting that was supposed to address the mistakes that were made and make changes to the party. After the meeting, I resigned from the party. The next week I changed my party registration from democrat to independent. There were no changes. The party loyalists just wanted to scam people and make them believe that there was a change. Same people, same ideas.