First, in reltion to the other candidates I mentioned:
-- Bernie: Full credit to him for identifying the signature issue of this campaign--income inequality. The thing that unites the protestors from Occupy Wall Street and the displaced steelworks in the midwest. But he had no chance of enacting anything if elected. The mainline representatives from the GOP AND the Democrats both opposed him (the Dems for his adoption of their party label for his own ends)
--Obama: not battle tested. His belief in his own intelligence and powers of logic led him to conclude that he didn't need to use the leverage from control of the House and Senate in 2009 to pass his legislative agenda. If people just sat down and talked to him they'd see it his way. By the time he found out he was wrong, it was too late. (Incidentally, I think this approach applies directly to Hillary's belief in 1993 that her similar powers could get helth care reform passed. Her hard-learned lesson means that she IS battle tested.)
More generally:
Hillary and Trump are running for the most important executive office in the world: CEO of democracy and the free market. So I apply the same process here that's used for any important hire in the business world: 1) resume, 2) references, and 3) interview. (People are free to add their own analysis of Trump here. I'll deal just with Hillary.)
1) Resume. Even her opponent grants her the advantage on 'experience'. Some say she's the ,most qualified person ever to run for the job. (I say no--check out what William Howard Taft had done.). But anyway, spending eight years in the White House dealing with policy matters...eight years in the Senate...and four as Secretary of State is a remarkable resume. But that doesn't describe what she did in those jobs, right? So on to
2) References. It's a matter of record that coming out of school she passed up a phenomenal and extremely lucrative career on Wall Street to go to work for something called the Children's Defense Fund. And there's never been any deviation from that mission to help others throughout her career. Maybe she could have done it better at times--but that's who she is. And of course there have always been a lot of people willing to offer character references to this point.
But no doubt, there's another side of this coin. Whitewater, Vince Foster, Benghazi, emails, the Foundation, etc. Anyone can believe what they want, but I would contennd here that ALL of those things have been proven to be totally wrong or virtually meaningless. Of course, many violently disagree. But it's hard to say that she skated on all this stuff because the Republicans went too easy on her.
But in references, you can choose who to trust.
3) Interview. That's the phase we're going through now in the debates. You can make your own decision.
So if all this is true, why don't many people feel like voting for her?
Two reasons IMO:
--the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy: I'm top of the list in believing this
--her own mistake in this campaign talking too much about Trump, and too little about policy that addresses income inequality.