Posted on 10/13/2017 7:12:43 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Hillary Clinton’s book is a pensive exercise to make sense of something Americans haven’t been able to understand either — why she lost the presidential race
Book: What Happened
Author: Hillary Rodham Clinton
Publication: Simon & Schuster
Pages: 464
Price: Rs 699
For many, in America and around the world, almost as astonishing as the fact that Donald Trump is now occupying the White House, is the fact that Hillary Clinton is not. Mrs Clinton herself does not quite understand that deplorable fact. Her memoirs are a thoughtful and candid attempt to understand what to her is still almost incomprehensible. Indeed her book might better have been called, not What happened, but What went wrong?
This is not mere egotism. Mrs Clinton is indeed highly qualified to be president. Her undergraduate career at Wellesley and at the Yale law school attest to her academic ability. Her experience is unusually broad and remarkably relevant for a president. As a practicing lawyer and wife of a rising politician in Arkansas, she had more experience than most national politicians of the poisonous brew of race, class and gender resentment that obsesses contemporary American politics.
Her experience as wife of the president not only vaccinated her, in often painful ways, against the dangers that lurk in the path of the mighty. She chose to specialise in the tangled problems that make it so hard to reform the American healthcare system, and indeed failed in that. She served in the Senate, and learned how the game of thrones is played on Capitol Hill. As secretary of state, she not only received an advanced education in international politics, she learned sharp lessons about what it is to live in the media storm.
None of this prepared her to lose the presidency, not once, but twice: she was only narrowly beaten by Barack Obama in 2008. Nor can she quite forget that there is a sense in which she did not lose the presidential race of 2016. She failed to win the necessary majority in that antiquated constitutional oddity, the electoral college, where Trump collected 57 per cent of the votes. But she did receive almost 3 million more votes from the American people than he did. She can say, because it is true, that “if just 40,000 people in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania had changed their minds, I would have won”. But Mrs Clinton knows that victories are made up of many fungible packets of 40,000 voters.
She is a savvy enough political wonk to dispose, fairly convincingly, of some of the more frequent “technical” reasons for her defeat that have been recited by the pundits. Did she not campaign enough in the Middle West? She lists how often she went there, how many staff she had working there, how much money she spent.
She even has the emotional intelligence to acknowledge that “when people are angry and looking for someone to blame they don’t want to hear your 10 point plan to create jobs and raise wages. They want you to be angry too.” She’s angry now.
Understandably, she makes much of two extraneous events that damaged her chances. She lays a good deal of blame on the unaccountable decision of James Comey, then director of the FBI, to announce, days before polling, that he had received a new batch of e-mails relevant to the Clinton campaign.
In fact they concerned not Hillary, but the behaviour of an errant congressman, the disgraced husband of Hillary’s closest aide. But they enabled Trump to resume his campaign about Hillary’s use of a private e-mail server when she was secretary of state, essentially a red herring. It enabled him to go on calling her “crooked Hillary” and for his crowds to chant “lock her up” (It must be excruciatingly for Mrs Clinton to learn now that six of the inner Trump circle were also using private e-mails in office).
Comey’s action is inexplicable and inexcusable. He is certainly no friend of Donald Trump. Possibly, he was trying to protect himself against some later charge that he had covered up facts potentially damaging to Hillary.
The second external event, still imperfectly understood, was the mysterious matter of Russian interference in the election. This will presumably be uncovered eventually by the various investigations now underway. Hillary Clinton is clear that Putin’s men were trying to influence the election in favour of Trump. She seems not to understand, or to admit, that Putin is no friend of hers because of her part in NATO expansion.
Why do I think she lost? I think she had very bad luck. But I also think that she was the victim of her own virtues, or what she sees as her own virtues. There is an almost smug sense of entitlement, a sense that she deserves to win because of her virtues, and because she represents in her person the Christian virtues and the exceptional virtue of the United States. It used to be only foreigners who were irritated by the American confidence in doing well by doing good. Things have gone badly enough for enough Americans now, that many of them too, find this insufferable.
She also suspects that she was unsuccessful because she is a woman. It does indeed seem that there is more political misogyny in America than in most other democracies. But there are approximately 130 million adult women in the United States. Hillary Clinton is certainly more qualified than most of them. But there are others. And many Americans, including many American women, have noticed that, for all her real merits and accomplishments, the irony of her passionate feminism is that she was only a senator in the first place, then a presidential candidate, and then Secretary of State, because she married a man who became president.
Was Hillary too virtuous or perhaps too patriotic to win? Each of the following came from Hillary, from one of her drones, or from a pro-Hillary article - I am not creative enough to have made these up.
93. American voters finding her insufferable because of Hillary’s confidence in her own Christian virtues, which represent America’s exceptional virtue, elected Trump.
92. Hillary’s very bad luck elected Trump.
91. A culture of grievance, victimhood, and scapegoating among hillbillies elected Trump.
90. Hillary’s beauty regime taking 600 hours away from the campaign elected Trump.
89. The press relentlessly beating Hillary up and obsessively focusing on her alleged faults elected Trump.
88. Debate questioners not asking the questions Hillary wanted elected Trump.
87. The Democrat Party having no data and no money for Hillary elected Trump.
86. TV executives failing to give Hillary enough airtime elected Trump.
85. Barack Obama failing to make a speech in favor of Hillary elected Trump.
84. Low information voters elected Trump.
73. The cultural, political, and economic game that’s being played to keep women in their place elected Trump.
82. White women voting against Hillary because their fathers, husbands, boyfriends, and male employers told them not to vote for “the girl” elected Trump.
81. Anthony Weiner, who brought the dumb story about Hillary’s dumb emails back into the news, elected Trump.
80. Matt Lauer and NBC launching a pointless ambush against Hillary and soft-peddling her opponent elected Trump.
79. An unfair election with secret reasons we may never know about elected Trump.
78. Hillary not being meaner and nastier elected Trump.
77. Sexism from Bernie Sanders and his voters elected Trump.
76. The American people not liking Hillary enough, without reason, elected Trump.
75. Innuendo and character attacks by Bernie Sanders elected Trump.
74. White identity politics from whites who felt threatened by black identity politics elected Trump.
73. Bernie Sanders voters not showing up elected Trump.
72. A bunch of black swans converging on Hillary in the final 12 days of the election elected Trump.
71. Wikileaks elected Trump.
70. Twitter memes elected Trump.
69. Astrological influences elected Trump.
68. Blatant sexism and unconscious sexism elected Trump.
67. People voting against Hillary because Obama is black elected Trump.
66. Traditionalist attitudes toward women elected Trump.
65. White voters afraid of losing White Privilege elected Trump.
64. Democrats doing a poor job of controlling the narrative elected Trump.
63. A thousand Russian agents working every day elected Trump.
62. Content farms in Macedonia elected Trump.
61. The TV networks keeping Hillary off the air elected Trump.
60. The vast right-wing conspiracy elected Trump.
59. Infowars elected Trump.
58. Google elected Trump.
57. Steve Bannon elected Trump.
56. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker elected Trump.
55. Nate Silver elected Trump.
54. Citizens United elected Trump.
53. The DNC being a mess and in poor shape elected Trump.
52. Bad polling numbers elected Trump.
51. Obama winning two terms elected Trump.
50. People wanting change elected Trump.
49. The New York Times, cable news, and television executives elected Trump.
48. According to Hillary, “Eight of the top 10 political documentaries on Netflix were screeds against President Obama and me” - Netflix elected Trump.
47. Democrats not making the right documentaries elected Trump.
46. The Democrat Party and the Republican Party elected Trump.
45. Concerns that Hillary Clinton was involved with a child sex trafficking operation elected Trump.
44. Concern about Hillary Clinton being a lizard elected Trump.
43. High expectations that Hillary would win elected Trump.
42. Voter suppression elected Trump.
41. FBI Director Comey announcing a criminal investigation into Hillary’s felonies just over a week before the election, when he had little reason to think there was anything there, elected Trump.
40. The Russians ransacking Hillary’s computer files and strategically leaking the truth elected Trump.
39. Misogyny elected Trump.
38. Gary Johnson and Jill Stein voters elected Trump.
37. Advocacy press on the right elected Trump.
36. Facebook elected Trump.
35. Old, out-of-touch democrats with a flawed message that alienated young voters elected Trump.
34. White nationalists elected Trump.
33. Hatred of Hillary Clinton at the FBI (how could anyone hate a lovable woman like Hillary?) elected Trump.
32. FBI investigation elected Trump.
31. Black voters not liking Hillary elected Trump.
30. Fewer than 100,000 deplorable voters spread across a handful of states elected Trump.
29. People hating Hillary because she is so professional, so polished, such a wonderful lawyer, so brilliant, so good, so righteous, and so much better than us elected Trump.
28. The lack of energy among Hillary supporters and expectations of Hillary being the inevitable winner, because it was her turn, elected Trump.
27. Robby Mook selecting the wrong travel stops for Hillary and spending heavily in the wrong states elected Trump.
26. Hillary’s campaign team failing to hone her message and get voters to the polls elected Trump.
25. Bill Clinton’s appearance of an inappropriate meeting with Attorney General Loretta Lynch elected Trump.
24. The ugly stew of racism elected Trump.
23. Hillary’s alleged lack of likability and claimed lack of trustworthiness elected Trump.
22. Self-hating women elected Trump.
21. Evangelical, Catholic, anti-marriage equality, and anti-choice social conservatives elected Trump.
20. Sinister outside forces elected Trump.
19. Whitelash elected Trump.
18. Democrat policies that favor the rich elected Trump.
17. Failure to talk to working-class white voters elected Trump.
16. Men elected Trump.
15. Lower-level FBI agents pressuring their Director (because that’s how professional relationships work) elected Trump.
14. Tim Kaine gave Hillary Virginia, but he also elected Trump.
13. White women elected Trump.
12. Racists elected Trump.
11. Sexists elected Trump.
10. Rural voters elected Trump.
9. The working class voting against their own interests elected Trump.
8. Fake news elected Trump.
7. Supermarket tabloids elected Trump.
6. Celebrity (The Apprentice) elected Trump.
5. White male resentment elected Trump.
4. Over-shaming Trump supporters elected Trump.
3. Rejecting Bernie elected Trump.
2. Reagan democrats elected Trump.
1. Backlash against political correctness elected Trump.
There are many terrible reasons for President Trump’s victory, but there are two things that were not a factor. First, Hillary was the perfect candidate; nothing she did harmed her candidacy in any way. Second, President Trump was the worst candidate imaginable; nothing he did helped his candidacy at all, except with racists, sexists, bigots, and the rest of the basket of deplorables.
As long as he sticks to reviewing the book, Hodgson repeats every lie Hillary spins without critical assessment. In the last paragraph he gets outside the book and chucks all that under the bus with an essential truth: Hillary’s lifetime accomplishment was riding Bill’s coattails.
In youth, Hillary attached herself to Bill for that very purpose and rode it a long way. What Happened is that Bill’s coattails are worn out and the free ride is over.
Bill didn’t even want Hillary to win. Maybe Bill colluded with the Russians — Mueller should look into that.
And that is why we are lucky to have perceptive posters like you to dig the nugget out of the tailings.
Great comment! Loved every word. Love your Bible verse on your profile page! Kudos!
>>She lays a good deal of blame on the unaccountable decision of James Comey, then director of the FBI, to announce, days before polling, that he had received a new batch of e-mails relevant to the Clinton campaign. In fact they concerned not Hillary, but the behaviour of an errant congressman, the disgraced husband of Hillary’s closest aide.
Godfrey lies to the people of India.
Weiner’s laptop contained Hitlery Rotten Clinton’s “missing” (deleted) emails, they weren’t missives from Mr. Weiner.
I find the reader comments are more fun than the article!
...And with all that going on - no typos!
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