This is a couple of days late, but I wanted to weigh in on What Happened, a new book that dropped on September 12. Well, after looking at a number of reviews and find a buttload of quotes, I would call this a burn book because it contains a series of essays where Hillary Clinton unloads on a bunch of people including James Comey, Jill Stein, Vladimir Putin, The Bohemian Professor, and The Sad Bambino.
The Reception of this book was mixed (even before the official release), which is to be expected of the offering of such a polarizing figure.
The have been a number of memes where Twitter users shared photoshopped images of the book.
There was even a controversy with Amazon reviews.
But the book tour has been selling out in blue states and sales of the book itself have already set 2017 records.
Now what do I think of the book? Well, I haven’t read it. However, I have found some in-depth reviews and I have found quite a few quotes from the book to boot.
Based on the limited information I have, this is a non-review. But it looks like the book is covering everything Clinton has already said about this past election ad I do have thoughts on those areas.
Here goes.
What’s in the Book?
In What Happened, Hillary Clinton does accept a share of the blame for making mistakes during her campaign, but out swinging against people like James Comey, Bernie Sanders, and Vladimir Putin.
When going through these quotes, I couldn’t help but laugh. I wasn’t laughing at Clinton, per se. FYI: there have been times when I’ve made people laugh when I was angry. So, that’s what this is about.
About Her Own Shortcomings
I go back over my own shortcomings and the mistakes we made. I take responsibility for all of them. You can blame the data, blame the message, blame anything you want — but I was the candidate. It was my campaign. Those were my decisions.
She admits that she overcorrected since 2008.
I had tried to learn the lessons of 2008, and in many ways ran a better, smarter campaign this time. But I had been unable to connect with the deep anger so many Americans felt or shake the perception that I was the candidate of the status quo.
However, she did not second-guess her Midwest strategy.
Some critics have said that everything hinged on me not campaigning enough in the Midwest And I suppose it is possible that a few more trips to Saginaw or a few more ads on the air in Waukesha could have tipped a couple of thousand voters here or there.
But let’s set the record straight: we always knew that the industrial Midwest was crucial to our success, just as it had been for Democrats for decades, and contrary to the popular narrative, we didn’t ignore those states.
About her speeches:
Just because many former government officials have been paid large fees to give speeches, I shouldn’t have assumed it was OK for me to do it. Especially after the financial crisis of 2008-09, I should have realized it would be bad ‘optics’ and stayed away from anything having to do with Wall Street. I didn’t. That’s on me.
‘But It Might Be That Way Because of Sexism’
Clinton addressed the amount of scorn hurled at her throughout the campaign.
A lot of people said they just didn’t like me. I write that matter-of-factly, but believe me, it’s devastating. But I think there’s another explanation for the skepticism I’ve faced in public life. I think it’s partly because I’m a woman.
But in the end, it baffled her.
What makes me such a lightning rod for fury? I’m really asking. I’m at a loss. I think it’s partly because I’m a woman.
Going After Russia
This man is President of the United States and no one is happier than Vladimir Putin.
Below, Clinton described her icy relationship with Putin.
Our relationship has been sour for a long time. Putin doesn’t respect women and despises anyone who stands up to him, so I’m a double problem. After I criticized one of his policies, he told the press, ‘It’s better not to argue with women,’ but went on to call me weak. ‘Maybe weakness is not the worst quality for a woman,’ he joked. Hilarious.
Going After James Comey
The former Secretary of State makes no secret of the fact that she was angry at (former) FBI Director James Comey.
Clinton wished she had hit back on Comey’s decision to say that Clinton was irresponsible with her emails (when she was Secretary of State) and discouraged him from going public with investigation details in the future. As it turns out, Comey made another public appearance when an unrelated investigation into Anthony Weiner led to the FBI reopening the investigation into Clinton’s emails.
My first instinct was that my campaign should hit back hard and explain to the public that Comey had badly overstepped his bounds—the same argument [Deputy Attorney General] Rod Rosenstein would make months after the election. That might have blunted the political damage and made Comey think twice before breaking protocol again a few months later. My team raised concerns with that kind of confrontational approach. In the end, we decided it would be better to just let it go and try to move on. Looking back, that was a mistake.
She said he had the greatest impact on the election.
My team battled serious headwinds to win the popular vote, and if not for the dramatic intervention of the FBI director in the final days, I believe that in spite of everything, we would have won the White House.
—
Comey made a choice to excoriate me in public in July and then dramatically reopen the investigation on October 28, all while refusing to say a word about Trump and Russia. If not for those decisions, everything would have been different. Comey himself later said that he was mildly nauseous at the idea that he influenced the outcome of the election. Hearing that made me sick.
Here’s a description of what happened when Congress received a letter from Comey, when he was the FBI director. The announcement in October came as Clinton’s plane was landing in Iowa, where she was to attend a rally.
We didn’t have a lot of information, because the internet had been very spotty on the flight, but Jennifer said it seemed Comey had sent a brief, vaguely worded letter to eight different congressional committees saying that in connection with an unrelated case, ‘the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent’ to the previously closed investigation into my handling of classified information — although ‘the FBI cannot yet assess whether or not this material may be significant.’*
Jason Chaffetz, the then-chairman of the House Oversight Committee, immediately tweeted with glee: ‘Case reopened,'” she continues. “Was this a bad joke? It had to be. The FBI wasn’t the Federal Bureau of Ifs or Innuendoes. Its job was to find out the facts. What the hell was Comey doing?
* The Jennifer referred to here is Jennifer Palmieri, who served as Hillary Clinton’s communications director for the 2016 campaign.
Clinton continues to describe the reaction her personal assistant Huma Abedin had upon learning that an investigation of her husband, Anthony Weiner, brought this on.
When we heard this, Huma looked stricken. Anthony had already caused so much heartache. And now this. ‘This man is going to be the death of me,’ she said, bursting into tears. After more than 20 years working with Huma, I think the world of her, and seeing her in such distress broke my heart. In the days that followed, some people thought I should fire Huma or ‘distance myself.’ Not a chance. She had done nothing wrong and was an invaluable member of my team. I stuck by her the same way she has always stuck by me.
Going After Bernie Sanders and His Supporters
Clinton admitted that she was endlessly frustrated with the independent senator from Vermont. Although she was grateful for him stumping for her after the primaries, she was angry about his primary campaign.
I admit I didn’t expect Bernie to catch on as much as he did. I nevertheless found campaigning against him to be profoundly frustrating. It was beyond frustrating that Bernie acted as if he had a monopoly on political purity and that he had set himself up as the sole arbiter of what it meant to be a progressive, despite giving short shrift to important issues such as immigration, reproductive rights, racial justice and gun safety.
Clinton said Sanders constantly tried to one-up her at every pass and turn.
Jake Sullivan, my top policy advisor, told me it reminded him of a scene from the 1998 movie There’s Something About Mary. A deranged hitchhiker says he’s come up with a brilliant plan. Instead of the famous ‘eight-minute abs’ exercise routine, he’s going to market ‘seven minute abs.’ It’s the same just quicker. Then the driver, played by Ben Stiller, says, ‘Well, why not six minute abs?’ That’s what it was like in policy debates with Bernie. We would propose a bold infrastructure investment plan or an ambitious new apprenticeship program for young people, and then Bernie would announce basically the same thing, but bigger. On issue after issue, it was like he kept proposing four-minute abs, or no minute abs. Magic abs! Someone sent me a Facebook post that summed up the dynamic in which were caught:
Bernie : I think America should get a pony.
Hillary: How will you pay for the pony? Where will the pony come from? How will you get Congress to agree to the pony?
Bernie: Hillary thinks America doesn’t deserve a pony.
Hillary: Actually, I love ponies.
Bernie Supporters: She changed her position on ponies! #WhichHillary #WitchHillary”
Clinton also claimed Sanders weakened her campaign and sought to split the party in two.
Because we agreed on so much, Bernie couldn’t make an argument against me in this area on policy, so he had to resort to innuendo and impugning my character. Some of his supporters, the so-called Bernie Bros, took to harassing my supporters online. It got ugly and more than a little sexist. When I finally challenged Bernie during a debate to name a single time I changed a position or a vote because of a financial contribution, he couldn’t come up with anything. Nonetheless, his attacks caused lasting damage, making it harder to unify progressives in the general election and paving the way for Trump’s ‘Crooked Hillary’ campaign.
I don’t know if that bothered Bernie or not. He certainly shared my horror at the thought of Donald Trump becoming President, and I appreciated that he campaigned for me in the general election. But he isn’t a Democrat—that’s not a smear, that’s what he says. He didn’t get into the race to make sure a Democrat won the White House, he got in to disrupt the Democratic Party …
I am proud to be a Democrat and I wish Bernie were, too.
Blaming Obama Somewhat
Clinton said Obama failed to make a bigger deal out of the suspected interference of Russian actors during the campaign. She also said Obama precluded her from going after Sanders.
Throughout the primaries, every time I wanted to hit back against Bernie’s attacks, I was told to restrain myself. Noting that his plans didn’t add up, that they would inevitably mean raising taxes on middle-class families, or that they were little more than a pipe-dream — all of this could be used to reinforce his argument that I wasn’t a true progressive. My team kept reminding me that we didn’t want to alienate Bernie’s supporters. President Obama urged me to grit my teeth and lay off Bernie as much as I could. I felt like I was in a straitjacket.
Criticizing Joe Biden
In March 2017, Joe Biden said the following while speaking at the University of Pennsylvania:
What happened was that this was the first campaign that I can recall where my party did not talk about what it always stood for—and that was how to maintain a burgeoning middle class.
In her book, Clinton said the following about Biden:
Joe Biden said the Democratic Party in 2016 ‘did not talk about what it always stood for—and that was how to maintain a burgeoning middle class.’ I find this fairly remarkable, considering that Joe himself campaigned for me all over the Midwest and talked plenty about the middle class.
Taking a Dig at Jason Chaffetz
Clinton’s run-in with Chaffetz (from the first chapter)
We headed up the stairs to leave the platform and go back inside the Capitol, shaking hands along the way. I saw a man off to the side who I thought was Reince Priebus, head of the Republican National Committee and incoming White House Chief of Staff. As I passed by, we shook hands and exchanged small talk. Later I realized it hadn’t been Priebus at all. It was Jason Chaffetz, the then-Utah Congressman and wannabe Javert who made endless political hay out of my emails and the 2012 tragedy in Benghazi, Libya.
Chaffetz’s Caption:
So pleased she is not the President. I thanked her for her service and wished her luck. The investigation continues.
Going After the Media
Clinton expressed her anger at the press for what she felt was unfair coverage during her entire run. She felt too much focus was put on her emails.
In particular, Clinton lashed out at Matt Lauer for what she thought was his unfair questioning during the Commander in Chief Forum in which she and Donald Trump took part, albeit separately. In particular, Clinton said she felt that she was ambushed about the email issue when she expected to talk about more serious issues. By contrast, she felt Lauer went easy on Trump.
Now I was ticked off. NBC knew exactly what it was doing here. The network was treating this like an episode of The Apprentice, in which [Donald] Trump stars and ratings soar. Lauer had turned what should have been a serious discussion into a pointless ambush. What a waste of time.
What Clinton wished she did:
I can’t say I didn’t fantasize about shaking some sense into Lauer while I was out there.
How she felt about the “soft-pedal” interview Trump received:
I was almost physically sick.
Taking Digs at Trump
Clinton would be remiss if she didn’t address her greatest political foe. She descried him as was “the perfect Trojan Horse” for Putin and a “clear and present danger for the country and the world.”
Of Trump’s suspected ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin:
He doesn’t just like Putin — he seems to want to be like Putin, a white authoritarian leader who could put down dissenters, repress minorities, disenfranchise voters, weaken the press and amass untold billions for himself. He dreams of Moscow on the Potomac.
Clinton discussed the moments during the Second Presidential Debate when Trump invaded her space by looming behind her:
Now we were on a small stage and no matter where I walked, he followed me closely, staring at me, making faces. It was incredibly uncomfortable. He was literally breathing down my neck. My skin crawled.
What she wish she said to Trump when he was hovering over her:
Back up, you creep. Get away from me.
About Trump’s calls to “Lock her up!”:
In my head, I heard the vicious ‘Lock her up!’ chants that had echoed through Trump’s rallies. In our second debate, Trump had said that if he won, he’d send me to prison. Now he had won. I had no idea what to expect.
She mentions this when talking about the inauguration:
There was a decent chance I’d get booed or be met with ‘Lock her up!’ chants if I went.
About Trump’s sexism:
Exhibit A is that a flagrantly sexist candidate won,” she writes. “A whole lot of people listened to the tape of him bragging about sexually assaulting women, shrugged, and said, ‘He still gets my vote.
The difficulty of Clinton’s concession:
‘Donald, it’s Hillary.’ It was without a doubt one of the strangest moments of my life. I congratulated Trump and offered to do anything I could to make sure the transition was smooth. He said nice things about my family and our campaign. He may have said something about how hard it must have been to make the call, but it’s a blur now, so I can’t say for certain. It was all perfectly nice and weirdly ordinary, like calling a neighbor to say you can’t make it to his barbecue. It was mercifully brief.
About going to Trump’s inauguration
The joke, it turned out, was on us.
—
I had heard that the first batch of white ponchos that arrived could have looked something like KKK hoods from a certain angle, and a sharp-eyed inaugural organizer quickly replaced them.
About Trump’s “dark and dystopian” inauguration speech:
I heard it as a howl straight from the white nationalist gut.
—
At some point in the day’s proceedings, Michelle and I shared a rueful look. It said, ‘Can you believe this?
—
‘That was some weird shit,’ George W reportedly said with characteristic Texan bluntness. I couldn’t have agreed more.
About Trump’s “War on Truth”:
[Trump is] Attempting to define reality is a core feature of authoritarianism. This is what the Soviets did when they erased political dissidents from historical photos. This is what happens in George Orwell’s classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, when a torturer holds up four fingers and delivers electric shocks until his prisoner sees five fingers as ordered.
On how Trump views the presidency:
I sometimes wonder: If you add together his time spent on golf, Twitter and cable news, what’s left?
I Can Agree on a Few Things Regarding Clinton.
I agree that Hillary Clinton looked like she would make a better president than Trump, namely because I agree more with her overall on policy (84%-15%, Clinton–to-Trump, based on an I Stand With survey) and her perceived maturity. Yet there were a number of disadvantages in her campaign.
1. I Agree Clinton Should Have Won in the 2016 General Election.
She was an experienced, knowledgeable candidate who wouldn’t make a fool of herself on the world stage. She had an enormous amount of clout within her party and she knew what she wanted to do with domestic and foreign policy.
Trump, on the other hand, was a dishonest, bombastic businessman most people couldn’t trust as far as they could throw him. I also agree that Trump looks like he never took the presidency seriously.
By all accounts, Trump was the worst candidate many people have ever seen. This should have been an “easy” contest, right?
To be honest, I never saw this as “easy,” but there were “simple” moves Clinton could have made to put distance between herself and Trump. Regardless, her domestic policies were clearly better than Trump’s and I never trusted he would keep the promises many of his followers believed, at least where it pertained to jobs and other populist issues.
Clinton should have beat Trump because she was clearly the better candidate. Yet there were plenty of factors dragging down her campaign.
2. I Agree The Benghazi Investigations Were a Political Witch Hunt.
The investigations ultimately harmed Clinton’s 2016 campaign and that was the aim of the Republicans. As I have stated before, Clinton was not at fault for what happened at that outpost, but the fact she was under investigation hurt her chances in 2016. Fox News kept pushing that story and it influenced a large swath of voters.
While there was important information in the resulting reports, the Republicans did not use that information to criticize Obama, but to hurt his possible successor. This was politically motivated and I found it disgusting.
Four people died in the September 11, 2012 attack on an U.S. diplomatic complex in Benghazi, Libya. That was a tragedy, but the Republicans were only looking at the political implications of it. They could care less about the lives lost that day, lest they would have made a bigger deal about bringing troops home from Afghanistan.
Do you want to know how ridiculous the Benghazi story was/is? Voters were once asked to answer a questionnaire about the Affordable Care Act. One respondent said he did not like the health care plan because of Benghazi. Those things had nothing to do with each other.
Additionally, the tragedy was used to make profits and fundraise for the RNC and Various Republican candidates.
3. Clinton Was Hurt by the Email Scandals.
She was also hurt by Comey’s last-minute announcement that the FBI was reopening the investigation into Clinton’s State Department emails. The Comey letter was sent to Congress only 11 days before Election Day and the FBI’s concerns were based on what was found in an unrelated investigation into Anthony Weiner.
The email investigation started with the Benghazi investigations, which definitely hurt Clinton. There was a huge focus on them by the media. In short, a large swath of voters were primed not to like or trust Clinton, her policies notwithstanding.
But I agree with Clinton that the last-minute announcement by Comey was the most hurtful part of the email issue.
4. Clinton Had to Deal With an Extraordinary Amount of Hate Aimed at Her.
Much of the hate towards Hillary Clinton early on was irrational. And much of it was rooted in sexism. Many people on the right saw her as First Lady and resented that a woman would have played any tangible role in her husband’s presidency.
I can tell some of HRC’s detractors were thinking: Who is this woman? Why is she trying to run things when her husband is the one in power?
When Bill Clinton ran for president in 1992, he promised that America would get a “two-for-one deal”: That meant Hillary Clinton would be an enormous factor in a Bill Clinton administration.
What Bill Clinton said was true. Hillary Clinton was a huge influence on that administration. She had often worked closely with Bill Clinton’s staff when he was governor and that continued when he was president. She also stumped for things like “welfare reform,” the “Three Strikes” Law, and pushed her husband not to support a bankruptcy bill at the time.
But it was her signature health care reform bill that signified the kind of stamp Hillary Clinton put on her husband’s presidency. Although that was soundly defeated in a Republican-controlled Congress, Mrs. Clinton set herself apart as an aspirational First Lady.
Hillary Clinton’s involvement in politics certainly set up many Republicans. Part of it was due to the spouses’ political partnership and Hillary’s specter. Since the Republicans were working hard to discredit her husband, it was only natural that Hillary Clinton would be attacked.
How Bad the Sexism’s Always Been
On top of that, Hillary Clinton would be blamed for all of Bill’s scandals. For the most part, she was blamed for not being able to keep her husband away from those women or just not being enough to keep him away. That is a sexist sentiment and one echoed by Trump in the 2016 election.
On some level, Hillary was said to actively harass the other women and cover up for him. Some of the people alleging this include Roger Stone, a consistently dishonest man who has taken part in election fraud and was close to the Trump campaign.
Now, there is proof that Hillary Clinton was proactive in dealing with some of the controversies with women. She was said to hire detectives to find information on numerous women. George Stephanopoulos, former press secretary for Bill Clinton, attests that when Connie Hamzy tried to flash her breasts to the president, the First Lady wanted to “destroy her story.”
However, there is no proof that Hillary Clinton actively harassed the other women. While she hasn’t exactly hidden her distaste she wanted to discredit numerous women making claims against her husband, that isn’t exactly conducive to harassment. It could lead to harassment, but that hasn’t been proven.
In any event, these actions would be natural for an ambitious woman who wants to control the narrative for her family, her long-term prosperity, and/or her own runs at public office. Men have done the same things, but why is it not viewed as bad when they do it? On some level, there is a double standard.
(However, Juanita Broaddrick’s story is compelling. She accused Bill Clinton of raping her in the 1970’s and she accused Hillary of confronting her afterward. This presents a quandary for feminists. Bill Clinton, considering his history, also presents a quandary for feminists.)
In HRC’s Political Career
There was always a measure of misogyny aimed at Clinton throughout her political life. People still call her everything under the sun just because she is a woman. Yes, there are real misogynists out there who refuse to vote for a woman for president.
And sadly, some of those misogynists were other women who felt that women should not be allowed to vote, much less be president. (Those happened to be Trump supporters, of course. I wonder if those ladies voted despite the dumb things they said.)
Trump himself is a chauvinist, so he naturally disgusts people like me.
Now, Here’s Where I Disagree with Clinton …
There are more areas where I disagree with the former secretary of state, but I will only list a few here. (The rest will come in a future post I have already largely written.)
1. Most of the Criticism Clinton Receives Now Isn’t Due to Sexism.
My criticisms aren’t due to sexism. In fact, I try to treat people with whom I might disagree with a reasonable amount of respect. And I set out to address this topic in a manner that was respectful as possible.
With that in mind:
Hillary Clinton amassed such an impressive résumé as a lawyer, as someone who worked on the Children’s Defense Fund, as First Lady, a Senator, and a Secretary of State. She helped fundraise for many Democrats and built a loyal following. It was understood that Hillary Clinton, the “policy wonk,” was pretty damn smart and had a tremendous amount of clout within the Democratic Party in her own right.
That said, there are areas where Clinton is criticized that have nothing to do with sexism.
For instance: Along the way, she stepped on a few toes and there were people who had legitimate grievances against her. Former political opponents might not have liked the way she campaigned. There is still residual anger from the last two presidential campaigns.
Also, much of the criticism from the left has everything to do with policy.
2. Yes, There Are Valid Criticisms of Clinton’s Policies.
I plan to address this in depth for my Rift on the Left Series, but many progressives were calling out Hillary Clinton based on policy. And they were pointing out how she and Bernie Sanders were like night and day on more policies than Clinton would admit. There were key disagreements on the minimum wage, fracking, health care, and education (for the most part), as well as what to do with the financial institutions responsible for the Great Recession.
There is a kind of cognitive dissonance to how Clinton addresses this. While she says Sanders had to try to differentiate himself from her she says his platform details were nothing more than a pipe dream. To add fuel to the fire, she titles the section with Bernie Sanders “Idealism vs. Realism.”
At the same time, Clinton glossed over issues like foreign policy (including foreign wars) and trade. These were two issues that seriously hurt her in the general election. (Among Trump voters were those who were opposed to foreign wars and Clinton, who advocated a no-fly zone in Syria, voted for the Iraq War.)
3. There Are Valid Criticisms of This Book Based on Who She’s Going After.
Clinton goes after a lot of people in this book but the worst passages are the ones dedicated to Sen. Sanders. Look, I have key disagreements with Sanders myself, but he is doing some very important work right now as a Senator. And while I can understand the anger aimed at him for criticizing Clinton and the Democratic Party (to an extent), I don’t see the good in these attacks from Clinton herself.
Attacks on Bernie Sanders and his supporters only serve to reopen old wounds. While there are definitely lots of Sanders supporters who will jump at the chance to laugh at the foibles of their sworn enemies on the left, the same is true about their opponents. And while I am looking at this past election myself, my goal is to air out all the dirty laundry in order to find how we can move on from this. To many it seems that Clinton is doing the opposite.
This book further alienates Clinton because it makes her look petty. For her to go after Jason Chaffetz for his stupid tweet (although she has valid reason to despise him since he once led the Benghazi witch hunt) and Jill Stein is unnecessary. It looks like score-settling. I can say the same thing about the Trump and Putin passages, although I largely agree with those passages.
Thomas Frank, the author of such books like What’s the Matter with Kansas? and Listen, Liberal voted for Hillary Clinton. He did so despite his grievances against the Democratic Party and because he said he liked Hillary Clinton more than Bill Clinton. But even Frank said the book was “churlish and mean-spirited.” In particular, Frank felt the attacks against Biden, Sanders, and Stein were odd and beneath Hillary Clinton.
I tend to agree.
What Could Clinton Say to Ease Tensions?
Before I conclude this thing, I would like to share one last quote. This screenshot was pointed out online and I had to download it and share it here.
Hillary Clinton said in an interview with Anderson Cooper that the women who didn’t vote [for her] would be given “no absolution.” Is this the right message, considering that the women she is most mad at are white women, who have historically voted more for Republicans anyway? And what does this do for the overall efforts of reaching out to Trump, third-party voters, and voters and convincing them to vote Democrat?
Consider that above screenshot. Should Clinton have made those thoughts public, or should she have said the following to the young lady who approached her?
Voting is a civic duty ad I wish all women would take part in it. There were many rave women from different walks of life ad different races who fought so that we would have the opportunity to take part ad weigh in on how this government is run.
Now, why didn’t you vote this time?
Mmhm…
What would it take for you to vote? What inspires you most?
Well, I happen to think that inaction leads to situations like this. Now, we have Trump.
I’m not blaming you, because you didn’t vote for him, did you? [Laughs]
But if more people voted we might not be where we are now.
These are uncertain times. That doesn’t mean it’s time to give up hope. It’s the exact opposite.
We need to fight! We need more people to pay attention. We need to organize and we need more good, energetic people to run for office.
I know you are disappointed. I am, too. It hurts.
But this is not about me. It’s about the prosperity of our country.
Now, I need you to do your part. Don’t just sit on the sidelines. I want you to make life difficult for Trump and anyone who seeks to undo all the progress we’ve made in the past 100 years.
Can you do that?
Good.
And you better vote next time.
I know that’s corny, but how would you feel if Clinton gave you that pep talk? It would have been extremely difficult for her to be sure, but how much good will would that create? This is what the book and the post-election analysis is missing.
Until Next Time …
Unfortunately, I have to discuss Clinton some more, so this is but one part. And boy, I know I might make some people mad in the next few weeks …
Works Cited
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Sainato, Michael. “In New Book, Clinton Blames Loss on Sanders’ Unrealistic ‘Pony’ Promises.” Observer. 5 Sept 2017. Web. <http://observer.com/2017/09/hillary-clinton-what-happened-book-bernie-sanders/amp/>.
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The Jimmy Dore Show. “Hillary’s Attacks On Bernie “Churlish & Mean Spirited”-Thomas Frank Interview pt. 1.” YouTube. 18 Sept 2017. Video. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl5fV9WoK74>.
Verhovek, John. “Key takeaways from Hillary Clinton’s new book, ‘What Happened.’” ABC News. 12 Sept 2017. Web. <http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/key-takeaways-hillary-clintons-book-happened/story?id=49790564>.
Wulfsohn, Joseph A. “Hillary Clinton Rips Matt Lauer Over Town Hall Interview in Her Book: ‘I Was Ticked Off.’” Mediaite. 7 Sept 2017. Web. <https://www.mediaite.com/tv/hillary-clinton-rips-matt-lauer-over-town-hall-interview-in-her-book-i-was-ticked-off/>.
Wulfsohn, Joseph A. “Hillary Throws Shade at Bernie: ‘Fundamentally Wrong’ About Democratic Party.” Mediaite. 5 Sept 2017. Web. <https://www.mediaite.com/online/hillary-throws-shade-at-bernie-sanders-in-book-fundamentally-wrong-about-the-democratic-party/>.
Shmaltz and Menudo 
Wonderfully balanced viewpoint on the Clinton Fiasco. I agree that the various – isms in this country ultimately led most severely to her defeat.
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