You see the quote above. This is a section of one of the excerpts being doled out to the media and public to build interest in Clinton’s latest book. In the excerpt she blames Bernie Sanders, among others, for her defeat, saying that his attacks against her during the primary caused “lasting damage” and laid the foundation for “(Donald) Trump’s ‘Crooked Hillary’ campaign.”
Observations:
1 As with her earlier excerpt about how she wishes she had acted more assertively when Donald Trump was “stalking her” during a debate, Clinton displays the opposite of leadership instincts here. Although she was the one offering herself as the leader of the free world, she whines that she was rendered powerless by the advice of others and the recommendation of President Obama. Saying that she felt that she was “in a straitjacket” is simply admitting that she was indecisive and accepted the judgment of others over her own. However, that decision was hers; she was not in a straitjacket, and she is accountable for the ultimate decision to “lay off Bernie.” She can’t credibly blame anyone else.
2. Bernie Sanders was as inoffensive and respectful as opponent as Hillary could have possible drawn for the Democratic Party nomination. His obvious reason for running was to get a national platform for his far-left, Socialist positions. He was too old, he was eccentric, and he wasn’t even a Democrat. Like Barack Obama, who also ran against Hillary believing that he had no chance, Hillary’s lack of charisma, chilly public persona and inherent untrustworthiness suddenly made Sanders’ underdog candidacy viable. Nonetheless, as Ethics Alarms discussed during the campaign, Sanders never behaved as if he was committed to winning. Most remarkably (and unforgivably for his supporters), he gave a pass to Clinton on her e-mail server scandal, saying more than once that he didn’t care about her “stupid e-mails.” Since Clinton was lying about, double-talking around, spinning and ducking the issue almost daily, this was a gift that no other serious candidate would have given her. Yet she’s blaming Bernie now for not being even less competitive.
Incredible!
3. Bernie’s plans that Hillary now calls a “pipe dream” happen to be core fantasies of her party’s stalwarts. Clinton is essentially admitting that she was a stealth candidate, advocating or passively signaling approval of far Left policies that she knew could not work. This is another reason “Lying Hillary” was so effective for Trump. What does Clinton really believe? It depends on who she is addressing, and what angles she is calculating at the time.
4. Candidates have an obligation to educate potential voters during campaigns. That’s one of the important civic functions of campaigns in a democracy. If one candidate spouts dishonest or unrealistic nonsense, as Sanders did more or less non-stop, other candidates have an obligation to take those statement apart like tinkertoys. If a candidate allows someone sharing a stage with her to mislead the public, that candidate is ethically complicit in the deception. Why didn’t Hillary point out to her audience that Bernie’s economics were absurd? Why didn’t she explain why simply ignoring the national debt and spending like a drunken sailor on free college for all and national health care would be disastrous? Why didn’t she lay out why Bernie’s blather about appointing Supreme Court justices to overturn Citizens United showed shocking ignorance of the judicial system?
5. The answer, of course, is that she assumed the nomination was wired, which, in fact, it was. The Democrats had given her a token challenger so what was always a long-planned coronation wouldn’t appear to the public as if the fix was in, and she almost lost anyway.
This is like Apollo Creed blaming Rocky for going the distance.
6. Finally, you have to wonder how Hillary could be so tone-deaf as to believe blaming Sanders for her defeat accomplishes anything now but cementing the conclusion that she was and is unfit for leadership. Why is she publishing this book? Is it just greed? Does she crave money so much that she is willing to sell her dignity and self-respect with a book equivalent of Basil Fawlty shaking his fist at the heavens when he encounters an entirely deserved catastrophe, or the literary version of Basil attacking his car?
Lingering delusions anyone still has regarding how the U.S. lost an opportunity to elect a wise, strong female President of personal courage and admirable character will surely be reduced to mist by “What Happened.” That, I suppose, will give it some value at least.
Ethics Alarms 
This book will be a bonanza of comedic material. I’m guessing that very near the front will be brief passage “taking” full responsibility for the non-win.
I would like to thank Jack and all of the COD posters for enhancing my discernment for identifying main ideas deep within intellectually challenging literature. I notice that on page 230, first paragraph, second sentence, Mrs. Clinton has shared with us a most crippling quality of her campaign… She was doing what she was told. Though, I admit that I have not read the whole book(only one paragraph), I am sure the more widely read folks here at EA would eagerly correct my cherry picking out of context.
Here’s what’s amazing: these are the passages they are releasing first. It would be like Obama releasing the section of his book in which he said he ate dog. Apparently either no one thinks these snippets reflect badly on her, which si amazing, OR the rest of the book is even worse.
1. Yep. One theme I’ve noticed of Clinton’s since November is statements like “I take full responsibility, but…” and then going on to blame others. Then I realized this tendency actually goes back a lot further than that, and covers her responses to both the e-mails and Benghazi (both of which were overblown as scandals, but still). Not a great leadership quality.
I still believe she would have been a far better leader than Trump (who also has a huge problem taking responsibility), but then, I think every other major candidate who ran with the exception of Ben Carson would have been better than Trump.
2. Yep.
3. Bernie’s plans that Hillary now calls a “pipe dream” happen to be core fantasies of her party’s stalwarts. Clinton is essentially admitting that she was a stealth candidate, advocating or passively signaling approval of far Left policies that she knew could not work. This is another reason “Lying Hillary” was so effective for Trump. What does Clinton really believe? It depends on who she is addressing, and what angles she is calculating at the time.
Which policies did she signal support of that she didn’t actually believe? Her policies were actually fairly detailed in comparison to most, it’s just that Trumpmania meant she didn’t spend a lot of time talking about them, because people were far more interested in her reactions to Trump. (She still should have talked about them more anyway.) But her policies were clearly not as extreme as Bernie’s.
4. Why didn’t she lay out why Bernie’s blather about appointing Supreme Court justices to overturn Citizens United showed shocking ignorance of the judicial system?
Well, because she actually made the same promise herself:
http://www.npr.org/2016/02/14/466668949/presidential-candidates-pledge-to-undo-citizens-united-but-can-they
Whether she did so because she didn’t know better or because she was trying to dupe her followers is the question. In a surprising twist, my money is on malice for this one. Clinton knows better.
5. Yep.
6. I’m not sure why it’s “greed” for Hillary Clinton to publish a book. There are a lot of people who actually do want her side of the story, and I imagine her book will make a lot of money. But that’s why all politicians write books, no? There’s nothing sinister about that. That her side of the story is self-pitying and not terribly ethical is a different issue from whether she should write a book at all.
Lingering delusions anyone still has regarding how the U.S. lost an opportunity to elect a wise, strong female President of personal courage and admirable character will surely be reduced to mist by “What Happened.” That, I suppose, will give it some value at least.
We missed an opportunity to elect a borderline-competent adult with some degree of experience in the field she would now lead. The real value of this book, to my mind, is that it hints that Hillary Clinton will never run for office again; I don’t think the left (myself included) could take another Clinton campaign. Defending her was, I’ll admit, exhausting, and I never want to do it again.
Oh, look, I could go downtown in DC, toss a bottle cap, and the chances are that I would hit someone better qualified to be President in most respects (Trump’s management and negotiations experience is a plus).
“…it’s just that Trumpmania meant she didn’t spend a lot of time talking about them…”
This is true. But let us not forget who is directly responsible for “Trumpmania” dominating the news: Hillary Clinton, the DNC, and their cronies in the corporate media. It’s the biggest bombshell of the hacked emails that isn’t talked about nearly enough.
1. This is, unfortunately, Hillary’s refrain, it has been her refrain for some time, and it always will be. When things go right, she is glad to stand up and take all the credit, even if it means she stole someone else’s idea or is ignoring those who did the actual legwork. When things go wrong, it’s all on someone else.
2. The fact that this old fartknocker who wanted to explode the national debt actually came close to beating Hillary and might have had a shot had the process been run fairly is what takes away my faith in millennials. Still, his statement on stage to Hillary that the world was “tired of hearing about your damn emails,” was the biggest red flag that he was just a patsy. If he’d been playing to win that was his chance to slam her hard. He didn’t take it.
3. Apropos of #2, he was as much there to help Hillary run further left as anything else, although he may not have been in on that part of the plan.
4. She’s a lawyer, anyone who knows basic Constitutional law knows better.
5. Correction, the Democrats gave her four what they assumed would be tomato can opponents thinking she could sleepwalk through a string of knockouts like Mike Tyson in his early career. Three duly fell quickly, but Sanders became unexpectedly popular in the college towns, or he would have fallen a lot sooner.
6. Greed and a lingering sense of denial, I think. Like Jimmy Carter she really can’t believe that she lost to that guy, thinks it was all a big mistake, and is never going to quite get unstuck from that belief. I do not believe that she is going to get involved in charity to the same level Carter did, because donations to her foundation are going to dry up now and she won’t work for someone else, but I can see her getting involved in freelance diplomacy the same way he did, or at least trying.
It always amuses (I don’t know that is the right word) me when I hear this kind of thing. They have basically 2 terrible choices and you loose faith in a generation because they make a terrible choice? Are you expecting that they are going to all agree with your terrible choice and pick that one? When you have the choice between two terrible things, is picking one more terrible than the other? Isn’t determining that a matter of perspective, or at least something that people might disagree on?
“Which policies did she signal support of that she didn’t actually believe? Her policies were actually fairly detailed in comparison to most, it’s just that Trumpmania meant she didn’t spend a lot of time talking about them, because people were far more interested in her reactions to Trump. (She still should have talked about them more anyway.) But her policies were clearly not as extreme as Bernie’s.”
Look, I get that after everything I’m about to write, one could respond: “But Trump….”. Assume for the sake of brevity that I’m aware that most of this applies to Trump as well. All I’m going to say is that for a party so set in saying that Trump is the lowest of the low, and Hillary was so eminently qualified, to fit a similar comparison to Trump is such a low bar to vault it should be embarrassing that she barely makes it.
But I digress.
It’s depressingly easy to tell when Hillary Clinton is lying, she has the worst poker face on Earth, and once you know the secret, you’ll quickly note the facial tick that signals her dishonesty: Hillary Clinton is lying when her mouth is moving.
Which policies did she signal support for that she didn’t believe? All of them. No, really. When her speeches to the big banks were leaked, she had admitted that it was necessary for her to have many faces on an issue, that the policies that she put out in public were often if not always different from the policies she put out in private. Why the hell, in the face of that, should anyone trust that she means anything that she says? Where Obama was a blank slate candidate that Americans painted their hopes and dreams on, Hillary Clinton is a chiseled slate covered in layers of scum and bile that she allows people to finger paint on. She was strictly against gay marriage before public opinion shifted and she was for it. She called black people thugs and super predators, before those terms were deemed deeply offensive. She was for wars before she was against them, and then for them again, she was for bailouts before she was against them, and she was against single payer before she was for it.
Now, one might argue that a lifetime spent in politics means that your opinions can evolve over time, and perhaps there’s something to that, but it’s a frail argument when you consider Bernie Sanders, who really hasn’t changed his mind on anything, despite being in politics almost as long as Hillary’s been alive. The fact of the matter is that a vote for Hillary was a vote for Democrats, or for a vagina, or against Trump, but it could not possibly be a vote FOR Hillary because no one has any idea of what Hillary actually stands for. She is a blade of grass in the wind, unprincipled and uncaring, blown wherever public opinion takes her.
When her speeches to the big banks were leaked, she had admitted that it was necessary for her to have many faces on an issue, that the policies that she put out in public were often if not always different from the policies she put out in private.
She never said her the “policies that she put out in public were often if not always different from the policies she put out in private;” you’re making that up. She did say that sometimes you have to have a “public position” and a “private position.” I agree that makes her untrustworthy, but it isn’t an example of a position she put out in the 2016 election that she did not believe, which is what I asked for.
She was strictly against gay marriage before public opinion shifted and she was for it.
I share your skepticism that her opposition to gay marriage was a genuinely held belief. But this has nothing to do with the 2016 election.
She called black people thugs and super predators, before those terms were deemed deeply offensive.
I think that lefty talking point is overblown. It’s also exactly like saying Donald Trump called Mexicans rapists and criminals. If you object to that characterization of Trump’s remarks–and I’m pretty sure you have–how can you possible characterize Clinton’s remarks this way? Your bias is getting to you.
She was for wars before she was against them, and then for them again, she was for bailouts before she was against them, and she was against single payer before she was for it.
I don’t remember her ever being against single payer, but changing one’s mind is not “signaling support of far Left policies she know could not work.” And none of these had to do with the 2016 election.
“policies that she put out in public were often if not always different from the policies she put out in private”
“you have to have a “public position” and a “private position.””
I stand corrected. That’s so different. I don’t know what I was thinking.
“If you object to that characterization of Trump’s remarks–and I’m pretty sure you have–how can you possible characterize Clinton’s remarks this way? Your bias is getting to you.”
Perhaps… But one thing that Clinton had going for her that Trump didn’t necessarily is that Clinton, despite being a scummy, scummy liar, isn’t a bumbling, poorly spoken idiot. Whereas I believe that Trump’s point was flubbed and might have improved with a little bit of finesse (Well… I’m not sure you could ever get that turd to shine, but we’ll never know, will we?), I believe that Hillary knew and meant what she was saying. That wasn’t a 57 states flub either. Is that holding her to a higher standard than Trump? Maybe. But it still seems an insufferably low bar for someone campaigning to be POTUS.
“And none of these had to do with the 2016 election.”
Oh don’t be stupid. Hillary’s political history was absolutely on trial for the 2016 election, Democrats made hay calling her the “Most Qualified Candidate Ever(tm)” How are we supposed to pretend she’s the Most Qualified Candidate Ever(tm), if we’re also supposed to pretend that she didn’t exist before 2015?
“policies that she put out in public were often if not always different from the policies she put out in private”
“you have to have a “public position” and a “private position.””
I stand corrected. That’s so different. I don’t know what I was thinking.
Look at your phrase “often if not always.” That was an unfair smear you added into her remarks to make them worse than they really were. This will help: imagine how you would mock a liberal if they said that Donald Trump admitted to “often if not always” grabbing women by the pussy.
Perhaps… But one thing that Clinton had going for her that Trump didn’t necessarily is that Clinton, despite being a scummy, scummy liar, isn’t a bumbling, poorly spoken idiot. Whereas I believe that Trump’s point was flubbed and might have improved with a little bit of finesse (Well… I’m not sure you could ever get that turd to shine, but we’ll never know, will we?), I believe that Hillary knew and meant what she was saying.
But she did not say that black people were superpredators. This started out as a super-lefty pro-Bernie talking point that was then adopted by anti-SJWs who wouldn’t even care if Clinton had said that. Any person who uses it immediately loses “serious person” points.
Oh don’t be stupid. Hillary’s political history was absolutely on trial for the 2016 election, Democrats made hay calling her the “Most Qualified Candidate Ever(tm)” How are we supposed to pretend she’s the Most Qualified Candidate Ever(tm), if we’re also supposed to pretend that she didn’t exist before 2015?
Jack’s statement was that Clinton signaled approval for policies she did not believe in in the 2016 election. I asked for examples of her doing that in the 2016 election. What are you missing here?
“Look at your phrase “often if not always.” That was an unfair smear you added into her remarks to make them worse than they really were. This will help: imagine how you would mock a liberal if they said that Donald Trump admitted to “often if not always” grabbing women by the pussy.”
Ah, the joys of grabbin’ puss. I hear it can be distracting… Which might be why you drew a comparison to a private conversation between two people and a speech made in front of hundreds, paid for with six figure fees. The problem is that Hillary LIVED her words, her speeches on the campaign trail changed depending on her crows, and some assertions were at direct odds with each other. You remember the “We’re going to kill coal jobs” comments, yeah… She didn’t make them in coal country, I’m just saying.
“But she did not say that black people were superpredators.”
I mean… She was OBVIOUSLY talking about the Italian inner city gangs, right? I really don’t know why Hillary engenders this kind of water carrying in people who should have every reason to actively despise her. There’s a context to those comments, and that speech, and the ’94 crime bill, and the fact that she did not specifically say “black people are superpredators” is irrelevant. If you want to argue that “Superpredators” in that context wasn’t racially charged, then I don’t know how you’ll ever be able to look in the mirror again after the next time you make some tenuous racial connotation argument.
“Jack’s statement was that Clinton signaled approval for policies she did not believe in in the 2016 election. I asked for examples of her doing that in the 2016 election. What are you missing here?”
I mean, I’m not trying to weaponize ignorance here. I’m not missing anything. You apparently missed the election.I feel like you’re being deliberately obtuse… You know Hillary is dishonest, even if you won’t say it, you know it, deep down. After everything that came out during this last cycle, from the leaked Emails to the leaked speeches, taking into account Hillary”s history, are you really going to stand there and argue that you *believe* that Hillary’s platform was advertised in good faith?
You want an example? Hillary’s economic plans were basically Bernie’s. She baled at free tuition, and a couple of other small points, but her plan was basically his, left out in the sun to dry a little longer. Now she calls his plan an “unrealistic pipe dream” that “tied her up like a straitjacket.”
So what was it? Was that her economic plan, or what she thought the idiot masses wanted to hear?
“you have to have a “public position” and a “private position”….
It’s even worse than that in context. She was speaking to corporate donors (of whom she has many) and basically making it very clear to them that they shouldn’t worry about any of her anti-corporate or populist rhetoric. Because she doesn’t mean it. Also the public “doesn’t want to see how the sausage gets made” and wouldn’t understand her need to do favors for large corporations in return for money and more favors.
Which is why Hillary fought tooth and nail to prevent the public from ever knowing about the text of those speeches. They were basically one big “don’t trust me about anything I say to anyone. Unless your one of the companies giving me a million dollars.”
I agree….
This kind of deflection frustrates me, but it’s something that’s increasingly common: “That person didn’t say that exact series of words, and because I refuse to look at the context around what they did say, I have plausible deniability as to what that meant. For all we know, they could have inhaled a metric ton of Vicodin, and those words are just stoned gibberish.”
If Hillary wasn’t telling her donors that they could ignore the show she put on for her voters, then what WAS she doing, ordering takeout?
“She called black people thugs and super predators, before those terms were deemed deeply offensive.” (bold mine)
Let’s try a more accurately depiction:
“She called black CHILDREN thugs and super predators, before those terms were deemed deeply offensive.”
“I think that lefty talking point is overblown.”
Oy, I’ve been using a Lefty point?
Anywho, wasn’t there a blanket exoneration issued when the Former Serial Sexual-Predator-In-Chief (Bill “Three Strikes” Clinton) leased office space in Harlem after leaving office?
To be accurate and fair, she called thugs and super-predators thugs and super-predators.
Jack;
My account now listed as pwsbubba instead of Paul W. Schlecht?
Sheesh, there appears to be no end to Worpress’ harassment. What’s next, tying me to the Equifax breach…?
Looks like they’ve finally relented to post my comments sans moderation.
Rats, shoulda sicced Zoltar Speaks! on them sooner.
My statement is based on the following less-than-flattering quote:
HRC: “They are often connected to big drug cartels, they are not just gangs of kids anymore. They are often the kinds of kids that are called superpredators — no conscience, no empathy. We can talk about why they ended up that way, but first, we have to bring them to heel.” (bolds mine)
FWIW, Politifact: “(Hillary) Clinton — in the midst of championing her husband’s 1994 crime legislation — did use the term ‘superpredator’ when referring to ‘gangs of kids.’ She did not specifically label superpredators as African-American, but the context of her speech and her subsequent apology decades later suggests it was a reasonable inference.”
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/aug/28/reince-priebus/did-hillary-clinton-call-african-american-youth-su/
Paul W. Schlecht wrote, “Rats, shoulda sicced Zoltar Speaks! on them sooner.”
LOL! I’m sure they’re feeling lucky that they didn’t receive a phone call from me. 😉
A phone call would be the least of their concerns.
You know those standard messages you hear when you call into customer service phone numbers of large companies that say something like “your conversation could be recorded for training purposes”; well I know for a fact that at least two of my phone calls to an unnamed large national company’s customer service department are being used for training purposes, I was told so by a friend half way across the United States that went through a training seminar for their customer service department and recognized my voice, I was able to confirm the calls she referenced. My phone conversations clearly identified flaws in their physical on-site service and also their phone supported customer service policies related to on-site physical service problems and I provided them with solutions to fix the problems; interestingly enough, they took the advice and the policies were changed including my fixes with more additions sometime after my phone calls.
> Barack Obama, who also ran against Hillary believing that he had no chance,
Makes sense, but do you have a citation for this, I’d love to learn more.
> 3. Bernie’s plans that Hillary now calls a “pipe dream” happen to be core fantasies of her party’s stalwarts. Clinton is essentially admitting that she was a stealth candidate, advocating or passively signaling approval of far Left policies that she knew could not work.
Excellent point although it is in tension with your earlier comment:
> his **far**-left, Socialist positions
Sanders is described by others (I am not informed enough to judge) as being no further left than FDR.
“I am a big liberal, it’s the Democratic Party who has moved right” — Bernie Sanders, ready for his close up.
The confusion is pretty easy to clear up. Bernie Sanders is a fantastic liar. FDR was not a proud socialist. The Left has moved far, far to the Left (listen to a Kennedy speech on economics…might as well be Reagan.) And if FDR had had a website, it certainly wouldn’t be loaded with talking points directly from the Communist Manifesto, as Bernie’s was.
Good point about Kennedy. Whatever happened to, “Ask not what your country can do for you…”?
“Barack Obama, who also ran against Hillary believing that he had no chance”
It’s an opinion, but one I share… Obama was a junior senator from Illinois, with basically zero name recognition. Hillary Clinton was Hillary Clinton.
““I am a big liberal, it’s the Democratic Party who has moved right” — Bernie Sanders, ready for his close up.”
But he was lying. Look, Bernie Sanders is a “Democratic Socialist”, a term I’m told is somehow different from “Socialist” which I’m told is somehow different than “Communist”, but when I ask the people what the difference is, they never seem to be able to articulate it. My best understanding is that the differences exists only as a matter of scale. I just want to point out, that there has never before been a time in the History of America where an out of the closet socialist came within sniffing distance of a major party nomination. The country HAS moved left.
No, SOME of the country has moved left. Some of the country has also moved right. The center has been weakened. That said, this is the first time such a wacky candidate hasn’t been laughed out of the voting booths a la Eugene Debs.
I think the entire landscape has shifted leftward. We no longer see debates between Republicans and Democrats about whether we should solve a particular problem with free market solutions or government solutions. The argument now is almost always about which government solution we should implement. If a free market is mentioned at all, it’s in the context of how the proposed government program will interact with and regulate it. The “small government Republican” is a vanishing breed, nearly extinct in the wild.
You’re right that the extremes on both sides have gathered strength, and the middle seems to be increasingly polarized, but that whole dynamic is taking place in an environment that has itself shifted to the left.
If you define additional government intervention in the private sector as by definition leftward then yes. The Federal government has been growing in power and influence since the end of the Civil War. The last small-government Republican, who believed it was government’s responsibility to protect people, not run their lives, was Reagan. That said, the US still hasn’t shifted as far left as Europe, where government came in to rebuild after WW2 and never withdrew. The days when the mailman was the only reminder that there was a Federal government are long gone, but the US is not at the point where government runs everything from the transportation network to the major industries to healthcare.
Isn’t a socialist just a communist who hasn’t started killing dissidents?
Depends on who you ask. Socialism is supposedly mostly about economics, whereas Communism is also a political ideology. Socialism is really supposed to be a capitalism-lite system with a lot of controls that seeks to achieve economic equality for all members of society. Communism pushes the idea of a classless society with no distinctions, abolition of religion, and a lot of those other trappings. Either system is rife with possibilities for abuse, and Communism is particular can very easily become straight-up tyranny and dictatorship hiding behind a thin ideological veneer, as it did in the USSR under Stalin.
Maybe we just call them “socialist” when they also happen to speak English. I don’t know, if someone has a better explanation, I’m all ears.
I think readers can skip this book. It will be Hillary trying to defend the indefensible, herself. Ok, that’s harsh.
Kidding aside, I’ve read the book “Shattered”, the inside of her campaign as told through interviewing a lot of people on her campaign. I think that book is a better look into “What happened”. I would say the authors seemed sympathetic to her, but they did not short sell the deficiencies. It’s also interesting how Hillary is a main character of “Shattered”, but always in the background, lurking and instilling dread among her minions. The overreaching impression I got, was that no matter how hard the campaign folks worked, it is Hillary that would cause them the most difficulties in their paths, rather than Trump or Bernie.
In conclusion, if anyone is still interested in how the HRC campaign ran in a relatively objective view, read “Shattered”. Hillary’s own account I would believe to be quite biased, because she hasn’t learned anything and is not willing to admit fallability.
3 and 4 hit hardest for me when I read the quote. I was at first incredibly angry about the huge pandering she was admitting to, but then found it hilarious that she was admitting to it in the first place. Politician Noises, exactly as I wrote.
I suspect the rest of the book is filled with such self-indicting complaints.
Even the title of the book is lame. It almost reads like a pathetic question, but even as a statement it lacks any sort of flair or details, like she expects everyone to already know what it’s referring to. To be fair, I suppose most Democrats are wondering what happened. Still, based on the tone I mentally translate the title to “Um, I Can Explain.”
It’s impossible not to catch the pathetic tone directly from the title. Everyone knows what happened. And sure, I’d like to hear a little more about Hillary and the DNC’s plan to get Trump nominated by nudging the press to focus on him, but I’m guessing that kind of actual insight into what happened won’t even be mentioned (thank the Russians for what little we know.)
This is just Hillary showing up way too late to try to take back the narrative. I’d bet a fiver that the working title was “What Really Happened” at some point.
In the movie “A Mighty Wind,” Fred Willard plays his usual idiot character, a former child star who used the catch phrase, “Wha’ Happened?” Youtube is already connecting the dots:
Jack asked, “Why didn’t Hillary point out to her audience that Bernie’s economics were absurd? Why didn’t she explain why simply ignoring the national debt and spending like a drunken sailor on free college for all and national health care would be disastrous? Why didn’t she lay out why Bernie’s blather about appointing Supreme Court justices to overturn Citizens United showed shocking ignorance of the judicial system?”
Although what came out of Clinton’s mouth may not have directly supported these things, I think the answer to each of those questions is once she was in power she would have tried to do the exact same things so why would she attack the very things she secretly wanted to do. Obviously, there was nothing about the portrayed Clinton facade that I trusted.
Why’s she publishing this book? She’s running again in 2020. Bill Clinton was the Baby Boom’s first president. HRC is the Baby Boom’s Harold Stassen.
I took the exact opposite conclusion. If she’s running again blaming a lot of her fellow Democrats for her loss seems like a bad strategy. I took it as “I’m never running again, so now I can say what I want, you jerks.”
I agree, but I’d pepper in some “Doallah Dollah bills ya’ll” for good measure. If all she wanted was to throw everyone she disliked under the bus, she could do it on Jon Stewart, she wants those sweet, sweet victim lucres.
Chris, since when has she begun making politically astute decisions? She’s delusional. She has no sense of cause and effect. And of course it’s about the money. With the Clintons, it’s always about the money. But she’ll make a run at the nomination for 2020. You really think all her financial supporters in Hollywood and on Wall Street and Silicon Valley are really going to abandon her?
I might agree with you, but for one detail: losing to Trump, of all people, has put such a stink on her, I question whether anyone would be willing to pony up the cash to support her again. I mean, that wasn’t just an ordinary election loss, it was a humiliation. Donald freakin’ Trump, man. When you lose to one of the worst candidates to ever make it on the ticket, what does that say about you?
But Jeff, it wasn’t her fault! It was because Bernie ran to the left of her and …The RUSSIANS! And James Comey! And the press! And mysogyny! (And what else… I’m thinking. I’m thinking…)
Of course it would make sense for not to run again. And I’m a little bit playing devil’s advocate on this. But her ambition and self image and greed are all truly Shakespearean.
True, once the sting of this loss fades, and she rewrites the narrative (at least in her mind), she’ll probably run for another office. I doubt it will be for president in 2020, but I can see her being installed as Mayor-For-Life someplace like New York or Chicago. I think she has a pathological need to be at the top of some organization, and can probably do the mental gymnastics to accept such a position as somehow even better than being president.
I think she needs something make herself feel important and allow her to pontificate and be listened to, even deferred to. Chronic Student Council President Syndrome?
Macedonians! And the patriarchy!
I agree with you, Other Bill. She’s going to run for the Oval Office again in 2020. I expect she’ll pick a most colorful, loose-lipped celebrity for a running mate – someone who will run for nomination on their own for a while, then drop out and join forces with her – someone who can out-Trump Trump (or will, or maybe already has), who’ll whip-up the leftist masses while persuading more in the middle to turn harder toward the left via nothing more than celebrity appeal and superior Trumpisms. Superior appeal to the masses’ emotions wins presidential elections from now on.
Interesting idea about a celebrity counter attack, Lucky. Can anyone really out Trump a Trump? I mean, the guy is kind of an original.
My guess is the Dems will go harder left a la Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann left and they will crash and burn in a George McGovern sized calamity. I just don’t see the left backing off. They’re going to double down and perhaps the Trump administration will actually accomplish some things in the mean time.
“Why is she publishing this book?”
She may not be up to another campaign, but if the Party and nation cry for help, duty would require her to respond.
This is another reason “Lying Hillary” was so effective for Trump.
It was “Crooked Hilary” and “Lying Ted”.
http://www.npr.org/2017/09/12/549430064/transcript-hillary-clinton-s-full-interview-with-npr-s-rachel-martin
http://www.npr.org/2017/09/12/549430064/transcript-hillary-clinton-s-full-interview-with-npr-s-rachel-martin