Archive for Category: Hillary Clinton

I finished The Destruction of Hillary Clinton in February 2017 and it was published in early April of that year. Since then, much of my account of the election of 2016 and the forces that combined to install Donald Trump in the White House has been borne out, including events and contributing factors that we were only beginning to learn about when I did my research for the book. At the same time, it has been disheartening and frustrating to watch other facets of the election not only remain generally unacknowledged, but actually continue on, some more virulently than ever. The publication of the paperback in November 2018 gave me the opportunity to discuss those developments, and “what’s happened since” the election. What follows is the text of that Afterword, which appears, along with a revised Introduction, in the paperback of the book, now titled The Destruction of Hillary Clinton: Untangling the Political Forces, Media Culture, and Assault on Fact that Decided the 2016 Election.

It’s difficult for me to write about Hillary Clinton’s What Happened without revisiting my anger over the continuing injustice of her treatment by much of the press. Yes, there have been appreciative reviews of the book, reviews that recognize that Clinton, as Megan Garber puts it, “is doing the thing so many women politicians and citizens have done, recently, in a world that refuses to make space for them: It reclaims.” In doing so, it inaugurates “a newly emotional style of political engagement”—but without sacrificing the factual, as some other politicians have done. Yes, it’s a candid, warm, and sometimes angry account of Clinton’s experience; it’s also an astute, multifaceted analysis of the “perfect storm” that resulted in the disaster of 2016.[1]

The unvarnished malice of the negative reviews, however, makes it difficult to avoid the conclusion that many responses to the book are an extension of the same desire to castigate Hillary that pundits brought to their reporting of the campaign. The book is “useless” (Sam Kriss) and “essentially wrong-headed” (Sarah Leonard); it’s like “Hillary cornering you in a coffee shop, replaying the game tape.” And of course, there’s the “blames everyone but herself” theme, with which we’ve been bludgeoned since the night of the election.

Now that we know for sure that the FBI is conducting an investigation into any connections and “coordination” between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government, pundits are asking—though not answering—the question of whether Russia’s efforts to sabotage Hillary Clinton’s campaign had any effect on the outcome of the election. No one wants to speculate, no one wants to “re-litigate.” “The past is past,” they say. The fact is that a smart ten-year-old can see how implausible it is to imagine that the continued assault on Hillary’s credibility wouldn’t have had an impact on the election. The evidence is circumstantial—but it’s massive, and accumulating all the time.

“The fake media is trying to silence us, but we will not let them. The fake media tried to stop us from going to the White House. But I’m president, and they’re not.”

During the past couple of months, Hillary Clinton has come “out of the woods” to deliver several speeches and give three fascinating interviews in which she said what everyone who has paid any attention to post-election revelations should know: her loss in 2016 was not due to any one factor, but an over-determined pile-on that few candidates could have weathered—and that she almost did overcome, even so.

On October 4, right before the Access Hollywood tapes broke, an article appeared in the Washington Post, describing the disappointment of Roger Stone and other backers of Donald Trump that the anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks had not yet produced the “October surprise” it had been promising. “For weeks,” the article read, the Trump contingent had “hyped the tantalizing possibility” that a set of documents would be released that would “doom Hillary Clinton’s chances in November.” The promised leaks, whose origin Julian Assange would not reveal, was touted as “historic” and Texas radio host Alex Jones pronounced that “the Clintons will be devastated.” Assange recommended patience; he promised to reveal documents every week for the next ten weeks, and said that “some will have a direct bearing on the U.S. election.”

We now know, thanks to a 14-page U.S. intelligence finding released on January 6—a joint product of the CIA, FBI, and National Security Agency–that the leaks were part of an intelligence operation personally ordered by Vladimir Putin with the purpose of “denying Hillary Clinton the presidency” and “installing Donald Trump in the Oval Office.” Putin had held a grudge against Clinton since 2011, the report stated, blaming her for inciting mass protests against his regime.

I am a baby-boomer. In fact, I am part of the very first cohort of baby-boomers, as is Hillary Clinton. I was born in 1947, almost exactly nine months after my father returned from naval service in WWII. And, like many others born roughly the same time, my life was profoundly affected by both the gender restrictions of the fifties and early sixties and the social revolutions that took place in the late 60's and early 70’s--especially feminism (which we used to call “women's liberation.”)

To begin by being thoroughly “transparent,” I am one of those post-65-year-old women with a Hillary sign in my front yard. Or, to be more exact, who had a Hillary sign in her front yard. Two actually. They both were stolen and I don’t believe it was so the folks who stole them could put them in their own front yard. So I guess the more precise word is that they were confiscated.

According to recent polls, American voters are still greatly concerned about the email “scandal,” which has played such a key role in Clinton’s low ratings for “honesty.” This concern is misplaced, as the Congressional Hearings that followed FBI director James Comey’s public announcement of the results of their investigation clearly proved that Clinton never lied about her handling of classified emails.

I really should get out of the habit of watching “Morning Joe.” I’m an early riser and for a long time it seemed the perfect segue between my second cup of coffee (during “Way Too Early”) and sitting down to work. Joe’s bombastic ego and Mika’s giggly, faux feminism got me just riled up enough to throw the comforter and dogs off my lap and head to the computer. Over the past year, however, adrenalizing irritation has given way to indigestion to stroke-inducing fury. It’s not a healthy way to start my day.