Hillary Clinton describes her loss in 2016 as “almost eschatological.” The word means, “relating to the final events in the history of the world.” For our purposes, 2016 was possibly the beginning of the end of the democratic experiment in this country. Clinton met with a writer from Financial Times for lunch recently and his headline was, “Hillary Clinton: We Are Standing On the Precipice Of Losing Our Democracy.”

I recommend you read the entire thing. The writer, Edward Luce, depicts the luncheon and talks about Hillary a bit. He reports that he has heard that in private and with friends she is funny and bitingly sarcastic. He reports that the media has never seen this side of Clinton. I mention this because I honestly believe that this is where Hillary Clinton has screwed herself politically her entire life. She doesn’t feel comfortable with the press and doesn’t let her hair down with them. That has worked to her detriment.

People have emotional intelligence and they sense that Clinton is not being spontaneous or completely open. This is why the accusations of underhanded doings stick to her like glue.  She is masked. She is guarded. And her enemies take advantage of her natural reticence and her caution and they spin into something evil.

What I think is really going on with her is what I’ll call a WASP sense of privacy and propriety. And that’s understandable and perfectly acceptable for most people. The problem is, at the level of presidential politics, you can’t really afford to be that private of a person. Clinton is immensely qualified but I think that her need to “act” a certain way in public has undermined her acceptance, and allowed her enemies to dig in with the secretive “crooked” Hillary allegations.

That said, listen to what she has to say about where we are in this country.

I ask whether things would have turned out differently had Clinton, not Trump, won in 2016. Her answer makes it clear she thinks the January 6 2021 storming of Capitol Hill to stop Joe Biden’s certification would simply have happened four years earlier. “Literally within hours of the polls closing in 2016, we had so much evidence pouring in about voters being turned away in Milwaukee and not being able to vote in Detroit,” she replies.

“These states were run by Republicans so there was no way to find out the truth about any of them. I also believe in peaceful succession and transition and all of that.” At that point she says she was unaware of Cambridge Analytica and the role of social-media algorithms — “all of the stuff that was convincing people that I was a murderer or a child trafficker”.

She reminds me that she won the popular vote by nearly 3mn but lost the electoral college by 78,000 votes. Biden won the popular vote by more than 7mn but barely scraped the electoral college by 43,000 votes. “That tells you everything you need to know about Republican strategy for 2024. Even in his reptilian brain, Trump has to know that he lost this time. He refuses to accept it because it wasn’t supposed to happen.”

Does she think Trump will run in 2024? “I think if he can he’s going to run again,” Clinton replies. “Follow the money with Trump — he’s raised about $130mn sitting in his bank account that he used to travel around, to fund organising against elections . . . I don’t know who will challenge him in the Republican primary.”

Interesting that she says, “if he can.” What might stand in his way? Maybe a criminal indictment?

It’s interesting to ponder Trump inciting the Capitol riot in 2017. Not to say he wouldn’t have done it. It would have been a pyrotechnic display of sour grapes, such as the world has never seen. At least in 2021’s riot, Trump could make the argument that something which was his was being taken from him. In 2017 it would have been, “something that I wanted wasn’t given to me,” which is a different kettle of fish.

It’s a shame that Hillary doesn’t feel free to be funny and sarcastic publicly. I really think I would enjoy knowing that aspect of her. Maybe she’s Dorothy Parker incarnate and we just don’t know it? Wouldn’t that be tragic? And in fact, that may be the case.

 

 

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22 COMMENTS

  1. She may have been a politician along the lines of Ann Richards. That was a great lady, with an excellent wit about her.

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      • I know Beto is the current darling to try to take down abbott and company, but a candidate like Ann Richards is needed today, she knew how to speak truth. Molly Ivans is missed as well. BTW, I know you have to work hard to keep up this website. I really appreciate all the hard work. The site has so much great content, I try to visit every day. best old guy

        • Thank you very much for your kind words. You just made my day. I put in a lot of hours here and it’s not just the writing. We have technical issues. I may be hiring another hosting provider — again. We have social media issues. There’s a lot to running one of these things.

          But I’m happy to say that the traffic is increasing and more people are reading the site. As long as that’s happening, it’s all worth it in my view.

    • I think the issue here is genuineness. Hillary comports herself with dignity. That’s all well and good. And for a senator or secretary of state, all that is fine. Being president is something else. There’s a level of intimacy that you need to display. I don’t thin you need to be a leg slapping good ole boy, but if in fact Hillary is funny and sarcastic, that might have been what would have won her the election. If she had busted Trump’s balls publicly with biting sarcasm, she might have won.

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        • I completely agree. But what happened was a horrible breach of trust on the part of the GOP. They put someone on the ticket that could not do the job. Obama said that. He said that while he had his differences with McCain or Romney, he never doubted that they could do the job.

  2. “It’s interesting to ponder Trump inciting the Capitol riot in 2017. Not to say he wouldn’t have done it.”

    Um, Ursula? Have you forgotten the fact that Trump was talking, just days before the 2016 election, that his “followers” needed to be ready to march on Washington if he “lost the election?” Trump, of course, had to project the idea that he couldn’t possibly lose the election by fair means (even though he did seem to be taken completely by surprise that he did win) so he spent weeks before the election–even before Comey’s little BS “reopening” the email investigation–trying to propose that only fraud could keep him from winning, even saying his supporters needed to be prepared to march on DC to overturn the election and stop the Clinton inauguration.

    He most certainly would’ve done that if the Electoral College had given Clinton the win.

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    • The problem is that we can only speculate. If Hillary had cleaned his clock, then he might have done something different. If the election was super close, then definitely, things would have exploded. We will never know. But yes, you are right. Trump was priming the pump for an explosion when he lost. That’s who he is.

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  3. Oh, as for Hillary’s lack of “being funny and bitingly sarcastic” in public and her lack of “comfortable with the press,” well, that’s the old double standard for you. She was never allowed to show any wit because, as First Lady, well it would reflect poorly on Bill and as Senator, she’d have been attacked as “not taking the job seriously.” Think about every female Senator. Which of them gets to crack jokes or make light of serious topics when compared to their male counterparts? Even the GOP’s top female political leaders refrain from exhibiting any (intentional) humor and almost all of them remain relatively distant from the media compared to their male counterparts

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    • You may be right. You probably are in fact. Hillary herself said she was the victim of the “vast right-wing conspiracy” and she was. They started in on her in the 90’s and made her into the wicked witch of the west — and north, south, and east. She was a trailblazer and had to take a lot of crap because of it. Sometime Google Clara Shortridge Foltz and read about how she wasn’t allowed to go to law school and how she had to pass the California bar three times before they licensed her. She and Hillary are soul mates.

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      • I think Hillary lost the election in 2010 when republicans swept into office. That allowed them the whole server, bengazi witch hunts that never went any where, but left the impression there must be something there. We will have the same if republicans get the speakers gavel in 2022, any possible Democratic presidential candidate will be hammered with investigations. And no, I don’t think Biden is up for another 4 years.

        • The problem the Democrats have right now is we have no bench. I’m probably going to get hammered for saying that but I said it. I don’t think Kamala Harris can win the presidency. I think Pete Buttigieg has the raw intelligence and the ability to do the job but this country is too backwards to elect a gay leader. Even Ireland, with its strong Catholic culture elected a gay leader, but we can’t do it here. Not now at this time in history. So I don’t know where we go, I honestly don’t. Believe me, it keeps me awake at nights. And let me share this idea with you: What if Liz Cheney ran and got the GOP nomination and it was a Cheney/Harris contest? I honestly think Cheney would win and I’ll get hammered for that, too, probably.

          • I have to agree with you on this Ursula. I would have loved to have Hilary as President. I voted for her. I NEVER thought I would be interested in politics, until the Orange Idiot ran, then I became terrified of what would become of this country. I still am, if the republicans take over, this country is doomed I am afraid.

      • Actually the claim about the vast right-wing conspiracy was in reference to the attacks on Bill, not herself. But, the right did go after her because she refused to do the usual “First Lady” routine and just take on some little “feel-good” role as pretty much every other First Lady had done since Mamie Eisenhower. (Criticisms of Eleanor Roosevelt were largely muted because FDR “used” her, sending her places to press for his policies where he knew he wouldn’t be very welcomed but would be, at the very least, polite to Mrs Roosevelt. As for Bess Truman, I’m not really aware of anything she actually did as First Lady. Mamie’s real initiatives were also pretty limited but she’s credited as being the first to decorate the WH for Halloween and her fudge recipe was widely reprinted in women’s magazines but she was also pretty private and reserved as was the norm for the era for anyone who was not “Hollywood.”) Hillary was charged with (or took charge of) the task of health care reform which was never the socialist program that the GOP made it out to be–ironically, it would be the basis for the program that Massachusetts’ GOP Governor Mitt Romney would institute for his state’s health care program (with very limited changes) which, in turn, was watered down even further to become the basis of “Obamacare.”

        • Bess Truman, if memory serves, hated Harry being president. I think that may have been one of his considerations for not running for a second term.

  4. Um…. Does no one remember, or just refuse to admit, that there were MANY Dems shouting that the 2016 electron was stolen, rigged, not legitimate. Along with many from Hollywood and almost all in the media. Actual video recordings of the broadcasts still exist of all the lefties proclaiming that exact words that they now are trying too jail people for. Or how about the fact that Clinton destroyed tens of thousands emails that were under subpoena? Or the fact that she and others flat out cheated the DNC nomination process. Or even that she was responsible for creating and spreading the lies about Trump and Russia. Before you continue you make yourselves look even dumber, consider the possibility that Hillary represented the penultimate politician, (lieing, scamming, killing, selling out America for donations, and generally not caring about anything but having more power and money no matter what it does to this country. And the one thing that no one can accuse Trump of being is a politician. He just doesn’t have the lifetime of training to smile and lie right to your face that career politicians do. We elected Trump as a great big middle finger to them. Maybe to send a message that were tired of politicians screwing this country, and if you keep it up well find someone even worse than Trump next time. But please, don’t blame sexism for that broad losing.

  5. Thanks URSULA .. got it .. yep too uptight WASPish. Smart enough and tough enough .. would have been a good President and Spectacular role model for Girls.

    • Ah ha found out one reason my comments don’t post sometimes. Have to absolutely make no errors w email (I always make typos and want to correct)

  6. Eschatological hmmm? Hilary thinks her poop doesn’t stink I guess. News flash Hilary, had you not thought the nomination for the 2016 prez election was your due, we might have had someone win it who wasn’t so loathed as you. The ‘pube machine must have been clinking the champagne glasses when they realized you were the Dem nominee. EVEN against someone so unfit for the office as former guy was.

    Here’s to hoping she fades into obscurity as much as we hope diaper don does.

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