Hillary's Ashes

The first excerpt from Hillary’s book is out…What Happened. Great title...for the entire country in fact...because for the sane majority of us that's the first thought that crossed our minds on the morning of November 9. But from the time it was first announced, the usual suspects were already out with their torches ready to burn her ashes all over again. A number of them told her outright to just "Go away". One wag, upon the book’s first announcement, observed, “It’s the first time a book asked and answered a question on its cover”:
That lame witticism will be the least inflammatory after the book itself comes out, and Hillary’s media critics dig into it for any sentence fragment or dangling modifier that helps reinforce their persistent narrative that she is a controlling, scripted, unlikeable woman whose lifelong status at the head of the class made her unable to relate to and inspire ordinary others. They will find what they’re looking for in her book simply because they will be looking for it and have spent decades “uncovering” it even when it didn’t exist or when evidence to the contrary did exist. Those who have admired and supported HRC must accept the fact that there is a hatred of her that’s visceral, irrational and permanent, and there’s nothing to be done about it at this point. The damage has been done…not just to Hillary but also the nation.

However, I must offer a few final observations on HRC before I, for my part anyway, turn her fate over to history--which I’m sure will not only restore her well-deserved lofty reputation, but ultimately judge that when the US failed to elect her president, it failed itself for divisive, debilitating, and dangerous decades to come:
Observation #1 : The first excerpt from her book details her feelings during the second presidential debate against Donald Trump where he stalked her around the stage.

"It was incredibly uncomfortable," she said, describing the moment. "He was literally breathing down my neck. My skin crawled. It was one of those moments where you wish you could hit pause and ask everyone watching, well, what would you do?" She continued: "Do you stay calm, keep smiling and carry on as if he weren't repeatedly invading your space? Or do you turn, look him in the eye and say loudly and clearly, 'Back up you creep, get away from me?' ... I kept my cool, aided by a lifetime of dealing with men trying to throw me off."

As much as I agonize for her dilemma in that moment, it may have been the time for her to lose her cool…or act it at least. Hillary, like many modern Democrats with national ambitions, had spent much of the 21stcentury trying to project an image of strength by advocating for the military, while painfully dodging or finessing face-to-face combat because polling told them Americans hate political conflict. Whatever they tell pollsters, Americans elected a president who thrives on combativeness...has made a reality show of the presidency out of it. I believe Hillary would’ve benefited greatly in the bizarre atmosphere of the 2016 election by confronting Trump then and there, if just by turning and staring him down. It would’ve been a thrilling, exhilarating moment for her supporters, and it would’ve given the catty media, which trafficked nonstop in smears about her bitchiness, something real of it that she could own rather than have pinned on her. This observation is not limited to that moment and her alone. I think Democrats in general have to start coming off less compliant and accommodating…even less reasonable…at least occasionally. Trump has changed the rules of the game where now appealing to people’s better angels may not always be as effective as scaring the devil out of them.
Observation #2 --The Hillary was a bad candidate myth becomes hollower with each passing day of the Trump presidency. Her candidacy was straight out of the mainstream of the Democratic Party stretching back to JFK through Dukakis, Bill Clinton, Gore, Kerry, and Obama; and her campaign was only marginally better or worse than any of them. Beside that, her decision to run against Donald Trump’s unfitness for office rather than the 1% and the decline of the middle class was just as it should have been. As has now become abundantly clear to the media, the Republican establishment, and millions of thoughtless voters who indulged his antics while ignoring her warnings, Trump is manifestly unfit to be president and poses an existential threat to American democracy. To ignore who he was and what danger he represented in 2016 would’ve been as malfeasant as campaigning in 2000 with evidence of an imminent 9/11 attack or in 2008 with evidence of an imminent financial collapse and ignoring either. If she had spent the bulk of her campaign harping on the privileges of the 1% and chanting “millionaires and billionaires” over and over again, we would be looking at the increasingly horrifying spectacle in the White House today and asking, “What was wrong with her? Couldn't she see this coming?”
Observation #3 -- Nothing is going to change on Hillary’s upcoming media book tour unless she makes it change. She must know going in that every time she sits down with someone to discuss her book, one of the first things she’s going to be asked is whether she accepts any responsibility for the failure of her campaign. She will be asked that even though she has already accepted responsibility. She will be asked that even if she accepts responsibility in a morning interview and then again in an afternoon interview, they’re still going to want her to do it again in an evening interview. She must realize that it’s not the acceptance of responsibility they want, it’s the televised thrill of humbling her…of showing-off to their media friends…of assuring the people who send them nasty tweets about Hillary that they feel their anger. It is all performance, and Hillary has got to be ready to confront it as she perhaps should’ve confronted Trump that night…because it really comes from the same bully posturing. I hesitate to tell her what she must do (done that), because she’s had far too many damn people telling her what she should do…or should’ve done. She actually did the near impossible in winning a majority of votes over truly diabolical obstacles. But this upcoming book tour will be important…not for selling books or telling "her side of the story"…but for her to rise up out of the ashes and resume her rightful place in our national debate. She’s the last one who should be silenced because hers was the first, loudest, and clearest voice to rise up against the calamity that has befallen us, and we need her again.