by Robert Carbery
Hillary Clinton has blamed literally everyone and everything but herself for her catastrophic loss to Donald Trump last November. She says the Russian hacks and the Comey meddling were mostly to blame. But earlier this month, she even added that the Democratic National Committee, which was rigged to ensure she was the nominee, was utterly worthless. And, she also mentioned that there was an unfair expectation that she was assumed to win all along.
Talk about out of touch with reality.
The real story behind Clinton’s loss is being read by many Americans in the recently published New York Times Bestseller, Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign. With wide ranging access to about a hundred sources who worked on the Clinton campaign, authors Amie Parnes and Jonathan Allen bring to light the real story behind the Democratic nominee’s loss. Since the candidate herself won’t tell you the truth.
The two were interviewed on the libertarian-infused morning radio talk show, Armstrong and Getty, last Friday.
Was the campaign doomed from the start?
Parnes and Allen agree that there were many red flags seen from the beginning. The very fact that no inspirational message was crafted for the Clinton speech announcing her candidacy, being just another standard Democratic Party stump speech, was problematic and pointed to the nagging issue that the candidate could not provide a reason why she should become president and why Americans should vote for her.
The authors continued to discuss the Clinton campaign being overly reliant on data and analytics, believing the same flawed polls that showed her with an insurmountable lead. Mrs. Clinton likes to blame Comey and Russia and just about anything else for her loss to Donald Trump just so she can avoid facing the reality that she was a horrific candidate and the country did not want to see her back in the White house. At the end of the day, she could not convince voters as to why she had to be president and why it had to be right now, instead, she obsessed with painting her opponent as a mean and racist individual.
The Clinton campaign was overly confident in its ability to turn out the same people who voted for Obama the last two elections, which was always a tall task. When Americans are still thirsty for change, the last thing they wanted was more of the same. People in the campaign believed the hype that came from the Clinton-aligned media and assumed they were on the winning side, which led to many simply jockeying for position in what would be the Clinton White House. Looking past winning the actual election would eventually prove disastrous for the Democrats.
In another segment of the radio interview, the authors talked about how the grueling campaign was spirit-crushing to many of the aides. This was mostly due to the investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of state, a cloud that hung over them throughout the campaign simply because the candidate would not confront it by admitting fault, apologizing, taking responsibility and moving on.
When everything you are trying to accomplish is being damaged by the email story that would not go away, you become crushed by this external force that is present but not of your doing. By late August and early September, Hillary finally started to apologize a little for her use of the server, but by that point it was far too late and the apology much to half-assed.
The Democratic Party and Hillary’s millions of voters across the country are dying for Mrs. Clinton to actually discuss what she did wrong during the campaign and highlight what she could have done better. But this would be admitting fault! Hillary Clinton is still living in denial over the reasons for her loss. Americans did not and do not trust her or like her. They knew what she would do in the White House. They did not want to hand her that power.
So this is all quite infuriating for Democrats who will learn nothing from Hillary Clinton, who recently called the email investigation a big “nothingburger.” She still does not understand the emails’ impact on her campaign or she is going out of her way to cloak the truth by not admitting to any wrongdoing whatsoever. And while the campaign seemed doomed from the start as we are learning from these in-depth post-mortem accounts of the brutal presidential campaign, Clinton was still very close to becoming president. And still won the popular vote 48% to 46%.
She had every advantage in the world. But she could never shake Trump or articulate her candidacy or move past the email investigation. Therefore, that glass ceiling will remain unshattered. For now.