In Defense Of Hillary

It is generally acknowledged that it is incredibly difficult to win a third term after a two-term President. People are just ready for change. And Hillary Clinton could not do it. But we need to remember that she came within a whisker of doing so. The difference between carrying the three states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania was just over 100,000 votes and those three states would have given her the electoral college victory. That is 100,000 out of over 120 million votes cast. Her current lead in the popular vote is over 400,000 and is expected to increase substantially as mail-in ballots are counted, primarily in the blue states on the West Coast. Some estimates put her as winning the popular vote by over a full percentage point.

Yes, Clinton was perhaps not the most charismatic candidate and carried a certain amount of baggage. But most of that baggage was pure fiction. She has been one of the most thoroughly investigated people on the entire planet and all anyone has ever been able to come up with is a series of faux scandals where no wrongdoing has ever been found. Like all politicians, she prevaricates, hedges the truth, and is not as forthcoming as some would hope. She has been continually treated to a double standard that no other politician has ever had to endure, even Obama. Yes, in hindsight, we can all point to the fact that she didn’t visit Wisconsin, but you have to imagine the polling data showed that she didn’t need to. Yes, you can say she should have been out there laying the groundwork for her campaign after leaving the Obama administration rather than doing speaking engagements on Wall Street. Yes, you can say that perhaps the Clinton Foundation should have focused at least some of its energies on doing more good here at home. Those are all valid criticisms but they only look good in hindsight.

In fact, the truth is that Hillary ran a pretty flawless campaign. Can you name one single misstep or faux-pas that the campaign made. Her biggest liability may have actually been, again, not her but her husband who made that ill-advised visit to the Attorney General and then helped promote the narrative that Obamacare was a disaster. You may not agree with her strategy or tactics, that she needed a more progressive message. But she adopted many of Sanders’ positions and actually ran on them. She was far better in all three debates than anyone could have expected or imagined.

Hillary faced great headwinds besides just trying to extend a Democratic third term. Every financial collapse like the one we had under George W. Bush has resulted in the rise of xenophobia and racism. Unfortunately, Hillary happened to run against a candidate who was willing to actually go there and, in doing so, he uncovered the “missing white voter” that many believed to be mythical and that neither John McCain or Mitt Romney could find. I have written that the GOP base has said that their last three candidates, which includes G.W. Bush, were not true conservatives. It is now clear that the base meant white nationalism when they spoke about true conservatism.

In addition, Hillary faced a mainstream press that was only to happy to apply a presidential standard to her while milking Trump to simply get eyeballs on their product and line their own pockets. One of the reasons there is so much uncertainty over what Trump will do as President is that he was hardly vetted at all by the press. Trump grew up in the New York media circus of the 1980s and 1990s, where celebrities nearly made a sport at getting their name into the paper. He learned that often there is no such thing as “bad” press. He knows how to play the media like fools. He was given billions of dollars in free air time. His positions changed hourly. The wall became a virtual wall and then a real one again. The ban against Muslims would happen, then it would just be increased vetting, and then the ban was on again. The same goes for the deportation force. He paid no price not only for the outrageousness of these positions but for the clear waffling on those very positions. Can you honestly say Hillary would have been given that kind of leeway by the media. He paid no price for breaking another norm of governance by not releasing his tax returns. The media constantly played the game of false equivalence between the mountains of illegal and unethical Trump behavior and the “scandals” surrounding Hillary’s email and the Clinton Foundation. The media barely reported on the two legal documents that showed clear sexual assaults by Trump and essentially allowed Trump to deny the fallout from the Access Hollywood tape with virtually no pushback. There was never any push on Trump’s Russian connections and the fact that he lied continually and provably throughout the campaign. The double standard in attitude that the press took to her and Trump was a huge hurdle to overcome.

Clinton was trying to replace the first black President and become the first woman to lead our country. No one should underestimate how difficult that task was. If racism and xenophobia were the center of this campaign, sexism and misogyny were not far behind. The evangelical community exposed themselves in this election for what they truly are. The cloak of “Christian” principles until now has allowed them to hide their true hatred and bigotry. Remember, that in the evangelical view, the woman clearly has a place and that is not a place of leadership. Patriarchy is the hallmark of virtually all the evangelicals and no one can deny the rampant sexism in the secular community as well.

In retrospect, President Obama also made things more difficult for Hillary in that he clearly needed to pound away at adding more stimulus to our economy. He was constantly rebuffed on infrastructure investment by Republicans who have now miraculously come around to that way of thinking. And he needed to actually take some the head honchos on Wall Street and march them into court. Even if the DOJ lost those cases, it would have been a statement to the country that there was at least an attempt to make Wall Street pay for destroying our economy.

Finally, Clinton faced a right-wing coup from within our own government. Late-deciding voters clearly broke heavily for Trump and the Comey letter gave cover for many traditional Republicans who were less than enthused about Trump to still pull the lever from him. Politics is a fringe activity for many people. We are all too busy trying to make ends meet and take care of our families and many of us only focus on the election until it is upon us. Hillary Clinton ran under an undeserved cloud of suspicion for the entire last week of this campaign. Suspicion that was shown to be totally undeserved. Comey’s letter violated DOJ policies and procedures and opened the floodgates of other false leaks from the cabal within the FBI out to destroy Hillary. The fact that Comey was able to finish his investigation within a week shows just how incredibly unnecessary his original letter really was. There is no doubt that Comey’s letter entirely changed the dynamic of the campaign and with the margin between victory and defeat at only 100,000 votes, it is quite clear that Comey and the FBI helped elect Donald Trump.

I know I will get pushback from readers that I am just making excuses and I am unwilling to learn the lesson from this devastating loss. And I agree that there are lessons to be learned. There was a need to understand that, even though employment was rising, people were experiencing dramatic downward mobility. In reality, Democrats had policies that would have helped address that issue – more stimulus, raising taxes on the rich and cutting them for the middle class, free college education, and investments in our communities. But the reality is that all those plans were continually blocked by the Republicans. The real lesson is that we did not do a good enough job communicating what was actually happening. Republicans held over 50 votes on repealing Obamacare. Somehow, we needed to make the Republicans have 50 votes on greater stimulus. So, yes, perhaps Hillary was not the perfect messenger and we needed a more progressive message, but she was our nominee. And we should not ignore the obstacles in front of her and how difficult the challenge was. And the reality that she came so close to winning. Of course, none of that will matter in the darkness of the next few years. But at least we should recognize it.