More info is now coming out about how Putin and his cronies hacked the 2016 presidential election, and how the Trump campaign condoned it. It is well known that Putin had a grudge against Clinton as Secretary of State and didn’t want her to ever become President, and how Trump saw this as an opportunity to steal the election from Hillary to become President himself. The outcome of the investigation into this matter now in progress remains to be seen.
As violating as this was, Russia, in reality played a small role into Hillary’s defeat, and even if they had no involvement, the outcome would have bee the same. As much as Putin wants to believe otherwise, it really wouldn’t have made any difference. The American press, the Republican party, and the American people themselves played the major role in depriving Hillary of her almost certain victory, and the author, Susan Bordo, who researched Hillary beginning with her college years recorded the entire process.
The cards were stacked against Hillary Clinton, from the very beginning. She was an ardent feminist, one of only seven women to attend Harvard Law School back in 1968, with the resentment of many of her male colleagues. She was a public defense lawyer, assigned by the courts to defend those who could not afford an attorney, sometimes defending those for crimes she herself despised.
Fast forward to marrying Bill Clinton and becoming first lady of Arkansas, where she worked in many organizations to defend children from sickness and abuse to keeping them out of prisons, later working for violence against women, and going as far as to help investigate Watergate at the request of the Senate Watergate Committee.
Later, she worked to create a universal health care system (as first lady of the United States; she failed), worked to help rebuild the World Trade Center, to protect homeowners in keeping their homes from being foreclosed (partially successful), worked against climate change, for LGBTQ rights, (as a U.S. Senator from New York), tried to broker a cease fire between Hamas and Israel (as Secretary of State) and so on. This entire list of her accomplishments (and it’s long) are at the end of Chapter 3, as an answer to Republican Presidential candidate Carly Fiorina's, challenge, “if you want to stump a Democrat, ask them to name an accomplishment of Mrs. Clinton’s.” Ms. Bordo then gives this list, being three pages long; and that didn’t include her college days.
Why then, with all this on her resume, did Hillary get defeated? (She was defeated in the electoral process. She won three million votes more than Trump in the popular vote.) Not only was she defeated, she lost to a man who, as rich as he is, is known to be a liar, a cheat, quick tempered, to ruthlessly and openly insult people, make fun of the handicapped, look down upon women and is working to take away many of their rights they have worked decades to obtain, and hasn’t accomplished a thing ever since taking office. Donald Trump once said in a speech, “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters.” He’s right; he can; and, in a way, he has figuratively done just that. The results 2016 election is proof of that.
What Hillary had against her, besides Vladimir Putin, was James Comey, head of the F.B.I.; Bernie Sanders supporters who could not bring themselves to vote for Hillary Clinton, and either voted for Trump, a third party, or chose not to vote; the extreme Right; faithful Republicans who always believed in their party, no matter who is nominated; anyone who could never vote for a woman no matter how good she is; the media that reported any and all “scandals” that turned out not to be that; the emails on her private server when she served as Secretary of State is one; no evidence was found of leaking any classified information; Wikileaks giving out “scandalous” information about Hillary. Note that none ever came out about Trump. Most of all, there were while middle class women who, amazingly, want nothing to do with Hillary for fear of embarrassment, and even worse, many people, of all races, who enthusiastically voted for Obama didn’t bother to go out and vote in this election at all. If they did, it would have been a different story. This was simply a Campaign of hate! You can understand all this from both reading the book and remembering what you’ve seen in the election of 2016. They both go together. The book is very accurate!
The ultimate incident that contributed to Hillary Clinton’s defeat began when Trump was revealed in a recording to brag about groping women and how easy it is for him to have sex, saying this in the most vulgar manner possible. This recording made news all over the media, but eight days before the election, F.B.I director James Comey revealed that Hillary was under investigation for having email contacts with Anthony Weiner, a disgraced Congressman from New York and because of it, was suspected of revealing classified secrets from the State Department (again). Interest in Trump’s revelations were dropped in favor of these accusations against Hillary. Four days later, it was found that Hillary, again, committed no crime, but it was too late. The damage had been done, and Hillary ended up losing to Trump.
This shows that no matter how badly Trump behaved, and there are many incidents in the book describing his misdeeds, anytime something about Hillary came up, no matter how trivial, Trump was forgiven and Hillary was under the microscope.
This book is short but concise. It’s easy to read, and it gives in great detail the entire battle between Clinton and Trump, and the trials and tribulations they both faced, but especially to Hillary.
The media pictured Hillary Clinton as a liar, a cheat, and conniving, but this book reveals the truth about her, and though not perfect, Hillary not only was none of these, but dedicated her life to causes of those less fortunate than her, those who were powerless but needed help and protection, and tried to save the sanity of this country. Yes, she made mistakes like voting to get into Iraq, but has since rescinded on that.
Everything negative that Hillary war depicted, we got in Donald Trump. This shows her enemies projecting themselves on her.
Hillary would have made a much better president than Trump, and this fact is revealed more and more each day. This book inadvertently shows what fools many of the American people are, for they are the real losers in the election of 2016. So is the rest of the world.
We are now paying the price.
Alastair Browne
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