Taking responsibility, but laying all the blame
HILLARY CLINTON REVEALS A LONG LIST OF REASONS WHY HER CANDIDACY FAILED
Hillary Clinton said Tuesday that she takes “absolute personal responsibility” for her 2016 loss. But she doesn’t, really.
Clinton suggested in an interview at a “Women for Women” event in New York that her forthcoming book would include plenty about how misogyny contributed to her loss, adding it to the blame she has assigned to FBI Director James Comey and Russian hacking. And by the end of the interview, she also blamed the debate questions she was asked.
The total picture was of a candidate only adding to the things she blames for her loss rather than truly looking inward.
She acknowledged her own flaws, yes, but she also seemed to suggest they were rather inconsequential and at one point appeared to sarcastically dismiss the magnitude of them.
Asked whether misogyny played a role, Clinton said with a wry smile: “The book’s coming out in the fall.”
“Yes, I do think it played a role,” she said. “I think other things played a role, too.” She would go on to name Russia and Comey’s letter about discovering more Clinton emails with 11 days left in the campaign. She said she was on her way to winning without them and would have won if the election were held Oct. 27.
“It wasn’t a perfect campaign. There is no such thing,” Clinton said. “But I was on the way to winning until a combination of Jim Comey’s letter on Oct. 28 and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me but got scared off. “If the election were on Oct. 27, I would be your president.”
She also blamed Russian hacking saying, “He (Russian President Vladimir Putin) certainly interfered in our election” and said he was not “a member of my fan club.”
But she’s offered similar — if less pointed — comments about those things before. The role of misogyny in her loss is something she seemed eager to preview in her book and encourage people to read about.
“It is real. It is very much a part of the landscape politically and socially and economically,” she added. “It (played) a role in this election, and I will have a lot to say about it.”
Later in the same conversation, Clinton also suggested that debate questions were to blame, saying moderators didn’t ask about how the candidates planned to created jobs.
“I’ve watched a million presidential debates in my life, and I was waiting for the moment when one of the people asking the questions would have said, ‘Well, so, exactly how are you going to create more jobs?’” Clinton said.
As The Washington Post’s Callum Borchers notes, it turns out NBC moderator Lester Holt actually led off the very first debate with this question: “Beginning with you, Secretary Clinton, why are you a better choice than your opponent to create the kinds of jobs that will put more money into the pockets
ONE OF THE CRITICISMS OF CLINTON IS THAT SHE HAS BLAMED EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING BUT HERSELF.
of American works?”
One of the criticisms of Clinton since her loss is that she has blamed everyone and everything but herself. She did offer some thoughts on her own shortcomings but not in any detail. And six months on, she’s clearly more than eager to chew over the other reasons she lost.
Even when Clinton acknowledged her own problems, she seemed to merely be checking a box and conceding the point. “Did I make mistakes? Oh my gosh, yes,” she said, before adding, apparently somewhat sarcastically: “You’ll read my confession and my request for absolution.”
The “request for absolution” line was delivered pretty thick. The takeaway: Clinton may believe in her own personal failures, but she believes they’re overblown next to everything else. Something tells me she’ll focus more on those things in her book.
Look, it’s fine to blame outside factors; Clinton lost by less than one point each in three swing states that made Trump the winner. It’s completely plausible that Comey or Russia or misogyny made the difference.
But “absolute personal responsibility” suggests you are taking total accountability for the outcome. Clinton simply isn’t doing that. In fact, she’s suggesting her own flaws were pretty minimal.