Sanders helped Trump win, says Clinton memoir
UNITED STATES: Hillary Clinton has blamed Bernie Sanders for opening the door to US President Donald Trump’s election victory by causing her own campaign lasting damage.
Clinton has turned on her former Democrat rival in What Happened, a book reflecting on her defeat, accusing Sanders and his supporters of giving Trump the ammunition to defeat her.
‘‘His attacks caused lasting damage, making it harder to unify progressives in the general election and paving the way for Trump’s ‘Crooked Hillary’ campaign,’’ she wrote.
The acrimonious rivalry between Clinton, an establishment centrist, and Sanders, a progressive who appealed to young people eager for more populist left-wing policies, caused a rift in the Democratic Party during the primary campaign, and the split endures.
Clinton likened Sanders, a selfdescribed democratic socialist, to a deranged character in the film There’s Something About Mary who plans to market a shorter version of the ‘‘8-Minute Abs’’ workout.
‘‘He’s going to market ‘sevenminute abs’. It’s the same thing, just quicker,’’ she wrote. ‘‘On issue after issue, it was like he kept proposing four-minute abs, or even no-minute abs. Magic abs!’’
Critics say that Clinton and the Democratic establishment did not understand Sanders’ appeal or do enough to move the party to the left.
According to a Harvard University poll last month, Sanders is America’s most popular politician and the only one a majority of voters, 54 per cent, view favourably.
Sanders, 75, has not ruled out running for the presidency in 2020.
Clinton also vented her frustration with James Comey, the FBI director who oversaw an investigation into her use of a private email server to conduct government business, and addressed a sexting scandal involving the husband of Huma Abedin, her senior aide. Abedin’s emails were found on a laptop belonging to her husband, Anthony Weiner, setting off a renewal of the FBI investigation, which Clinton said was a big factor in her election loss.
However, she said: ‘‘You can blame the data, blame the message, blame anything you want - but I was the candidate. Those were my decisions.’’
Clinton also questioned whether a stronger response from President Barack Obama to reports of Russian meddling in the election might have made a difference. She also expressed regret that she never got the chance to confront Russian President Vladimir Putin in person. ‘‘But he hasn’t had the last laugh yet.’’
- The Times, AP