Hillary Clinton: Still stuck in ‘16
SENECA FALLS, N.Y. — There’s a familiar face at the start of the Ludovico Sculpture Trail in this town famous for its place in the history of women’s rights. There’s no inscription and no mystery. It’s Hillary Clinton.
The bust was placed on the trail in 2013, when Clinton had already accomplished more than most people do in three lifetimes. Even then, everyone knew she would run for president, and until late on election night, most would have predicted any plaque would start with the words “First woman president.”
That is not happening, and it’s time for closure.
It is easy to feel warm about Hillary Clinton when you’re eating at places like Café XIX (get it?) and stopping to grab a selfie with statues of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
But the real Clinton makes sure the warmth doesn’t last. While I wandered around Seneca Falls, Clinton was driving a double-decker bus over her party.
She had previously blamed her defeat on James Comey, Russia, fake news, WikiLeaks and media focus on her shockingly sloppy email arrangements. The latest scapegoat is the Democratic National Committee. When she won the Democratic nomination, she told Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg last week at a Recode conference, “It was on the verge of insolvency, its data was mediocre to poor, nonexistent, wrong.”
Not surprisingly, this did not go down well with Andrew Therriault, the DNC’s former director of data science. And so another feud began, another backflip into the poisonous waters of 2016.
There is blame and blame and blame, from Obama to Clinton, from Comey to Russia, and many more. But why would Clinton choose to relitigate all of this, and now of all moments? We can’t miss her if she refuses to be gone.
Now would be the time, after a terrible loss, that most people would retreat from the public stage to regroup and emerge later with a meaningful way forward. The best role model for this is former vice president Al Gore.
But that has never been Clinton’s style. Instead she’s out there talking about why she lost, about the book she’s writing about why she lost, about her new organization called Onward Together. I’m sorry, but that sounds like a slog. Make America Great Again is fallacious and superficial, but at least it doesn’t sound like a march through quicksand to an unspecified destination.
Whether you love Clinton or really can’t stand her, I highly recommend a visit to her bust on the Seneca Falls sculpture trail. It’s an experience akin to recentering a map on your smartphone. The fraught present recedes, perspective snaps in, and Clinton takes her place in the tableau of history.
Her last chapter may not yet be written, but any plaque on that bust would be crowded even now: First lady, U.S. senator, U.S. secretary of State, first female presidential nominee of a major political party.
That is more than enough to put her in the pantheon with Anthony, Stanton and the rest.