Hillary Clinton airs whines and grudges in book

The last thing Hillary Clinton should have done after her stunning loss to Donald Trump was write a book. Naturally, that is exactly what she did. (Maybe she wouldn’t have been such a great president, after all.) She was angry, bitter, stunned and emotional.

You know who writes things down when he’s angry, bitter, stunned and emotional? Trump.

Clinton should have been better than that. She should have waited. She had every right to write a book, of course. But while the exercise might have been therapeutic for her, it won’t win her many friends or admirers. Not based on excerpts of her book, “What Happened,” that have leaked.

She writes in the introduction, “In the past, for reasons I try to explain, I’ve often felt I had to be careful in public, like I was up on a wire without a net. Now I’m letting my guard down.”

Those who’ve seen the book say that while Clinton accepts responsibility for her loss, she also takes the opportunity to settle some old scores, blaming and criticizing people such as Sen. Bernie Sanders, her primary challenger; Vice President Joe Biden; and, of course, former FBI Director James Comey. And Trump, naturally. In one quoted excerpt, she writes, “I think it’s fair to say that I didn’t realize how quickly the ground was shifting under all our feet. I was running a traditional presidential campaign with carefully thought-out policies and painstakingly built coalitions, while Trump was running a reality TV show that expertly and relentlessly stoked Americans’ anger and resentment.”

While taking a shot at Trump’s ugly campaign, Clinton is admitting here that Trump understood a considerable portion of the electorate way better than she did. He tapped into something she and her campaign staff didn’t recognize. (And neither did most of us in the media.)

And while Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes — more than any losing presidential candidate in history — she didn’t campaign strategically well enough to win the Electoral College.

So, while she disappeared to write her book, we were left to deal with youknow-who.

Clinton spent the last eight months living in the land of hypotheticals. The rest of us have had to deal with reality. She’s had the luxury to ask herself, “What if?” We’ve been stuck, day after day, week after week, month after month, asking ourselves, “What the … ?”

The title of Clinton’s book doesn’t have a question mark. It’s just “What Happened.” There’s no need for a question mark, because we all know what happened. She lost.

Anyone looking for a written examination of the last election that might actually alter the outcome will have to wait for the report of special counsel Robert Mueller.