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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHillary Clinton Is Furious. And Resigned. And Funny. And Worried.
The surreal post-election life of the woman who would have been president.
By Rebecca Traister
When I walk into the Chappaqua dining room in which Hillary Clinton is spending her days working on her new book, I am greeted by a vision from the past. Wearing no makeup and giant Coke-bottle glasses, dressed in a gray mock-turtleneck and black zip sweatshirt, Hillary looks less Clinton and more Rodham than I have ever seen her outside of college photographs. Its the glasses, probably, that work to make her face look rounder, or maybe just the bareness of her skin. She looks not like the woman whos familiar from television, from newspapers, from America of the past 25 years, but like the 69-year-old version of the young woman who came to the national stage with a wackadoodle Wellesley commencement speech in 1969. With no more races to run and no more voters to woo with fancy hair, Clinton appears now as she might have if shed aged in nature and not in the crucible of American politics. Still, this is not Hillary of the woods. She is reemerging, giving speeches and interviews. Its clear that she is making an active choice to remain a public figure.
Its the day after Donald Trump has fired FBI director James Comey, the man who many including Clinton believe is responsible for the fact that she is spending this Wednesday in May working at a dining-room table in Chappaqua and not in the Oval Office. Clinton checks with her communications director, Nick Merrill, about whats happened in the past hour shes been exercising and listens to the barrage of updates, nodding like a person whose job requires her to be up-to-date on whats happening, even though it does not.
I am less surprised than I am worried, she says of the Comey firing. Not that he shouldnt have been disciplined. And certainly the Trump campaign relished everything that was done to me in July and then particularly in October. But having said that, I think whats going on now is an effort to derail and bury the Russia inquiry, and I think thats terrible for our country.
It will be days before newspapers report that Trump asked Comey to move away from the Russia investigation prior to firing him, but the implications are already clear. History, says Clinton, will judge whoevers in Congress now as to how they respond to what was an attack on our country. It wasnt the kind of horrible, physical attack we saw on 9/11 or Pearl Harbor, but it was an attack by an aggressive adversary who had been probing for many years to figure out how to undermine our democracy, influence our politics, even our elections. Her hope, in the wake of Comeys dismissal, is that this abrupt and distressing action will raise enough questions in the minds of Republicans for them to conclude that it is worthy of careful attention, because left unchecked
this will not just bite Democrats, or me; this will undermine our electoral system.
more
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/05/hillary-clinton-life-after-election.html
liberalmuse
(18,672 posts)Still. I think a lot of us are feeling the same.
FakeNoose
(32,639 posts)... in Wisconsin (proven) Pennsylvania (being investigated) and Michigan (suspected).
These 3 swing states were what threw the election to Trump and all 3 states were probably hacked. Not in a way that can be definitively proven, so it's really difficult and painstaking. The voting machines have been rigged to carefully and subtly change a few votes in the backwoods counties that nobody noticed. But it was enough to swing the entire state and give the electoral college votes to Trump. It didn't matter that Trump lost by 3 million, he won the votes that mattered and the 3 states that mattered.
I feel very sorry for Hillary and I do care about her, but she'll live this down. The country will not, if we don't or can't fix the flaw in our voting machines IMMEDIATELY before the next election.
angstlessk
(11,862 posts)triron
(22,002 posts)North Carolina probably was as well using ruthless voter suppression.
FakeNoose
(32,639 posts)Thanks for that info.
Tommy_Carcetti
(43,182 posts)Somewhere out there, there's a parallel universe.....
SticksnStones
(2,108 posts)Really enjoyed the article. I'm surprised (and pleased) your post didn't get hijacked with negative HRC stuff.
What could have been...still hurts ~
#StillWithHer
From the article: After the exchange, Clinton and her aides had appeared upbeat. The crowd had been enthusiastic, and there was a sense that Clinton had done something that she has long found difficult in public: She had been herself brassy, frank, funny, and pissed. But on cable news and social media, another reaction was taking shape. The New York Times Glenn Thrush, who has reported on Clinton for years, tweeted mea culpa-not so much, suggesting that the former candidate blames everyone but self. Obama-campaign strategist turned pundit David Axelrod gave an interview claiming that while Clinton said the words Im responsible
everything else suggested that she really doesnt feel that way. Joe Scarborough called her comments pathetic; David Gregory suggested she was not taking real responsibility for the fact that she was not what the country wanted. And in the Daily News, Gersh Kuntzman delivered a column that began, Hey, Hillary Clinton, shut the f up and go away already.
Later, Amanpour would tell me how surprised she was by the negative reaction. The idea that she shouldnt mention the Comey letter when the entire nation and the most respected statisticians are considering its impact is so strange, she said. If she were a man, would she be allowed to mention it? As a woman, I am offended by the double standards applied here. Everyone shrieks that Hillary was a bad candidate, but was Trump a good candidate?