Clinton Interview

[Whateverist]

Poor dems just can't campaign their way out of a paper bag.  If only the electorate would just trust that they'd be safe and sane (if unimaginative) if only they'd ignore what they say and vote for them any way.

And you decided to include that anecdote for a reason. I mean, what did it signify to you? Is that when you started to understand you were missing something important about the country, in that moment? 

No, I understood that long before, Rachel, and in the book, what I tried to point out is, I understood there was anger and fear and people were really unhappy because of what had happened in the financial crash. I understood all of that, and I understood that my opponent had been, from the beginning of the primaries, fueling that anger, and providing scapegoats, and a kind of cynical nostalgia that was rooted in saying, basically, you know, all these other people — whether it's African-Americans or Muslims or immigrants or women or whomever — we're going to get it back to the way it was. And that's going to be my gift to you. I understood all of that. What I didn't — and I say this in the book — I didn't really do well is conveying how much I understood of that, conveying how I got the despair and the anger. I talked about it, I talked about it constantly. I talked about jobs. I talked about the despair of people in America, white Americans who were dying at an unbelievable rate because of suicide, opioid abuse, alcoholism, so much that really signifies that despair.  I talked about it, but I didn't really convey the emotional resonance that would have maybe made it possible for somebody to say, "Yeah, you know, maybe that one sentence she said was taken out of context because look at what she's done and look at what she says she will do."