Archive for the ‘Hillary Clinton’ Category

Steve Schale on the night the lights went out on Hillary Clinton in Florida – SaintPetersBlog (blog)

On Election Night 2016, at approximately 7:45 p.m.,Steve Schalewas at an Orlando brewpub.

The Democratic strategist opened his laptop to review his states election returns.

Its in real bad shape, Schale toldHillary ClintonpollsterJohn Anzaloneand campaign consultantJim Margolisin a phone call.

What the f**k are you talkingabout, Anzalone asked disbelieving, according toShattered,ariveting look behind the scenes ofthe Clinton campaign.

Shattered is now the No. 1 non-fiction book on theL.A. Times best-sellerlist,and sits at No. 2 on The New York Times best-seller list.

Trumps numbers werent just big, they were unreal, say co-authorsJonathan AllenandAmie Parnes.

They write:

In rural Polk County, smack-dab in the center of the state, Hillary would collect 3,000 more votes than Obama did in 2012 but Trump would add more than 25,000 to Mitt Romneys total. In Pasco County, a swath of suburbs north of Tampa-St. Petersburg.

Trump outran Romney by 30,000 votes. Pasco was one of the counties Schale was paying special attention to because the Tampa area tended to attract retirees from the Rust Belt folks whose political leanings reflected those of hometowns in the industrial Midwest.

In particular, Schale could tell, heavily white areas were coming in hard for Trump.

A couple of paragraphs later, Allen and Barnes note:

Youre going to come up short, Schale told Margolis and Anzalone.

The book also reports Schale set off an alarm bell unnecessarilyin the eyes of some of Clintons senior aides.

They demanded to know what data he was using to determine that the race was over so early.

As the worldwould learn, of course, Schale was right.

Despite polls saying otherwise, and despite a supposed surge in Latino voters in early voting that was to be the hidden weapon to bring Clinton a victory in Florida,Donald Trumpwon the Sunshine State by 1.2 percentage points.

When it was clear that Trump would win Florida, other states began falling in line, setting off one of the greatest political upsets in U.S. history.

In an email Thursday, Schale told FloridaPolitics.com:

The first returns from Pasco were horrendous, and I initially thoughtshe was done, but very quickly, urban counties came in, and she waswell ahead of all the benchmarks.

She was also doing wellinplaceslike Seminole, and her absentee numbers in places like Sarasota and Pinellas were looking fine. Margolis and Anzalone called me at about7:15to ask if I was seeing the samething they were, and I confirmed thatI was, and I was cautiously optimistic.

By about7:45, the bordercounties on I-4 those around the urban ones started to reportmorecompletereturns, and it became pretty clear, when combined with less than robust Election Day returns from the base counties, that shewould not go into8 p.m., when the Central time zone counties report,with a big enough lead to offset what was going to happen there.

Icalled those guys back, to tell them she was going to be short in Florida, and the book basically takes it from there.

In Shattered, the authors report that when the Clinton camp learned they would probably lose Florida, they also heard they were losing in North Carolina. They were keystone states for two of Hillarys three paths to victory.

A short time later, Bill Clinton called Craig Smith, the first person hired forClintons1992 campaign, and the co-founder of Ready for Hillary,the super-PAC formed at the beginning of 2013to support a Clinton presidential run.

FromShattered:

Sorry to be the one to tell you, Smith said in an Arkansas drawl echoing the former presidents, but were not going to win Florida. Bill hung up and called GovernorTerry McAuliffe, who was eager to depart Virginia for the victory party at the Javits Center. Dont bother coming, Bill told him.

According to a post on hisblogafter the election, Schale said Clinton had a roughly four-point edge inearlyvoting and vote-by-mail tallies going into Election Day.

Trump won by 360,000 votes 13 points more than enough to overtake Clintons early vote lead.

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Steve Schale on the night the lights went out on Hillary Clinton in Florida - SaintPetersBlog (blog)

Hillary Clinton to speak at book publishing convention – Page Six

Hillary Clinton is coming to next months publishing convention.

The former presidential candidate, secretary of state and US senator will speak June 1 at BookExpo, the publishing industrys annual national gathering, convention officials told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

The hour-long event is being billed as An Evening with Hillary Rodham Clinton and will take place at the Jacob Javits Center, the site for BookExpo. Officials declined to say whether Clinton will give a speech and/or be interviewed onstage.

Clinton, the first woman to run as a major party nominee for president, will likely discuss the book of essays she has planned for September. The book, currently untitled, is expected to touch upon her loss to Donald Trump. In recent speeches and tweets, Clinton has openly criticized Trump and reflected on the election, stating that misogyny, Russian interference and the FBI played roles in her stunning defeat.

Clinton has long been popular in the solidly Democratic community of publishers, writers and booksellers, and both she and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, have been guests at BookExpo.

She was first lady when she spoke at the 1995 convention to promote her debut book, It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us, and Bill Clinton was featured in 2004 when he previewed his memoir My Life. In 2014, Hillary Clinton made a brief appearance at the convention, meeting privately with booksellers to discuss Hard Choices, her memoir about her years as secretary of state

This years BookExpo runs May 31-June 2 and will be immediately followed by the fan-based BookCon. Featured speakers will range from Stephen King to retired astronaut Scott Kelly.

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Hillary Clinton to speak at book publishing convention - Page Six

Free Beacon Fan Fiction: Hillary Clinton Detained, Trump Declares ‘Promise Kept’ in Fabulous Rose Garden Ceremony – Washington Free Beacon (blog)

July 4, 2017

CHAPPAQUA Hillary Clinton surrendered to federal authorities onTuesday aftera nine-hour standoff involvinga series of tense negotiationsanda brief exchange of gunfire with Kazakh mercenaries. The former secretary of state was transferred to a federal prison facility in Cumberland, Md., where she will await trial on chargesof corruption,racketeering, treason, voter fraud, planning the Benghazi attack, associating with perverts, and disseminating"fake news."

FBI Director Louie Gohmert praised the operation as "a victory for justice," hours after Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a 612-page indictment against the failed presidential candidate at a press conference in Washington. "Hillary Clinton embodies the tyranny our Founding Fathers fought to eradicate,"Gohmert said in a statement. "Congrats to President Trump for keeping his promise to LOCK HER UP" [emphasis in original].

Love Trump's Jail.

The FBIopeneda formal investigation into Hillary Clinton's criminal deviancein early June, days after Gohmert was sworn in as successor to James Comey, thedisgraced former director who was fired by the president in May. Comey's dismissal sparked protests across the country, as millions of angry voters took to the streets imploringPresident Trump to fulfill his campaign promise to imprison Hillary for her myriad crimes against the American people.

Many in the "fake news" media were stunned when Attorney General Sessions announced the indictment on Tuesday. During a subsequent briefing with Justice Department communications director Tomi Lahren, reporters broke down in tears and babbledhysterically about Hitler. Lahren mocked a failing New York Times correspondentwho tried to disrupt the briefing by commandeering "thepeople's microphone" before being dragged offby federal agents.

"Hillary's arrest is a defeat for the cucks inthe lamestream press who have devoted their lives to protecting acorrupt murderer," Lahren said. "She will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and shown no mercy."

It was the most highly-rated Justice Department briefing in history, according to President Trump.

DOJ communications director Tomi Lahren briefed the press on Hillary's arrest.

President Trump, along with Sessions and Gohmert, watched the standoff at the Clinton's Chappaqua estate via a live feed in the situation room and tweetedthroughout the ordeal.

Hillary's arrest is another the victory for the president, whose executive order authorizing the detention of journalists at Guantanamo Bay was recently upheld by the Supreme Court. Trump told Sean Hannity in a phone interview that Hillary's indictment would give Republicans the momentum they needed to passa "massive" tax reform plan, and allow him to "focus onbringing foreign terrorists to justice, as opposed to the domestic kind. We just locked up a big one."

Thousands of revelers gathered outsidethe White House to celebrate the occasion, while a handful of low-energy protesters looked on in dismay. White House officials said the president planned to invite GOPlawmakers to the Rose Garden on Wednesday for a "fabulous" ceremony featuring a full musical set performed by Mike Huckabee.

Mission accomplished.

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Free Beacon Fan Fiction: Hillary Clinton Detained, Trump Declares 'Promise Kept' in Fabulous Rose Garden Ceremony - Washington Free Beacon (blog)

The real reason Hillary Clinton lost – Washington Post

I once wrote a column in praise of competence. The object of my admiration was Walter Mondale, then running for president against Ronald Reagan. The presidents message was that it was morning again in America. Mondales message was that he was competent. He lost 49 states. He was Hillary Clinton even before she was.

The comparison is apt and sad. It came jumping out at me as I read Shattered, Jonathan Allen and Amie Parness new account of how Clinton managed to lose to Donald Trump, a man for whom the word competent is about as fitting as humble. She did it, the two tell us, by assembling a huge and unwieldy campaign apparatus, by fixating on data and not, unfortunately, on retail politics, and by not being able to adequately explain her use of a private email server, a historically trivial matter that came to symbolize her failings as a politician. She seemed inaccessible.

But Clintons great failing, the book not to mention the election itself makes clear, was her inability to fashion a message. She knew why she was running for president: It was her turn. But she could not say that. She could not merely say that she was prepared, a walking briefing book. Policies coursed through her body like blood cells. She knew everything. She was, in the famous formulation of Isaiah Berlin, a fox. Trump was a hedgehog. He knew just one thing: why he wanted to be president.

[Why Trump cant do what he said hed do]

Shattered is a cliche-clogged slog in itself. The authors made a deal with sources within Clintons campaign not to write anything until after the election and to treat what they learned as on background meaning the sources would not be named. This leads to a heavy drizzle of the words source and sources and, after a while, a certain resistance on the part of the reader: Who are these people? Even banalities are privileged: It was a very hard 10 days, a source says about some very hard days.

(Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)

The other word that keeps coming at you is message. Clinton did not have one, and the search for a message preoccupied her staff. Oddly, and fatally, Clinton left it up to them to articulate why she was running. As a mental exercise, I tried to come up with a message myself: Hillary Clinton because shes not Trump is the best I could do. As it turned out, she could do no better.

Bernie Sanders, in contrast, knew why he was running, and his supporters knew it, too. He was something of a biblical figure. He wanted to smite the big banks and put some Wall Street heads on the end of a pike. It was, in his own way, a position paper.

As for Trump, he was going to make America great again never mind that he did not have a clue as to how. He had the unassailable confidence of the ignorant, unburdened by knowledge and complexity. He was successful, but lets not make too much of it. He drew three inside straights in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania and won them all by margin-of-error numbers. As he was at birth, he was lucky.

[Why so many people dont hear or wont accept what Hillary Clinton actually says]

When I wrote about Mondale, I felt sorry for the guy. I liked him. Hes smart and has a refreshing sense of humor. Whatever my feelings for him were, the camera did not agree. It showed a cold and somewhat distant Midwestern archetype. The same with Clinton. Ive had a few private moments with her and found her to be as her aides will always tell you fresh, irreverent and funny. She gets the joke. Alas, on TV none of that came through, as if she was hiding from the camera lest it reveal too much.

Clintons search for a message occupies much of Shattered. It is a sad trek because she was an oxymoron: a familiar figure who was seeking to appear fresh and, as she herself acknowledged, a politician with no gift for politics. I know that I engender bad reactions from people, and I always have, Allen and Parnes quote her as telling an aide. There are some people in whom I bring out the worst. I know that about myself, and I dont know why that is. But it is.

In the end, Clinton had it right. She was stuck with herself. It was good enough for most voters, but not for enough of them in those three key states. She lost, and a fool won. That, to us, ought to be the message.

Read more from Richard Cohens archive.

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The real reason Hillary Clinton lost - Washington Post

Hillary Clinton has a right to be a major voice in American politics but maybe it’s time she moved on – Los Angeles Times

Hillary Clinton is back. Six months after her defeat, Clinton has waded into the middle of our postelection battles more quickly and more bluntly than any other losing candidate in modern times.

She has accused President Trump of pursuing what appears to be a commitment to hurt so many people. She called House Republicans healthcare bill shameful. She proclaimed herself part of the resistance. Shes traveling the country giving speeches. Shes reportedly organizing a new political action committee to raise money for Democratic causes. And shes writing a book to explain her side of the 2016 presidential campaign. She says she doesnt expect to run for president again. But she has been careful not to rule it out.

Clintons impulse to get back into the fight is understandable. Democratic politics has been the cause of her life, and shes surely entitled to work through her grief over the campaign. If her book turns out to be a candid self-examination of what went wrong a big if, based on her self-protective previous memoirs that could be healthy for her party.

But by moving so fast and so visibly, and by keeping the door open to another presidential campaign, Clinton risks harming not only her own image, but the anti-Trump resistance she wants to help.

Start with her interview last week with Christiane Amanpour of CNN. Asked to explain her loss to Trump, Clinton said she took absolute personal responsibility but then listed all the external spoilers she faced: FBI Director James B. Comey, Russia, WikiLeaks, the media and misogyny.

Although those items certainly belong on the list, she left out the missteps of her own campaign. Jim Comey didnt tell her not to campaign in Wisconsin, noted David Axelrod, who helped Barack Obama defeat her in 2008.

And Clinton reminded everyone that she didnt do as badly as it looks. I did win more than 3 million votes than my opponent, she said.

Meanwhile, she said she doesnt mind getting into Twitter wars with the president. Fine, she said. Better than [him] interfering in foreign affairs," Clinton said of the prospect Trump would tweet about her. "If he wants to tweet about me then Im happy to be the diversion.

Not a great strategy. I suspect Trump would like nothing better than endless verbal battles with Clinton, to remind his voters of the candidate they voted against instead of the ever-more-apparent flaws of the president they voted for.

Indeed, Trump took the bait after Clintons interview.

Comey was the best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton in that he gave her a free pass for many bad deeds! he tweeted. The phony Trump/Russia story was an excuse used by the Democrats as justification for losing the election. Perhaps Trump just ran a great campaign?

As for the new Clinton political action committee, Onward Together, its unlikely to convince Bernie Sanders voters that the party is devoted to campaign finance reform.

Other Democrats arent sure they need Hillary Clintons help to raise campaign money in the age of Trump. Jon Ossoff, the House candidate in suburban Atlanta, has raised millions without her.

The new super PAC, if thats what it is, would put the Clintons in the role of kingmakers, using money to help candidates they favor. And it will look suspiciously like a framework in the making for Hillarys still-not-ruled-out 2020 campaign.

So about that campaign, in case shes thinking about it: bad idea.

Its possible that Clinton doesnt really want to run again that shes simply trying to bolster her brand and maintain her influence. She knows shell get far more media attention for her book, her speeches, and anything else she chooses to say if she keeps the possibility of a presidential run alive.

But theres no reason to believe a third Hillary Clinton campaign would be easier or more successful than her first two. Rank-and-file Democrats arent clamoring for her to run. A Harvard-Harris Poll in March found the former candidate in fifth place with support from only 8% (ouch!) of her own partys voters after Bernie Sanders, Michelle Obama and Elizabeth Warren. The top choice, tellingly, was someone new, at 45%. Clintons presence in the center of any stage, moreover, could make it harder for talented young Democrats to rise to the top.

Hillary Clinton has more than earned her right to be a major voice in American politics. Shes smart and forceful on a raft of issues, from working-class job creation to foreign policy. But shes not great at running a presidential campaign. Shes tried twice, in races where she began as the presumptive front-runner, and lost both times. Thats enough.

Maybe its time she moved on to higher pursuits. Jimmy Carter lost a presidential election in 1980, Al Gore in 2000. They devoted themselves to causes they believed in: international peacemaking for Carter, climate change for Gore. Both won Nobel Peace Prizes. That wouldnt be a bad legacy even for someone who hoped to shatter a glass ceiling.

doyle.mcmanus@latimescolumnists.com

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Hillary Clinton has a right to be a major voice in American politics but maybe it's time she moved on - Los Angeles Times