Hillary Clinton may have lost the presidential election to Donald Trump, but she's in a strong position to bring home a gold medal in self-serving blame-storming -- though knowing her, she'll likely blow that large lead, too. If you're keeping score at home, feel free to tally the outward-facing excuses she offered in less than two minutes during an interview with CBS News' Jane Pauley on Sunday morning. Life is just so unfair:
It was that damn Comey letter -- which was precipitated by new evidence that emerged just before the election, pertaining an investigation into her rules-violating, national security-endangering secret email scheme, about which she lied repeatedly. Which is Comey's fault, you see. But it was also the dastardly Russians and their meddling, which didn't compromise a single ballot (plus, it's not as if Donald Trump's campaign wasn't battered by an endless stream of brutal oppo and attacks down the stretch). Then there were those "voter suppression" efforts like Wisconsin's constitutional and popular voter ID law (the survey she cites in the book has even been debunked by left-leaning Politifact). Finally, we mustn't forget all the "sexism and misogyny" that brought her down. Sure, there were multiple factors that contributed to Mrs. Clinton's loss -- which is true in any given cycle -- and she's right that our leaders must take careful inventory of Russia's malfeasance in order to guard against future intrusions into our electoral process.But the laundry list in that clip excluded a cold, hard truth: Hillary Clinton was a terrible candidate. She a corrupt, unlikable liar who managed to blow a gimme race against a profoundly flawed opponent whose unfavorable rating among the electorate was an extraordinary 61 percent. None of those inescapable truths are about Comey, or Putin, or voter ID, or identity politics. They're about her character flaws, Democrats' foolishness in stacking the deck for her, and the power of the voting public's desire for change. Given her scathing assessment of the Trump administration and the media's relentlessly negative coverage thereof, one would think a prevailing sense of (previously-undetected) buyers' remorse would have taken root among throngs of American voters. Not so much:
Good luck making sense of this
— Bill Scher (@billscher) September 7, 2017
+/- ratings, NBC/WSJ
Obama 51/35
Bush 45/30
Sanders 44/30
Trump 36/52
HRC 30/53https://t.co/OnI5crAKfv
It's almost as if people aren't enamored with whiny losers who reflexively reallocate blame and attack ideological allies who had the temerity to challenge them. Imagine that. I'll leave you with this, with a hat tip to Duane Patterson:
May she never, ever leave us.