Hillary Clinton “is in talks with Columbia University to take on a formal role at the Ivy League — and potentially house her archives there,” the New York Daily News reports.
“One option under discussion is an esteemed ‘University Professor’ role that would allow Clinton to lecture across a range of schools and departments without the requirement of a strict course load.”
Jeff Greenfield: “All through her public life, Clinton has been hobbled by the label ‘inauthentic.’ Her changing hairstyles, her choice of baseball teams, her circle-the-wagons approach to the press—they’ve all felt, to the public, like symptoms of the lack of a core…”
“Her book suggests, though, that the person we’ve seen over the past quarter-century, and the person we watched seek the presidency twice, is the authentic Hillary. In fact, to judge by her book, she may have been the most authentic person in the race. The lengthy analysis of why voters behaved as they did, the detailed accounts of the programs she intended to pursue as president, the ways in which racism and misogyny played out in blatant and subtle forms, all paint the picture of a very smart, deeply engaged self-described ‘policy wonk,’ who is consumed by the need to conquer problems with an army of data-driven policies, and whose instinctive resistance to visionary politics proved to be one of her biggest handicaps in her (presumably) last run.”
“And if she seemed out of touch and unable to connect to voters in a changed America—unable to understand why a significant majority of voters saw her as untrustworthy—well, in a sense, What Happened suggests that that was ‘authentic’ too, the flaw of a person who still retains blind spots in trying to understand the limits of her appeal.”
New Yorker: “When the C.I.A. first told Obama, in August, that the Russians had been meddling in the Presidential race, the agency shared the information with the Gang of Eight—the congressional leadership and the chairs and the ranking members of the intelligence committees. The Administration asked for a bipartisan statement of warning. Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, adamantly refused, muffling for weeks any sense of national alarm.”
Said Clinton: “McConnell, in what I think of as a not only unpatriotic but despicable act of partisan politics, made it clear that if the Obama Administration spoke publicly about what they knew, he would accuse them of partisan politics, of trying to tip the balance toward me… McConnell basically threatened the White House.”
David Remnick: “For all of Hillary Clinton’s skills of survival, she will have a hard time finding a similar peace or place in public affairs. For one thing, Gore was in his early fifties when he lost. Clinton is sixty-nine. For another, the circumstances surrounding her defeat are immensely more disturbing. Clinton lost a race that few thought possible to lose. Her opponent was not Mitt Romney or John McCain or Marco Rubio but Donald Trump, a demonstrably crooked businessman and reality-television star, an unsavory, if shrewd, demagogue whose rhetoric and policy proposals had long flouted the constitutional norms of the United States.”
“She lost because of the tactical blunders of her campaign. She lost because she could never find a language, a thematic focus, or a campaigning persona that could convince enough struggling working Americans that she, and not a cartoonish plutocrat, was their champion. She lost because of the forces of racism, misogyny, and nativism that Trump expertly aroused. And she lost because of external forces (Vladimir Putin, Julian Assange, James Comey) that were beyond her control and are not yet fully understood.”
“Martin Shkreli, the former pharmaceutical executive who is awaiting sentencing for a fraud conviction, was sent to jail on Wednesday after a federal judge found that he presented a threat to the community because he had offered money for a strand of Hillary Clinton’s hair,” the New York Times reports.
“Mr. Shkreli, who was free on $5 million bail while he awaited sentencing, offered $5,000 on Facebook to anyone who could ‘grab a hair’ from Mrs. Clinton during her book tour.”
“It’s devastating, especially when you lose to someone who you are worried about taking on the responsibilities and power of being president.”
— Hillary Clinton, quoted by NBC News, on losing the 2016 presidential election.
Ezra Klein: “What Happened has been sold as Clinton’s apologia for her 2016 campaign, and it is that. But it’s more remarkable for Clinton’s extended defense of a political style that has become unfashionable in both the Republican and Democratic parties. Clinton is not a radical or a revolutionary, a disruptor or a socialist, and she’s proud of that fact. She’s a pragmatist who believes in working within the system, in promising roughly what you believe you can deliver, in saying how you’ll pay for your plans. She is frustrated by a polity that doesn’t share her ‘thrill’ over incremental policies that help real people or her skepticism of sweeping plans that will never come to fruition. She believes in politics the way it is actually practiced, and she holds to that belief at a moment when it’s never been less popular.”
“This makes Clinton a more unusual figure than she gets credit for being: Not only does she refuse to paint an inspiring vision of a political process rid of corruption, partisanship, and rancor, but she’s also actively dismissive of those promises and the politicians who make them.”
Hillary Clinton told the Today Show that she was “dumbfounded” when former FBI Director James Comey reopened the investigation into her email server right before Election Day.
Said Clinton: “The determining factor was the intervention of Comey… it stopped my momentum, it drove voters from me.”
She added: “I feel very strongly that he went way beyond his role in doing what he did.”
Hillary Clinton told CBS News that she will not pursue the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
Said Clinton: “I am done with being a candidate.”
But she added: “I am not done with politics because I literally believe that our country’s future is at stake.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders brushed off the accusations in Hillary Clinton’s new book that his attacks on her during the primary made it hard for her to unify progressives, The Week reports.
Said Sanders: “Secretary Clinton ran against the most unpopular candidate in the history of this country and she lost and was upset about it, and I understand that. But our job now is really not to go backwards. It is to go forward.”
He added: “We need her help to go forward, let’s not keep arguing about 2016.”
New York Times: “The appearance will come one week after the book hits shelves. And the network promises that Mrs. Clinton will sit down with Mr. Colbert to discuss her writing, as well as ‘her run for the White House in 2016’ and ‘her thoughts on the current administration.'”
President Trump “may be the only person in politics truly excited about Hillary Clinton’s book tour,” Politico reports.
“Democratic operatives can’t stand the thought of her picking the scabs of 2016, again — the Bernie Sanders divide, the Jim Comey complaints, the casting blame on Barack Obama for not speaking out more on Russia. Alums of her Brooklyn headquarters who were miserable even when they thought she was winning tend to greet the topic with, ‘Oh, God,’ ‘I can’t handle it,’ and ‘the final torture.'”
“Political reporters gripe privately (and on Twitter) about yet another return to the campaign that will never end. Campaign operatives don’t want the distraction, just as they head into another election season. And members of Congress from both parties want the focus on an agenda that’s getting more complicated by the week.”
A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds President Trump’s approval rate has sunk to a new low of 36%.
For comparison, Hillary Clinton’s approval is at a new low of 30%.
“What makes me such a lightning rod for fury? I’m really asking. I’m at a loss… I think it’s partly because I’m a woman.”
— Hillary Clinton, quoted by CNN in her new book, What Happened.
CNN: “A lengthy middle section of Clinton’s book is devoted to Russia’s attempts to influence the US presidential contest, which Clinton blames in part for her loss. She describes herself as consumed by the various threads of Russia’s involvement, writing that she follows ‘every twist and turn of the story,’ often with chagrin.”
Writes Clinton: “I read everything I could get my hands on.”
“Clinton’s book does involve some introspection and she takes responsibility for her failures, but the book oozes with contempt for Trump and blames two external factors — Russia and fired FBI Director James Comey — for her loss.”
Hillary Clinton casts Sen. Bernie Sanders as an unrealistic over-promiser in her new book, CNN reports.
She also said that his attacks against her during the primary caused “lasting damage” and paved the way for Donald Trump’s “Crooked Hillary” campaign.
Clinton said Sanders “had to resort to innuendo and impugning my character” because the two Democrats “agreed on so much.”
Hillary Clinton will soon embark on a three-month book tour to promote her memoir What Happened.
Said Clinton in a statement: “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.”
Mike Allen: “And this time, she’ll go to Wisconsin.”
Morning Joe aired excerpts from Hillary Clinton’s forthcoming memoir, What Happened.
This is not OK, I thought. It was the second presidential debate, and Donald Trump was looming behind me. Two days before, the world heard him brag about groping women. Now we were on a small stage and no matter where I walked, he followed me closely, staring at me, making faces. It was incredibly uncomfortable he was literally breathing down my neck. My skin crawled.
It was one of those moments where you wish you could hit pause and ask everyone watching “well, what would you do?” Do you stay calm, keep smiling and carry-on as if he weren’t repeatedly invading your space? Or do you turn, look him in the eye, and say loudly and clearly “back up you creep, get away from me! I know you love to intimidate women, but you can’t intimidate me, so back up.”
I chose option A. I kept my cool, aided by a lifetime of dealing with difficult men trying to throw me off. I did, however, grip the microphone extra hard. I wondered though, whether I should’ve chosen option B. It certainly would’ve been better TV. Maybe I have overlearned the lesson of staying calm, biting my tongue, digging my fingernails into a clenched fist, smiling all the while determined to present a composed face to the world.
Taegan Goddard
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.
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