Hillary Clinton’s forthcoming memoir now has a title: What Happened.
“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.”
Hillary Clinton’s forthcoming memoir now has a title: What Happened.
“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.”
Harry Enten: “Clinton’s unpopularity turned out to be a key factor in 2016 congressional races. Unsurprisingly, people who had a favorable view of Clinton primarily voted for Democrats in House races, while people with a favorable view of Trump primarily voted for Republican candidates. But among the 19 percent of voters who had an unfavorable view of both presidential candidates, House Republican candidates won by a margin of 30 percentage points.”
“Next year, though, Clinton won’t be on the ballot (although Trump continues to tweet about her). That could be a big problem for House Republican candidates, especially if Trump remains unpopular. That’s because realistically, the only way for Democrats to take back the House is to run up huge margins among voters who don’t like Trump.”
“The U.S. Postal Service engaged in ‘systemic’ violations of federal law by pressuring managers to approve letter carriers taking time off last fall to campaign for Hillary Clinton and other union-backed Democrats,” the Washington Post reports.
“High-level postal officials had for years developed a practice of granting the employees’ requests for unpaid leave, leading last year to an ‘institutional bias’ in favor of Clinton and other Democrats endorsed by the National Association of Letter Carriers, one of the largest postal unions.”
You're reading the free version of Political Wire
Upgrade to a paid membership to unlock full access. The process is quick and easy. You can even use Apple Pay.
“For a president with historically low poll numbers, Donald Trump can at least find solace in this: Hillary Clinton is doing worse.”
“Trump’s 2016 Democratic rival is viewed favorably by just 39 percent of Americans in the latest Bloomberg National Poll, two points lower than the president. It’s the second-lowest score for Clinton since the poll started tracking her in September 2009.”
Defense Secretary James Mattis told the MIHS Islander that President Obama should have listened more to Hillary Clinton’s advice.
Said Mattis: “I was a NATO officer and then a central command officer under President Obama and he was trying to reach out to the Arab people. He unfortunately didn’t always have the best advisors or he didn’t listen to his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, so we missed some opportunities there.”
“They paid me.”
— Hillary Clinton, in an interview by Recode, on why she spoke at Goldman Sachs.
“Hillary Clinton lambasted the media’s coverage of her use of a private email server as secretary of State, arguing Wednesday that she did nothing wrong and charging that the media’s fixation on the matter allowed Republicans to effectively exploit it,” The Hill reports.
Clinton argued that most people viewed the issue as “the biggest nothing-burger ever.”
Said Clinton: “They covered it like it was Pearl Harbor.”
New York magazine has a must-read interview with Hillary Clinton:
Affection for her campaign staff is one reason Clinton claims she will not point fingers at her own team in assessing her loss. “I will never say anything other than positive things about my campaign,” she tells me in Chappaqua. “Because I love the people that led it, worked in it.”
Besides, she argues, “what I was doing was working. I would have won had I not been subjected to the unprecedented attacks by Comey and the Russians, aided and abetted by the suppression of the vote, particularly in Wisconsin.” She agrees that there are lessons to be learned from her campaign, just not the same ones her critics would cite. “Whoever comes next, this is not going to end. Republicans learned that if you suppress votes you win … So take me out of the equation as a candidate. You know, I’m not running for anything. Put me into the equation as somebody who has lived the lessons that people who care about this country should probably pay attention to.”
Meanwhile, Axios notes Clinton returned to her alma mater to deliver this year’s commencement address, “where took a few jabs at the president, being careful not to mention his name.”
“In the midst of the 2016 presidential primary season, the FBI received a purported Russian intelligence document describing a tacit understanding between the campaign of Hillary Clinton and the Justice Department over the inquiry into whether she intentionally revealed classified information through her use of a private email server,” the Washington Post reports.
“Current and former officials have said that document played a significant role in the July decision by then-FBI Director James Comey to announce on his own, without Justice Department involvement, that the investigation was over. That public announcement… set in motion a chain of other FBI moves that Democrats now say helped Trump win the presidential election.”
“But according to the FBI’s own assessment, the document was bad intelligence… possibly even a fake sent to confuse the bureau.”
Hillary Clinton “is building a new political group to fund organizations working on the resistance to President Trump’s agenda, spending recent weeks in Washington, New York City, and Chappaqua, N.Y., meeting with donors and potential groups to invest in, and recruiting individuals for the group’s board of directors,” Politico reports.
“She is looking to launch the group, expected to be called Onward Together — a nod to her campaign slogan, Stronger Together — as soon as next week.”
Hillary Clinton “soon will launch a PAC as a way of ‘acting as a quiet catalyst’ for organizations she cares about, and eventually will help 2018 congressional candidates — but with no intention of making it a vehicle to run for anything herself,” Mike Allen reports.
“According to a source familiar with the planning, the initial focus will be on lifting up organizations that are the product of the energy and activism she has seen since the election, and existing groups that have been reignited and reinvigorated by that energy. She has met with some of these groups, and it’s something she’s become increasingly passionate about with each meeting.”
The New York Times reviews Shattered by Jonathan Allen and Amy Parnes.
Although the Clinton campaign was widely covered, and many autopsies have been conducted in the last several months, the blow-by-blow details in Shattered — and the observations made here by campaign and Democratic Party insiders — are nothing less than devastating, sure to dismay not just her supporters but also everyone who cares about the outcome and momentous consequences of the election.
In fact, the portrait of the Clinton campaign that emerges from these pages is that of a Titanic-like disaster: an epic fail made up of a series of perverse and often avoidable missteps by an out-of-touch candidate and her strife-ridden staff that turned “a winnable race” into “another iceberg-seeking campaign ship.”
“The DNC announced on Sunday that Hillary Clinton’s campaign had turned over its email list, giving the party a major boost as it rebuilds under a new chair and prepares for the midterm elections next year and the 2020 presidential race,” the Huffington Post reports.
“The list, provided as an in-kind contribution from the Hillary for America campaign organization, includes more than 10 million new names that the DNC did not have on its voter files, according to both Clinton and DNC aides. The contribution was valued as $3.5 million.”
Vanity Fair reports on the debate inside Clintonworld about what Hillary’s role should be for the duration of Trump’s presidency.
Said one person close to the Clintons: “She’s trying to navigate what’s appropriate. Does it look like sour grapes? Does it look like she’s positioning for something? She can’t look like a politician or someone who’s trying to position herself. Those days are over….She’s trying to resurrect her image, as well as resurrect her name.”
The central challenge for Clinton is “capitalizing on her political martyrdom without quite appearing to do so.”
Said the Clinton loyalist: “It’s a fine line because it could become easily an ‘I-told-you-so’ tour, which no one has any appetite for… If you move too quickly, you look political. You lose your stature as an elder statesman. You look like a chronic politician. If you move a bit more strategically — target your appearances, target your messages at your appearances, craft your messages appropriately for your appearances — you can keep on an elder stateswoman status. You can have an impact on the dialog where it won’t look self-serving.”
Hillary Clinton said that misogyny “certainly played a role” in her bruising defeat to Donald Trump in last year’s presidential election, AFP reports.
Said Clinton: “I don’t know that there is one answer. Certainly misogyny played a role, I mean that just has to be admitted.”
She added: “I think in this election there was a very real struggle between what is viewed as change that is welcomed and exciting to so many Americans and change which is worrisome and threatening to so many others. And layer on the first woman president over that and I think some people, women included, had real problems.”
Hillary Clinton “has all but ruled out returning to her family’s foundation,” The Hill reports.
“The former Democratic presidential nominee has indicated to confidants and associates that she more than likely won’t be returning to the Clinton Foundation, which drew headlines in the 2016 election cycle for possible conflicts of interest.”
Hillary Clinton appeared at a private event at Wellesley College, speaking to students at her alma mater about the presidential election and her time at the college, the Boston Globe reports.
When asked, “What would you change about your campaign?” Clinton replied, “I’d win.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
“There are a lot of blogs and news sites claiming to understand politics, but only a few actually do. Political Wire is one of them.”
— Chuck Todd, host of “Meet the Press”
“Concise. Relevant. To the point. Political Wire is the first site I check when I’m looking for the latest political nugget. That pretty much says it all.”
— Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the Rothenberg Political Report
“Political Wire is one of only four or five sites that I check every day and sometimes several times a day, for the latest political news and developments.”
— Charlie Cook, editor of the Cook Political Report
“The big news, delicious tidbits, pearls of wisdom — nicely packaged, constantly updated… What political junkie could ask for more?”
— Larry Sabato, Center for Politics, University of Virginia
“Political Wire is a great, great site.”
— Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”
“Taegan Goddard has a knack for digging out political gems that too often get passed over by the mainstream press, and for delivering the latest electoral developments in a sharp, no frills style that makes his Political Wire an addictive blog habit you don’t want to kick.”
— Arianna Huffington, founder of The Huffington Post
“Political Wire is one of the absolute must-read sites in the blogosphere.”
— Glenn Reynolds, founder of Instapundit
“I rely on Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire for straight, fair political news, he gets right to the point. It’s an eagerly anticipated part of my news reading.”
— Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.