HRC: The End (or is it?) – by Amanda S. Green

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

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HRC: The End (or is it?) – by Amanda S. Green

This is the final post on HRC’s book, What Happened. I almost wrote “HRC’s novel”. Why? Because in a lot of ways this has been the best fiction writing I’ve seen in some time. I swear she isn’t recounting the same election season I remember. But it is over, or it will be as soon as I finish this post. What isn’t over is HRC’s belief that she is still relevant and has a role to play in the U.S. political landscape.

I’ll admit up front that I skimmed much of the last 80 pages of the book. Why? Because it is not much more than a rehash of the same sort of things she spent the previous 380 pages or so talking about. Even I have my limits and I finally reached it with this book. In answer to a question one of you asked in the comments a week or so ago, I continued reading and blogging about the book for two reasons. The first was it became like a car wreck. You know as you approach and see the flashing lights of the emergency vehicles that you should look away, but you can’t. You just have to see what happened.

The second reason is a little better. I read the book and blogged about it because the best way to recognize the next HRC to come down the pike is to do our best to understand this one. I’ve come away with a couple of conclusions along this line. The first is that HRC hasn’t admitted, to herself or anyone else, that her political career is truly over. The second is that even if she doesn’t run for office again, she plans to try to pull strings from behind the curtain. The third is that she truly does see herself as some legend in the making, a woman leading a movement and she isn’t about to give that up without a fight.

Campaigns are full of minor annoyances and major frustrations, but at the end of the day, it’s inspiring to watch our democracy whir into action. When all the arguments are made and rallies are finished and TV ads have aired, it comes down to regular people lining up and having their say. I’ve always loved that quip from Winston Churchill about how democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others. I still believe that, even when our system feels totally nuts. (Electoral College, I’m looking at you.) (pg 378)

That sounds good, doesn’t it? In fact, I’m sure most of us could agree with Churchill’s sentiments. However, when looking at the quote in context, you can see why HRC didn’t give more than one very small part of it. Had she done so, her cut at the Electoral College would quickly fall apart.

The quote comes from a parliamentary debate on November 11, 1947. You can read more of it here, but this is what I found interesting when looking at HRC and her complaints – er, observations about the 2016 election:

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time; but there is the broad feeling in our country that the people should rule, continuously rule, and that public opinion, expressed by all constitutional means, should shape, guide, and control the actions of Ministers who are their servants and not their masters.

“[P]ublic opinion, expressed by all constitutional means, should shape, guide and control the actions of Ministers who are their servants and not their masters.” It is clear Churchill understood something HRC continues to deny: elected officials are to be servants of their constituents and not the masters thereof. He also recognized that there are constitutional considerations that come into play – ie, the Electoral College – again, something HRC wants to turn away from. It is clear from everything HRC says in the book that she feels only certain peoples should have a say in how our country is run and that only certain segments of the public should have their opinions considered. That is, in my mind, very far from what Churchill talked about that day in 1947.

For weeks, I had been carrying around heavy binders full of memos relating to the transition and the first decisions I would have to make as President-Elect. There were Cabinet Secretaries to pick, a White House staff to hire, and a legislative agenda to begin working on with Congress. I loved diving into the details of governing, but in the homestretch of the campaign, it was hard to focus on anything past Election Day. (pp 379-380)

Hmm, maybe that was part of the problem, Hils. You got ahead of yourself. You were so focused on what would happen AFTER you were elected that you forgot the first hurdle you had to clear – getting elected. She complained earlier in the book that people couldn’t relate to her and she didn’t understand why. Maybe she ought to take a harder look at herself. Her attitude of assuming she already had won the White House meant she didn’t need to connect to us lowly voters. She didn’t need us. The election was in the bag.

Except, as she and the DNC soon discovered, it wasn’t.

In the chapter entitled “Why” (and you can probably guess what she referred to there – Why did she lose the election? Why didn’t we love her?), she had this to say:

I go back over my own shortcomings and the mistakes we made. I take responsibility for all of them. You can blame the data, blame the message, blame anything you want – but I was the candidate. It was my campaign. Those were my decisions. (pg 391)

Wow, is she actually going to take responsibility? Don’t hold your breath. There’s more.

I also think about the strong headwinds we faced, including the rise of tribal politics in American and across the globe, the restlessness of a country looking for change, excessive coverage of my emails, the unprecedented late intervention by the director of the FBI, the sophisticated misinformation campaign directed from the Kremlin, and the avalanche of fake news. Those aren’t excuses – they’re things that happened, whether we like it or not. (pg 391)

Oookay. Can you imagine how the Left would scream if Trump, or any conservative for that matter, talked about “tribal politics”? Note how she continues to fail to recognize why America wanted change. It’s just bad because it wasn’t the change she was offering. Nor does she discuss the role her own people, and folks from the DNC, played in the Russian connection. And all that “fake news”. Remember, just a couple of chapters earlier, she was excoriating the rest of us because we had lost faith in the foundations of our country, foundations that should be educating us about politics and those running for office. One of those foundations was the media – the same media she now appears to blame for “fake news”.

And we get a laundry list over the next 20 pages or so of why she didn’t win. First there were the 40,000 voters from Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania who voted for Trump instead of her. If they’d just voted for her, she would have won. There is the “false” claim by Joe Biden that she didn’t have an economic message. HRC claims Biden’s statements were false because she talked about the economy. According to her, she talked about it a lot. But she doesn’t get that talking about the economy isn’t the same as having an economic message. Once again, she didn’t connect with the voters, especially in the Rust Belt, because she didn’t tell them not only what she wanted to do to help them and their employers but how she planned to do it. Remember, she admitted earlier she’d made a mistake in that area by talking about shutting down the coal mines and focusing on new energy and renewable energy sources.

She blames those who voted against her instead of “voting for” Trump. She also doesn’t understand it because she had such high approval numbers when she left State. Poor Hillary, we didn’t love her the way she thought we should.

After all, the polls all said she should have won. “So, no, all the polls weren’t wrong. It’s possible that my lead throughout the race was slightly overstated – but not significantly. It’s reasonable to conclude, therefore, that something important and ultimately decisive happened at the very end.” (pg 401)

So, who else does she blame? Comey, of course. After all, he dared speak out about her emails. (pg 405) Russia is next. (pg 406) Economic anxiety and bigotry also make her hit list. (pg 410) She makes no attempt to hide her disdain for those voters who supported Trump. She also manages to throw Bernie Sanders under the bus and Jill Stein quickly follows him.

That said, a small but still significant number of left-wing voters may well have thrown the election to Trump. Jull Stein, the Green Party candidate, called me and my policies “much scarier than Donald Trump” and praised his pro-Russia stance. (pg 411)

If that’s not enough, she claims Trump exploited “racial and cultural anxiety”. (pg 412) I’m not saying that all Trump voters are racists or xenophobes. There are plenty of good-hearted people who are uncomfortable about perceived anti police rhetoric, undocumented immigrants, and fast-changing norms around gender and sexual orientation. But you had to be deaf to miss the coded language and racially charged resentments powering Trump’s campaign. (pg 413) In other words, you are as bad as Trump because you didn’t vote for her.

But it doesn’t stop there. She claims there was voter suppression, citing a claim by an “unnamed” Trump staffer on the issue. (And can you hear the cries of foul if conservatives made such accusations about her campaign and cited unnamed sources?) Oh, and she blames the Supreme Court for “gutting the Voting Rights Act in 2013”. (pp 418-419). Notice how carefully she avoids mentioning the armed “concerned citizens” who did their own forms of voter suppression in 2008 and 2012, those times for the Dems.

There’s more but you get the drift. She finishes up talking about how “love and kindness” had been a fundamental part of her campaign. (pg 441) I guess I didn’t pay close enough attention because I missed that part. What about you? Oh, and she doesn’t carry around any bitterness after the election. She just couldn’t live that way.

So why the hell is she still going on and on about how bad Trump is?

What’s the final verdict on the book? Part of me is glad I read it. I am most definitely glad, after reading it, that she isn’t our president. It won’t surprise me at all to see her trying to make a powerplay of some sort at the next election, whether it be another attempt to win office or to determine who should be the Democrats’ “anointed one”. But the book is done. There are no more blog posts and my liver survived.

Barely.

(You can find the other installments in this series at the following links: What Happened or How I Suffered for this Blog and had to Share, Grit and Gratitude, HRC Gets Caught Trying, A New Deal, A Square Deal or How She Wanted to be the Next Roosevelt, It’s All His Fault, Turning Mourning into a Movement, HRC: Idealism and Realism, HRC: Making History , HRC: Those Damn Emails and HRC: The Russians Did It – Amanda S. Green.)

[I know this is hard to watch, imagine what it must be like to read the book.  If you want to help finance Amanda’s liquor bill, use this address  Send the woman a drink-SAH]

313 thoughts on “HRC: The End (or is it?) – by Amanda S. Green”

  1. So HRC thinks she can manage Elizabeth Warren, Kamela Harris, Keith Ellison, or whoever else the DNC decides to run in 2020? Ooooohhhh boy. *sad head shake*

    1. I honestly think she sees herself as the great puppet master. If she can’t be in front of the curtain, she will control everyone from behind it. After all, we should be dancing to her tune and no one else’s.

        1. She probably can’t control but she can ruin. She has enough of a cult of personality, especially with women of a certain age, to play kingbreaker if not kingmaker.

          And I think she is vindictive enough to do so. If she can’t be the first woman president no one else can either.

          1. With a little luck, she might wreck the present Democrat establshment for good and all, leav8ng the possibility for something a little less calcified to take its place. And, incidently, give Trump another four years and maybe the Republicans four to eight after.

        2. I’m hoping that her health problems will take her out of play well before the next election. The only problem is that if the Dems can put up some just as evil but not so obviously so, they are likely to win the next election. It was a pretty narrow margin this last time.

          1. Oh, my hope (nasty man that I am) is that she has just enough health and political oomph to grab the nomination again, amd not enogh to pull of the election. Fondest hope? That we see her drop dead on the stage of the LAST debate, leaving her hapless vice-nominee to run in her stead…..

            1. Dropping dead of exhaustion during the campaign risks turning her into a martyr. That is something we *DEFINITELY* do not want.

              2. Depends on what the cause of the exhaustion was.
                One could always hope she would be caught in a major sexual indiscretion that while considered nobody else’s business, would none-the-less be a 9 week media blitz that would carry her off.

              1. Nah, self-inflicted alcohol-related brain damage causing her to go *completely* incoherent on a national stage, too badly for it to be covered up.

          2. No, I’m fine with her trying, and failing to the the nomination in 2020, then living to eat that bit of humiliation.
            That’s if they even let her run.

      2. I intend to pay no attention to that woman behind the curtain — and I don’t think anyone will be paying for her to take up that position either. Since the Clintons are only in it for the money (regardless of the rhetoric they spew), once the donors turn away, perhaps she will finally retire.
        “..the best way to recognize the next HRC to come down the pike is to do our best to understand this one. ..”
        From your keyboard to the internet’s webz!

        1. I think Bill was only really in it for the money and the chicks. HRC has a thirst for absolute power that’s very evident, as well as a disdain for all those deplorables that won’t fall in line, that the nation recognized and rewarded with a Chardonnay Box Of The Week subscription in November of 2016.

          Okay, it’s turned out to be a Chardonnay Box Of The Day subscription, but only Huma is counting.

    2. *hands you some tuna to chew while you consider*

      I’d love for her to run again. I’d love to see her lose spectacularly in both the electoral college and popular vote.

      2. As above, I want her to get tromped and discarded in the first couple of primaries, then have a few years to live with the fact.
        She can excuse away 2008, and 2016. Being a single digit also ran in her party’s early primaries? That’s got to hurt.

        1. That’s evil. And I hope you get what you wish for. With her being vindictive enough to take out her anger on whoever takes their nomination.

  2. All of that, and she still thinks nothing is her fault and that she stands a chance running again. It must be nice to be so confident that external reality doesn’t mean anything.

      1. She really does live in her own world .. I don’t remember now who posted it, but I read a great article about how shielded she is from reality –I mean stuff like paying bills, housework, driving, etc. — and has been since Arkansas, because everything is done for her, including, apparently, printing out her Top Secret State emails.

  3. Hillary IS relevant. Her trial will be a damning indictment of the entire Democrat Party…and their bootlicks in the Propaganda Press.

    2. I wish. I’m just afraid there’s been such a cock-up about the investigation nothing will ever stick to her. Now, they might finally get something to stick to Huma and company, but I’m not going to hold my breath.

      1. I’m starting to wonder if leaving the investigation on the back burner wasn’t a serendipitous action, if not planned outright. Right after the election, all of the hard core anti-Trump and pro-Hillary/pro-Obama people in the government (those being three overlapping groups, not a monolithic “Deep State”) were likely poised to deny, obfuscate, and sabotage any investigation.

        By leaving it until people started to expect it wasn’t coming, and focusing on campaign promises he could deliver and getting Congress to play ball on something, anything… he gave them plenty of time to start thinking it wouldn’t happen, and to focus on other things. Every person who quit in a snit at State is one less person who’ll run interference for its past head. And given the way the left eats its own – Hillary’s position is a lot weaker now than it was a year ago, as her supporters and allies have turned on each other.

        I’m sure Sun Tzu had something to say about not attacking the enemy when he’s at his strongest and prepared for you… and I’m pretty sure Trump knows it, too.

        1. I think that’s why Trump has left Mueller in place — in the course of what he couldn’t avoid tripping over, he’s dragged out more dirt on Dem operations than if he’d planned it that way, and the more they try to cover and backpedal, the worse it gets. Never interrupt your enemy while he’s busy hanging himself.

      2. Something’s going on in the background. It’s not entirely clear *what* is going on. But something is definitely going on. For instance, we’ve got the news that emerged the other day about the FBI having essentially already written the report exonerating Hillary before they’d even talked to a bunch of important people. So although it’s too early to be certain, it’s possible that something big is coming down the way.

        JackStraw (I think), one of the commenters over at Ace’s blog, has been a big proponent of this sort of thinking, and has been paying a lot of attention to what’s been going on that isn’t being trumpeted.

        (no pun intended)

        1. This morning I open the computer and the feed is touting two stories. One is from half a day ago announcing that the FBI has started a new investigation into the Clinton Foundation and Pay-for-play, the other from fifteen minutes ago saying the Justice Department has done so as well.

          Now I am sure there will be great shouting and gnashing of teeth, but I have a sneaking suspicion that there are those in the Democratic party who would not mind seeing the Clinton’s go down AND to be able to blame a Republican administration for it — most particularly Trump’s.

        2. If true, then that’s a good piece of evidence of a conspiracy within the FBI to steal the election.

      3. What concerns me is what happens if/when (I am leaning towards “when”) the precedent is set. Seen through the funhouse mirror vision of the left, we get “legal action used against political opponents.” And that’s a bad precendent to set.

        Against that, we have an IRS targeting folks for political opinions (Lerner et. al.), an FBI thoroughly politicized at the upper levels and covering butt for political friends (Comey et. al.), obviously partisan special prosecutor (Mueller)…

        If the ideal of blind justice and the rule of law is so completely broken that *none* of us expects those we lend power to to *not* act to uphold the law first and foremost then we have lost something precious. That ideal is damaged, grievously so, now. And this isn’t even the first time that blindfold has slipped.

        But justice, firm, unyielding, tempered with mercy but unceasing in her pursuit of the guilty- for a solid foundation there, I would be willing to give up much, and risk much as well. Given a prosecutor of unimpeachable character and firm conviction (and, ah, where to find such angels of mankind? And can we clone them?), I *would,* wholeheartedly support chasing down the guilty wherever they may hide, no matter how high and mighty they may be within the bounds of our laws.

        I do set aside the sweet, sweet vengeance I desire for that lofty goal. But now as we stand, justice and the rule of law is not strong, not nearly so as it should be. Should Sessions regain his senses and scour the justice department from top to bottom, ruthlessly tossing out partisans of all leanings and replacing them with men more in the mold of Gorsuch and Scalia, now then, *then* could we make bold moves in restoring Lady Justice to her place. Ferret out all the dirty secrets and shine a light on the diseases that infect the swamp.

        Absent that, I worry. Yes, I know, we do not face a rational foe. Or words will be twisted and our motives impugned. We have brushed close once again to becoming a Banana Republic again these past eight years. I would urge us to make things *right* before we go after the Clintons and their allies and cronies.

        1. You’re worried about incentives to go “f- it, I’m crossing the Rubicon with my army”?

          1. Sulla was the first to march on Rome, doing it twice, both during Iulius Caesar’s lifetime. Sulla, as well as his opponents, also held bloody purges of their political enemies as they swapped control of Rome. One of those purges, and a pardon by Sulla, led to young Iulius’ time away from Rome serving in the legions in Asia, now Turkey.

            Caesar’s crossing the Rubicon to march on Rome after the Senate acted against him was just following Sulla’s precedent.

            The current precedent setting, whether the politicized bureaucracy in the IRS and FBI, or the nutball crazycakes loony general political climate on both losing sides over the past 15 years, is the one thing that worries me the most, since it seems that nobody can see the direction that this pattern of precedents leads.

            1. *raises eyebrow* Thought I’d hid my tracks a bit better than that. *chuckle* Good catch.

              Yes, Rome was on my mind then. Precedents can form traditions even stronger than law. If a precedent is set, or has been set already, that the winning side gets to *ruin* the losers through incarceration (DOJ), states sponsored theft (possibly from the IRS), and so on, we are DONE as a nation. What follows from that is the erasure of peaceful transfer of power as a first world nation. Or very well could. As you said, nobody knows where such precedents could take us.

              The left are the envelope pushers in this. They’ve been at it from time out of mind, since the proto-left were living it up with bread and circuses and before. The Ur-drives of greed, selfishness, fear, and anger run about clothed in the ill-fitting tatters of “care” and “virtue.” Where the old-school Constitutionalist calls for the sober responsibility of *less* government intrusion and summons its citizens to duty only for necessities of war and law and natural disasters, the Neo-Marxist-Socialist-Communist-Democrat whips its minions to rage and points them at the enemy. Yes, enemy. That’s how they see us.

              There are enough hints and suspicions for reasonable doubt yet unseen on the courtroom floor for me to desire a legal reckoning on many points. Some of which I see today are already in process (Fusion GPS for one- the emails for another). What I’ve been trying to get at is that what I want *more* than vengeance for past wrongs (do I even need to say it again? Yes, yes I do. BENGHAZI.) is for the return of the rule of law. Not an ancient Greek democracy where the mob rules, to mix a metaphor a bit.

              Evil threatens. It always has. Always will. What legacy will we leave those who come after us, I wonder? What will liberty mean to them? How will they see us, their past, when we have long since given over our burdens and taken our final rest? They will have their challenges, too. Many of them the children of the solutions we implement today.

              That is what worries me. But also gives me hope.

              1. “The left are the envelope pushers in this”

                Of course they are, They despise the current societal structure and figure they win by abusing power or by provoking abuse of power by those tasked with maintaining our civilization. Win/Win for them, as they (as a movement) pay no price for making defenders of the ancien régime over react and violate the norms they’re tasked to defend.

                Thus we see demonstrated the benefits of air superiority, aka owning the MSM.

  4. …to miss the coded language and racially charged resentments powering Trump’s campaign.

    And who does hear such ‘dog whistles’? Dogs. And that, Hillary, makes you a…

    1. There were things I was concerned about in terms Trump’s campaign and racism. Likewise Trump’s campaign and sexism, Trump’s campaign and handling of journalists, etc… But again, the most disqualifying thing by far was his support for Obama in 2008.

      There were better reasons to support the Nazis in the ’30s and ’40s than there were to support Obama. McCain was and is a terrible human being and a terrible candidate, but Obama was and is horrifically worse.

      1. 2008?
        He still “supported” him in 2012, though supposedly already was planning to run against his policies over 0bama’s insults at the Press Dinner in 2011. He tweeted his congrats to his “friend 0bama” on the win with “Always vote for a winner”.
        He maxed out legal donations to McCommie in the Virginia Gubernatorial election just before declaring he’d run as a Repub for president. There was little in his background to give anyone reasonable assurance he’d be anything other than at best a Giuliani/GHWB type of Northest lib republican.
        Glad 0bama was enough of an ass to make the vindictive Trump willing to undo all his “best” works.
        I think, he told Hillary he was going to work to help her, told her and Bill everything they wanted to hear, and then did his revenge on her and 0bama, and she can’t call him out as it’d show she is as contemptible as we all know she is. “He was supposed to throw the election but didn’t” would go over great, don’tcha think?

        1. ?

          Trump threatened to run in 2012 as a Republican. He also pushed the birth certificate issue to the forefront before the election, and put enough weight on it to finally force Obama to address it.

          1. yet still congratulated his friend Barak.
            He gave scads of money to leftiod candidates in 2014, and his Birther work was as a shill for Hillary (which is where that whole thing originated), and is also why 0bama insulted him like that at the Dinner (0bama being as vindictive and petty as Trump can be). Like I said, he wasn’t very confidence inspiring to those who knew what he was up to in the world.
            It’s a bit like, say, Warren Buffet suddenly running as a Republican against say, Joe Biden.

            1. Well, if this were 1950, nobody would blink at a Republican congratulating a Democratic president on the occasion of his election (or re-election). Money donations to the person who helped you, or to both candidates, were common and polite for businessmen. Calling someone a friend in a congratulatory note can be a statement of fact, or just a polite noise that oils the social wheels. (In this case, it seems to have been a polite momentary truce declaration, while re-arming and re-scheming.)

              And “always vote for a winner” could be a rueful statement that Trump didn’t.

              1. that’d work if he also gave the max to the Repub in the races, but in most cases he gave nothing. I only say ‘most’, because I only know of a few and he gave nothing at all to anyone “-R” but I don’t know all of who he might have donated to.

                1. In NY the difference between throwing your money down a rat hole and donating it to Republican candidates is that there is a chance, if you throw enough down the rat hole you will choke the rat.

                  Look at how bad things had to be for Giuliani to get elected, and he’s only Republican by NY standards. In a business dependent on union cooperativeness donating to Republicans is akin to shooting yourself in the foot.

              2. oops. forgotted to include before hitting post it:
                His CongaRats may well have been camo/social grease, as I heard he registered MAGA the day after the Dinner. I’ve said before one reason he was “(B)asically a Democrat” was his circle of freinds (which included a certain Chappaqua couple who once resided at 1600 Pennsivania and who he had a consultation/meeting/whatever a short time before tossing his hat into the ring for the nomination), and his scads of money allowed him to be unaffected by any policies his circle of friends enacted. Going conservative also doesn’t affect him much, as any larger amounts of money he gets over the tax rates, increase in earning via business is just a drop in the bucket. I think he got mad at those circle jerks when they laughed at him and didn’t have his back when 0bama dissed him.
                Hillary was at the fore on that.

        2. It’s certainly the way I would write it in a politico-thriller. If things did go down that way, then it should be a warning to anyone else who disses Mr. Trump when he’s already on your side.

            1. His pique is aimed in the right direction? The “Resistance” sure seems insistent on maintaining that, don’t they?

              “Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.”

              1. Indeed, the “Resistance” and MFM (but I repeat myself) reactions only make him long for new and creative ways to get their collective goats, gore their bulls, and snatch away their eggos.

      1. I’ve had a couple female dogs in my life (both Doberman Pinschers). They are both long gone but would be deeply offended to have been compared to HRC
        as they were gentle and intelligent creatures.

        1. I’ve had some wonderful time with a female mutt and likewise.
          I’d use a similar, rhyming, word that starts with ‘w’ but $SISTAUR is neowiccan or such and calls herself ‘witch’, and there is no comparison – at least that would have similarity and with which I might agree.

          While there are those people that do a dandy job of reminding me how the company of dogs and horses is so much more pleasant, Hillary seems to be one of those oh so special people that make me recall all the lovely snakes and spiders I’ve met and whose company would be preferable.

          Humans can be some of the most generous creatures, I must admit. Some are even willing to admit Hillary as one of theirs.

      2. I know female dogs. Some female dogs are friends of mine. Hillary Clinton is no female dog. I think I’ll see what she is next Tuesday.

    5. Oooo, isn’t that a contradiction? How can Trump voters be so stupid to vote for him, yet have the mental capacity to decode the secret messages?

  5. OK Amanda, your work is done and you can take a well-deserved break from considering the depths of leftist insanity. Rest, recuperate, and find yourself some sort of mental bleach to help dispel the lingering taint of such nonsense.

    1. Which is exactly what I plan to do. I am, however, going to continue doing posts here. Some will be on books but I doubt any will go into the depth this book required.

      2. Look at it this way, you have a wonderful, real-life model to use for the villains of your next six books. /laugh

  6. God, what a cold mess of crap. Why cold? Ninth circle, because I believe that’s where those of her ilk should exist.
    Glad to hear your liver survived Amanda. Mine wouldn’t have and I would probably be still in a coma. Or the book would have reached orbital velocity….

    1. Oh, the book is going to be sacrificed on the altar of a bonfire. This is one book I won’t hesitate burning now that I’ve finished it.

          2. Driving a large rosewood stake through its center at midnight on a crossroads might be more appropriate…

          3. or, the same plan i had for the copy of “A People’s History” that i had to buy in college- a few choice rounds of incendiary or tracer ammunition.

  7. HRC: So, no, all the polls weren’t wrong.  It’s possible that my lead throughout the race was slightly overstated – but not significantly.  It’s reasonable to conclude, therefore, that something important and ultimately decisive happened at the very end.

    Polls are indicators, the election itself is what matters.

    One factor you probably have not considered, there were the people who did not talk to pollsters or had lied to pollsters who came out and voted against you.   

    Within your own party there was trouble when it became known that you had made efforts to engineer Sander’s loss of the nomination, who knows how many of his supporters simply failed to vote, or voted for an alternative party after that.  (Sorry dear, I won’t buy that it was the fault of the press for reporting what had been done.) 

    And, yes, in many cases they voted against you, rather than for Trump.  Why?  You had so lost the trust of people that they were willing to take their chances on Trump rather than be assured of having you and all that would bring.

    1. Yep. But those folks made a mistake. How could they vote against her? She was the greatest and bestest thing to ever run for President. Just ask and she’ll tell you.

    3. Indeed – I would not answer a poll honestly, or even answer at all. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that a great many people went out of their way to either avoid, or mess with the poll-takers.

      1. I think I got called twice in two days by a poll taker who seemed to be trying to form my opinion as much as get it. I gave it. What did (do) I think of the individual who wrote this memoir? A liar, a traitor, a betrayer, untrustworthy, and I (as I recall saying) I would not trust her to feed my dogs while I was on vacation. I might have said that she probably would, but I would hate to trust her.

          1. I got a push poll once, too. So-called pollster acted (I presume acted, might have actually believed it) bewildered/offended when called on it. The bias seemed pretty obvious to me – and you can guess which way it went.

            And then there was the time that a particular candidate’s supporter’s called and $HOUSEMATE answered. They asked for his support for said candidate. $HOUSEMATE told them exactly what he thought of said candidate (the word ‘kook’ was involved). Seems the old phone number was marked off their list after that. Good.

            1. I was living in Bethesda MD for a while, in an area that got (for some reason) an ungodly number of far Left petitions circulating. In the first week we had our doorbell rung (I think) six times; always (or course) when we were busy. The last interruption was a pair of sweet innocent coeds with something from the Sierra Club. I was cheesed off enough to explain to them that I thought that half the environmental crises in the world could be ameliorated by hanging the board of directors of the Sierra Club.

              Do you know? After that we didn’t get bothered by anywhere NEAR as many Lefty petitions? Funny, that.

              1. yes, and the fact that it is Bethesda will keep me from applying at Bethesda (the game company)

            2. I got one of those. “What would you think if I told you [X] had done [Y]?” I didn’t specifically say they were dancing on the ragged edge of slander, since they legally were *just* on the side of not doing so, but they were implying it good and hard. I think I annoyed them by repeating that I would do my research and make my decision based that way. (It was a minor race; I don’t remember if it was even one I had a stake in.)

        2. In 2008, $SPOUSE was still a Democrat (long since corrected), and she got a call from a canvasser who asked about her support for Hillary. The ensuing wild laughter might have gotten us in deep trouble if she had won.

          For ’16, we had caller ID, and if a call even seemed close to a poll, we carefully ignored it. The RC in my handle stands for Red County, and we’re used to getting abuse from the Dems (usually west of the Cascades). Doesn’t mean we’ll volunteer for it…

          1. We had a local election a few years back where one candidate got a bad rep for robocalling registered voters of his party until many of them got angry about it.

            Turned out, it was the other party making the robocalls exhorting people to vote for the candidate… I guess they figured the annoyance factor would flip some voters their way, and if not, they hadn’t lost anything anyway.

            1. I have often walked down this street before; but the pavement always stayed beneath my feet before (‘scuse me) considered plastering my car bumper stickers advocating for the opposition party — I’m With Her, Obama/Biden, Friends Don’t let Friends, etc. — and then drive like a total jackass, cutting people off, swiping parking slots or parking at an angle so I take two, speeding up and slowing down to prevent merging, sitting at a light admiring the pretty green color … doing everything I can to annoy people and cause them to associate my lack of consideration with the current liberal candidate.

                1. I have seen more than one leftist proudly recounting the passive-aggressive vengeance they pour out upon people with Republican-type bumper stickers (“and I SPED UP to make sure he couldn’t get in front of me when the road narrowed, and I hope this taught him something!”). I am always boggled that they think this is 1) apt to be noticed and 2) likely to make the noticer regret their red-state ways.

              2. One cannot go far wrong by prompting the thoughts of Jeremy Brett. Mind you, while his Freddie Eynsford-Hill is sweetly charming, which is what was called for, I do prefer his Holmes.

      2. You know, I was thinking that possibly part of the problem with the polls was that they likely polled more people in big urban areas, which do tend to be strongly Dem. But I did get two or three phone polls way out here in the high desert — the person on the other end had no idea where I was (and wouldn’t have known where I was even if I had told them — I tested that). I could tell right away with one caller that she was pushing the liberal agenda and we had a discussion, with me trying desperately to stay calm and not rant at the poor girl (sounded pretty young) for being a total idiot. I don’t know if I convinced her that Left-wing thinking was incorrect, but I did at least let her know that some of us have good reasons for our opposing opinions. I really should have some kind of a script prepared for the next election, though, because I’m not the best at thinking on the fly.

        1. That’s possible. But any poll can be manipulated so easily by the way the questions are asked and who they poll. Then you have to add in the likelihood of the person answering the poll will answer honestly. Either way, I learned a long time ago not to trust polls.

          1. The only reason to take a poll is for the (admittedly limited) pleasure of discerning the a priori assumptions baked into the premises.

            And so many of those questions do not reveal what they presume to. Take the most jejune question possible: “Is the country on the right track?” That could easily elicit the same response from me (I think it is slowing its descent into autocracy but has not yet turned that corner) and a Sandersiista.

          2. I once worked for a political polling company. (Don’t look at me like that. It was some 30 years ago, I was fairly young and naive and more desperate for a job, any job,). They were at the time one of the better companies in the business, very conscious of the various forms of bias, and very conscientious about training their low-level peoples to avoid it. It worked well for their major client. Lesser clients, alas, didn’t get the same care, and we conducted more than one poll that seemed to have been designed to tell the clients what they wanted to hear. It’s much easier to get it wrong that it is to get it right. One suspects that HRC managed to get pollsters who would tell her what she wanted to hear rather than a first rate company that would take pains to measure public opinion accurately and give her the bad news when the news was bad.

          3. You have to also factor in the possibility that the poll taker may not record your answers correctly, or at all.
            I particularly have a problem with either-or / two-choices questions (when there are far more options for action than being presented); or the ones that append a “because” clause to some option (I might do “that,” but not for the proposed reason).
            IMO, Trump-leaning voters who were reluctant, or wary of being identified, either did not answer, or guarded their words very carefully.
            I never read posts or articles discussing polls and “what it all means” because polls don’t mean anything anymore, and I would rather waste my time reading about actual events, not prognostications.
            However, with the rise of the Main Fake Media, reading about facts is getting more difficult.

      3. To be honest, half of my poll responses were pure fantasy.

        “What political party do you belong to?”

        “I’m a member of the American Nazi Party.”

        … extended period of silence…

    4. Only one poll matters.

      And given the vast quantity of spam phone calls these days, I know of no one that answers calls from numbers they do not recognize any longer. The result is that the sample from which telephone polling is extracted is very, very different from the voting population. Given the corrections already required to make polled numbers come out within reason, and the voodoo black arts those corrections require, I was not surprised one whit when the opinion polls did not match the vote.

      This says nothing about opinion poll “results” published to move public opinion rather than measure it, but by all accounts the internal unpublicized polls used by both sides also missed vastly.

      Until the spam phone call problem gets solved somehow, I don’t see any way to fix opinion polling.

      1. “Until the spam phone call problem gets solved somehow”

        January 01, 2018 cover story of the Weekly Standard:

        Telemarketers, Ahoy
        Annoyed by those phone calls pitching solar panels, debt relief, and timeshares? Help is on the way.
        4:00 AM, DEC 22, 2017 | By TONY MECIA
        There are plenty of people working to make the world a better place. Doctors vaccinate children in Africa. Researchers hunt cures for cancer.

        Then there’s Roger Anderson.

        He’s harnessing technology to waste the time of telemarketers. Anderson’s vision is to build a world free of those annoying phone calls pitching solar paneling, debt relief, and timeshares.

        The 48-year-old telephone-systems engineer acknowledges that eradication of the entire telemarketing industry is a lofty goal. But he figures that the more time telemarketers spend talking to one of the 10 computer programs he’s developed, the less time they will have to scam innocent people like you.

        “If you want to pay it forward, you should waste as much time of that telemarketer as possible,” he says. “There’s a feeling of civic duty there to protect the next guy.”

        Over the years, the federal government has tried mightily to protect consumers from unwanted telephone sales calls. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) adopted rules limiting the hours that telemarketers can call. It has outlawed the recorded messages known as “robocalls” and cracked down on telemarketers whose caller IDs lie about their phone numbers—what is known as “spoofing.” The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) maintains a robust “Do Not Call” registry with 226 million numbers and regularly announces massive fines against companies that violate it. Yet none of these efforts has stemmed the flood of infuriating and often fraudulent calls.

        “The technology has now developed to the point where it is quite easy and cost-effective to unleash massive numbers of robocalls on consumers,” says Ajit Pai, chairman of the FCC. “There is no question that, unfortunately, the innovative spirit runs strong in these scammers.”

        Pai says he receives between two and five robocalls a day on his government-issued cell phone, often from numbers that appear to come from the same area code and prefix as FCC headquarters. “If they are robocalling the FCC itself, there is something very wrong here,” he says. Pai has made cracking down on illegal robocalls the agency’s top consumer-protection priority.

        Telemarketing is among the most despised of all professions. When Gallup asked about the public perception of telemarketers in December 2015, it found—unsurprisingly—that they were toward the very bottom of the list of professionals. A whopping 56 percent of those taking the survey said they considered telemarketers to have low or very low levels of honesty and ethical standards. The only groups that rated more loathsome were lobbyists (60 percent) and members of Congress (64 percent).

        [END EXCERPT]

        1. It’s amazing/amusing (a-moo-sing?) how many hangups there are when one picks up and says nothing. Or I’ll answer, “Moo?” and then it/they hang up. I don’t really have the temperament to string them along. See, it wastes MY time, too. Though I am tempted to reply with a “900 number” type script of how much continuing will cost them.

          1. That only works if there’s a live person at the end. The calls I get usually don’t have those. And the most annoying ones *act* like there’s a live person (at least at the start), but are really just machines. They tend to have a noticeable silence right at the start (while the machine determines that someone actually picked up the phone), and launch into a dialogue that usually acts like the voice at the other end of the line got caught off-guard when you picked up the phone (to cover the rather long silence).

            2. There’s the “girl” who “has to adjust her headset”. This is usually spoofed to a local prefix, but from a block of numbers that has never been used. I’ve read complaints about that robocall across the nation. Not sure what it pushes; never waited that long.

              Decades ago, I answered a call with “County Morgue and Delicatessen”.
              My brother’s fiance had been coming up with wacky phone calls, but that answer stopped her cold. Hmm, thought for 2018 polling season. [evil grin]

              1. FOR YEARS my children answered the phone with “Penguin delivery service” and if you were a pollster or someone else they were annoyed at, they would go on to argue that you MUST take delivery on your order of king penguins, or whatever.
                One of our less connected to reality friends once called me in a panic on the cell phone to inform me our home phone had been highjacked…

                2. “Unit Three here… who are you? This is an official phone, and you’re interfering with a stakeout.”

                  1. Like when husband changed our IP name to “Spook’s van on the corner.” (We lived downtown Colorado Springs and someone had abandoned a white van at the corner. Authorities finally moved it after three months, but while it lasted…)

                    1. The hot spot on my cell phone is named “IRS Surveillance Van #23”. It has been known to cause consternation with one co-worker, for some reason. . .

                  2. Asked one caller “What’s your security clearance?”
                    “Sir?”
                    “What’s your security clearance? This is a hotline.”

                    Well, it was, a direct line to system transmission. Red phone, too. Just it wasn’t the hotline.

                    Did get an apology. It was a long time before we got another telemarketer on that line.

              2. Let’s see … there’s “Joe’s Pool Hall, Eightball speaking.” Then there’s “City Morgue. You stab ’em, we slab ’em.” One, from my wife, for those who ask “Who’s this?” is “This is me. Is that you?”

                1. While one could answer such calls with “Planned Parenthood: You -uck ’em, we chuck ’em!” I think a simple one-word call acknowledgment might better suffice: “Gallup.”

                  1. Or you rape ’em, we scrape ’em…..

                    There’s also my old stand by of Betsy’s Diner, Ptomaine our specialty….

                3. There was a period that my brother would answer the phone with “Sherwood Forest, Robin Hood speaking!”. Confused a lot of callers, but he finally gave it up after one immediately asked to speak with Little John.

                4. Abdul’s House of 1000 Delights, Number ### speaking.

                  Road Kill Cafe, from car grille to our grill!

        2. Ajit Pai is one of my new heroes.
          I am an aggressive “number blocker” since my home phone allows that option.

        3. When Gallup asked about the public perception of telemarketers in December 2015
          So, a polling organization called people and asked their opinion of pollsters and telemarketers? Is there irony in that, or what?

  8. Amanda, you darlin’ girl, thank you ever so much for taking this one for the team. A righteous fisking indeed, and installments so as to cushion the effects of utter disgust and loathing your most accurate reporting engenders in any rational and serious observer.
    Done and done, so now take a deep breath and return to generating those works of wonder that you craft so extremely well.
    Another in the Witchfire Burning universe would be greatly appreciated.

    1. Thanks, Uncle Lar. I am returning to Mossy Creek as soon as I finish up here. This morning has been blog related work — between here, VG and my own blog. Once I’m done, it’s real writing time. yay!

  9. “This is the final post on HRC’s book, What Happened.”

    So mote it be.

    And again, thank you for your service.

  10. Personally? If I’d been polled I’d have lied like a rug. Because my vote isn’t anyone else’s business and I’m under no obligation to tell the truth to a stranger asking an intrusive question. So I’ll ‘politely’ tell them what they might want to hear. “Oh, hell YES I’ll be voting for (someone I wouldn’t vote for if you paid me…).”

    As it was, I didn’t expect her to lose. I was HOPING she’d lose, but I figured the fix was in. After all, she got the FBI to say that she wasn’t going to be prosecuted for stuff that if I’d done a thousandth of while I was in the AF I’d be in Leavenworth for the rest of my life. To borrow from ‘Animal Farm’, it was clear SHE was more equal than the rest of us. So the fix was in, Hillary was gonna be Prez.

    I’m glad I was wrong.

    1. Story (Reader’s Digest? I forget.) phone call… grandmama answers…
      “Hello? Yes. Oh, yes I’ll be sure to help him out. Goodnight.”

      ‘Who was it?’
      ‘Campaign, calling for $INCUMBENT.’
      ‘But you said you’d help him out.. and you can stand him.’
      ‘I said I’d help him out.’

    2. LOL. You sound like me when it comes to exit polls. I have yet to answer one of them with who I really voted for.

      I also worried about the fix being in, especially after it came out about how the fix for the primary had been in. Like you, I’m glad I was wrong.

      1. Oh, I love exit polls. They can be so much fun. Here in the tiny town of Speck, the local Democrats (all five of them) run the exit polls on national election days. They have lemonade if you answer, and its pretty good lemonade. Two of them are little old ladies, one is the guy that bought the local newspaper, and the other two don’t seem to talk much.

        I have to admit, I’ve trolled them badly for years.

        “So, how did you vote today?”

        “Carefully.”

        “I mean who did you vote for?”

        *draws self up, hitches up belt* “The Right Guy.”

        “And that would be?”

        “Cthulu. He is the answer to all our needs!”

        One year, it was Hulk Hogan. Then Batman. I think my vote was registered for Ronald Reagan during the ninties twice. The little old ladies dutifully tally up the polls every time, and post them at the YMCA. One year, Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer won the mayor’s office, according to the exit polls. *chuckle* That one took some doing, as I recall…

    3. Mi mama always answers proudly that she is voting by secret ballot. If the caller is stupid enough to press, they will get an earful about how voting really works in the rest of the world, and how they are a disgrace to their mothers for trying to breach one of the most amazing things about America, and…

      I’m willing to bet more than one pollster has foolishly hung up thinking “Oh, hispanic, obviously straight-ticket democrat.” Which is the opposite of true; my mother enjoys paying very close and malevolent attention to her voting, while protecting her vote’s privacy with all the glee and fierceness that only those who’ve lived without can understand.

      1. We no longer have secret ballots in my county. Which includes the state capitol, which is, as usual, heavily left.

          1. It’s more common than you’d think.

            My county got “electronic voting machines” a while back. You identify yourself to the election official, who crosses your name off the list, then keys a lengthy amount of… something… into an 8-track-sized box connected to her laptop. She hands it to a “polling assistant” who carries it over to one of the voting machines and sticks it in a slot. Then the polling assistant looks over your shoulder to “help” you if you need it. When you’re done, the polling assistant pulls the box and takes it back to the clerk, who then does more keyboarding before dealing with the next voter.

            Sure, my vote is secret. And the Tooth Fairy still owes me for that wisdom tooth I had removed couple of years ago…

    4. With respect to the fix being in, part of me wonders if the Dems so believed their own BS about Trump that they did less chicanery than normal.

      1. Or concentrated it in the wrong states. ISTR something about the Clinton campaign shutting down local efforts in some states that ultimately went for Trump in order to concentrate on winning the traditional swing states, and running up vote totals in “safe” Blue states to ensure a popular-vote victory so she could claim a mandate.

        1. That was my understanding. They leaned on their polls and ignored what the Dems-on-the-ground were seeing and saying until literally the last minute.

          1. They also ignored the Big Dog himself, which was not a smart thing to do, even though he is the King of Sleaze.

  11. I remember reading or hearing about a European dictator who, after the overthrow of his government, was simply encysted. He was given papers to sign, decisions to make, and troops were paraded for him, until he took to his bed and passed away in his sleep, still thinking he was the Head of State.

    If the Democrats were clever they would do this for Her Shrillness; tell her she’s running in 2020, provide her with an entourage and apparent coverage. Fake television appearances and rallies could keep her occupied, and then tell her she’s won and bury her in paperwork. I’m not sure how speeches to Congress could be faked, but they could come up with something, I’m sure. Feed the delusion, and she could be kept happy and (more importantly) far away from the reins of power until she passed quietly in her sleep (nor noisily eating a carpet).

    It would be expensive, but I’m by no means sure that letting her run around loose won’t be more so. Shrillary is so deluded, so unpleasant, and so given over the the more blatant forms of graft that she actually manages to DAMAGE the ‘Progressive/Liberal’ brand. And that ain’t easy.

    2. Shrillary is so deluded, so unpleasant, and so given over the the more blatant forms of graft that she actually manages to DAMAGE the ‘Progressive/Liberal’ brand. And that ain’t easy.
      Whut? Sure, back when they had a lock on the media it was bloody difficult to scratch the lib/prog public image. At least until the lies and failures became impossible to either cover up or blame on conservatives.
      But these days with a bit of Fox and a whole lot of conservative internet sites the whole lib/prog agenda is under a magnifying glass, which not only serves to expose their nefarious dirty tricks, but like any good lens serves to focus the harsh light of truth into a nicely burning ray to singe their backsides.

      1. Shrillary is so ostentatiously corrupt and stupid that it shows even through the usual Liberal Media filter. And that’s pretty impressive. But of late they’ve gotten pretty sloppy with their candidates. Obama came off as nice and clean, but Gore was an obvious stiff and Kerry came off as an arrogant asshole no matter how the Media tried to cover for him.

      1. Do you know, that never occured to me. I was thinking of the old comparison of Uncle Joe Stalin quietly smoking a pipe with a certain damnable Austrian noisily eating a carpet.

        I can’t really imagine any person of either sex touching her or allowing her to touch them. Though I suppose a sex worker probably faces worse at least ince in their career….shortly before becoming a lampshade.

          1. Good stories. Execrable personal choices, at least in my opinion.

            Unfortunately, Hillary can’t even tell good stories.

        2. Remember Kissinger’s comment: power is the ultimate aphrodisiac. There’s not a single prominent national politician who has a shortage of potential willing sex partners.

    4. I don’t know if that ever actually happened. But Pratchett pulled it off against an arch-devil that was so loathed that both the devils *and* the souls of the damned hated him.

  12. Something very important and decisive did happen at the end. Millions of people walked into the voting booth and made their mark, whether for that evil interloper Trump or against her Highness. And she lost the race.

    And I can’t be the only one that looks at this whole series as one continuous whine if “if only they didn’t know the bad and knew the good”. Sorry, that’s campaign’s job.

    1. The book was nothing but one big whine. I kept picturing Sally Field when she accepted her Oscar for Norma Rae. But instead of her saying, “You like me. You really like me”, she was whining, “Why don’t you like me? You were supposed to like me.”

        1. Nor can I, but that clip came to mind and stayed there. Of course, I liked the one that hit me last night. HRC as the Wicked Witch during the melting scene. Except this time, she was melting because her brain couldn’t process her loss and she had a complete mental and physical meltdown. Yes, I’m warped. More now than before I read the book.

          2. You bored through to the end of “What Happened.” Now I feel bad that I never managed to make it more than halfway through “Mein Kampf.”

      2. … nothing but one big whine.

        A ‘Converter’ (I forget which aircraft was so dubbed, as it “converted jet fuel to noise”)…
        converting… something.. to *whine*.

        2. Cessna T-37 “Tweet”. Sometimes the “6,000 pound dog whistle”.

          Cute little thing, the T-37.

  13. Gag. I came by out of perverse fascination, the same thing you mentioned in your wreck analogy. Will mention the following:

    She sees herself as a legend in the making? Well, okay. Lucrezia Borgia is a legend, too.

    On transition before the election: Actually, that’s common now for both candidates. Can’t remember the year it started, but both Republican and Democrat candidates start the process on the chance that they might win weeks before the election. Where she got the cart ahead of the donkey was assuming she couldn’t lose.

    On the polls: The problem was believing her team’s own propaganda. It seems clear that they pressed for super sampling strictly to throw the polls, and, by extension, public opinion in her favor. Frankly, the idea of super sampling gives me the heebie jeebies because they tend to be based on assumptions even when they’re on the up and up. But who says these assumptions are valid? Unless there’s hard data to support it, they’re just how those conducting the polls think things work. If they’re wrong, the polls are also wrong. But in 2016, it seems that Hillary’s team may (from memory here) pressed for super sampling simply for the propaganda value, and thus Hillary should have remembered the results were cooked. Apparently, she didn’t, and that doesn’t speak well for Hillary.

    A bit fitting, perhaps. By loading the polls, they encouraged Hillary supporters that they didn’t need to vote. Thus, on the grand morning of November 9, 2016, there was a loud cry of outrage by those who supported Hillary, but couldn’t be bothered to vote.

    Yet there was something else. Bet she didn’t tell what a poly sci professor found in an impromptu poll of his own: that many of those voters Hillary thought she had in the bag didn’t vote because they didn’t like her. And on that Wednesday, I saw a lot of smiling faces from those she counted as “her” voters.

    1. Kevin, you’re right on all points, imo. As for the transition, I know it’s now common and I expect it. But reading that part of her book, it is clear she focused on that because she just assumed she’d already won. She lost sight of — if she ever had it — the real issues in the race and, to be honest, the fact that she had to be elected. How dare the little people not do as they were supposed to.

      And yes, I think a lot of it all came down to the fact we didn’t like her. We’d seen enough of her as First Lady of Arkansas and then of the US, as senator and then SecState to know we didn’t want her as President. Sure, we might not have liked Trump but we didn’t like him less than we didn’t like her.

      1. The election was Russian Roulette, and sure, to a lot of votters, Trump was five rounds out of six in the chamber. Hillary was a fully locked and loaded semi-auto, round in the chamber (with the third parties being pistols of unknown rounds in the chamber). The Voters were asked which they were going to put to the country’s head and pull. 1/6 chances ain’t good odds, but it’s better than hoping for a missfire.

        1. I live in a lock state (so deeply colored that there’s no chance of a flip, and totally ignored in campaigning.) So I voted third-party in the hopes of pushing them up above the 5% mark, not because I thought the candidate was any good.

          1. That’s what I was going to do . . . until one of those polls showed _Texas_ as wobbling. Then I held my nose and voted for Trump. Glad I did. I only have to apologize for the nose holding, not my vote.

              1. I badly wanted Cruz. By the time the primaries reached California Trump was the only game in town, and I wanted to make his margin convincing enough that the other candidates who were signaling a possible 3rd-party run didn’t.

                So far, I may not particularly like the man’s personality, I think he’s been doing a far better job as President than I’d expected he would. And so much better than his opponent would have, or his predecessor did, that I’m glad he’s in office.

      2. “Sure, we might not have liked Trump but we didn’t like him less than we didn’t like her.”
        In the end, that’s what it all boiled down to.

    2. Lucrezia Borgia was apparently a nice woman who was unlucky in her family. Historians now think the murder stories about her were just made up. She had a hard emotional life, like a lot of Italian noblewomen of the period, but put up with it.

      OTOH, the more we find out about Hillary, the more guilty she is revealed to be. There doesn’t seem to be any part of her life where she deals honestly with people or legitimately loves her country. She convicts herself with her own words and excuses.

        1. Same problem there. Her in-laws wanted her out of the way so they could reclaim her husband’s estate before the Crown did (there was a whiff of possible treason involved on his part.) She refused to go quietly, and was competent, so a story was made up to permit the in-laws to whisk her off to a remote castle and they got the good lands. Or so the guide in her original castle explained.

          Sort of like Lucrezia and like Margaret von Tirol (aka Margaretha Maultasch [“pouch-mouth” and you can take that in several directions, all rude]), a decent woman caught in politics.

      2. Historians now think the murder stories about her were just made up

        Recall that some historians thought the stories about Caligula were made up, like how he made a Roman temple into his front porch. Then archeologists found he’d done exactly that.

        I’ve been guilty of this, too. I discounted a local account of iron smelting during the Civil War as melting and reusing iron, because everyone knew there was no iron ore in the area. Then I literally stumbled over a chuck the size of my fist, next to a “sink hole” that might have been something entirely different. Oops! Suddenly the implausible was plausible.

        All this to say is that while we should be prepared to discount something as historic propaganda if there’s evidence to indicate such, we should apply skepticism to skepticism, even if it’s our own.

        That doesn’t mean we should accept all history at face value. Maybe Lucrezia is the victim of bad press. But unless there’s hard evidence the stories are unfounded, we shouldn’t be quick to discount them, either.

          1. Richard III has mostly been exonerated because there’s a *lot* of reasons to believe he was slandered and not a lot of reasons to believe he wasn’t. Though honestly, the best comment on the subject is a bit at the end of The Daughter of Time which mentions that the elementary textbook that vilified Richard III then went on to describe his successor’s large-scale removal (by death) of his enemies as “sensible and considered.” It doesn’t matter where you fall on the perspective of the guilt of a king centuries dead so much as it matters whether you learn how to recognize historical bias.

      3. “love and kindness” had been a fundamental part of her campaign, fundamentally absent. At least she’s consistent in that area. “love and kindness” has been missing from her for most of her life. I really have to wonder how damaged Chelsea may be from having her for a mother. On the other hand, maybe in her case the school systems managed to moderate the damage HRC was causing.

    3. One also gets the idea that Hillary happily shoots the bearers of bad news.
      So, you get slanted polls because no one wants to lose their job because the poll is accurate.
      Which ties into yestreday’s post- cut off the feedback, get big boom.

    4. On Hillary not remembering the polls were cooked for her I will advance she may not have know. It seems a lot of her staff reported what pleased her not what she needed and cooking the polls to get good numbers but not letting her Highness know they were cooked (and thus that she wasn’t as beloved by others as she was by herself) seems within the possible.

  16. RE: “racially charged codewords and resentments”–how does that distinguish Trump’s campaign from what Democrats have been doing for decades?

    1. Ah, buy when SHE and her fellow Progressives do it, it’s for a GOOD REASON.

      This bitch really does need to shriek out her life on a short stake. But it just isn’t worth the time and treasure it wold take to arrange that.

      1. I disagree with that sentiment, for two reasons. First, one should always endeavor to send people who deserve execution to their eternal reward quickly.
        Second, I don’t know if she’s done anything to deserve execution. Now, what she does deserve is being forced to watch as people live happy, successful lives without her mucking about in them.

        2. There’s sure an awfully long trail of unlikely, odd, and suspicious deaths that have followed the Clintons since they were rising in Arkansas. If someone could actually connect those deaths to the Clintons and make it stick, I’m pretty sure she deserves execution.

          1. Remarkably confusing.

            Guilt deserving punishment and legally provable guilt are quite different. Do you believe she’s guilty? Do you believe it beyond a reasonable doubt? Do you think it can be proved beyond a reasonable doubt?

            I got the impression that you’d like her punished, reasonable doubt be damned. That way lies.. badness.

            1. Losing the election, being denied the office she was absolutely entitled to (in her mind), being rejected by the American people- this is a pretty good punishment for the likes of her.

              1. Aye. As much I might like the idea of [Hillary for Prison] there is a certain satisfaction in her screaming and kicking into being a… footnote.

  17. Here’s a comment on Hillary’s book from Ann Althouse’s blog yesterday:
    Blogger William Chadwick said…

    If only Margaret Hamilton had been alive to do the spoken-word edition. . .

    1. I’ll get you Mr Trump and your little dog too!

      Can someone just drop a house on her?

      Paging Dorthy Gale.

  18. Golly. I get the impression that Hillary was an imperfect candidate and the electorate was restless. Who ever suspected?

  19. I almost wrote “HRC’s novel”. Why? Because in a lot of ways this has been the best fiction writing I’ve seen in some time.

    It’s a trope-subverting alternate-history SF where the protagonist thinks she’s Mary Sue, and every failure is proof that she needs to Sue Harder.

    -j

    1. Dear Humanity: As a Mythical Creature I do surely appreciate your telling stories. It’s how we myths came to be and how we ‘are’. However, in this particular case, could you please perhaps consider trying the telling of better or less unpleasant stories? Also, beware, as stories have power and some have this thing where they merge into your Reality and ‘come true.’ Please, be careful. Thank you.

  20. The first is that HRC hasn’t admitted, to herself or anyone else, that her political career is truly over.

    Good. She is leading a movement built around a cult of personality that I suspect will be hard for a Warren or Harris to harness but will dull either of them in 2020. A Hillary run, even if she has to drop out at some point, would probably lead to some old white guy *cough*Biden*cough* to getting the Dem nod with the result revolt calling the Dems as compromised as Trump and a similar to 2000 Green Party vote.

    I also think Hillary would run to do just that out of pettiness.

    Which sounds great.

    1. A Hillary run ‘splitting’ the Democrats?
      Split Democrats might just be worth the pain of that.
      The disease is bad.
      The cure treatment might be painful.
      Do we have enough anesthetic?

      2. Anesthetic? Are you goin’ SOFT on us, Orv? We can’t have that. It’s SUPPOSED to be painful; that’s only way they’ll learn.

        1. You would have loved a friend I had from the Boston Goth scene. She was know for having had dental work (the drilling kind) and saying, “No Novocaine” the quoting the “Pain is weakness leaving the body” bit.

          1. Transcending dental medication, was she?

            Now, I will grant that that brings terrible images or pains to mind, but in the last few years, I have turned down chemical anesthesia for some dental work. The dentist I see (or who sees me) has this wonderful water pulsing system that seems to numb things sufficiently that minor ‘drill & fill’ (more like ‘grind & bind’ nowadays) doesn’t need -caine. If you had told me,, not all that many years ago, that I would turn down anesthesia, I’d have wondered what street pharmaceutical you were using to excess. Now, a more involved procedure? Yeah, time for the anesthetics.

            1. Oh yes. I if I ever have to have anything close to 2016’s adventure ever again, I will be out, OUT for the duration.

            2. As a youth, I had a lot of cavities, and after one time with Novacaine, opted against it. About 15 years later, all those fillings had to be redone because the rot hadn’t been eliminated.

              That dentist (and later ones) used a swab of something light (benzocaine or similar) to numb the gums. Then the big needles came out. The replacement fillings have lasted about 40 years, so I’ll put up with the shot. (The dental surgeon who got my wisdom teeth used a general. The shards looked like he’d been mining in my mouth.)

              Root planing is mildly uncomfortable, except when I had Dr. Mengele’s hygienist. I made a joke about falling asleep during the procedure, and her response was “not with me”. She was right, and the only saving grace was I never saw her again. Not sure if she left the practice walking or being carried out. There were some interesting people living in that area….

    2. The Democratic 2020 campaign will be great*, kind of like a movie production where the ego of an A list supporting actor goes out of control, and it turns into a fascinating train wreck. Like “Battlefield Earth”.

      *If the Democrats haven’t managed to put her and Bill away on a nice, isolated farm somewhere, where they’ll have lots of room to run around.

  21. I knew quite a few people who voted for Trump, but never would have admitted to a pollster that that is what they were going to do. I don’t blame them.

    I would have done the same but fortunately I was never asked, I’m not sure I could have gotten it out convincingly. There was quite a lot of anti-Trump pressure in my neighborhood, and it wouldn’t have surprised me if such a “pollster” turned out to be a neighbor just calling to find out if I was “voting right”. I like my tires without slashes, thank-you-very-much.

  22. If you ever dare tackle another book, I have just the thing, a relic from the days when the Dems thought Sarah Palin was the worst thing they had to worry about:

    ““They said what they would do, and we did not listen. Then they did what they said they would do.”

    So ends the first chapter of this brilliantly readable counterfactual novel, reminding us that America’s Christian fundamentalists have been consistently clear about their vision for a “Christian Nation” and dead serious about acquiring the political power to achieve it. When President McCain dies and Sarah Palin becomes president, the reader, along with the nation, stumbles down a terrifyingly credible path toward theocracy, realizing too late that the Christian right meant precisely what it said.

    In the spirit of Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America, one of America’s foremost lawyers lays out in chilling detail what such a future might look like: constitutional protections dismantled; all aspects of life dominated by an authoritarian law called “The Blessing,” enforced by a totally integrated digital world known as the “Purity Web.” Readers will find themselves haunted by the questions the narrator struggles to answer in this fictional memoir: “What happened, why did it happen, how could it have happened?”

    1. Oy. I’m a Christian Fundamentalist, and all I (and every other Christian Fundamentalist I know) would like to see happen is to get back to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights! I think you’ve swallowed a wee bit of left-wing kool-aid there, Christopher!

      1. I’m an agnostic, and I agree with you. The Left have been telling themselves ca pfire stories about how horrible Christians would be to everybody if they had the chance. These tend to run to sexual enslavement of women, violent supression of all dissent, and religious law superseding the Bill of Rights.

        You know, everything the Left stands for.

        Ok, maybe sexual slavery of women is a touch too far for the Left, but their fascination with sex makes it plausible.

        1. Apparently, all you need to do to sell to a certain demo is accurately describe life for women in the sharia countries, but file off all the Moslem stuff and substitute Christianity, as imagined (culturally appropriated?) by someone who has never actually experienced all that Christiany stuff.

          That right there is Cutting Edge Speculative Fiction Social Criticism, with a side order of Timely Warning On Frightening Trends.

        2. “maybe sexual slavery of women …”

          I got two words for you, Bubelah:

          Lolita Express.

          Two more? Harvey Weinstein. Or Jeffrey Epstein.

          There’s no point in sexual enslavement of women* — they’re an asset subject to rapid depreciation. Why buy hankies when Kleenex are so cheap?

          *If that’s the extent of your interest in them.

          1. Exactly. Calling the law “the Blessing” would be opposed by Calvinist and Baptist, as it looks a bit too Charismatic.
            They’d be at each other’s throats because neither will budge on whether or not alcohol should be legal.

          3. Because everyone they don’t like is automatically on the same side, of course.

        6. Easy. If you don’t want to have sex with $HUMAN, you’re $PHOBIC and will be penalized. Next question?

      2. I missed the transition at first and had to go back and pay closer attention to the quotation marks, but I believe Christopher is proposing this book as close kin to the level of brainmelting induced by What Happened and has quoted a description from someone who has drunk more than a bit of the kool-aid.

      3. I was merely quoting what the blurb said. I’m an agnostic, and I know this is full of poop.

      4. I’d be reluctant to be a fundamentalist of anything in this day and age. Although I suppose a true Christian Fundamentalist would be someone who always lived their life the same way Jesus lived his.

        1. There are probably multiple definitions of ‘fundamentalist.’ The one I’ve always understood (in relation to the churches I’ve attended) was someone who actually believes the Bible is true and at least attempts to obey it. I guess the same applies to Muslim fundamentalists — it’s the books that differ.

          1. Not going to get into a Theological Debate here, but yes that’s the root definition of Fundamentalist Christianity.

            Fundamentalist Christians can and do argue about the meaning of Scripture but at its heart is the idea that the Bible is the Word of God and to be Christian, we must follow His Word and to work at joining into a relationship with God as Lord & Savior.

          2. Gateway writer’s gotta write what a gateway writer’s gotta write.

            Trump’s lived the life he’s lived. All of a sudden he wants to be an extra fancy tele-evangelist for the rest of his public life? Sudden mental degeneration is a boring explanation. An interesting reason why a sane functioning Trump would decide to do such a thing could well be a good story in its own right.

            2. Anybody with a grandma stubborn enough to keep speaking Scottish Gaelic when she moved to the US, is stubborn enough to do anything, if you get his back up.

              And Trump isn’t all that gung-ho a Christian, no. But if the world is agin it (and tells him he cannot do it), he is going to be for it.

              1. Getting his back up in a way that would nearly exactly match every jot and tittle of leftist fearmongering sounds like an adventure.

              2. What a lot of those outside churches fail to comprehend is that church members who voted against Hillary did so because she thought she could change religious doctrines. Donald “Two Corinthians” Trump was seen as not so hot morally, but more likely to leave everyone alone.

                1. Yep. Even were he as corrupt and incompetent as Hillary, Teh Donald was not likely to require your gym effectively make the locker rooms monogendered.

  24. The VRA? Really? especially since most of the states that turned the election to Trump *aren’t even subject to the Voting Rights Act’s additional enforcement*

  25. I’m interested to see just how much “help” Hillary provides during the 2018 elections. The party insiders just might use that as an excuse to throw the Clintons under the bus once and for all.

  26. I never liked Trump, but 2016 was a classic syphilitic camel election for me, so the voting against HRC was vastly more important than voting for anyone.

    I’ve been pleasantly surprised to date with President Trump, but his main credential continues to be that he’s not HRC.

  27. Will Hillary run again? I think Dick Morris went on record saying she absolutely would not run again. Unless, that is, she happened to be breathing.

    1. Eh, I saw the immediate grooming for Chelsea to be the next puppet for the puppet master… But no narcissist every gives up the limelight willingly, and I’m willing to bet she’d shoulder her daughter aside the instant she thought she had a chance instead.

      While Obama proved you can run for president and win with only a record of voting present, Chelsea doeasn’t have the race card to play, so I don’t think she has a shot.

      1. Chelsea has all the charisma and drive of a 4th generation Kennedy spawn. Groom they may, but she’s not really going anywhere- maybe a very safe House seat for a super leftist district.

      1. And the difference is..? 😉

        I was looking at the NYT headline on split-screen as I typed. And I have a head cold. Otherwise, no excuses, sir.

      2. My first guess was thrown lamp …

        Although Hillary’s CPU overheating did occur to me.

        And now, for whatever reason, I am imagining Wha Hoppen the audiobook as read by a Dalek …

          1. OK, now I have a Dalek voice shouting “COLLUSION! COLLUSION! TRUMP! RUSSIANS! COLLUSION!” in my head. Thanks a lot.

    4. I ran across something that said it was in Secret Service part. Now there’s conspiracy theorist fodder.

      1. That would have a very simple explanation. Everyone on HRC’s security detail has to consume mind-altering substances in order to avoid doing the exact opposite of what they’re supposed to do.
        Some of those are flammable, and some involve open flames.

  29. “I also think about the strong headwinds we faced, including the rise of tribal politics in America …”

    I find no little amusement in the coiner of the phrase “Vast Right Wing Conspiracy” is shocked, shocked at the rise of “tribal politics.”

    Handily, NRO’s Jim Geraghty provided this recent reminder on tribalism in the Nineties:
    During the brief but long-overdue reevaluation of Bill Clinton’s behavior while in office last autumn, I vaguely remembered a book by James Carville from around that time that argued loyalty to Clinton was the right virtue, and that those who rebuked the president for his actions with Monica Lewinsky, Paula Jones, Juanita Broaddrick, and Kathleen Willey had committed some sort of morally-repulsive betrayal.

    I tracked down a copy of the book and found I had recollected it pretty accurately. James Carville’s Stickin’: The Case for Loyalty is a pretty remarkable artifact of a time when people were unafraid to argue that absolute devotion to a president, no matter how bad his actions, was morally right and that speaking out against unethical and illegal behavior represented true villainy.

    But there was one key quote — repeated twice — that really jumped out at me: “In my world, you don’t abandon a guy over sex. You stick with him.”

    [SNIP]

    It’s never easy to confront a friend or co-worker when you think they’re doing something wrong, and it’s extremely difficult to confront a boss. But at the very least, we’re not supposed to actively justify and facilitate someone else’s bad behavior.

    “You don’t abandon a guy over sex” has got to be one of the most enabling sentences ever put into print.

        1. And then we would have to call in some sensitivity readers from Mordor…if you can’t wrap your mind around the idea of an Orc as a “snowflake” maybe SJW would be a better fit.

          The invincible J. P. Sears shows the way:

  30. Thanks for taking the hit for the team, Amanda.
    I know I could not have made it through the first chapter, much less the entire book, but reading your review and the commentary has made it — well, not enjoyable, precisely, but entertaining in a rather dystopian way.

  31. Pingback: FINALLY: Clinton Foundation Investigated By FBI And DOJ For Pay To Play [VIDEO} - Victory Girls Blog

  32. I look forward to your coverage of the sequel where she provides the answers this book left out.

  33. I recently read Edward Harris’s “Shattered: Why Hillary Clinton Lost the Presidential Election.” One reason he tells us she lost is that not everyone supports all those GREAT THINGS that Obama did for us, Once the deplorables die away, things will be better, he informs us.

    1. Well, he is totally correct on the conclusion.
      On the prediction: who is having more babies, Deplorables or Leftists?
      Not really sure where the Muslims come in, as they have high(er) birthrates than the Left, but hate everything the Left stands for, with the exception of a joint commitment to decrying (nonexistent) Islamophobia.

  34. they’re things that happened, whether we like it or not
    Ummmm, no, Hil, they aren’t. They didn’t happen – at least not the way you write them.

    Can someone get this woman a coat and some thorazine?

    1. Happily, I’m not licensed to practice any sort of medicine in any state.

  35. “talking about shutting down the coal mines and focusing on new energy and renewable energy sources.”

    Shutting down the coal mines was a definite action she was going to take.

    Focusing on new energy and renewable energy sources was just eye wash. Focus doesn’t DO anything.

  36. Oh, and she doesn’t carry around any bitterness after the election.
    Of course not. She has lackeys to carry the bitterness. Also to carry the chardonnay. And the vodka. And, occasionally, her.

        1. Y’know, it strikes me that if Snickers is looking to move on from Joe Pesci as their commercial spokesman, Hillary is tanned, rested and ready.

  37. Love you Amanda, we really do, but you’ll have to spend another 30 days in the Decon Tent just as a precaution.

    What’s that? Can’t hear you over the ventilator. Try this – if you want more rum, flap your arms twice – yes just like bwahshaha! Sorry that was mean, can’t help myself though, you look like a flying marshmallow.

    No seriously, stop that. We are all out of rum.

  38. Pingback: On minimum wage issues, writing and more - Nocturnal Lives

  39. Do not look on or try to understand the old gods, and now that this special hell is over I nolonger need to wonder if….

  40. Pingback: Hillary Clinton: Loser – Neurotoxin

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