Next week is the launch of Hillary Clinton’s book, What Happened. It’s going to squeeze in her weeks-long tantrums post-2016 in one single book, where we can all share a laugh at the woman who blew one of the most winnable elections in recent memory. As Leah wrote earlier this morning, she’s turned her cat claws on Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who challenged Clinton in the 2016 Democratic primaries. In a new excerpt, she says something that probably should have been rammed home, which is that Sanders is not a Democrat:
He isn’t a Democrat---that’s not a smear, that’s what he says. He didn’t get into the race to make sure a Democrat won the White House, he got in to disrupt the Democratic Party. I am proud to be a Democrat and I wish Bernie was too.
Yet, CNN’s Brianna Keilar aptly noted that Clinton is complaining about things that were in her realm of control. She knew she had vulnerabilities. She did things that damaged her own brand—a lot of what she did contributed to her loss. Hence, it’s the reason why she’s insufferable to listen to concerning her 2016 loss; a losing candidate bears all the responsibility in defeat. Clinton has yet to truly embrace this principle. As we’ve said before, it wasn’t the Russians who told her to not campaign in Wisconsin.
Democrats are quietly just wishing that Clinton would go away, instead of rehashing the contentious intraparty squabbles that were present during the 2016 cycle, especially during the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.
On Inside Politics, the panel, which consisted of Jeff Zeleny, The New York Times’ Jonathan Martin, and The Atlantic’s Molly Ball, pretty much concluded that all this book is going to do is pour salt in the Democratic wounds; wounds that have not yet healed from their thrashing last year. Right now, the progressive Left is mounting something of a takeover within the Democratic Party, citing Hillary Clinton as a reason for the 2016 loss. She wasn’t far left enough. They’re pushing for harsh litmus tests on abortion and single-payer health care, while establishment Democrats are wary that such a lurch to the Left will cause the party to self-destruct. On top of that, the party is struggling with fundraising, finding a message, finding a leader, and trying to find candidates who aren’t all from geezer world.