In an audio excerpt from her upcoming book, “What Happened,” Hillary Clinton describes feeling deeply uncomfortable by Donald Trump’s antics during a presidential debate.
Yet listening to Clinton, my first takeaway was “this is why you lost!”
After all, the former senator and first lady comes across when speaking as incredibly boring and impersonal. She speaks in dreary monotone sentences that offer a window into a calculating mind. And in Clinton’s cold anger and arrogance, we are again convinced that she is not a good loser, and therefore not a good politician.
Conversely, whatever you think of his theatrics and flexible relationship with the truth, at his rally on Tuesday night, Trump again showed why he was so successful in the presidential campaign. He is bold, charismatic, and unpredictable. He doesn’t let facts get in the way of a good story, and the crowd eats up his stories. Moreover, his fire-from-the-hip mentality is appealing to an electorate that has lost faith in both of our major political parties.
Clinton still doesn’t seem to get this.
In her statements since the election, Clinton has come across as drained and angry. That’s understandable, of course, but most politicians would have been able to keep their visible anger in check. Clinton cannot. Instead, she still struggles to understand how the voters picked Trump over her, and why her record as a lawyer, politician, and first lady were not regarded more highly than Trump’s billions.
And again, that’s her problem. In his boldness and his billions, Trump was seen as a creator and a doer: someone who would shake up Washington and get reform enacted. In her reliably safe resume, Clinton was seen as someone who knows the unwritten rules and doesn’t upset vested interests. But the very qualities that Clinton believes makes her stronger than Trump, are actually the weaknesses that led Trump to defeat her.
Here’s what happened last year: Clinton didn’t understand what the electorate wanted, Trump did.
