Nobody walked away from the 2016 election in great shape.
Though he pulled off a historic upset, Donald Trump faced the challenge of governing a highly skeptical country where more voters cast ballots for his opponent. Speaking of that opponent, Hillary Clinton hobbled into election day with an unfavorability rating of 55 percent. In the days before Nov. 9, she trailed Trump by a margin of eight percent on the question of who voters believed to be more honest and trustworthy. And on election day, voters who disliked both candidates chose Trump by a wide margin.
In June, after all the fawning coverage of her walks in the woods and attendance at Broadway plays, Gallup found the former secretary of state’s unfavorable rating had actually increased to 57 percent.
Clinton is not, as they say, a well-liked public figure.
Nevertheless, she is persisting to inject herself into the national news cycle. On Wednesday, Clinton released excerpts of her forthcoming memoir to “Morning Joe,” making a splash with one particular revelation about her internal monologue during the second debate last fall. “Well, what would you do?” she asks in the book, recalling Trump’s infamous decision to lurk behind her on the stage during the event. “Do you stay calm, keep smiling and carry on as if he weren’t repeatedly invading your space? Or do you turn, look him in the eye and say loudly and clearly: ‘Back up you creep, get away from me. I know you love to intimidate women, but you can’t intimidate me, so back up.'”
One gets the impression Clinton believes passages like these will contribute to her legacy as a great champion of political decency, jilted by an anxious electorate that struggled to accept a female leader, preyed upon by the incompetence of James Comey, forever regretting its impulsive decision to cast a reality star in America’s leading role. And they will — in Chappaqua and in Manhattan and in Hollywood and in Washington, D.C.
But no matter how hard Clinton stretches to explain “What Happened,” as the title of her book promises, those efforts will do little to broaden her appeal outside of the elite corridors in which she is already revered.
The media tour she is bound to embark upon after the book’s release will be another campaign to convince America that though she is imperfect, just as human as the rest of us, she is worthy of our collective adoration. For mustering the humility and courage to produce a painfully honest evaluation of her defeat at the hands of a gaudy businessman, Hillary Clinton has done the country a service, they will say.
But that’s just the problem.
We’ve heard it all before. Almost a year of sympathetic coverage of her post-election life, the dog-walks and the selfies and the letters to Teen Vogue writers, has done nothing to curry favor with the public. As the season shifts and Clinton prepares for a legacy-cementing round of promotional interviews with sympathetic talk show hosts, the aforementioned 57 percent of us will remember why her triumph in the popular vote had absolutely nothing to do with popularity.
Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
