Hillary Clinton is like a figure in Greek myth, doomed to wander the earth as a flesh-and-blood answer to anyone who struggles to understand what happened in 2016 and how President Trump won.
How did a real estate tycoon with a long history of ethically dubious business dealings become president? Look to Hillary Clinton. How did a man who quite literally lives in a golden tower in New York City win the working-class vote? Behold: Hillary Clinton. How did a political neophyte defeat the Democratic machine? Two words: Hillary Clinton.
The list of factors that likely contributed to the Queens businessman’s unlikely victory is long, but Clinton’s name is right up there at the top.
And it’s as if she’s determined to prove to the world that 2016 wasn’t a hiccup, and that she really is about as ungifted, ungracious, and unsavvy as any politician who has ever sought the White House. Consider, for example, the following clip from her address this weekend at the India Today Conclave 2018 in Mumbai:
“If you look at the map of the U.S., there’s all that red in the middle where Trump won,” she said. “I win the coast, I win, you know, Illinois and Minnesota, places like that. I won the places that represent two-thirds of America’s gross domestic product.”
“So I won the places that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward. And his whole campaign, ‘Make America Great Again,’ was looking backwards,” Clinton added.
Setting aside any ideas she might have inspired about awarding the franchise based on economic production (so crazy it just might work?), this helps explain her loss of the working-class voting bloc that the Democrats seem to have surrendered without a fight. Also, A-plus job suggesting poor people are to blame for Trump.
Congressional Democrats from the states that chose Trump over Clinton are likely less-than-thrilled with her remarks from Saturday. Imagine being a lawmaker from, say, Wisconsin or Michigan and having to answer whether you agree with your party’s 2016’s presidential nominee that your constituents are “backwards” bigots. Those responses should be fun.
Clinton continued, explaining what she thought Trump really meant when he said he would “Make America Great Again”: “You didn’t like black people getting rights, you don’t like women, you know, getting jobs. You don’t want, you know, to see that Indian-American succeeding more than you are. Whatever your problem is, I’m going to solve it.”
This is simply a more specific version of her disastrous “deplorables” episode, arguably her biggest blunder of 2016. The only difference now is that she has taken her attack on Trump supporters overseas and, by implication, retracted her apology for saying what she did about his voting base.
If it wasn’t clear already that Clinton hasn’t learned a damn thing from 2016, this Mumbai appearance should remove all doubt.
