Hillary Clinton Explains Why She Lost on a Liberal Podcast

https://crooked.com/podcast/hillary-clinton/

This episode from left-leaning Pod Save America, features an interview with Hillary Clinton discussing her new book What Happened. Listen to this after reading the articles for this week to see how her perspective differs from what really happened.

One excerpt to think about:

(Questions to keep in mind: Does she really answer his question? What does she insinuate about the media?)

Question [min 5 and 16s]: “So the excerpts of the book that have leaked out so far have set off another round of Bernie vs. Hilary recriminations, everybody’s favorite pastime. Now, I know that elsewhere in the book you give Bernie a lot of credit, you say that the debate is over blown, that you actually agree on most issues, but it seems like there’s still an important debate about what comes next for the party, that we should talk about. So, from the Spring, the Washington Post Poll found that 67% of voters found that Democrats were out of touch with the concerns of an average person, and that includes 44% of democrats. To turn this around, do you think that the democratic party needs to fundamentally change as an institutions  with regards to policy, or do you think it’s about sharpening our message, better technology in the party and stuff like that?”

Answer [min 6 and 2s]: “I’ve given this a lot of thought as you might guess because it is deeply distressing to me that we are painted like that. And I can only speak, again, from my own experience which I tried to relate in the book, I had such a different experience in 08, as you all know because you were part of the Obama campaign, once it was over it was over. And I quickly endorsed President Obama, really hard to get him elected, I was still arguing with my supporters at the Denver convention telling people don’t be ridiculous you’ve got to vote for Obama at the time, and I was thrilled that he got elected. I didn’t get anything like that respect from Sanders and his supporters, and it hurt. You know, to have basically captured the nomination ending up with more than four million votes than he had, and he dragged it out, and each vote was so reluctant, but why would we be surprised? He’s not a democrat, and that’s not a slam on him, that’s just a repetition of what he says himself.  

So what I’m focused on is people who are proud to be Democrats, people who want to defend the legacy of Democrats, of our last president and presidents before who have done so much to help so many Americans economically, and in terms of civil rights, and human rights, and I think we are facing a couple of very difficult obstacles. First, the other side has dedicated propaganda channels, that’s what I call Fox News. It has outlets like Breitbart and crazy Info Wars and things like that. In this particular election, it was aided and abided by the Russians and the role Facebook and other platforms played. We were late to that. We did not understand how a reality TV campaign would so dominate the media environment. And I confess, I was doing everything I can to build on the success of President Obama’s campaign I had a lot of people you guys know, but boy was it tough to break through. So, I think the Democrats can do a lot, but they are still going to face a very difficult media environment, and we need to figure out how we’re going to break through. I mean obviously more podcasts, more other ways of communicating so other voices can be heard and real positions can be part of it, but we’re still at a disadvantage."

A few quotes from articles:

Pre-Primary News Coverage of the 2016 Presidential Race: Trump’s Rise, Sanders’ Emergence, Clinton’s Struggle

“The invisible primary is the stage of the campaign where journalists have the most latitude in deciding what and who to cover. It’s also the stage where the press forges its “metanarratives”—its dominant personal narratives of the leading contenders.”

“As regards Clinton, she was the candidate best prepared for the presidency as a result of her experience and detailed knowledge of policy issues. But this positive metanarrative competed with more frequently employed negative ones—that she was difficult to like, overly calculating, and hard to trust. As for Sanders, the storyline was that he means what he says—that he speaks, not from what the polls say is expedient, but from what he believes.”

News Coverage of the 2016 Presidential Primaries: Horse Race Reporting Has Consequences

"The media coverage on one level mirrored the ratio of wins and losses rather than the ratio of delegates. Sanders received nearly as much press attention as did Clinton, getting 46 percent of the Democratic coverage to her 54 percent (see Figure 7)." 

News Coverage of the 2016 General Election: How the Press Failed the Voters

“As journalists would have it, the Trump and Clinton camps were the cause of all the negativity. And it was certainly true that the election was unusually nasty. But to attribute the tone entirely to the opposing camps is to ignore the pattern of presidential election coverage during the past few decades (see Figure 3). Not since 1984—eight elections ago—have the presidential nominees enjoyed positive press coverage. The 2016 campaign did not even top the record for negativity. That distinction belongs to the 2000 campaign when news reports questioned whether Al Gore was trustworthy enough and George W. Bush was smart enough to deserve the presidency”