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Clinton is most revealing on the campaign strategy - frustrations running against a candidate like Trump; inside view of decisions, media
And this is a useful book for an accounting of Russia and 2016 - one historians will probably rely on more than many HRC interviews
It also shows Clinton at her empirical core - the numbers, the data, the evidence. That's useful (even if it's not headline grabbing)
Some of it reads as narrow and self-pitting; people are allowed to feel and express that after loss. (Esp if they're told to "be authentic")
Her argument on jobs and media ignoring virtually any message she offered, while slamming her lack of message, should be taught in J school
Trump "drove" policy message by acting out, and voters heard more about wall, jobs and swamp in addition to his antics
Weirdly for a politician, tho, Clinton doesn't hammer her popular victory that much. She won a lot more votes...
All said and done, and more voters chose her. She was more popular. And she was the first woman nominee to boot.
So if anyone would hammer that, you'd think it would be her, in her campaign book.
Instead she often joins the narrative of "why Clinton lost," as if more voters chose Trump...
while I happen to think HRC campaign was run in a mediocre way, if 40k voters swung in a few states there'd be no essays on "why she lost"
So HRC 2016 is a bit like a gun background check vote in the Senate - the policy can be nationally popular AND lose the Senate vote.
The factual reality is the more popular thing can lose in an non-pure-democratic system, like the Senate or Electoral College.
That's no comfort for [Dems or gun control advocates], but it's bizarre to then pretend the winner "won" by being more popular.
The raw truth is our political system may put the runner-up in the White House, and ask the winner to "take responsibility" for losing.
That's our Constitution and it ain't changing soon. We can accept it as the rule of law without pretending it's majority rule. It's not.
So, some his & lows from What Happened. I'd actually rec reading Remnick's article on it over the actual book, unless you have lots of time.
