What Happened Read online

  The controversy over my emails quickly cast a shadow over our efforts and threw us into a defensive crouch from which we never fully recovered. You can read plenty more about that later in this book, but suffice it to say that one boneheaded mistake turned into a campaign-defining and -destroying scandal, thanks to a toxic mix of partisan opportunism, interagency turf battles, a rash FBI director, my own inability to explain the whole mess in a way people could understand, and media coverage that by its very volume told the voters this was by far the most important issue of the campaign. Most people couldn’t explain what it was really all about or how the allegations that I was a threat to national security squared with the support I had from respected military and civilian national security experts, including Republicans and Independents, but they understandably came away with the impression I had done a big, bad thing.

  One result was that, right away, I was back in my usual adversarial relationship with the press, clamming up and trying to avoid “Gotcha!” interviews at a time when I needed to be reintroducing myself to the country. I watched my approval numbers drop and my disapproval and distrust numbers rise, as my message about all the things I wanted to do as President was blocked or overwhelmed.

  There were other disappointments as well. In 2008, critics had slammed me for not being accessible to voters and avoiding traditional grip-and-grin campaigning. This time they went the other way and ridiculed my intimate listening sessions. “Where are the rallies? Why can’t she draw a crowd?” they’d ask. That “enthusiasm” question never really went away, even when we drew large crowds.

  Other than Iowa and Nevada, where we built extensive organizations, I struggled in caucuses just as I had the last time. By their structure and rules, caucuses favor the most committed activists who are willing to spend long hours waiting to be counted. That gave the advantage to the insurgent left-wing candidacy of Bernie Sanders. My advantage came in primaries, which have secret ballots and all-day voting, like a typical election, and much higher turnout. The difference was most clear in Washington State, which held both a caucus and a primary. Bernie won the caucus in March, and I won the primary in May, in which three times as many people voted. Unfortunately, most of the delegates were awarded based on the caucus.

  Ultimately, none of this mattered much after I built up a large delegate lead in March. What did matter, and had a lasting impact, was that Bernie’s presence in the race meant that I had less space and credibility to run the kind of feisty progressive campaign that had helped me win Ohio and Pennsylvania in 2008.

  One piece of advice that President Obama gave me throughout the campaign was that we needed more message discipline, and he was right. In 1992, Bill relied on James Carville and Paul Begala to help him shape his winning message, and they made sure that everyone in the campaign—including the candidate—stuck to it day after day after day. In 2016, my campaign was blessed with many brilliant strategists, and they helped me develop a message, Stronger Together, that reflected my values and vision and a clear contrast with Trump. It may not have been catchy enough to break through the wall of negative coverage about emails—maybe nothing could—but it was the case I wanted to make. And when voters got a chance to hear from me directly, at the convention and in the debates, polls showed they liked what they heard.

  It’s true, though, that we struggled to stay on message. My advisors had to deal with a candidate—me—who often wanted something new to say, as opposed to just repeating the same stump speech over and over. In addition, more than in any race I can remember, we were constantly buffeted by events: from the email controversy, to WikiLeaks, to mass shootings and terrorist attacks. There was no such thing as a “normal day,” and the press didn’t cover “normal” campaign speeches. What they were interested in was a steady diet of conflict and scandal. As a result, when it came to driving a consistent message, we were fighting an uphill battle.

  Add all this together, and I think you get a picture of a campaign that had both great strengths and real weaknesses—just like every campaign in history. There are important lessons to learn from what we got right and what we got wrong. But I totally reject the notion that it was an unusually flawed or dysfunctional campaign. That’s just wrong. My team battled serious headwinds to win the popular vote, and if not for the dramatic intervention of the FBI director in the final days, I believe that in spite of everything, we would have won the White House. I’ve been criticized harshly by political pundits for saying that, and even some of my supporters have said they agree with me but I shouldn’t say it. If you feel this way, I hope you’ll keep going and give my response a fair reading.

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  Since the election, I’ve asked myself many times if I learned the wrong lessons from 2008. Was I fighting the previous war when I should have been focused on how much our politics had changed?

  Much has been made about my campaign’s supposed overreliance on Obama-style big data, at the expense of more traditional political gut instinct and trusting folks on the ground. This is another criticism I reject. It’s true that some of our models were off—just like everyone else’s, including the media, the Trump campaign, everyone—probably because some Trump supporters refused to talk to pollsters or weren’t honest about their preferences or because people changed their minds. It’s also true that, like any large organization, we could have done a better job listening to the anecdotal feedback we were getting from folks on the ground. It’s not like we didn’t try. My team was constantly in touch with local leaders, and I had trusted friends reporting back to me from all over the country, including a big group of Arkansans—the Arkansas Travelers—who fanned out in nearly every state. I believe they helped us win the razor-close Missouri primary, and they were a constant source of information and perspective for me. But every precinct leader and party chair in the country wants more attention and resources. Sometimes they’re right, sometimes they’re wrong. You can’t make those decisions blind. You have to be guided by the best data available. This isn’t an either/or choice. You need both data and good old-fashioned political instinct. I’m convinced that the answer for Democrats going forward is not to abandon data but to obtain better data, use it more effectively, question every assumption, and keep adapting. And we need to listen carefully to what people are telling you and try to assess that too.

  Still, in terms of fighting the previous war, I think it’s fair to say that I didn’t realize how quickly the ground was shifting under all our feet. This was the first election where the Supreme Court’s disastrous 2010 Citizens United decision allowing unlimited political donations was in full force but the Voting Rights Act of 1965 wasn’t because of another terrible decision by the court in 2013. I was running a traditional presidential campaign with carefully thought-out policies and painstakingly built coalitions, while Trump was running a reality TV show that expertly and relentlessly stoked Americans’ anger and resentment. I was giving speeches laying out how to solve the country’s problems. He was ranting on Twitter. Democrats were playing by the rules and trying too hard not to offend the political press. Republicans were chucking the rule book out the window and working the refs as hard as they could. I may have won millions more votes, but he’s the one sitting in the Oval Office.

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  Both the promise and the perils of my campaign came together on a warm and brilliantly sunny June day in 2015, when I formally announced my candidacy in a speech to thousands of supporters on Roosevelt Island in New York’s East River. Now the event seems almost like a quaint throwback to an earlier era of politics—a time when policies and polish were assets, not liabilities. Nonetheless, that hopeful, joyous day on Roosevelt Island will always rank as one of my favorites.

  For weeks before the speech, I went back and forth with my team about what to say and how to say it. I’ve never been very adept at summing up my entire life story, worldview, and agenda in pithy sound bites. I was also acutely aware t
hat, as the first woman to be a credible candidate for President, I looked and sounded different than any presidential candidate in our country’s history. I had no precedent to follow, and voters had no historical frame of reference to draw upon. It was exhilarating to enter uncharted territory. But uncharted, by definition, means uncertain. If I felt that way, I was sure that a lot of voters would feel even more wary about it.

  I also knew that despite being the first woman to have a serious chance at the White House, I was unlikely to be seen as a transformative, revolutionary figure. I had been on the national stage too long for that, and my temperament was too even-keeled. Instead, I hoped that my candidacy—and if things worked out, my presidency—would be viewed as the next chapter in the long progressive struggle to make the country fairer, freer, and stronger, and to beat back a seriously scary right-wing agenda. This framing took me directly into the politically dangerous territory of seeking a so-called third term after Obama and being seen as the candidate of continuity instead of change, but it was honest. And I thought placing my candidacy in the grand tradition of my progressive forebears would help voters accept and embrace the unprecedented nature of my campaign.

  So when Huma suggested launching the campaign on Roosevelt Island, named after Franklin Delano, I knew it was the right choice. I’m something of a Roosevelt buff. First on the list will always be Eleanor. She was a crusading First Lady and progressive activist who never stopped speaking her mind and didn’t give a damn what people thought. I return to her aphorisms again and again: “If I feel depressed, I go to work.” “A woman is like a teabag: you never know how strong she is until she’s in hot water.” There was a minor Washington tempest back in the 1990s when a newspaper claimed I was having séances in the White House to commune directly with Eleanor’s spirit. (I wasn’t, though it would have been nice to talk to her now and then.)

  I’m also fascinated by Eleanor’s husband, Franklin, and her uncle Teddy. I was riveted by Ken Burns’s seven-part documentary about all three Roosevelts that aired on PBS in 2014. I was particularly struck by the parallels between what Teddy faced as President in the early years of the twentieth century, as the industrial revolution upended American society, and what we faced in the early years of the twenty-first century. In both eras, disruptive technological change, massive income inequality, and excessive corporate power created a social and political crisis. Teddy responded by breaking up powerful monopolies, passing laws to protect working people, and safeguarding the environment. He may have been a Republican, but he put the capital P in Progressive. He was also a shrewd politician who managed to fend off the demands of angry populists on his left, who wanted to go even further toward Socialism, and conservatives on his right, who would have let the robber barons amass even more wealth and power.

  Teddy found the right balance and called it the “Square Deal.” I loved that phrase, and the more I thought about the challenges facing America in the years following the financial crisis of 2008–2009, the more I felt that what we needed was another Square Deal. We needed to regain our balance, take on the forces that had crashed our economy, and protect hardworking families shortchanged by automation, globalization, and inequality. We needed the political skill to restrain unchecked greed while defusing the most destructive impulses of resurgent populism.

  On tough days out on the road, when reading the news felt like getting your teeth kicked in, I’d remember what Teddy said about those of us who climb into the arena. “It is not the critic who counts,” he said, but the competitor “who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds . . . who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.”

  I also was inspired by Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal program of the 1930s, which saved capitalism from itself following the Great Depression, and by his vision of a humane, progressive, internationalist America. Four Freedoms Park, at the tree-lined tip of Roosevelt Island, commemorates the universal freedoms FDR proclaimed during World War II: freedom of speech and worship, freedom from want and fear. It’s a picturesque spot with a striking view of the New York skyline. Announcing my candidacy there felt right.

  The final few days were a flurry of marking up drafts and rewriting lines with Dan Schwerin, my longtime speechwriter, who had been with me since the Senate. As the campaign went on, he would be joined by Megan Rooney, a wonderful writer who spent four years traveling the world with me at State and then went to the White House to write for President Obama. Despite our best efforts, when the morning of June 13 dawned, I was still not quite satisfied. I turned to the bottom of page 4, the key moment in the speech, when I was supposed to say, “That’s why I’m running for President.” What followed, “to make our economy work for you and for every American,” was true and important. It was the result of deliberation and debate with my senior advisors, culminating a few days before around the table in my dining room in Washington. I had put down a draft in frustration, declared myself finished with all the slogans and sound bites, and said that I was really running for President to make the economy work for everyone, and why didn’t we just say that and be done with it?

  But something was missing—emotional lift, a sense that we were setting out on a common mission to secure our shared destiny. I remembered a note that Dan and I had received a few days earlier from Jim Kennedy, a great friend who has a deft way with words. He reflected on a line from Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” speech: “Our strength is our unity of purpose.” America is a family, Jim noted, and we should have one another’s backs. In that moment, I had no idea that the election would turn into a contest between the divisiveness of Donald Trump and my vision of an America that’s “stronger together.” But it felt right to call for shared purpose, to remind Americans that there is much more that unites us than divides us.

  I picked up my ballpoint pen and, playing off Jim’s language, wrote, “We Americans may differ, bicker, stumble, and fall; but we are at our best when we pick each other up, when we have each other’s back. Like any family, our American family is strongest when we cherish what we have in common and fight back against those who would drive us apart.”

  A few hours later, I was standing at the podium in the blinding June sun, looking out at the excited faces of cheering supporters. I saw little kids perched on their parents’ shoulders. Friends smiled up at me from the front row. Bill, Chelsea, and Marc were glowing with pride and love. The stage was shaped like our campaign logo: a big blue H with a red arrow cutting across the middle. All around it, a sea of people clapped, hollered, and waved American flags.

  I allowed myself a moment to think, “This is really happening. I am going to run for President, and I am going to win.” Then I started to speak. It was hard to read the teleprompter with the sun in my eyes, but I knew the words well by this point. It was a long speech, full of policies and insights developed over the previous months of listening to people such as Pam in New Hampshire. That’s not everyone’s cup of tea. But I thought it was the kind of speech a candidate for the most important job in the world ought to give: serious, substantive, honest about the challenges ahead, and hopeful about our ability to meet them.

  I told a couple jokes. “I may not be the youngest candidate in this race,” I said, “but I will be the youngest woman President in the history of the United States.” Little did I know that, in fact, I would end up being the youngest candidate, running against septuagenarians Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump.

  I was pleased with how the speech was received. The journalist Jon Allen, who has followed me over the years, declared, “Clinton pretty much nailed the vision thing.” Jared Bernstein, Joe Biden’s former top economic advisor, smartly described it as a “reconnection agenda” (I loved that) that aimed to “reunite economic growth with the prosperity of middle- and low-income families.”
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br />   But it was E. J. Dionne, one of my favorite political commentators, who had the most thought-provoking—and, in retrospect, haunting—reaction. “Hillary Clinton is making a bet and issuing a challenge. The bet is that voters will pay more attention to what she can do for them than to what her opponents will say about her,” E. J. wrote. “The challenge is to her Republican adversaries: Can they go beyond low-tax, antigovernment bromides to make credible counteroffers to the nurses, truckers, factory workers, and food servers whom Clinton made the heroes of her Roosevelt Island narrative about grace under pressure?”

  We know now that I lost that bet—not because a Republican came along and made a more credible counteroffer to middle-class voters but because Donald Trump did something else: appeal to the ugliest impulses of our national character. He also made false promises about being on the side of working people. As Michael Bloomberg later said at the Democratic National Convention, “I’m a New Yorker, and I know a con when I see one.” Me too.

  As I would often do in big moments over the course of the campaign, I closed the speech by talking about my mother, Dorothy, who had passed away in 2011. She lived to be ninety-two years old, and I often thought about all the progress she witnessed over the course of her long life—progress won because generations of Americans kept fighting for what they knew to be right. “I wish my mother could have been with us longer,” I said. “I wish she could have seen Chelsea become a mother herself. I wish she could have met Charlotte. I wish she could have seen the America we’re going to build together.” I looked out at the crowd and up at the New York skyline across the water, smiled, and said, “An America where a father can tell his daughter, yes, you can be anything you want to be—even President of the United States.”