What Happened

What Happened by Hillary Rodham Clinton                   AudioBook:   16 hours, 50 minutes     Hardback Book:  512 pages          

Excellent book.    So many things are discussed here that happened prior to the campaign, during the campaign post campaign up to July of 2017.    She does not dodge tough accusations but addresses them with directness and honesty.   She took the loss personally and once she recovered from the doldrums of defeat she went back over what happened, why and how it happened.    This book is a reflection of her assessment.   Well written,  brutally truthful accepting her faux pas, like addressing a crowd in Kentucky meaning to discuss her go green policy she planned to initiate to address getting away from burning fossil fuels so the greenhouse gasses that absorb infrared radiation or carbon dioxide and chlorofluorocarbons that prevent these gases from escaping into outer space and instead act like a blanket holding the heat in earth’s atmosphere surrounding the planet thus heating up the surface causing global warming – instead of coming out with the facts first about global warming and how She wanted to implement policies to address the issue she blurted out,  “Well first I will shut down coalmining and put about 25,000 coalminers out of a job.”   I just know her aides were slapping themselves in the forehead going WTF?  Tell me she did not just say that in a coalmining state to an audience of coalminers and their families struggling financially to live!    Whatever else she may have said was lost beneath all the booing.   She was almost literally run out of town when she tried to go back to Appalachia and apologize and try to set right what she actually meant instead of what she had said.   One politician was on his way to turn himself in for fraud but delayed his trip to the courthouse to stand up and heckle her and tell her off saying they might think he was bad for what he had done but she was pure evil and trying to take the food out of their mouths and take their livelihood away.   She tried to address the remarks but again she was shouted down with taunts of, “GO HOME, HILLARY!”  and worse.    One man in Arkansas told her, he had always liked her and Bill and had voted for Bill for president but he wouldn’t be voting for her because she wanted to take his guns away and make him go to a gay wedding.   She is still really proud of her slogans, “Better Together,” and “Love Trumps Hate,” but as Doonesbury writer/cartoonist Scott Adams said, “Americans are lazy and only half listen so what they heard was ‘Love Trump..” so they did.    Hillary gives the reader a lot of behind the scenes stuff,  a lot of information on events, political maneuvers both above board and clandestine.   She calls out Donald Trump, other politicians, the head of the FBI and she does not pull any punches.     She tells a lot of what she wanted to do and say and knee jerk reactions she wanted to come out clawing with she also tells how her advisors including the President asked her to hold back and keep calm rather than in attack mode.   Heck, as it turned out maybe a little down and street might have been to her advantage, let her opponenets know she was no pushover but her advisors all thought that would just make her look like a bitch so she fought her honest reactions and took the higher road.   Seems a person who says whatever comes to mind, tells off whoever he wants to whenever he wants to, and does his best to form convivial relationships with former and some current adversaries is more to the voting majorities favor.  Oh yes, she also mentions all that talk about collusion and hacking of the votes in what might be 19 states.    Females are never made of Teflon.    Glass ceilings are still higher than her arms can reach.   She would have had one heck of a celebration had she won.    I won’t spoil it but it would have been magnificent on so many levels.    She says she may be done but she will never be out.   She will continue to support Democratic candidates and democracy to her dying day like one of her heroines, Eleanor Roosevelt.    A great bird’s eye view into all that is a political race from the ground up.    A worthy read for all but political science majors do take note.   Well done, well executed.   Great read.