Hillary looks back in anger

Hillary Clinton sat for an interview with Walter Mossberg and Kara Swisher at Recode’s 2017 Code Conference yesterday. The full video (below) runs 75 minutes. Recode has posted a transcript here.

Swisher gingerly reminds us of Clinton’s invocation of the vast right-wing conspiracy. Swisher asks “how many years did you talk about the vast right-wing conspiracy?”

Clinton’s definition of the VRWC amounts to opposition to her political causes. “[There are forces in our country — put the Russians to one side — who have been fighting rearguard actions for as long as I’ve been alive, because my life coincided with the Civil Rights movement, with the Women’s Rights movement, with anti-war protesting, with the impeachment…you know, the driving out of office because he was about to be impeached president…”

Enter Citizens United. “[T]he Supreme Court said, ‘Oh, we don’t need it [the referent is not entirely clear, but you know what she means] anymore,’ throws it out, and Republican governors and legislatures began doing everything they could to suppress the vote. So, that was before we get to the Russians, or Cambridge Analitica, or anything of the outside. And there were lots of factors at work and yeah, it was aimed at me, but it’s a much deeper, more persistent effort to try to literally turn the clock back on so much of what we’ve achieved as a country.”

Clinton remains in Nurse Ratched mode. In case you needed a reminder how she managed to lose to Trump, Clinton gives it several times over. To borrow a phrase from Milton, herself is Hell.

That’s not the way she sees it. “I take responsibility for every decision I make — but that’s not why I lost,” Clinton averred.

It was the fault of the Democratic National Committee. “I’m now the nominee of the Democratic Party. I inherit nothing from the Democratic Party,” Clinton said. “It was bankrupt, it was on the verge of insolvency, its data was mediocre to poor, nonexistent, wrong. I had to inject money into it — the DNC — to keep it going.”

It was the fault of James Comey. “I can’t look inside the guy’s mind. He dumped that on me on October 28, and I immediately start falling,” she said.

It was the fault of the New York Times. It blew concerns about her private email setup for her official business as Secretary of State out of proportion. “I’m just using everything that anybody else said about it besides me to basically say: This was the biggest nothingburger — ever.” According to Clinton, the Times covered the story “like it was Pearl Harbor.”

It was the VRCW 2.0, as James Antle puts it. “Like, oh, you know, there she goes, vast right-wing conspiracy, now it’s a vast Russian conspiracy,” she said. “Well, it turned out we were right, and we saw evidence of it.”

It was the fault of Russia…working with…”I’m leaning Trump.”

And that’s not all! “[A]t some point it sort of bleeds into misogyny.”

There is also the well-known media advantage benefiting Republicans. “The media forces on the Republican side are entrenched and very effective. So you’ve got obviously Fox, but you also now have Sinclair buying 140-plus local stations. And they’re beginning to call the shots on those local stations.”

The litany is endless. You have to get into the questions and answers to find her allocation of blame to voter suppression in Wisconsin.

Swisher thinks she is flattering Clinton with the observation that “you seem mad as ever, which I love. You know what I mean?”

Clinton responds: “You know, look. I’m not going anywhere [applause].”

Clinton concludes with her take on Trump. “You know, it’s the circus. Right? It’s what a classic authoritarian does. It’s not just about influencing your institutions, your values. They want to influence your reality.”

Unreal.

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