Hillary Clinton Without Tears

The interview with Secretary of State Clinton that aired over the weekend is a reminder of the former state secretary’s lack of understanding of what happened to her in 2016. It’s a disheartening glimpse, too, into the collapse of the centrists in the party that handed up FDR, Truman, Kennedy, LBJ, and a certain William Clinton. Mrs. Clinton now predicts President Trump will run again and shows why, if he does, he might yet win a second term.What drew the most comment in the interview is the moment Mrs. Clinton breaks down in tears while reading the victory speech she’d hoped to deliver on the evening of November 8, 2016. In her speech, she describes her dream of going back in time, as the newly elected president, to find her mother as a young girl who, having been cast out, at age 8, by her family is riding on a train to California, alone with her little sister.Mrs. Clinton’s dream is that as president she “finds” her young mother-to-be on the train, she takes her mother in her arms and says, “Look at me.” As in, it’s all okay, my future mom, look what I’ve become. It’s not an ignoble sentiment; Mrs. Clinton was dreaming of comforting her mother in the desperate days of her mother’s childhood. Yet somehow it’s impossible to imagine, say, Reagan or FDR talking so self-referentially.Jefferson, who created what became the modern Democratic Party, talked of democracy itself and dreamed of what Lewis & Clark might discover in his purchase of Louisiana. FDR talked of the danger of fear itself. Reagan warned of communism and spoke to Americans of the economic principles of liberty. They had moments of vainglory, no doubt, but none of them made themselves, or their opponents, personally the issue.Does Mrs. Clinton still not get that? Candidate Trump nailed her on the point, mocking her very campaign slogan, “I’m with her.” Mr. Trump responded by telling voters: “I’m with you.” Does she still fail to focus on the substance of what the candidate who defeated her was saying as he flew from one airport rally to another, talking about the devastation wrought in the Rust Belt by Democratic policies?This editorial is not an endorsement of Mr. Trump — or even of the idea that he should run again. It’s but a marker of what the woman Mr. Trump defeated in 2016 is — and isn’t — saying. Where is she on the Iran appeasement? Where is she on inflation? Where is she on Red China? Where is she on Ukraine? Where is she on the build-back-better fiasco? Where is she on the surrender to Afghanistan? Or the Abraham accords?Where is her party?It would be a mistake to hang this entire burden on Mrs. Clinton — particularly on her latest remarks, which are part of a video course on resilience she’s presenting on MasterClass.com. Then again, too, there’s an opportunity for someone in the Democratic Party to give a master class in respect of substance — which is what Mr. Trump delivered in 2016 in his epic campaign through the Rust Belt and other gutted arsenals of democracy.Mrs. Clinton’s failure to answer any of that — or the movement of minorities toward the Republican Party — can be seen as a sigh of resignation of the center of the party in the face of the leftist, Green New Deal, socialist, anti-Israel faction. MasterClass says that Mrs. Clinton’s 16 video lessons will teach the power of resilience. Yet what has been aired so far strikes us as a sad, self-centered envoi to what might have been.

Hillary Clinton Without Tears

Hillary Clinton Without Tears

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