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How I Lost By Hillary Clinton
Judging by the stance of the leadership of the Democratic Party and much of the media, Hillary Clinton’s devastating loss in the presidential election of November 2016 was all the fault of pernicious Russian leaks, unwarranted FBI investigations and a skewed electoral college. Rarely blamed was the party’s decision to run a deeply unpopular candidate on an uninspiring platform.
At a time of widespread dissatisfaction with business-as-usual politics, the Democrats chose to field a quintessential insider. Her campaign dwelt little on policies, focusing overwhelmingly on the personality of her opponent.
That this strategy was a failure is an understatement. Losing an election to someone with as little competence or support from his own party as Donald Trump marked an extraordinary fiasco.
The refusal of the Democratic leadership to identify the real reasons for their defeat is not just a problem of history. If Democrats persevere with a politics that prioritizes well-off professionals rather than ordinary Americans, they will leave the field open to right wing populism for many years to come.
Drawing on the WikiLeaks releases of Clinton’s talks at Goldman Sachs and the e mails of her campaign chief John Podesta, as well as key passages from her public speeches, Why I Lost By Hillary Clinton also includes extensive commentary by award-winning journalist Joe Lauria, and a foreword by Julian Assange, editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks.
It provides, in the words of the Democratic candidate and her close associates, a riveting, unsparing picture of the disastrous campaign that delivered America to President Trump, and a stark warning of a mistake that must not be repeated.
At a time of widespread dissatisfaction with business-as-usual politics, the Democrats chose to field a quintessential insider. Her campaign dwelt little on policies, focusing overwhelmingly on the personality of her opponent.
That this strategy was a failure is an understatement. Losing an election to someone with as little competence or support from his own party as Donald Trump marked an extraordinary fiasco.
The refusal of the Democratic leadership to identify the real reasons for their defeat is not just a problem of history. If Democrats persevere with a politics that prioritizes well-off professionals rather than ordinary Americans, they will leave the field open to right wing populism for many years to come.
Drawing on the WikiLeaks releases of Clinton’s talks at Goldman Sachs and the e mails of her campaign chief John Podesta, as well as key passages from her public speeches, Why I Lost By Hillary Clinton also includes extensive commentary by award-winning journalist Joe Lauria, and a foreword by Julian Assange, editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks.
It provides, in the words of the Democratic candidate and her close associates, a riveting, unsparing picture of the disastrous campaign that delivered America to President Trump, and a stark warning of a mistake that must not be repeated.
- GenresPolitics
262 pages, Paperback
Published April 1, 2017
About the author
Joe Lauria
3 books5 followersJoe Lauria is an author and former Wall Street Journal correspondent who has also reported for the Boston Globe and The Sunday Times (London), among other newspapers.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
December 26, 2017
So don’t get angry with me for saying this, but toward the end of the book I was starting to think along the lines of “you know, she may be totally corrupt, but she bloody knows the issues!” Like, if you compare the first paragraph of any of the answers she gives to Lloyd Blankfein’s questions (for example, regarding China) to the longest statement Trump has made about anything, it’s night and day how much more she knows, even if she actually does not care.
And the narrator is bloody annoying too. I totally come from his side. My voting record is Dukakis ’88, Obama ’08, OK? But the guy keeps carping on how awful and phony she is and, you know what? He’s applying ideology to a subject where there is room for none. A corrupt insider who’s “on the take” is not any more vulnerable to somebody with an ideology that to an assistant district attorney with no such leanings.
It is the evidence that carries the book, and that only.
But the evidence is devastating. The three pages that list what she’s charged for her speeches and to whom is all you need to know. Like, she starts with USD 225k for everybody, but toward the end she goes totally a la carte, charging “what the market will bear.” They could have published that alone and the book would be worth buying.
But they’ve published more. My total favorite is the bit where Chelsea suddenly discovers how awful the Clinton Global Initiative is and starts spamming about this major epiphany of hers and in particular about how it makes her saintly daddy look like Tony Blair. So the main man there first fires off an email saying “somebody contain her please,” but she carries on. And then he goes “can somebody please remind her we paid for her wedding?”
It’s awesome awesome stuff. I haven’t seen the whole list, so I can’t tell whether the person who did the anthology was some type of God or if all the material was this revealing.
But if you want to have a feel for the depths to which the polis has sunk, you simply must read these emails.
And if it was the KGB who released them (which I very much doubt) they’ve done the West a service. This is a major wake-up call!
And the narrator is bloody annoying too. I totally come from his side. My voting record is Dukakis ’88, Obama ’08, OK? But the guy keeps carping on how awful and phony she is and, you know what? He’s applying ideology to a subject where there is room for none. A corrupt insider who’s “on the take” is not any more vulnerable to somebody with an ideology that to an assistant district attorney with no such leanings.
It is the evidence that carries the book, and that only.
But the evidence is devastating. The three pages that list what she’s charged for her speeches and to whom is all you need to know. Like, she starts with USD 225k for everybody, but toward the end she goes totally a la carte, charging “what the market will bear.” They could have published that alone and the book would be worth buying.
But they’ve published more. My total favorite is the bit where Chelsea suddenly discovers how awful the Clinton Global Initiative is and starts spamming about this major epiphany of hers and in particular about how it makes her saintly daddy look like Tony Blair. So the main man there first fires off an email saying “somebody contain her please,” but she carries on. And then he goes “can somebody please remind her we paid for her wedding?”
It’s awesome awesome stuff. I haven’t seen the whole list, so I can’t tell whether the person who did the anthology was some type of God or if all the material was this revealing.
But if you want to have a feel for the depths to which the polis has sunk, you simply must read these emails.
And if it was the KGB who released them (which I very much doubt) they’ve done the West a service. This is a major wake-up call!
October 11, 2017
To be honest, I just glazed over a lot of what came up during the election and the last few years, and this book was a good summary: Clinton emails, Benghazi, Clinton Foundation, Goldman Sachs speeches, etc.
The back and forth about whether to take foreign money is almost comical, and the DNC rep plotting to use Sanders' religion against him as if he were in the opposition party is just, oof.
The authors give a good geopolitical backdrop to the emails, although it falters when it gets too opinionated.
The back and forth about whether to take foreign money is almost comical, and the DNC rep plotting to use Sanders' religion against him as if he were in the opposition party is just, oof.
The authors give a good geopolitical backdrop to the emails, although it falters when it gets too opinionated.
August 25, 2024
A book that gives an excellent overview of Hillary Clinton, the woman, through her own correspondence
Any review of this book would have to start out by saying, at least technically, that this is not a book written by Hillary Clinton. Instead, it is a collection of documents (i.e., emails, speeches, etc.) that provide a very good overview of her, as a person. Considering that the documentation is “raw”, while her own books were, pretty much, written almost entirely by ghost writers and committee, these documents actually do a better job at providing us with a picture of her than “her own” do. This documentation, albeit gained through hacks, as the author of the book points out, provides quite the picture. As the book states (p. 25) “What matters in the end was not who was behind the hack, or leak, but what the emails, private speeches, and some unguarded public comments say about who Hillary Clinton is, and why she lost [italics added]”.
The emails and other documentation are broken out into a number of categories, including banking and finance (showing that she was very supportive of traditional conservative financial interests, despite making herself out to be a “progressive” painting herself as a “woman” of the people), personal issues (supporting the view of how she attacked those who did not “ear” their positions and draft dodgers while simultaneously supporting her spoiled daughter and draft dodging husband on that count [i.e. – it was “OK” as he opposed the Vietnam war]) and military and foreign policy issues, among others. The emails on the military and foreign policy issues are the weakest with respect to new information in that, even though they publicize her wanton hawkishness, none of this was really a revelation. Her very public and adamant support of bombing Serbia, attacking Libya, invading both Iran and Iraq (she was at the forefront of the Democratic party while senator of New York) and her hawkish attitudes in general were all pretty clear in her many public comments and actions well before this book was published.
All and all a very revealing look into Hillary Clinton, both the candidate and the person. The emails and other documents presented in this book go very far in explaining why she could not defeat another very weak Presidential contender, Donald Trump. Four stars.
Any review of this book would have to start out by saying, at least technically, that this is not a book written by Hillary Clinton. Instead, it is a collection of documents (i.e., emails, speeches, etc.) that provide a very good overview of her, as a person. Considering that the documentation is “raw”, while her own books were, pretty much, written almost entirely by ghost writers and committee, these documents actually do a better job at providing us with a picture of her than “her own” do. This documentation, albeit gained through hacks, as the author of the book points out, provides quite the picture. As the book states (p. 25) “What matters in the end was not who was behind the hack, or leak, but what the emails, private speeches, and some unguarded public comments say about who Hillary Clinton is, and why she lost [italics added]”.
The emails and other documentation are broken out into a number of categories, including banking and finance (showing that she was very supportive of traditional conservative financial interests, despite making herself out to be a “progressive” painting herself as a “woman” of the people), personal issues (supporting the view of how she attacked those who did not “ear” their positions and draft dodgers while simultaneously supporting her spoiled daughter and draft dodging husband on that count [i.e. – it was “OK” as he opposed the Vietnam war]) and military and foreign policy issues, among others. The emails on the military and foreign policy issues are the weakest with respect to new information in that, even though they publicize her wanton hawkishness, none of this was really a revelation. Her very public and adamant support of bombing Serbia, attacking Libya, invading both Iran and Iraq (she was at the forefront of the Democratic party while senator of New York) and her hawkish attitudes in general were all pretty clear in her many public comments and actions well before this book was published.
All and all a very revealing look into Hillary Clinton, both the candidate and the person. The emails and other documents presented in this book go very far in explaining why she could not defeat another very weak Presidential contender, Donald Trump. Four stars.
June 11, 2017
This was primarily editorializing with a lopsided slant punctuated by occasional quotes from Clinton, many of which did not come across as particularly damning even with the author's commentary for context. Most of the truly interesting source tidbits were not from Clinton at all, but rather members of the DNC. Lauria also has a tendency to wander off on a lot of tangents throughout, some of which seem truly unconnected from the ostensible topic printed on the cover.
There are plenty of specific complaints one could make about this book, but simpler than that is recommending that one save their time and use it to read The Quiet American instead.
There are plenty of specific complaints one could make about this book, but simpler than that is recommending that one save their time and use it to read The Quiet American instead.
December 2, 2019
this book is based on Podesta email released by Wikileaks I would recommend everyone to read it. there are so many secrecy in our government and you can learn those from this book
March 21, 2022
very good information about how hillary worked as state dept. head and the speeches she was giving to the upper-classes in america but felt somewhat low on an overarching narrative that tied all the information given together
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews