When it came to
dealing with the working classes, Hillary focused on the Flint water crisis,
which meant she was doing two things wrong; focusing on only one community, and
reminding everyone of how bad things were. Then, in a desperate bid to kick
Sanders, she falsely accused him of voting no to the auto industry bailout. If
her elbowing and grandstanding weren’t enough, she was now resorting to
outright lying. Fact checkers went haywire on her, as Sanders had voted yes to
the bailout. Nobody was happy with her now. Especially not the people who
supported her.
The authors argue
that Hillary’s incredible myopia cost her the vote in the Rust Belt states, and
that is where it mattered most. Winning over the White American working class
voters would mean success or defeat, and she failed. It’s all in the chapter
titled The Canary In the Auto Plant,
which is perfectly apt, considering that old factory cities are the proverbial canary
in the coal mine. The state of Michigan is full of working-class White voters,
and whatever she’d do – or not do – would resonate all over the USA. Her
failure to win the Rust Belt is what resonated. The working classes felt like
she was demonizing them.
This book stresses
Hillary’s complete and utter failure to connect with the White voters who had
no college education. Be it Michigan, Ohio, New Hampshire, or Missouri, she ended
up alienating everyone. The authors Allen and Parnes suggest that her
six-figure speaking fees may have been part of the problem along with her
chummy relationship with Wall Street tycoons. It made her look like a pawn of
big business, and though Wall Street tycoons are powerful, they are few in
number. Though Irish and Polish-American auto workers are probably not going to
be seen at an a “ban Wall Street” rally, they’re not going to have much use for
a dinner party full of CEO’s. The laid-off workers would probably have liked
for her to meet with them and show some concern for THEIR needs, not just those
of the 1%. All she needed was to win over one UAW chapter, and she’d have won
over all of them. Though not expressly mentioned in the book, a lot of
Hillary’s campaign cash was raised by her husband Bill, who shamelessly profits
off his status as an ex-president.
The authors don’t
talk about Trump much, after all he’s not the subject of the book. But they do
stress that he concentrated on the electoral vote by winning over entire
states, particularly in the Rust Belt. After that, he went for that states
where Obama had won in 2008. His tough-talking bravado impressed a lot of
people there, and it swung the vote in his favor. There’s also a possibility
that older Black voters may have voted for Trump; those that are fed up with
crime and disorder may have been looking for a president who’d get tough.
I always had the
vibe that Hillary Clinton was elbowing her way into the spotlight, and this
book confirms it. She comes across here as I always saw her; a ranting,
domineering tyrant, and according to this book, nobody was fooled. Bernie
Sanders, on the other hand, had a strong following among working class whites,
which Hillary did not. In fact, it seems like she was deliberately avoiding
them. Not smart.
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