Darkly Conspiratorial Hillary Clinton: "I Knew They Would Never Let Me Be President"

This is a woman, you'll remember, who prized aides like Sidney Blumenthal who would play to and confirm her conspiratorial fantasies.

The NYT reporter who covered Hillary for a decade, Amy Chozick, shares some insights into the woman who fell from grace stairs.

This from a Washington Post review of her book, Chasing Hillary.

She contends that sexism played a big role in Clinton’s defeat but also encounters it first-hand among Clinton’s campaign staff....

When Chozick zeroes in on Clinton and leaves herself out of it, she can be perceptive, pithy and surprising. On Clinton's apparent disdain for the electoral process: "If there was a single unifying force behind her candidacy, it was her obvious desire to get the whole thing over with." On Clinton's ambition: "Her only clear vision of the presidency seemed to be herself in it."

...

And even on Clinton's proclivities: "For all the lesbian theories, Hillary enjoys nothing more than flirting with a handsome, preferably straight man." (Despite aggressively questioning Clinton about her e-mails, Ed Henry became a favorite: "She would regularly look past her almost entirely female press corps to call on the Fox News correspondent, with his cherub cheeks and Pucci pocket squares.")

...

I've noticed this about some "alpha" women who have queen bee tendencies: They're kinda sexist against other women. Maybe it's that they feel other women are competitors on the specific playing field of Who Is The Queeniest of Queen Bee in a way men are not/cannot be -- men are competing in another division entirely, as in college sports -- but power-seeking women often are fixated on a Lonely Victory -- they want to be the woman in charge. They don't want other women tagging along to share the Female Empowerment Spotlight.

This is fun:

"Chasing Hillary" offers some searing moments surrounding election night, as when the Clinton team's data guru grasps that his Florida models were off (Latino turnout lower than expected, white turnout huge in the Panhandle), then turns to campaign manager Robby Mook and says, they could be wrong everywhere."

I'm at full staff.

Mook eventually delivers the news of impending defeat to Clinton. "I knew it. I knew this would happen to me,” she answers. "They were never going to let me be president."

For those who still say Trump is psychologically unfit to be president, I say: Well, okay, but compared to whom?

The only other candidate in the race who could actually win was a woman with a long history of corruption and conspiracy-thinking, who walked around with a literal Enemies List and actually rated people on that list, from one to seven (if memory serves) as far as how betrayish she felt they were.

The next day, Times reporters consider what they'd missed -- and why. "God, I didn't go to a single Hillary or Trump rally," a colleague of Chozick's admits, "and yet, I wrote with such authority."

You've got your Dunning in my Kruger! Mmm-- two incompetent tastes that taste even more incompetent together!!!

Now come the parts about the sexism of Hillary's male staff, towards women.

Chozik only refers to these Guys by nicknames -- Broan Loafers Guy, Policy Guy. Cutesy stuff like that.

The most "loathsome" is the one she calls "Original Guy," "the longest-serving Svengali and the most-devoted member of Hillary’s court of flattering men."

She later reveals this "loathsome" creature to be Philippe Reines.

They ask if there are any other Times reporters, preferably male, that they could talk to instead of her....

The undercurrent of sexism spills over when Chozick and Original Guy spar over whether a prior conversation can go on the record, and he randomly paraphrases a crude line from "Thank You for Smoking," a 2005 film in which a reporter sleeps with a lobbyist for information. "I didn't know I had to say it was off the record when I was inside you," Original Guy smirks. (“"he words hung there," Chozick recalls, "so grossly gynecological.")

Chozick doesn’t name him but later cites a Times story by Maggie Haberman revealing that Original Guy served as the Trump stand-in during Clinton’s debate preparation. "Hmmm, wherever will Hillary find a manipulative, sometimes-charming, often hilarious, possible sociopath," Chozick muses. "I won't out Original Guy here, except to say that his name rhymes with “Philippe Reines."

Odds that Jake Tapper and CNN will give Amy Chozick a full "town hall" to promote her book at: Zero.

They're only interested in promoting some tell-all books.

Because Integrity.

...

The fury is less evident when she mentions the harassing tendencies of Clinton’s spiritual adviser, whom the Clinton reporters nicknamed Hands Across America. "HAA exhibited generally creepy behavior, but seemed more pitiful and effeminate than threatening, which is why I tried to ignore his rubbing up and down my back," Chozick writes. She does not name HAA in the book; more than a year after Trump's inauguration, Chozick co-wrote a Times story about how Clinton kept spiritual adviser Burns Strider on the 2008 campaign despite repeated accusations of harassment by campaign staff.

The Daily Beast has another damning quote -- "Basket of Deplorables" was no off-the-cuff line. Hillary routinely used it as a laugh line in big-money fundraising dinners in swank places like the Hamptons.

That was no slip of the tongue, since "Hillary always broke down Trump supporters into three baskets," Chozick writes.

“Basket #1: The Republicans who hated her and would vote Republican no matter who the nominee.

Basket #2: Voters whose jobs and livelihoods had disappeared, or as Hillary said, 'who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens in their lives and their futures.'

Basket #3: The Deplorables. This basket includes 'the racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic--you name it.'

"The Deplorables always got a laugh, over living-room chats in the Hamptons, at dinner parties under the stars on Martha’s Vineyard, over passed hors d'oeuvres in Beverly Hills, and during sunset cocktails in Silicon Valley," Chozick continues.

Funny, I don't remember Chozick or anyone else covering Clinton during the campaign reporting that little nugget. It's almost as if they were trying to protect her from herself, and deliberately hiding relevant information from the public they were allegedly helping to make an informed choice.

And speaking of conspiracy theories: Bill Clinton, maybe trying to pay Hillary Clinton back for all the conspiracy theories she dreamed up to save his bacon in 1997, spins out this incredible conspiracy theory about the New York Times trying to get Trump elected.

Why? For money.

"After the election, Bill would spread a more absurd Times conspiracy: The publisher had struck a deal with Trump that we’d destroy Hillary on her emails to help him get elected, if he kept driving traffic and boosting the company's stock price."

References to "They," talk of a Jewish-owned newspaper sabotaging her campaign for sheckels -- these conspiracy theories, like most conspiracy theories, seem to be converging on to an anti-semitic underlying premise.

The book sounds very feminist, very liberal, and still very pro-Hillary, despite her frustrations with Hillary for being a Gigantic Loser.

So I'm not recommending it. Just sharing some quotes.

They Would Never Let Me Be President"&bodytext=This is a woman, you'll remember, who prized aides like Sidney Blumenthal who would play to and confirm her conspiratorial fantasies. The NYT reporter who covered Hillary for a decade, Amy Chozick, shares some insights into the woman who fell...&topic=world_news"> posted by Ace of Spades at 06:15 PM

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