Hillary Clinton is coming out of the shadows of 2016 to launch her blame-game book tour, and Democrats are not happy about it. A new story by Politico revealed that Democrats are begging Clinton to keep 2016 in the past. Take Democrat Representative Jared Huffman for example:
Please Hillary, don't go there. I supported you. Bernie showed restraint & class & ran aspirational campaign. Politics is rough sometimes. https://t.co/UenQ2jbaXJ
— Rep. Jared Huffman (@JaredHuffman) September 6, 2017
Senator Claire McCaskill was one of Clinton’s first endorsers, but President Donald Trump carried the state by 18 points. What did she have to say about Clinton’s book tour?
Asked whether she was excited about Clinton’s book tour, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), one of Republicans’ top 2018 targets, responded first with, “Beg your pardon?”
Asked again, she started shaking her head, walking away.
Clinton’s embarrassing loss in 2016 made ten Senate Democrats very nervous about their odds in 2018. President Trump carried ten states that have Democrat Senators up in 2018 – five of the states were carried by double digits.
You can help us beat Clinton’s allies up for election in 2018. Pitch in today!
Democrats dread Hillary’s book tour
Reliving the 2016 nightmare is the last thing the party needs right now, many say.
Politico
By Edward-Isaac Dovere and Gabriel Debenedetti
Democratic operatives can’t stand the thought of her picking the scabs of 2016, again — the Bernie Sanders divide, the Jim Comey complaints, the casting blame on Barack Obama for not speaking out more on Russia. Alums of her Brooklyn headquarters who were miserable even when they thought she was winning tend to greet the topic with, “Oh, God,” “I can’t handle it,” and “the final torture.”
…
But with a new NBC News poll showing her approval rating at 30 percent, the lowest recorded for her, Clinton kicks it off on Tuesday with a signing at the Union Square Barnes & Noble in New York. She’ll keep it going all the way through December, all across the country.
“Maybe at the worst possible time, as we are fighting some of the most high-stakes policy and institutional battles we may ever see, at a time when we’re trying to bring the party together so we can all move the party forward — stronger, stronger together,” said Rep. Jared Huffman, a Democrat who represents a Northern California district. “She’s got every right to tell her story. Who am I to say she shouldn’t, or how she should tell it? But it is difficult for some of us, even like myself who’ve supported her, to play out all these media cycles about the blame game, and the excuses.”
In a tweet late Tuesday night, Huffman pleaded with Clinton to stop blaming Sanders for her loss, as she partly does in the book, according to excerpts that leaked ahead of its release. Huffman said the tweet had gotten a lot of “likes” from his colleagues — albeit in private conversations with him.
“There is a collective groan,” he said, “whenever there’s another news cycle about this.”
Asked whether she was excited about Clinton’s book tour, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), one of Republicans’ top 2018 targets, responded first with, “Beg your pardon?”
Asked again, she started shaking her head, walking away.
“I’ve always been a looking forward kind of a guy,” said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), asked the same question on Wednesday. “I think I’ll leave it at that.”
…
For Clinton, it’s not about the future of the Democratic Party. She’s promoting the book because she doesn’t think the story of 2016 has been told properly. People close to her believe there’s still no closure from 2016, and that no one has offered a reliable autopsy.
…
Many people close to her and supportive of her insist that any concerns about relitigating 2016 are just wrong. Democratic and White House politics are shaped around last year’s campaign regardless, they say, and her voice is the only one not currently part of the conversation.
…
“A Sad, Petty ‘It’s Everyone Else’s Fault,’ Book,” read an email from Sanders die-hard (and Clinton’s 2006 Senate primary opponent) Jonathan Tasini.
“Pathetic. But it is a planned mass PR campaign in prep for the corporate #Dems next candidate. Reality: 75% did not vote 4 her. Denial,” tweeted RoseAnn DeMoro, the executive director of National Nurses United.
Clinton worked on the book with a small team of personal aides, but consulted a wide range of friends and former staffers. Sections of the book have been floating around among sympathetic Democrats for weeks, so many Clinton allies are bracing for impact.
…
Even among some of Clinton’s former aides, there’s an exhaustion of not wanting to have to defend her anymore. They’ve spent the past two weeks chattering among themselves about the rollout, including frustration over the sheer number of Twitter jokes about Clinton visiting Wisconsin on the tour — something she famously didn’t do during the general election.
Republicans and Sanders-aligned Democrats quickly started mocking the high cost of entry to some events — “VIP Platinum” tickets to her Toronto stop, for example, run up to $3,000 and include a meet-and-greet — that reminds them of the paid speech controversy that dogged her throughout the campaign.
Many also believe the party has largely moved on from 2016, and that this is a selfish endeavor more about Clinton’s own feelings than helping the party or country take their next steps. Others worry about the sections on Obama, including Clinton’s speculation in the book about what would have happened had the former president done a prime-time address on Russian interference in the election. Clinton also takes a swipe at Joe Biden for criticizing her since the election.
And many current candidates don’t want to be anywhere near her. After the initial book tour schedule was posted last month, one Democratic operative working on 2018 races notified 15 campaign clients that Clinton would be within 500 miles of them, warning them to prepare: “The more the focus is on us, and not Trump, the harder 2018 is going to be.”