Democrats have been slowly but surely growing tired of the Hillary Clinton Excuses tour for the last several months, but now the façade of gentle patience is flaking away. Take Atlantic editor Michelle Cottle’s recent article that puts aside all of the warm, fuzzy feelings to simply tell Hillary once and for all: Your “high profile is hurting the Democrats.”
Cottle, wary of turncoat accusations, pads her criticism of Clinton with a long introduction in which she praises the former secretary of state for a recent speech. She says Clinton was right on point with her defense of the media and her warnings that Trump was devaluing the First Amendment. And then, when it’s time to lower the boom, she does so with such overwrought flattery that Cottle might as well have written, “PLEASE don’t hate me, Mrs. Clinton!”
“Isn’t there someone who can convince this accomplished, inspiring, barrier-breaking superwoman to stop whining about 2016?” she asks.
Let the wave of nausea pass…
But it’s actually instructive, this sentence and the rest of the over-apologetic prose that Cottle sprinkles this chiding with, because it shows you that this is coming from someone who wouldn’t be caught DEAD reading the National Review (much less Breitbart). Cottle is a Democrat through and through, and she loathes Trump and the Republicans. She wants to win in November so badly that it is driving her to a point that she would have never thought imaginable: To agree with conservatives that, yes, Hillary, you need to go away and stop complaining about your election loss.
“Whatever the root causes, the result is what it is: She lost,” Cottle writes. “And while her frustration, disappointment, and rage make perfect sense, Clinton needs to give the public kvetching and finger-pointing a rest—if not for the sake of her or her party, then for the nation as a whole.”
We’re not sure that Clinton’s rhetoric and excuses “make perfect sense,” but again, that’s because we’re not looking at 2016 through the eyes of a deranged liberal. To us, the election result was surprising but certainly not inexplicable. You don’t need to build a blame list 100 entries long to figure out why Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump.
But that hasn’t stopped Mrs. Clinton from assuring audiences from here to Mumbai that she was the victim of Putin, Comey, sexism, Bernie Bros, socialism, and every other menace tangible and intangible. And for as much as these excuses grate on our nerves, Democrats like Cottle are beginning to realize that they will take their toll on a party that just wants to win again, dammit!
“When it comes to the national political landscape, she has not yet reached the point where she can sound off in a way that doesn’t reek of self-pity and bitterness and rationalization,” Cottle concludes. “Until that changes, she should recognize the yuge favor she is doing the GOP—and, by extension, Donald Trump. With that in mind, she really does need to stop. Just. Stop.”
Ah, but there is no goal, no priority, and no political party that is more important to Hillary Clinton than…Hillary Clinton. So you guys can try to shut her down all you like; her ego will not permit her to simply sit down and shut up.
And yes, Republicans are going to take full advantage of that in the midterm campaign season.
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