Clinton has given several interviews in advance of the book’s release, explaining the reasons she felt she lost the 2016 presidential election to Donald Trump. In one with National Public Radio’s Rachel Martin, Clinton said it was “somewhat disorienting,” that the trust she felt she built up with the American people during her time at the State Department did not carry through to the election.
“… I came out of the State Department with the highest approval ratings of anybody in national public life. I think 69 percent approval. When we started the campaign we had every reason to believe that we had a path forward that relied on how people felt about me and how they thought about my work over many years. But it's absolutely true that between the consistent pounding on me, first by Bernie Sanders, but more consistently by his supporters, and the theme that Trump stuck with, it really was hard to break out from under that.”
Clinton went on to say that she felt she did well in the debates and was on the path to winning the election, but “unfortunately the (FBI Director James) Comey letter, aided to great measure by the Russian WikiLeaks, raised all those doubts again.”
Clinton addressed the fact that young women failed to come out to support her on Election Day.
“I talk about a conversation I had with Sheryl Sandberg, who has really helped to put into perspective a lot of research that supports common experiences. And she said, look, the research is absolutely definitive. The more professionally successful a man is, the more likable he is; the more professionally successful a woman is, the less likable she is,” Clinton said. “… And Sheryl ended this really sobering conversation by saying that women will have no empathy for you, because they will be under tremendous pressure — and I'm talking principally about white women — they will be under tremendous pressure from fathers and husbands and boyfriends and male employers not to vote for "the girl."
In the book, Clinton also talked about a criticism that she didn’t’ spend enough time in the Midwest – long a Democratic Party stronghold.
"Some critics have said that everything hinged on me not campaigning enough in the Midwest," Clinton writes. ''And I suppose it is possible that a few more trips to Saginaw or a few more ads on the air in Waukesha could have tipped a couple of thousand voters here or there."
"But let's set the record straight: we always knew that the industrial Midwest was crucial to our success, just as it had been for Democrats for decades, and contrary to the popular narrative, we didn't ignore those states."
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