"Let Hillary Clinton roar." Need to face forces that are still there; not scapegoat her.
Let Hillary Clinton roar
by Susan Bordo
Editors's note: Susan Bordo is the Otis A. Singletary Chair in the Humanities and Professor of Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Kentucky. Her new book is "The Destruction of Hillary Clinton." The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.
(CNN)Something very strange is going on in post-mortems about the 2016 election. On the one hand, the hard evidence is piling up that a combination of factors largely outside of Hillary Clinton's control were responsible for her loss to Donald Trump. On the other hand, many apparently don't want Hillary Clinton to talk about any of that.
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The fact is, consumers of the popular media -- and not just Fox -- were virtually bludgeoned into dislike and suspicion of Clinton. Even the most sympathetic op-eds invariably would genuflect to her "flaws." The caricatures, no matter how ill-founded, became nailed into popular consciousness. So should we be surprised to see them surface yet again in reaction to her book?
The mainstream media has also yet to speculate -- let alone diagnose -- what seems perfectly obvious to anyone with an ounce of common sense: that Clinton's electoral college loss was certainly not primarily due to whatever mistakes she may have made, but an unusually multi-faceted and highly potent combination of disparate assaults: from the left, the right, the Russians, the FBI, a flagrantly lying opponent who made a chant of her suitability for prison, and yes, the media itself.
I mean, really: How could anyone have survived all that? It was, as she herself describes it, a perfect storm. Yet nearly 66 million stood by her, many of whom remain intensely devoted supporters.
When, too, has any election culminated in a greater disaster for democracy? No wonder the Democrats, the pundits, and the voters themselves are so eager to disown their own complicity and to cast Clinton as the sole cause of our present situation.
"She gave us Trump," disgruntled Sanders supporters like to say. No, Trump's win is the result of many things, and we would do better to try to unpack them with precision and a view to complexity rather than scapegoat Clinton or her campaign.
Hillary Clinton may have been a special kind of lightning rod, but the elements that brought her down are still bristling in our atmosphere, ready to strike again, and we need to face them. The fact is that is it only when we've done that that we will be able to truly "move on."
http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/13/opinions/let-hillary-clinton-roar-bordo/index.html
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