What Hillary Clinton lost was her chance to be the first female US president; what she has gained in the eight years since that wrenching disappointment is less clear. “My life is richer and my spirit is stronger,” she insists, but her new book, Something Lost, Something Gained: Reflections on Life, Love and Liberty, reveals her to be also the victim of lingering PTSD. Brooding about her defeat, she muddles the five-step grieving process and alternates between denial and anger, bargaining and depression. As yet, despite walks in the woods and romps with her grandchildren, she seems not to have arrived at acceptance. Just as Donald Trump continues to grouse about the supposedly stolen election of 2020, so Clinton shadow-boxes her way through endless reruns of her wonky, uncharismatic 2016 campaign.
An FBI official, she relates, recently commiserated with her about Trump’s victory and blamed the bureau for tripping up her candidacy when it reopened an investigation into her emails. Clinton spurns his offer of sympathy, snapping “I would have been a great president”, and stalks away. Later, she elaborates a morbid fantasy about the US in Trump’s second term, with troops in the streets and concentration camps for refugees. In 2016, Trump anatomised American malaise and boasted: “I alone can fix it.” Clinton’s doomy scenario has a corresponding unspoken subtext. “I alone,” she seems to imply, “could have stopped him.”
