Hillary’s Fall – A Matter of Perception

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Hillary lost the presidency to Donald Trump because of five mistakes she (and her campaign) made, all of which she had full control over.

Mistake No 1- Perception

Hillary failed to dispel the perception issue that’s been shadowing her all her life.

Most political “experts”, analysts or pundits have great hindsight. So, it is no surprise that after Hillary’s shocking loss, they all came out of the woodwork to explain their punditry; better yet to excuse their lack of understanding of the shift in the electorate. As such, since after the result of the elections, there has been no lack of experts trying to justify their ignorance. It’s almost boiled down to a contagion; once one “expert” voices his opinion, usually based on feeling, emotions and partisanship, all experts would follow suit. From that point on, all interviews, discussions, commentaries veer around the “expert’s opinion”. At this point, it should be obvious it’s best to stay away from those “experts” before you too become infected.

Contrary to the experts, I have always relied a great deal on my foresight; as such, I usually ignore their viewpoints, their commentaries and most definitely their expert opinions. So, it should come as no surprise to my blog readers that throughout the 2016 presidential campaigns I discussed the candidates in great detail and have correctly predicted ahead of time the outcomes of the primaries on both the Republican and the Democratic sides, which bring me back to the statement made on both part 1 and part 2 of this series that Hillary’ loss of the presidency was not the result of any external factor. Below I discuss the main reasons behind the shocking loss.

Hillary walked into the race for the presidency of the United States with a big negative, mostly to no fault of hers. The Republican machine has done an excellent job smearing the Clintons in such a way that even those who supported Hillary didn’t feel comfortable defending her. Although I strongly believe that most of the accusations against the Clintons are false – I’ll explain shortly – Hillary was overwhelmingly responsible to dispel those accusations. I am fairly certain those accusations by the Republican machine had one objective, to destroy the Clintons but as I mentioned earlier, those accusations are mostly baseless. However, the Republican machine continues to peddle the accusations because they helped the GOP’ cause and the GOP’s disciples believe they are true.

With the danger of coming across as the Clintons’ defender, I am certain most of those accusations are false; here is why. All of the “crimes” the Clintons were accused of (including the Benghazi tragedy and the latest Emailgate debacles) were investigated by Republican prosecutors; the Benghazi alone had 16 different congressional hearings, all of which cleared Mrs. Clinton. In all of those cases however, the Republican “investigators” would leak information containing innuendos – just like James Comey did with the email investigation – which caused devastating damage to her reputation without being able to charge her of any crime. Listen to how FBI Director James Comey announced the outcome of the emails investigation; here is in one sentence what Comey said: she did a lot of bad things; she did a lot of stupid things which are bad but there will be no charge. To simplify, “she is a crooked and corrupt individual we are not going to charge.” Using the email investigation as an example to figure out why there is such negative perception of the Clintons, ten years from now, most people would remember that Hillary was not charged for the “emails crime”, not that she didn’t commit any crime. In other words, the investigators always make sure that her reputation is destroyed although there could be no charge. And it has always worked.

How could I possibly know that?

Look no further than the Monica Lewinsky’ affair; everyone would agree that it was more of a personal issue for the Clintons’ family and yet Republicans pounced on the opportunity to “impeach” Bill Clinton, and they did. How could anyone believe that all those accusations against the Clintons are true? Does anyone believe Republicans would give a pass to the Clintons? Of course not! As outlined earlier, the Republican investigators and/or prosecutors always make sure that the Clintons are smeared and their reputations destroyed.

I can rationalize all that because by now it should be obvious to any rational individual that Republicans would rather gamble the future of the country to get their way; so, there is nothing they would not do to cling to power.

But what has puzzled me, even up to this point is how naïve Hillary seemed when she entered the race. There is no excuse; Hillary has been in and around politics all her adult life; she has been the target of the Republican machine since Arkansas when Bill Clinton was the governor; so, it was expected that she would continue to draw fire, an avalanche of fire, from the Republican machine, especially during a presidential bid.

Instead of addressing the perception issue head on: put out statements to explain lingering issues such as the Monica Lewinsky affair, the Benghazi tragedies and the ongoing emails investigation, Mrs. Clinton was completely mum about those issues. And even when asked by reporters, she would completely ignore those reporters. It was as if Hillary somehow believed that if she ignored them long enough they would disappear. I am not sure who came up with the “ignore all personal issues” strategy, they will go away but it behooves to ask, what the hell was Hillary thinking? I scratched my head so much I think I could become bald, trying to understand what exactly was going on in her mind.

In politics, one doesn’t wish problems away; Hillary knows that; she’s been around long enough to witness that, to be subject of it, to even live it. So, why in the world did she adopt a behavior that was sure to hamper her effort to become president?

Regardless, as it should be obvious by now, the perception problem could have been addressed from the very beginning of the campaign and measures could have been taken to prevent its occurrence from continuing to creep up throughout the ordeal. One cannot in good conscience pin the lack of effort to stamp out the perception issue on the FBI Director or Wikileaks (Julian Assange) or the Russians. It’s an issue which was fully under Hillary’s control; she chose to ignore it. And perception is deadly when it’s not flattering.

In the next article, I will discuss Mistake No 2 which contributed to rob the country of the most qualified individual who could be president.

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