New York Times reporter Amy Chozick has offered her account of what happened during the 2016 presidential race, sharing snippets, insights and quotes from Hillary Clinton's run for president and commentary about what happened during her campaign and in the days and months after her loss.
Amy Chozick was the lead reporter for The New York Times covering Hillary Clinton's campaign in 2016. Chozick has written a memoir of Clinton titled, "Chasing Hillary: Ten Years, Two Presidential Campaigns, and One Intact Glass Ceiling," set for release on Tuesday.
Note-takers will undoubtedly continue their assessment of the voids and mistakes of the race that came close to electing the nation's first female president. Chozick's book offers yet another of the growing explanations Clinton gives for her loss.
"I knew it. I knew this would happen to me ... They were never going to let me be president," Clinton reportedly told campaign manager Robby Mook on election night as Florida went for Donald Trump and the thought began to take hold that other states might flip Republican as well.
Though Chozick points to the role journalists may have played in electing Donald Trump president, she nevertheless put the lion's share of the blame for the loss squarely on Clinton. She describes the Democratic candidate's "obvious desire to get the whole thing over with." Of Clinton's ambition on seeking the nation's highest office: "Her only clear vision of the presidency seemed to be herself in it."
But, according to a review in The Washington Post, much of the book is about Chozick's ambivalence about her role as a reporter covering the Clinton story, as well as where she stood in the Clinton world and at the Times.
"Unfortunately, too much of the book is devoted to Chozick's worrying and whining — 'Jesus did I whine' — about her status at the Times," the Post review stated.
"In her mind, Chozick's connection to Clinton assumes epic dimensions. 'Ours was destined to be an impossible, tortured, and unrelentingly tense relationship weighed down by old grudges and fresh grievances,'" the review stated.
"'To Hillary, I was a big ego with no brain and no amount of cordial small talk could make up for the bad blood between her world and mine.' For a second you almost forget that Clinton is running against Trump," the Post review continued.
But of Clinton's failures on the campaign trail, Chozick's explanations for her loss include the candidate's disdain of the media [Chozick: "Trump understood our gluttonous short attention span better than anyone … but especially better than Hillary."]; her likability problem [Hillary: "You know, I am getting pretty tired of hearing about how nobody likes me."]; and Clinton's notion that she "became an unwitting agent of Russian intelligence," Axios summarized.
Chozick also explains the backstory for Clinton's infamous "basket of deplorables" comment about Trump voters, saying not only was it a scripted remark, it had been one that those in the Clinton-sphere had bandied at parties and get-togethers for some months. Apparently, Clinton was "stunned" when the remark bombed at a New York fundraiser, The Daily Beast reported Friday.
"The Deplorables always got a laugh, over living-room chats in the Hamptons, at dinner parties under the stars on Martha's Vineyard, over passed hors d'oeuvres in Beverly Hills, and during sunset cocktails in Silicon Valley," Chozick wrote.
The book is described as long on "Clinton's entourage," according to the Post, but maintained "Clinton herself does not emerge too vividly here." To summarize, Chozick said she wanted to remember Clinton as the woman who "tried to hold it all together — her marriage, her daughter, her career, her gender, her country.”
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