Hillary Clinton — what REALLY happened

Hillary Clinton is on a tour right now, hawking her latest book “What Happened.” It’s her explanation of why she lost the last presidential race to Donald Trump in what was supposed to be a slam-dunk victory. Of course, people have their own opinions of that — she was a flawed candidate beset with baggage courtesy of her husband Bill; she sabotaged Bernie Sanders; she was incompetent and corrupt; she was overconfident and entitles. Her Democratic Party is supposedly alarmed that she’s fighting that same battle all over again.

The reality, however, is much more straightforward than that. And it has precious little, if anything, to do with her.

Since 1980, the Republican Party nationally has done an excellent job speaking to people’s fears — and nothing motivates people to vote more than fear. In the 1980s it was communism, adjusted in the 1990s to “liberalism”; more recently, it’s become “Islamofascism” and illegal immigration from Mexico, which at best are greatly overstated. Even the Trump campaign motto “Make America Great Again” had a basis of fear that we were “slipping” in world stature (when that certainly wasn’t the case).

Of course, Bill Clinton signed what was considered a draconian crime bill when he was president (and for which he and Hillary later apologized) that incarcerated a disproportionate amount of young African-American males. But at the time the bill did have bipartisan support, even from the Congressional Black Caucus. And in 1996, up for reelection, he did claim that the GOP planned to cut Medicare by $270 billion (the figure was right but referred to the cut in the proposed increase).

But I digress. When you’re driven by fear you seek an easy scapegoat, and she turned out to be it — and flatly lying about her wasn’t off-limits. “Benghazi” and her use of a private email server for official business were willfully played up for the specific reason of damaging her candidacy even though folks knew full well that they didn’t rise to the level of corruption or incompetence. And then you had Trump constantly referring to “crooked Hillary” amid chants of “Lock her up” because he understood that’s what his base wanted to hear. It turned out that people really did want someone that crude.

Bottom line, Hillary lost because she belonged to the wrong party at the wrong time; she’d have beaten virtually any other Republican in the field, but the populace was in the mood for an “outsider” who spoke directly to their fears. After all, not for nothing is Trump still holding campaign rallies — it’s a way to let his base know, “I’m in charge.”