A few months after losing her second bid for the presidency and after some much needed rest, Hillary Rodham Clinton sat down to write a book detailing to herself and to her constituents what went wrong. She shoulders complete responsibility for her defeat. That said, there were many unexpected twists and turns that effected the election process. Clinton lays out in intricate detail how the combination of all these events led to her defeat. She also issues a warning about upcoming elections, anticipating that similar problems will recur in the future.

The decision of whether or not to attend Donald Trump’s inauguration was a difficult one for Clinton. Some Democrats were boycotting the President Elect. Other friends and supporters advised her to stay away.

Although still stinging from the “mean-spirited” campaign she felt Trump ran, the peaceful transfer of power remained an honored tradition in Clinton’s mind. After checking with the Bush families and the Carters, she learned that each former president and first lady would be attending. Clinton decided to put on a brave face and go.

This reality—Trump being sworn in as president—was shocking. It was surreal smiling at and shaking hands with Republicans who, for the past year, had called her terrible names and advocated she be “locked up.”

During Trump’s address, Clinton reflected on her campaign and began to process what had happened. Until the very last days of the campaign, most pollsters, political pundits and media predicted that Clinton would be the next president of the United States. How, she wondered, could 62 million Americans have voted for a man who had sexually assaulted women, called Mexican immigrants rapists, mocked people with physical disabilities and scammed so many through his various businesses?

The question that she continues to puzzle over is how she allowed this to happen. Adding insult to injury, this was her second defeat while aspiring to the office of the presidency. Eight years prior, Barack Obama beat her out to receive the Democratic nomination. And now, despite winning the popular vote by some three million votes, she was watching someone else be sworn in.

To cope with this devastating loss, Clinton withdrew from public life for several months, surrounding herself with family and her closest friends. Hiking, yoga and chardonnay brought some degree of peace. Buying and remodeling the house next door was another outlet.

A book that helped her gain perspective on the loss was The Return of the Prodigal Son by Henri Nouwen. It taught her that gratitude can coexist with hurt and resentment. This insight, while walking through the grieving process, allowed her to begin thinking more about the future instead of dwelling on the past.

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In  deciding to run for president a second time, Clinton believed that her experiences as First Lady, Senator of New York and Secretary of State gave her credibility with the voting public. She believed she would be a good president. But no woman in history had ever won the nomination of a major political party. She threw her hat in the ring in June 2015, certain that both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were right—no one was more qualified than she to be president.

While everything in politics is a little tougher for women, Clinton didn’t want the electorate to view her as a female candidate per se, but as the best candidate. That she was competing as a woman in a male-dominated society should have made her look tougher and sharper. Without question, sexism and misogyny played some role in her loss. Sexism is when society develops a set of rules and behaviors for women. Misogyny, on the other hand, is a darker, deeper attitude towards women that often manifests as rage and disgust, sometimes even violence.

Sexism and misogyny are challenges that dogged Clinton her entire political life, but the 2016 campaign further amplified them. While the press judged Clinton to have won three of the four debates, Donald Trump’s camp credited him with promoting an extremely masculine, aggressive approach to the contests.

While being a woman in politics makes the job more difficult, the other side of the coin is that the presence of women makes politics better for everyone. When our political landscape resembles our national makeup, we will have laws and policies that are fair and representative for all Americans.

From the outset, Clinton was determined to run a better campaign than she had in 2008 when she lost to Obama. Hiring smart, key people was the first objective, and many came from Obama’s camp. There were data analysts, computer programmers, personal advisers, fund-raising experts, press handlers, focus group organizers, opinion researchers and so on.

The next step was to iron out major issues for her campaign to address. With her new staff, Clinton identified two main “pain points” facing Americans—economic pressure and political gridlock. While the country was coming out of the Economic Crisis of 2007-2008, many people were still struggling financially. Many of these same people saw Washington as a hub of dysfunction that was hindering their recoveries. In short, elites had caused the mess, and the elected elites couldn’t be bothered to do anything about it.

In the 2008 campaign, the press often referred to Clinton as secretive and guarded. The more negative attacks the press leveled at her, the more she limited her interactions with them, further justifying their accusations. She now sought to change that dynamic, vowing to be more open and transparent.

As the campaign progressed, many unforeseen problems came to light. Anger over the economy proved to be far greater than her team anticipated. Also, no one on Hillary’s team foresaw how nontraditional Donald Trump’s campaign would turn out to be. 

In November of 2015, Clinton met with a group of mothers in Chicago to discuss the growing problem of gun violence, especially in black communities. Some of these mothers began traveling together, calling themselves Mothers of the Movement. They shared stories of their sons and daughters having been shot and killed. During this same period, the Black Lives Matter movement arose in response to police shootings that often involved young black men. 

The most notable of these shootings occurred in Sanford, Florida when Trayvon Martin, an unarmed seventeen year old black, was shot and killed while walking to a local convenience store. The man who pulled the trigger was a neighborhood watch volunteer, George Zimmerman. The jury found Zimmerman innocent. For a time, it seemed that every day revealed a fresh gun death. There seemed to be two common denominators—guns and young blacks.

For Clinton and many Democrats—including President Obama—the gun issue is tied directly to the National Rifle Association. Their heavy lobbying and campaign contributions swayed politicians to pass a law exempting gun manufacturers from being sued for criminal negligence when arms are used in the commission of crimes, individual shootings and mass killings. Clinton notes that gun violence is far and away the leading cause of death for young black males, but touches every community, race and class in America. Thirty-three thousand people die each year from guns, about ninety per day. But the country wasn’t ready to embrace any safeguards because of a perceived infringement on second amendment rights. As one voter told a Clinton aide, “The Democrats want to take away my gun and make me go to a gay wedding.”

After listening to these mothers and looking at the available data on gun deaths and shootings, Clinton felt it incumbent upon her to take on the NRA. Trump, on the other hand, suggested that teachers should have guns in their classrooms, and that the night clubbers in Orlando would have been safer “with guns attached to their hips.” 

By risking the wrath of the NRA and angering a majority of gun owners, Clinton opened up a new front in the war between herself and Donald Trump—quite an emotional issue for many Americans. The available data shows that more guns cause more deaths, and yet this research seems to have little bearing on new gun safety legislation.

If Donald Trump, the NRA, and economic insecurities weren’t big enough issues, Clinton also had a contentious press to deal with. From day one, the media was after Clinton regarding her use of a personal server which housed both official and unofficial emails during her tenure as Secretary of State. To her, this was a non-story and an issue with precedent—Colin Powell had mixed professional and personal emails on his computer as well. For Clinton, well thought-out policies were far more important than the hype surrounding her emails. Trump quipped to Time magazine, “She’s got people that sit in cubicles writing policy all day. It’s just a waste of paper.”

Her opponent was not alone in believing that policy papers were a waste of time and energy. The media was following suit based on air time devoted to policy coverage. In 2008, major networks in their evening newscasts spent a total of 220 minutes covering policy positions. By 2012, it was down to 114 minutes, and in 2016 that number dropped to 32 minutes. One hundred minutes, however, were spent covering the email story in 2016.

Policy details were not important to her Democratic opponent during the primaries, either. Bernie Sanders talked about big ideas and excited his fan base with bold, new visions, but when pushed to explain funding and organizational details, Sanders often failed to offer satisfactory responses.

Clinton admits she misjudged the impact that her prepared policy papers would have—or more precisely, not have—on the voting public. She was surprised by the lack of media attention they received, and regrets being unable to convince the media that the economy was more important than her email issues. 

Perhaps more damaging to the Clinton campaign than any of the media and bipartisan attacks, though, was the press conference held by FBI Director James Comey on July 5, 2016, when he announced that, while there was no evidence of wrongdoing by Clinton, the handling of her emails was “extremely careless.” Clinton and her team were joined by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in arguing that Comey had badly overstepped his authority and influenced the election. This was one of the reasons the Trump administration later fired Mr. Comey.

That our democracy and the 2016 presidential election were interfered with by Russia is indisputable. Furthermore, this foreign interference likely decided the outcome of the election. In Clinton’s estimation, she and Vladimir Putin were longtime enemies, and he would rather have seen almost anyone else in the White House. Some of Putin’s anger can be traced back to the Clinton administration of the 1990s. During that time, a number of territories that had belonged to the USSR began declaring their independence. Several even joined NATO at the urging of the US. Putin was a high-ranking KGB agent who saw the actions of these states as treasonous, and blamed President Bill Clinton’s policies for Russia’s losses.

As Secretary of State, Clinton saw Russia use social media and strategic information leaks to destabilize eastern Ukraine. Similar operations began in Crimea.

How were Trump and the Republican Party drawn into this dangerous alliance? One possible explanation is Trump’s fascination with strong-arm dictators and thugs, such as Kim Jong-un and Putin. Trump routinely defended their actions as examples of strong leadership. He also stated the massacre of Chinese dissidents in Tienanmen Square showed strength.

Another factor was Trump’s vision of the role the U.S. should play on the world stage. He seemed to want to disassociate from our allies and practice a more isolationist policy, shedding the mantle of global responsibility. Abandoning NATO appeared to be on his radar.

Lastly is the more shadowy issue of Trump’s financial ties to Russia. He publicly stated that he had done a lot of business with the Russians. Golf journalist James Dodson, who frequently plays golf with the Trump family, quotes Trump’s son, Eric, as saying, ”We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.” Since Trump refused to release his tax returns, these claims were difficult to substantiate.

Further evidence of Russian interference became public in June, 2016, when the Democratic National Committee was hacked. Thousands of personal emails were stolen and released, some twenty thousand to WikiLeaks. This was proof that Putin was actively helping his preferred candidate, Donald Trump.

The WikiLeaks email releases fascinated the public, though, by and large, they were quite pedestrian in nature—one contained Clinton’s campaign director’s recipe for risotto. This did guarantee, though, that the words “Clinton” and “email” remained linked in the national headlines right up until Election Day.

WikiLeaks also helped promote what came to be called “fake news.” Inaccurate, misleading or completely false news stories began to appear in WikiLeaks, Facebook, Breitbart, Reddit, Drudge Report and other outlets. This fake news purported to be factual information gleaned from the stolen emails. WikiLeaks tweeted on November 6, 2015, that the Clinton Foundation used charitable donations to pay for Chelsea’s wedding. Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post investigated this claim (after the election) and found it to be false. Of course, the damage was done, as other major news services picked up the story and spread it nationwide.

In early January, 2016, the US intelligence community presented their findings to President Obama. In their report, they detailed how Vladimir Putin himself had ordered all of these covert operations with the express goal of arranging for Clinton’s defeat, having Trump elected and seeking to undermine the faith of the American people in the democratic process. President Trump, without wavering, refuses to acknowledge that the Russians interfered with or manipulated the 2016 Presidential Election, even as the evidence mounts.

Clinton spent the better part of a year struggling to explain the loss to herself, as well as to her constituents. In the final analysis, she accepts the blame for everything. To be sure, though, there were a variety of complex issues and previously unseen tactics that occurred in this particular election, including a country crying out for change, excessive coverage of her emails, a Kremlin- directed misinformation campaign, a deluge of fake news and, of course, the Electoral College’s role in choosing the President. More difficult to quantify is the undercurrent of anger and rage in American society. There is no doubt that Donald Trump expertly harnessed that fear and resentment. Clinton did not, and she has no regrets about that.

The question most often asked of Clinton is, “What do we do now?” Certainly the Intelligence communities have a great deal of work to do in rooting out foreign governments’ covert interference in our electoral process. Additionally, the Democratic Party must seek to understand the American working class—their thoughts, feelings and the root causes of their anger. Employment opportunities must increase across the board. Affordable health care must be available to all. The gridlock stifling Washington must be resolved. The Democrats must turn again to the common man and woman, and listen to them.

A difficult topic still to be addressed is that of race, with tensions across the country between whites and minorities that need immediate and honest attention. Clinton believes the Republican Party is engaged in voter suppression aimed at keeping all minorities away from the polls. This can only lead to increased unrest and violence. Racial unrest is one avenue that Russia sought to exploit during this election.

Also close to Clinton’s heart are the issues she has dealt with her entire life—sexism and misogyny. She didn’t break the glass ceiling as she hoped. Her prayers are for the young, bright, educated women with the same dream as hers. She is sure that one day, soon, a woman will be in the Oval Office.

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