From the Archives: When Maureen Dowd Lost Hillary Clinton

A look back at how 'journalists' turn reality into fiction to suit their own fantasies

I spent almost all of 2016 supporting and defending Hillary Clinton as we worked to get her elected president, not so much to keep Donald Trump from becoming president, though that was part of it (not that we ever believed that clown could ever become president), but because she was the most qualified and because she deserved to win.

Nothing worked; she lost, and WE lost. You know the rest of that painful story. You lived through it, as the rest of us did. And while postmortems do no good, a look back at how the ‘journalists’ sabotaged our efforts can’t hurt, now that we know they’ve learned nothing from their failures and their follies, and they’re at it again.

This particular piece, about Mo Dowd’s invention of a Hillary who never existed, should serve as a cautionary tale. It won’t. But take a look at Dowd’s dialogue and then tell me she didn’t make it up. She did. And a fine work of fiction it might be if she hadn’t contributed to the damage done to the one person who could have stopped Donald Trump in his tracks.

Think of it: if Hillary had won the election there would be no MAGA, no right-wing Supreme Court, no unnecessary COVID deaths, no end to Roe v Wade, no January 6, no ICE kidnappings, no sullying of our solid worldwide reputation, no dread, no fear, no looks back with longing at a democracy being shredded by potentate wannabes, by millionaires and billionaires, by phony militias, by ordinary citizens who have fallen headfirst into a cult built on racism and otherness.

If we let the perpetrators off the hook they’ll go on to do it again. If we don’t expose them, if we don’t shame them—if we, instead, welcome them back to a society they helped create, where kindness and integrity struggle to exist, we’ve gotten into bed with the enemy.

Our mission is to let the enemy know we see them and we’re not capitulating. I’ve seen them and they aren’t US.

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When Maureen Dowd Lost Hillary Clinton

(First published at Ramona’s Voices. February 17, 2016 and again right here in November, 2021)

Hillary Clinton, 2016. Image: Bloomberg

In the latest chapter in Maureen Dowd's never-ending story of the Clintons, "When Hillary Clinton Killed Feminism", the long-time New York Times columnist builds her case in the only way Maureen seems to know how: by putting thoughts into Hillary's head and words into Hillary's mouth.

Even after all these years, Maureen is still trying to invent Hillary the Terrible, Hillary the Prevaricator, Hillary the Shallow. And every time she's sure she's got it, every time Dowd thinks she’s written the perfect scenario, in which her character lives up to her previous, masterful buildup, Hillary the Unpredictable takes off in another direction.

And Dowd fumes! Even on the printed page you can see Dowd fuming. Hillary is HER invention! HER antagonist! Who the hell does she think she is?

Because Maureen Dowd's version of Hillary Clinton doesn't exist in real life, the author resorts to the phrasing of a fiction writer:

"Hillary believed. . ."

"The Clintons seemed to have. . ."

"It turned out that female voters seem to be looking at. . ."

"This attitude intensified the unappetizing solipsistic subtext of her campaign. . . " (Thrown in because, come on! That took some work!)

"Hillary started from a place of entitlement. . ."

"Hillary’s coronation was predicated on. . ."

"The Clintons assumed. . ."

"And now she's even angrier. . ."

"Hillary has an 'I' message: I have been abused and misunderstood and it’s my turn."

"It’s a victim mind-set that is exhausting. . ."

"Hillary knew that she could count on the complicity of feminist leaders. . ."

"And that’s always the ugly Faustian bargain with the Clintons. . ."

What a story! The stuff of great fiction, and Maureen Dowd is without a doubt a great storyteller. But if there was a part in there about Hillary killing feminism--as the title suggests--I must have missed it.

But let's say it's in there and I did miss it: Hillary Clinton has been accused of a lot of things, but killing feminism is a new one. The last I looked, feminism is alive and well and doing just fine. The plot twist comes when Dowd tries to portray Hillary as a perennial victim, only to give her the power to kill an entire movement. It stretches credulity, even for fiction.

The theme of Hillary as either victim or villain is growing old. She is neither. But Dowd has lived with this character for so long, building her into a larger-than-life creature of her own making (as every good writer of fiction must do), she can't let her go. Not her Hillary. Not this version. It's driving the poor woman mad! (No, not really. I made that up. See how easy it is?)

At risk of seeming presumptuous, let me just say, writer to writer, woman to woman: Maureen, honey, it's time. It's time to let it go, to move on to something new. You've done all you can with this one, and it's just not working. Now you're repeating yourself.

Even in fiction, the same old story is still the same old story.

In July, 2016, Chris Christie did it, too. No, he’s not a journalist but he is a fabricator, so let me include this piece on the pillorying of Hillary:

But the award for Best Preview About How It's Going to Be had to go to Chris Christie, Donald's chief-enforcer-apparent, who took to the stage and whipped the crowd into a frenzy with a speech that had nothing to do with Donald Trump (mentioned only four times by name, once in a sentence that went like this: "But this election is not just about Donald Trump."), and even less with fixing the state of the nation, focusing instead on a bizarre, cringe-worthy mock trial of the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee, one Hillary Rodham Clinton.

From “Burning Hillary at the Stake: A Race Like No Other”, July 20, 2016.

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And this one, called “Morning Joe Crew Doesn’t Care For ‘Shouty women’”:

“Bob Woodward was on Morning Joe today talking about Hillary Clinton, and in the course of the conversation he said, "I think a lot of it with Hillary Clinton has to do with style and delivery, oddly enough. She shouts. There is something unrelaxed about the way she is communicating."

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And this one, called “Something Wicked This Way Comes’, first published at Ramona’s Voices on August 29, 2016 and reprinted here at Substack last September.

All of this to cement in place my own conviction that the press is often America’s worst enemy when it comes to advocating for truth and justice. Hillary Clinton should have won in 2016. Kamala Harris should have won in 2024. There was never a time in our history when someone like Donald Trump should have won any public office. The press did nothing to stop it. And now here we are, still imploring a deliberately clueless press to do their jobs and help to stop the horrors we’re enduring today because Donald Trump is back in the White House.

This should also tell you why I’ll never quit this. Why would I? The job isn’t done yet.

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