What happened - A year later, Hillary Clinton's book is out

A woman watching the results on election night in Clinton rally in NYC (Frank Franklin)

One year ago, the United states and mostly the rest of the world were all waiting for one thing: the result of the presidential elections. Whether you think Hillary would have been a great president or one that would have ruined America, this day was thought by many as symbolic, and remembered in America's history for being the first election where a female wins. But what made this election even more interesting was that this day never happened, and Clinton lost to Trump.

Last week, Hillary Clinton published her memoir What Happened and is now touring North America. In her book she supposedly gives us an insight of the campaign, her personal life, and what made her loose the elections. While her supporters where more than excited about this memoir and rushed to buy it (300 thousands copies sold in one week), Clinton received a lot of criticism, since she apparently blamed others more than herself for her loss. Indeed, throughout her memoir Clinton first puts forward the sexism that could have happened during this campaign. She then obviously points her finger at Trump and Putin, WikiLeaks and even Bernie Sanders, who by the way vividly responded to her accusations. In fact, Hillary accused Bernie of not pushing his supporters to vote for her enough, while when in 2008 she had lost to Obama she urged her supporters to vote. Bernie fully denied this and highlighted the fact that a quarter of Clinton's supporters in 2008 shifted towards Republican John McCain instead of Democrat Barack Obama. Ouch. Concerning the leaked emails, it is true that Hillary Clinton made a big fault, but the other candidate Trump did not seem perfectly "clean" in front of the law either..

Anyway, the point here is not to tell you who's right and who's not, I'd like to go a bit further than that.

Let's look at the first line of Clinton's book:

"That which does not kill us make us stronger"

I'll be honest here, I let out a big sight while reading this. Cliché ? A bit, I thought. Reactions to this were various, from people already to tears to others rolling their eyes:

"When I read this sentence, I burst into tears. When my daughter is old enough, I'm going to read it to her. These are the words of a woman who should have been our president, and not a day goes by that I don't think about that fact with regret. If you ever want to run again, I am still with you, as my numerous bumper stickers say. Your logo was great, by the way, if you're reading this. I hope you are, somewhere. I always hope so."

and...

"This book is trying too hard."

(quotes taken from the Washington post)

Same thing for most of the articles I read online, they usually present completely opposite point of views. The thing is that most people, even before having read the book, already have an opinion on it. The day What Happened was released on Amazon, it received more than a thousand one-star reviews (which were later on deleted), raising the question of how do a thousand people read a book in one day -they don't. In my opinion, wether this book deserves to win a price or to be thrown in a trashcan, people already know if they're going to like it or not before even reading it based on their political opinions.

So what is our take on this ?

What happened 's content is not what's the most interesting about the memoir; what is interesting is what it represents. What Happened is clearly a metaphor of the election. What I mean by that is that Hillary was meant to fail, but not because of the reasons you think. It wasn't Sanders's fault. It wasn't WikiLeaks fault. It wasn't even Trump's fault. Whether what she proposed to do for America was amazing or pure nonsense, whether the factors listed below had intervened or not, Hillary Clinton was going to fail.

Think about it for a second,

This election took place in 2016. Eight years that the democrats were in the White House. A year with rising extremist beliefs, both in America and Europe. A year with massive immigration due to a high number of refugees. A lot of terror attacks, people scared, confusion, and amalgam. In other words, the perfect mix for a wave of populism. People wanted change. So add all of this to an electoral system that's completely outdated and here we are - Trump gets elected.