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Clinton weighs in on 2016 election

Democrats must look beyond her analysis to win in the future

So, Hillary Clinton is writing a book, perhaps offering her take on the 2016 presidential election. And, as she told an interviewer recently, she accepts responsibility for losing to Donald Trump.

Sort of.

“It wasn’t a perfect campaign. There’s no such thing,” Clinton told a reporter this week, adding, “But I was on the way to winning until a combination of (FBI Director) Jim Comey’s letter on Oct. 28 and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me but got scared off.”

And one more thing: Asked whether misogyny played a role in her loss, replied, “Yes, I do think it played a role.” Misogyny is “very much a part of the landscape politically, socially and economically,” she suggested.

In other words, Clinton still has not accepted responsibility for her loss.

Any number of factors, including Comey’s behavior, can be cited as factors in the presidential election.

But the bottom line is that Trump found a way to appeal to voters who felt marginalized by the political establishment. Clinton did not. In her own Democratic Party’s way of putting it, she wasn’t able to gain the trust of “the little guy.”

Unfortunately for her party and, for that matter, the nation as a whole, too many Democratic leaders continue to refuse to accept what happened last fall. They, like Clinton, reject taking responsibility for one of the biggest political miscalculations in history. Unless they do that, their next nominee for president will fare no better than blame-everyone-but-me Clinton did last year.

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