Hillary Clinton's New Memoir Attempts to Explain Presidential Election Loss

Hillary Clinton’s new book, What Happened, will be released to the public next week. In it, she takes some amount of ownership for her 2016 loss to Donald Trump in the presidential election, and allows readers to look at the events before the election through her eyes.

CNN bought a copy of the book before its official release. CNN writes that Clinton does take some of the blame for what happened during the election, but does also insist that some things were out of her control.

CNN calls Clinton’s voice in the book “defiant to conciliatory to — at rare moments — deeply vulnerable.” She does admit to “misjudging the environment in which she was running” as well as who she was running against.

“I think it’s fair to say that I didn’t realize how quickly the ground was shifting under all our feet,” she writes, according to CNN. “I was running a traditional presidential campaign with carefully thought-out policies and painstakingly built coalitions, while Trump was running a reality TV show that expertly and relentlessly stoked Americans’ anger and resentment.”

Clinton does unabashedly blame sexism and criticizes those who previously criticized her, such as Vice President Joe Biden or Senator Bernie Sanders. She also lashes out at James Comey for “turning the picture upside down.” And of course, she calls out President Trump, for both the campaign he ran and for how he is currently acting as president.

Clinton also blasts the media for the way they handled her email controversy, and especially singles out The New York Times, according to CNN.

This is Clinton’s third book. She discusses all the research she did after her loss, citing studies, reports, and news articles that offer “suggestions at how her style of campaigning was lost on an angry and disillusioned electorate,” writes CNN.

She is also more vulnerable than ever before, talking about the whiplash she felt in the 24 hours after election day.

Besides just politics, the book digs into Clinton’s personal life in a way readers have not seen before. She addresses the many, many rumors about her relationship with her husband, such as “it’s just a marriage on paper now.” She dedicates passages to her mother and her daughter.

And finally, she writes that while she is sure there are plenty of people who would prefer if she just disappeared, she isn’t going to do that.