Hillary Fans Are Still With Her
Months after the election, Clinton supporters are sticking #WithHer during her book tour, even if it means camping out overnight.
by Sam Raskin and Libby Torres
Hillary Clinton began her book tour at the Union Square Barnes & Noble on Tuesday. While the event began at 11 a.m., the former Secretary of State and twice unsuccessful presidential candidate drew lines out the door and around the block, with roughly two dozen fans arriving late Monday night and several more in the early dawn on Tuesday.
After a surprising defeat to President Donald Trump, Clinton has mostly kept a low profile. Early reports about her book, “What Happened,” released on Sept. 12, reveal she discusses everything from former presidential candidate and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, former president Barack Obama, FBI Director James Comey, and her view on millennial voters and why she feels she lost the election. And though the former First Lady is hardly the most popular of politicians in America — her favorability rating is currently at 42 percent according to the Real Clear Politics average — she draws strong, unrelenting support from her core followers months after votes were cast.
Predictably, most of the attendees we spoke to in line for Clinton’s book signing had also voted for her in the election. Some NYU Local spoke with were fans of hers, through thick and thin, since the 1990s. In fact, what her supporters see as unfair criticism and vitriol directed at Clinton during her campaign and the preceding years under a microscope has actually endeared her to some of her fans.
“I like the fact that she’s honest and she’s very vulnerable, especially with her critics,” said Brandon Echevarria, a 24 year-old from Staten Island, who was camped out on 17th Street.
Ava Paloma, 33, originally from Pittsburgh, also identified with Clinton’s hardships, particularly the Monica Lewinsky scandal in the mid ’90s. “Honestly, when I was growing up and everything was happening with Monica Lewinsky,” she said, “that she was able to maintain a sense of composure through all of it which I found really fascinating,” said Paloma. “It was just something about her being so composed through that, at least in a public arena, we obviously don’t know privately what she went through, but it was something that was just so fascinating to me,” Paloma said. “I thought she had a magical power or something,” she said in jest.
“Well, I’ve been following her since she was First Lady,” said Grant Haralson, 26, one of the faction that slept on the street. “I did a project on her when I was in fourth grade, she seemed to always be working for the people and she’s very qualified.”
“She’s very smart, she’s tough and she just perseveres,” said Janie Goffe, another longtime Clinton supporter originally from New Jersey, echoing others. “She’s been vilified for years and years and years. She just keeps going and going and going,” Goffe said with laugh.
In addition to persevering through adversity and the rigorous inspection that comes with being in the public eye for decades, her status as a prominent female politician — namely the first woman to be nominated by a major American party for President — was appealing to many, as well.
“I just think she’s a wonderful role model for women, the way she always gets up,” Irene Port said. A former administrator at the NYU physics department, Port wasn’t shy about expressing her admiration for Clinton. “To me, that’s an important role model for women to see her out today, to see her not give up.”
“I was so excited to have the first first female president,” said NYU sophomore Cat Heinen. “I went to an all-girls high school so I’ve just always been a major supporter of female rights.”
David Gordon, an NYU freshman who spent the night outside the Barnes & Noble, cited her status as the first female nominee as a source of admiration. “A lot of people use this term a lot, but for me, despite me being a white man, I still recognize her being a trailblazer and I think that too often it’s overlooked by whatever people label [as] her flaws,” Gordon said. “She’s really been an inspiration to me.”
One of the several criticisms of the book was its dredging up old Hillary versus Bernie faction arguments from 2016. Just as the party begins to unify and close old wounds, some say, Clinton emerges to knock Sanders, causing many on the left to relitigate the primary.
Many of Clinton’s most loyal supporters, of course, are no fans of the progressive hero, and thus feel her gripes with Sanders are warranted. Some feel that her demise was in part due to Sanders’ campaign’s contributing to her unpopularity, especially among younger voters. “[Sanders] definitely had a negative impact on her campaign and the election,” Lindsay Theisen, 31, told us. She spared no sympathy for the Vermont senator. “Bernie Sanders isn’t a Democrat, [Clinton] was right about that. He switched his party affiliation to run, and I do think everything she has said about him is correct.”
Irene Port agreed, saying Clinton “did wonderful” during the election. “But something was bigger than her,” she continued. “There was something — a force — bigger than Hillary Clinton, unfortunately.”
However, not all of Clinton’s supporters shared this view. Indeed, Dipali 30, from Kenya, was less sympathetic towards Clinton’s spin. “Her strategy was poor,” Dipali said of Clinton. “She should have campaigned where she knew she wasn’t gonna win, and she didn’t do that. And that led her to losing [the election].”
Dipali called Clinton’s supposed attacks on Sanders in her book “unfair,” concluding that “[Clinton] could have done a lot of things differently, but she didn’t.”
Similarly, Paloma, the Clinton supporter since the Lewinsky scandal, wasn’t a fan of rehashing the primary, either. “It really gets me,” she said. “Because even in terms of like Bernie Sanders, I would have fully supported him,” said Paloma. “The kind of arguments I get in with Bernie Sanders supporters, it’s just like, why are we fighting this fight right now?”
Along with Sanders’ campaign, among the several things to which Clinton partially attributes her loss, she believes FBI director James Comey’s letter to congress, informing members he had reopened the investigation into Clinton, played a major roll in sinking her during the campaign’s final days. Like the candidate herself, few casted blame on Clinton’s campaign electioneering strategy, message or policies.
Asked about why he believes Clinton lost, Gordon, the NYU freshman who lived just four blocks away in University Hall, believed the famous Comey letter was a large contributor. “I think there were a bout 40 different factors that had any one of them changed, she would have won,” said Gordon. “But if I had to make a list, I’d put James Comey’s letter at the top of it, sexism not far behind.”
Goffe was on the same page. “If it wasn’t for Russia and the media and Comey,” she said, “I think she would have been President.”
This airing of grievances were not off-putting to the book signing event and did not regard her interpretation as sour grapes. For them, hearing what happened for her perspective was the core appeal of taking the time and effort to see Clinton. While there has been an abundance of punditry and reporting during the campaign, and even more Monday morning quarterbacking afterwards, Clinton’s diehard fans saw this book tour as an opportunity to hear her side of the story, unfiltered.
“I think she’s trying to offer an analysis of what happened,” said Gordon. “Everyone recognizes that the 2016 election was a historic election for reasons that will be documented and I think that adding her voice to that crowd is really important,” Gordon added. “In fact, she has probably one of the most important voices to be added to that because she had first-hand knowledge of everything that went down.”
When asked what she hoped to see from Clinton in the future, Lindsay Theisen didn’t hold back. “I just hope she uses her profile to, obviously, just make a difference. And talk about the issues that she wants to. And,” she continued, “say whatever the fuck she wants.”
