Clinton: It's time to abolish the Electoral College
Clinton: It's time to abolish the Electoral College
Story highlights
- "I think it needs to be eliminated," Clinton said of the Electoral College
- Clinton also displayed animus for fired FBI Director James Comey
New York (CNN)Hillary
Clinton told CNN on Wednesday that it is time to abolish the Electoral
College, part of a sweeping interview where the former Democratic
nominee sought to explain why she lost the 2016 election.
Clinton, in the interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper, displayed her animus for fired FBI Director James Comey, reflected on her love for the people -- namely former President Bill Clinton -- who helped her get through the crushing loss and blasted the arcane election body that she believes helped Donald Trump win the presidency.
"I think it needs to be eliminated," Clinton said of the Electoral College. "I'd like to see us move beyond it, yes."
Clinton
won the 2016 popular vote by nearly 3 million votes, a fact she
routinely brings up in her new memoir. But Trump won the Electoral
College, a body of 538 members who select the president based on the
popular vote in each state, meaning the person who gets the most votes
nationally doesn't necessarily win the election.
The
Electoral College is just one external factor Clinton blames for her
stunning loss to Trump in her newly released memoir, "What Happened."
Clinton also faults Comey for his "rash" involvement in the election,
Russian President Vladimir Putin for directing operatives to meddle in
the election and apathetic voters who only got engaged once the election was over and Trump had won.
But
Clinton also blames herself in the book, writing that she did not fully
understand the American electorate and failed to understand with the
anger that animated Trump.
Clinton
said Wednesday that October 28, the day that Comey sent a letter to
Congress saying he was reopening part of his investigation into
Clinton's emails, was the day she lost the election.
"That
was the determinative day because it stopped my momentum," she said. "I
don't blame voters for wondering what the heck was going on."
Comey, Clinton added, "forever changed history" by reopening the email investigation just to close it days before Election Day.
"I
believe ... it became a perfect storm," Clinton said of Comey and
Russia's involvement in the election, adding that she hopes "nobody ever
faces what I faced with respect to that."
After
the 2000 election, when former Vice President Al Gore won the popular
vote but lost the electoral college and the presidency, Clinton also
called for an end to the Electoral College.
"I
believe strongly that in a democracy, we should respect the will of the
people and to me, that means it's time to do away with the Electoral
College and move to the popular election of our president," she told reporters at the time.
Rehashing the election
Another
person drawing Clinton's ire in what has amounted to her political burn
book: Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who challenged Clinton for the
Democratic nomination in 2016.
Clinton
writes that Sanders' attacks on her caused "lasting damage" and laid
the groundwork for Trump's campaign against her. In her interview with
CNN, Clinton says the "political sin" Sanders committed was not unifying
the party fast enough by dropping out of the race once his campaign was
clearly over.
"The political sin
he committed was the failure to move quickly to unify the party and his
supporters," she said. "It was clear I was going to be the nominee,
like, in March or April. It was beyond any doubt in June."
Clinton
said she immediately backed Barack Obama in 2008 when her campaign was
over, but that she "didn't get that same respect and reciprocity from
Sen. Sanders or from his supporters."
"He could be helpful, if he so chose," Clinton said.
Support
Despite
the sting of her loss -- and the wrongs Clinton appears eager to right
-- the former secretary of state was also hopeful in her interview,
particularly when she spoke about the support she has received from her
daughter, Chelsea, her husband and other people close to her.
Clinton
said she "wanted to make clear" in her book that politics is not
everything in life and "pull the curtain back and say, 'I lost a
presidential campaign that I thought I was going to win. It was
devastating. But I have so many blessings in my life, starting with my
husband and the life we've built together.' "
Clinton
emotionally reflected on the darker moments of her marriage to former
president, conceding that she had to answer "hard questions" about their
relationship in the 1990s.
Clinton,
describing her marriage in terms she rarely uses, said she "really had
to struggle" with their marriage when the Clinton White House was
consumed by the former President's affair with Monica Lewinsky, a White
House intern.
"Anybody alive in
America at that time knows how difficult that period was. And, you know,
I really had to struggle. And I had a lot of angst," she said. "I had
to call back on my faith and my family, my friends."
The
candor about her marriage mimics the tone of Clinton's book, where she
writes that in the face of the Lewinsky controversy, she asked herself
"do I still love him" and "can I still be in this marriage without
becoming unrecognizable to myself"?
Clinton
told CNN that in the darkest moment of her marriage she resolved not to
make "a decision that other people wanted me to make."
"I
was going make my decision. And it was based on those two questions and
the life we had built together," Clinton said. "And I'm very glad that
that's the way I chose to continue my life."
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