Former first lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has released a new book titled "What Happened". The book includes essays and personal stories from Clinton's life, up to and including the 2016 Presidential Election, and her defeat at the hands of Donald Trump. With the book now on the shelves, Hillary Clinton finds herself in the public eye yet again, however, instead of a campaign, she's now on a book tour, making stops at talk shows and signing copies at stores across the nation.

The book has been praised and ridiculed by many, and the debate still continues as to whether or not writing it was a good idea. There are many who have commended her for speaking her own truth and calling out her opponents, while others are simply sick of her justifications, and wish she would go away altogether, and after reading it for myself, I don’t really know what to make of it. It’s always nice when someone exercises their ability to think and speak freely, especially about something so controversial, but the contents of her book and its details regarding her presidential defeat certainly leaves much to be desired.

Clinton goes after many people and entities that she believes are at fault for her loss, and the example that I am about to provide are merely a short list of them. She claims that the media played a large role in Trump's election, writing in her book that, "Many in the political media … can't bear to face their own role in helping elect Trump, from providing him free airtime to giving my emails three times more coverage than all the issues affecting people's lives combined." She also went after fellow Democrat and campaign opponent Bernie Sanders, saying that, "His attacks caused lasting damage, making it harder to unify progressives in the general election and paving the way for Trump's 'Crooked Hillary' campaign."

Clinton also blamed former FBI Director James Comey, saying that "If not for the dramatic intervention of the FBI director in the final days we would have won the White House.", Green Party candidate Jill Stein, referencing the 2000 election by writing, "There were more than enough Stein voters to swing the result, just like Ralph Nader did in Florida and New Hampshire in 2000.", and even President Barack Obama when she wrote in her book, "I do wonder sometimes about what would have happened if President Obama had made a televised address to the nation in the fall of 2016 warning that our democracy was under attack. Maybe more Americans would have woken up to the threat in time. "

Don’t get confused and think that I’m some right wing nut going on and on about “crooked Hillary”. I voted for Clinton in the election, but even I have to admit that she was not a very good candidate. She came off as detached from the American people and their issues, made cringe-worthy attempts to connect with the millennial vote that won Obama two terms, and was never able to escape from the vast amount of criminal investigations and conspiracies that she and her husband were subjected to. However, the biggest factor in her defeat, in my opinion, was because she was part of the establishment; she gave speeches to the big banks and was a large player in the political system that many voters were sick and tired of. To many, she was everything that was wrong with Washington D.C and politics personified, and even still she seems to miss this point almost entirely.

All of this being said, I do kind of feel sorry for her. From the beginning of the election cycle, it seemed that she was destined to one day sit in the oval office, and then it was all taken away from her, like sand escaping through your fingers. Any attempt by Clinton to explain the 2016 election was going to be met with criticism. Maybe she was speaking out too much, or perhaps not enough. She devoted a lot of pages to playing the blame game but also took time to point the finger at herself. "You can blame the data, blame the message, blame anything you want - but I was the candidate. It was my campaign. Those were my decisions."

So what did happen during the 2016 election? Was it just the perfect storm? Was it the hopeful message of the Trump campaign? Was it Hillary’s inability to connect to the voting public? It’s very tempting to try and answer these questions now, but the answers won’t become clear for years, or even decades. In the end, Hillary Clinton made her case, and all we can do now is to let history have the final say.