The President America will never have – HRC!

American Elections are over and in Donald Trump they have their 45^th President Elect and it has been a week of everyone asking how? How did Trump win? More importantly, how did Hillary lose?

Let me begin by confessing upfront I have never been to USA but let me also share that I have been following American politics from 1985 and I have called every election starting 1992 when Bill Clinton won. I have got only 2 elections wrong, first was in 2000 when Al Gore lost to George Bush and now in 2016 when Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump but to my credit both time the losing candidate did get more popular votes even if not the politically managed electoral college.

Much has already been written about Hillary’s loss and correctly so because it was her election to lose and she lost it. Yes I am saying it – she is to blame for her loss. Not Donald Trump for calling her lair and threatening to put her into Jail, not the FBI director by his raking up her email controversy a week before voting when everyone thought she had buried it, not the republicans for they were lost themselves and not the chanakya fish which predicted a Trump win.

She did not lose the election in the last week, I think she got it wrong much earlier but did not know it then. In hindsight it’s easy for many like me to give discourse on appear know it all and I plead guilty, still here is my take on 5 key reasons I think why she lost purely based on what I have seen and heard on TV and read about:

• First and foremost as a leader people want to know what you stand for. Hillary always spoke about what she did not stand for. She spoke about what was wrong with Donald, she spoke about why America should not elect him but she did not focus why America should elect her, what she stood for and what an average American could expect of her as a president.  Her campaign slogan – “Stronger together” was fuzzy, unclear and people did not know what to make of it in comparison to Trumps – “Making America Great Again”. Another one “Love Trumps Hate” was more about Trump than her.

• She focused on diversity and forgot about being inclusive and played the woman card a tad too much. Agreed she was the first woman nominee of a major political party and that should have just been that. In her bid to woo the women voters she forgot the American men and they don’t like being ignored. White or black both men did not vote for her and unfortunate for her women did not come out in huge numbers to vote for her too. 54 % women voted for her and 41% men. As an HR person I can tell you for diversity to be successful you have to be inclusive and that clearly means taking men along.

• She was proud of being the establishment and the insider. Her campaign spoke about her experience in the government, her career as a senator and secretary of state and not to forget the FLOTUS. She misjudged that Americans did not want an insider. Barack Obama was not exactly an insider. She lost to him in 2008 and yet did not learn. When an average American has an all time low trust in every American institution today, why would he/she elect an insider? Again her calling Trump the proverbial outsider worked for him and against her. She took the fall for all that is wrong with America today.  As I see it, a choice she made and paid for it in the end.

• She never spoke truly and from the heart. She was never Authentic. In all the debates and rallies that I listened to, while I hated Trump for saying what he said knowing he meant most of it, if not all, I never connected with all the right things she said. They all came across as correct things to say but somewhere seemed to be just words. I have followed her career for long but never heard her talk about Monica scandal, how she felt as a wife, why she stood with Bill (most believe it was for the ticket and donors) how did she feel when she lost to Obama and why she agreed to work with him (her book does not share her true feelings) and on many other occasions when she could have including the email scandal. I think her concession speech was her finest in a long long time where we saw the woman Hillary was and the woman she wanted Americans to vote for. But it was too late by then

• She could not be Trusted.  Yes that is a fact. 70% Americans said they did not trust her and 50% said they hated her in the run up to polls. Her hope was they hated Trump more but alas it was not to be. They chose to forgive Trump and not her. Her manipulation of the nomination race through super delegates, her bad judgment and questionable ethical record which Trump kept harping upon rally after rally in all swing states to rake up his electoral college numbers.

It’s time America had a woman president, after all 240 years is as the saying goes ‘one hell of a long time’ and yet the wait continues. I think sooner than later a woman will hold the oval office but one thing is clear that woman will not be Hillary Clinton. I admire her for coming so close, for her public service, for all the work she did to break the glass ceiling, for being the person she is and I know she will be remembered in history for a president America never had, yet I think she was the “wrong woman” even though the time seemed right.