NEW YORK _ Hillary Clinton, who spent decades on the public stage in a myriad of roles and changing personas, emerged Tuesday in a new one: ghost from the political past.
The reception was decidedly mixed.
On the day marking publication of her latest memoir, the former first lady, U.S. senator, secretary of state, two-time Democratic White House hopeful and loser of the searing 2016 presidential race made a flurry of campaign-style stops, including a book signing and batch of media interviews.
It was a chance to open old wounds and allow partisans to fall back on familiar positions.
For Clinton fans, their ardor undimmed, the re-emergence of their heroine offered a chance to ponder what might have been.
In New York City, hundreds lined up at a Manhattan Barnes & Noble for a chance to shake her hand, enjoy a snatch of conversation and buy their own autographed copy of "What Happened."
Shannon and Jessica Marshall, 29-year-old twin sisters from New York, dug out of their cupboards the blue "I'm With Her" T-shirts that they hadn't worn since the early hours of Nov. 9, when Clinton conceded defeat. "The world would be a lot less stressful if she'd won," said Shannon, who arrived at 5 a.m. to be among the first in line.
For some, Clinton was even more appealing in defeat than she seemed as the once-prohibitive front-runner. "Women are always dumped on and disrespected," said 24-year-old Brandon Powell, who crossed the Brooklyn Bridge from Flatbush to see Clinton. "She's a hero for the way she stood up under pressure."
The former candidate, wearing a luminescent turquoise jacket and trademark black pantsuit, arrived at the bookstore nearly an hour after the scheduled 11 a.m. starting time. The crowd greeted her with shouts of "Hillary! Hillary! Hillary!"
Seated on a makeshift stage separating her from reporters and those in line, Clinton made no public remarks to the media, but chatted with fans, offering sympathetic bromides to the many who expressed their grief over the election's outcome.
"Keep up your spirits," she was overheard saying. "We have to do better. ... I'm glad you like the book."
In the course of 491 pages, Clinton took full responsibility for her stunning loss to Donald Trump _ she carried the popular vote, but lost in the Electoral College _ except when she didn't.
"I go back over my shortcomings and the mistakes we made," she wrote in her memoir. "I take responsibility for all of them. 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."
She said her lucrative speechifying after leaving the Obama administration, which drew attacks from both Trump and her primary rival, Bernie Sanders, had been a mistake. "I should have realized it would be bad 'optic' and stayed away from anything having to do with Wall Street," she wrote. "I didn't. That's on me."
She also reiterated that her decision to use a private email server as secretary of state, which led to a politically enervating FBI probe, was "a dumb mistake." But, she said by way of qualification, it was "an even dumber 'scandal.'"
In the same fashion, Clinton's buck-stops-here statement yielded to a number of grievances _ about misogyny, a public with little patience for substance _ and a gallery of villains _ some more insidious than others _ which she blamed for costing her the election.
Among those cited are Sanders, President Barack Obama, Russian President Vladimir Putin and, most especially, James B. Comey. The former FBI director came in for particular derision for his handling of the email probe _ and especially for reopening the case in the closing days of the election based on a newly discovered cache of emails that proved immaterial.
"What happened in the homestretch that caused so many voters to turn away from me?" Clinton wrote. "First, and most importantly, there was the unprecedented intervention by then-FBI Director Jim Comey."
Clinton suggested he was more concerned with appearances than justice, and she suffered as a result.
"When you're the head of an agency as important as the FBI, you have to care a lot more about how things really are than how they look," Clinton wrote, "and you have to be willing to take the heat that goes along with the big job."
She said Obama could have been more forceful responding to Russia's pro-Trump meddling in the campaign, and also writes that he kept her from going harder after Sanders, who turned into a far more formidable primary opponent than she or many had imagined.
The Vermont senator, a political independent and not a registered Democrat _ as Clinton notes _ came in for some of her most barbed observations. "Because we agreed on so much, Bernie couldn't argue against me in this area on policy," Clinton wrote. "So he had to resort to innuendo and impugning my character. Some of his supporters, the so-called Bernie Bros, took to harassing my supporters online. It got ugly and more than a little sexist."
The sniping at Sanders, who fired back after excerpts from the book were published last week, has only deepened the discomfort among Democrats wishing Clinton had taken the more typical political route, accepting her lumps, not writing the book and retiring to the role of respected, but seldom seen, party elder.
Instead, she will embark on a monthslong nationwide tour _ mixing free book signings and paid appearances _ that will stretch into mid-December.
"It tears the scab off the wounds," said a longtime Clinton loyalist, who did not want to be identified to preserve his relationship with the Clinton family. "A few people would say she has every right to speak out and God bless her. But most people are just, 'Why?' We don't need this. It doesn't do anything to fix the problems we have as progressives or Democrats or liberals or whatever we might be."
For their part, Republicans were delighted to take a few shots at their old nemesis and enjoy a break from months of Trump-related upheavals.
"The book really is just a big excuse for why she lost," said Barry Bennett, a Republican strategist who served as an advisor to Trump's campaign. "She blames everyone for her loss. ... She seems to truly be delusional."
Not surprisingly, Trump came in for brutal treatment in her account.
She describes him as phony, cruel, insensitive, sexist and thoroughly unqualified to serve as president, though she allowed as how: "You've got to give it to Trump _ he's hateful, but it's hard to look away from him."
She suggested Putin is not just someone the president personally admires, but wishes to emulate: "A white authoritarian leader who could put down dissenters, repress minorities, disenfranchise voters, weaken the press, and amass untold billions for himself. He dreams of Moscow on the Potomac."
In an interview published Tuesday in USA Today, Clinton went even further, saying she was convinced the Trump campaign purposely colluded with the Kremlin to tilt the election against her.
"There certainly was communication and there certainly was an understanding of some sort," she said. "Because there's no doubt in my mind that Putin wanted me to lose and wanted Trump to win.
"I happen to believe in the rule of law and believe in evidence, so I'm not going to go off and make all kinds of outrageous claims," she went on. "But if you look at what we've learned since (the election), it's pretty troubling."
In one of the book's more tender moments, Clinton discussed her sometimes-difficult marriage to President Bill Clinton, who was impeached for lying about his White House affair with intern Monica Lewinsky.
"There were times that I was deeply unsure about whether our marriage could or should survive. But on those days, I asked myself the questions that mattered to me: Do I still love him?" she wrote. "And can I still be in this marriage without becoming unrecognizable to myself _ twisted by anger, resentment, or remoteness? The answers were always yes. So I kept going."
And for those who may wonder, Clinton said, yes, it can be painful to be a public figure so deeply reviled for reasons she still cannot fathom. "For the record," she wrote, "it hurts to be torn apart."
But despite what Republicans and even some Democrats might hope, she said, she would not follow the path of those previously vanquished and quietly go away. "There were plenty of people hoping that I, too, would just disappear," she wrote. "But here I am."
