LIVE from Seattle: Hillary Clinton comes to the Paramount to discuss “What Happened?”

Good evening from Seat­tle’s Para­mount The­atre! Wel­come to our live cov­er­age of for­mer U.S. Sen­a­tor and Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Clin­ton’s Seat­tle stop on her book tour for Clin­ton’s 2016 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign mem­oir What Hap­pened.

Here’s the syn­op­sis of the tour:

Join Hillary Rod­ham Clin­ton this fall as she trav­els the Unit­ed States. She’ll con­nect with audi­ences in a con­ver­sa­tion about a sto­ry that’s per­son­al, raw, detailed and sur­pris­ing­ly fun­ny. She’ll take you with her on her jour­ney and talk about What Hap­pened, what’s next, and what’s on your mind. What you’ll see will be her sto­ry – Live. Her sto­ry of resilience, how to get back up after a loss, and how we can all look ahead. It’s about Hillary’s expe­ri­ence as a woman in pol­i­tics — she lets loose on this top­ic, and oth­ers, in a way she nev­er has before.

Clin­ton has claimed 2016 was her final cam­paign for elect­ed office, and at least for those in the room, there seems to be more antic­i­pa­tion to hear from her than peo­ple in Salt Lake City or Fort Worth would have been for Mitt Rom­ney in 2013 or for that mat­ter any­one was for John Ker­ry in 2005.

6:15 PM: Tonight is set to have at least two sur­pris­es. The event is set to begin at 7:30 PM Pacif­ic, but we’re not sure yet which of the two chairs Sec­re­tary Clin­ton will be sit­ting in for the event, or even who’ll be sit­ting in the oth­er chair.

For now, media are get­ting set­tled in as much as can be done in the cor­ner, and, per­haps because of the attempt­ed ter­ror attack in New York City this morn­ing, the Secret Ser­vice and secu­ri­ty asked every­one with cre­den­tials to get in no lat­er than an hour and a half before the start of the event for wand-waves and bad searches.

At the moment, Clin­ton is meet­ing with VIP tick­et hold­ers, list­ed at $500 to $650 at face val­ue. This is quite a dis­count from last Octo­ber when sim­i­lar access to the even­tu­al U.S. pop­u­lar vote win­ner would have cost about 40 times more.

6:45 PM: In addi­tion to the two pink-lit stairs on stage, there are three book­shelves show­ing off more than fifty copies of her book, and anoth­er great mound stacked on tables on the way in the auditorium.

For what­ev­er easy jabs about tick­et prices and those will­ing to pay a few hun­dred dol­lars to speak, get a book signed by, and take a pic­ture with a polit­i­cal celebri­ty, an answer to that title is some­thing many peo­ple here clear­ly are look­ing for.

7 PM: Dur­ing the 2016 cam­paign, like many peo­ple, I was a polit­i­cal junkie. It was the best show in town and more­over, every­one on the side of Good and Decent Things expect­ed polling was reli­able, and enough Amer­i­cans would reject the uni­form awful­ness of the GOP nom­i­nee that there was no way he could win.

We were right about the first part; they just all lived in or had moved to the wrong places. The rea­son those cam­paign fundrais­ers cost upwards of $27,000 a tick­et is that mon­ey can eas­i­ly cross state lines, but not votes.

But, there was so much con­tent to be con­sumed, not just the Live Every Day Dra­ma of Twit­ter and WaPo bombs and shouty cable news pan­els, but also back in time. The Howard Stern inter­views of a brag­gart grop­er made good hate-watch­ing, but Sec­re­tary Clin­ton had many of her own high­lights, espe­cial­ly her Hard Choic­es book tour fol­low­ing her depar­ture from the State Department.

We rarely got to see the easy con­fi­dence and wit Clin­ton was capa­ble of when, for exam­ple, she sat down to talk to Google’s Eric Schmidt.

It’s lit­er­al­ly impos­si­ble to imag­ine the cur­rent com­man­der-in-chief talk­ing about the Syr­i­an Civ­il War, or any geopo­lit­i­cal top­ic with the knowl­edge and self-reflec­tion Clin­ton demon­strates in that brief talk.

Which is all to say, I’m one of those peo­ple very much look­ing for­ward to what Clin­ton has to say, and to see how she feels now that it looks increas­ing­ly like his­to­ry will view her as a Cas­san­dra for what her oppo­nen­t’s pres­i­den­cy would look like.

7:15 PM: There are sub­stan­tial­ly few­er pink March for Women hats than I would have antic­i­pat­ed (we’ve seen at least two peo­ple wear­ing them).

But in wa,y I’m not sur­prised because so far the crowd appears to be pret­ty gray-haired and pre­dom­i­nant­ly female. From the the cor­ner of the the­ater we’re sta­tioned in, it’s tough to see if the bal­cony has some more peo­ple rel­a­tive­ly unbur­dened by years and there­fore mul­ti-dig­it­ed bank accounts, but it’s easy to see why Clin­ton’s cam­paign res­onat­ed so per­son­al­ly with so many women across the U.S. before the glass ceil­ing cracked and would­n’t quite break.

7:30 PML In the con­text of so many wide­ly pub­li­cized accounts of sex­u­al harass­ment and abuse, it’s pos­si­ble Clin­ton will open up more about her own expe­ri­ences deal­ing with harass­ment and gen­er­al misog­y­ny through­out her life, but doing so means breath­ing on the haunt­ed mir­ror that spells out words like J u a n i t a and b l u e d r e s s. “How can Clin­ton claim to talk about harass­ment when her own husband—”

The hall is near­ly filled up now, but the lights still haven’t dimmed.

7:45 PM: It may not be pos­si­ble to find this out, but I’d be awful­ly curi­ous whether this crowd match­es up more with Clin­ton vot­ers or donors in 2015–2016, and how it match­es with, say, a pro­gres­sive rock show like King Crim­son. (Stay strong Dave.)

This hall does not, at first glance, seem to be a rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­ple of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty’s base, even though Seat­tle real­ly, real­ly pre­ferred Clin­ton rel­a­tive to her oppo­nent. But this is def­i­nite­ly not a snap­shot of the city as a whole. Why it would be or ought to be, are prob­a­bly entire­ly too dis­cur­sive, even for this.

7:47 PM: Mod­er­a­tor Anne Lam­ott intro­duced Hillary Clin­ton by say­ing, “Please join me in wel­com­ing the woman who said Yes,” to thun­der­ous cheers and a pro­longed stand­ing ova­tion from the crowd.

Clin­ton opened by remark­ing that in the past, she often felt like she need­ed to be cau­tious and hold some­thing back, but “those days are over.”

Loud cheers and applause followed.

Clin­ton said her book look­ing back is about things that were frus­trat­ing like the chap­ter “Those Damn Emails”, but also the moments she wants to trea­sure like stand­ing on stage to receive the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nomination.

Writ­ing a book is often a painful process, but ulti­mate­ly cathar­tic, Clin­ton said. She talked about four things that helped her recov­er from the election:

1. The knowl­edge that every­one gets knocked down at some point or anoth­er; and what mat­ters is whether you get back up;
2. Spend­ing time with fam­i­ly and grand­kids instead of suc­cumb­ing to the temp­ta­tion to pull up the cov­ers in the morning;
3. Read­ing a lot of books, espe­cial­ly mys­ter­ies, because in those the bad guy usu­al­ly gets it in the end;
4. Not hes­i­tat­ing to relax with a glass of Chardonnay.

Clin­ton also talked about the impor­tance faith has for her. There’s too much at stake for any­one to sit on the side­lines. Peo­ple have to con­tin­ue speak­ing out, she said. There are peo­ple who need us to advo­cate for them. Like the chil­dren and fam­i­lies who will be hurt by Con­gress’ fail­ure to reau­tho­rize CHIP.