Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party (2016)

A spiritual sequel to conservative pundit Dinesh D'Souza's 2012 "documentary" 2016: Obama's America, Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party is a similar call to arms against that years Democratic presidential nominee, in this case Hillary Clinton. Not as successful finically as the previous film, Hillary's America grossed $13 million at the box office against a $5 million budget, compared to the Obama films $33.4 million box office on a $2.5 million dollar budget. Hillary's America was still the top grossing documentary of 2016, and while it won multiple "Razzies" including worst film, Hillary didn't become president, so there's that.

Like the Obama film while the Democratic nominee is the apparent subject, D'Souza is the star. The beginning of the film recounts Dinesh's 2014 convection and subsequent sentence for violating campaign finance law. While a case can be made that Dinesh's crime may well have been overstated, and his sentence perhaps comparatively harsh, it is not as harsh as he makes it out to be in this movie. D'Souza spent 8 months in a halfway house, was fined $30,000 (his illegal campaign contribution to New York Senate candidate Wendy Long was $20,000), and sentenced to five years probation. D'Souza also lost the right to vote, which I agree was too sever, but he got that back when President Trump pardoned him in 2018, he then released an overtly pro Trump film (Death of a Nation: Can We Save America a Second Time? ) four months later. The movie seems intentionally gauzy about his sentence, making it look like he was in a more traditional prison during reenactment sequences in which Dinish stars, these set the pattern for other "off" seeming reenactments throughout the film. D'Souza also claims that his trial and convection was "revenge" by the Obama's over the success of his earlier movie, I remain unconvinced of the validity of this accusation.

While Hillary is the title character in this movie Dinesh takes his time in getting to her. The films subtitle "The Secret History of the Democratic Party" takes the bulk of the run time. D'Souza uses an unconvincing narrative arc of his "prison" experience prompting him to look into the supposedly "secret history" of the Democratic party. The problem with this assertion is that the history explored here is hardly secret, I learned many of these things in public schools, and as a professional political analyst, none of the this stuff would have been really new to Dinish. I have been surprised however how damning much of this films target audience takes this "secret history" to be. Said audience of course is primed to view the Democrats as negatively as possible, so the filmmakers had a running start.

The core of this criticism is the history of racism, especially anti-black racism, in the Democratic party. 19th Century Democrats supported slavery, and many in the 20th century supported Jim Crow. That is all true, but what is ignored is that things can change over time, that is what history is, change over time. Yet there are many out there who think this troubling history on the part of the donky party is a "gotcha" "death blow" to the Democrats, and reflects what is truly in their collective dark hart. Never mind that in 2016 the candidate whose rallies were most popular with neo-confederates wasn't Hillary's. Former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke endorsed a presidential candidate in 2016, but it wasn't Hillary. Also, there was a black Democratic president of the United States in office for 8 years, you might have heard of him, he was the guy before Trump. True believers however tend to care little for facts.

The movie does finally get to Hillary, it rehashes old favorites of her detractors, some of them fair some of them not. Amongst the not far are those related to Hillary's legal defense of an accused rapist in 1975. No Hillary did not volunteer to defend the man Thomas Alfred Taylor, a then 41-year-old accused of raping a 12-year-old girl, but rather Hillary was assigned the case by Arkansas Judge Maupin Cummings. No Hillary did not get Taylor "off" for the crime, he was plea bargained to a reduced sentence after questions were raised about the validity of some of the physical evidence against him. No Hillary did not laugh about this in a recording of a 1980's interview with Arkansas reported Roy Reed, or rather she did laugh, but not in the context her critics imply. Rather she laughed in regards not to the crime, but some of the things that came up while working the defense. One example is when Hillary is talking about a lie detector test the defendent took: "Of course he claimed he didn’t. All this stuff. He took a lie detector test. I had him take a polygraph, which he passed, which forever destroyed my faith in polygraphs. [laughs]" While criticism's of Hillary casting herself as a champion of a woman's right to be heard, that we should "believe all women" when they recount stories of sexual abuse, while she was a merciless critic of those who creditably accused her husband of sexual harassment and assault, those criticisms are absolutely fair.

What you have at the end of Hillary's America is what it is throughout, what it was intended to be, an exercise is preaching to the choir, rallying up the base. If your not in said base D'Souza's more legitimate  points are hampered by his many more less legitimate ones. While this film cost twice what Obama's America cost, it often looks cheaper. The historical reenactment scenes are hokey, unconvincing, and sport bad make up and costumes, how did John C. Calhoun's whig not end up on the editing room floor? The most obvious big uses of money in the film are the fake DNC lobby, designed to make it look like the Democrats are just vomiting out money on themselves, and the rental of an orchestra and men's chorus for a rendition of God Bless America at the end of the film. This movie can be hard to watch on many levels, quality of the acting, and the production design, and the content, but mostly the boredom of how watered down and unduly drawn out the whole thing is. The four percent Rotten Tomatoes score is deserved, only rarely is this movie so bad that it is entertaining, mostly it is just so bad. *

Also this movie has some anti-Russia stuff in it, D'Souza apparently hadn't yet gotten that memo yet.