Hillary Clinton at the Glazier Arboretum Park, where she often likes to hike, in Chappaqua, N.Y.

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Adrienne Grunwald for NPR

Hillary Clinton at the Glazier Arboretum Park, where she often likes to hike, in Chappaqua, N.Y.

Adrienne Grunwald for NPR

Hillary Clinton’s final campaign for office ended in a shocking defeat. But she isn’t going quietly into the night.

“I think the country’s at risk, and I’m trying to sound the alarm so more people will at least pay attention,” Clinton told NPR.

That said, her career as a candidate is over.

“I’m done. I’m not running for office,” Clinton said. But for those, including Democrats, who would like her to just go away? “Well, they’re going to be disappointed,” she said.

“I’m not going anywhere. I have the experience, I have the insight, I have the scars that I think give me not only the right, but the responsibility to speak out,” Clinton said.

In her new campaign memoir, What Happened, and in interviews with Morning Edition‘s Rachel Martin and NPR’s Tamara Keith, Clinton talks about her own failings, but she doesn’t hold back on calling out sexism in American politics and heaping criticism on President Trump.

“I think he’s being played,” Clinton said of Trump, suggesting that he’s given aid and comfort to Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. “I think he doesn’t even understand the kind of strategic overview of what’s happening in the world, and what we need to be doing to prepare, and so I’m gonna keep speaking out.”

Asked if she is able to turn on the news without thinking, “What would I do in this situation?” Clinton responded with a laugh.

“No, I do it every single time! Look, I was prepared to be president. I had prepared and worked at it, and I go a little bit batty when I hear him say, ‘Gee, this is a really hard job. Who knew health care was so complicated?’ I did. No, I always am responding and reacting. Sometimes I yell at the TV even.”

What Happened

But Trump is the one in the Oval Office, not Clinton, and she offers a series of explanations for what she did wrong, in the book and in her interviews with NPR.

“I take ultimate responsibility for the loss,” Clinton said. “I was the candidate. I was the person whose name was on the ballot. And I’ll never get over that.”

There was the private email server she used for official business while secretary of state, a cloud that hung over her campaign from start to finish.

“It was a dumb mistake. I think it was a dumber scandal, but it hurt,” she said.

She also describes an inability to connect with the anger coursing through the electorate.

“I understood there was anger and fear and people were really unhappy because of what had happened in the financial crash. I understood all of that,” Clinton said. “What I didn’t — and I say this in the book — I didn’t really do well is conveying how much I understood of that, conveying how I got the despair and the anger.”

Clinton had plans — so many plans — for combating the opioid crisis, for helping people in coal country, for creating jobs through infrastructure spending and more.

“I talked about it, but I didn’t really convey the emotional resonance,” she said.

While Trump was sending a signal to voters by talking about making America great again, bringing back coal jobs and building a wall, Clinton’s detailed plans didn’t break through.

“The amount of time and effort we spent not only devising the best infrastructure plan you could imagine but figuring out how it was gonna be paid for, nobody cared,” she said.

Meanwhile, she said, Trump tapped into something, even fed it.

His message was “discriminatory, it was bigoted, it was prejudiced,” Clinton said. “And yet it fed into part of the electorate that just wanted to have a primal scream. They didn’t like what was going on. They wanted something different. They weren’t interested in what you could actually do, because clearly Trump hasn’t done very much that he said he would do. But they really responded to his racial and ethnic and sexist appeals.”

And while Trump started his campaign with a memorable line, Make America Great Again, Clinton said her team was headed into the general election trying to develop a theme that fit.

“I had three different very smart groups work independently, and I asked them, ‘So what should be the theme of our general election?’ And they each, amazingly, came up with the same slogan: ‘Stronger Together.’ Because what they argued, and what I believed, was that America does better when we’re working together, when we’re helping each other, when we’re aiming toward a future of opportunity where we have broad-based economic growth that includes everybody, and where, yes, we stand up for human rights and civil rights,” Clinton said.

But, asked to choose her biggest regret, Clinton didn’t look inward.

“Losing is my biggest regret,” she said. “And losing to someone who was not qualified and did not have the experience or the temperament to be president of the United States. That is my biggest regret.”

Clinton says her biggest regret from the 2016 presidential election is losing.

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Adrienne Grunwald for NPR

Clinton says her biggest regret from the 2016 presidential election is losing.

Adrienne Grunwald for NPR

Clinton deflected the question of whether another Democrat could have beaten Trump, saying, “Well, I don’t think it’s useful to speculate, because I was the nominee.”

What if Joe Biden had been the nominee?

“Well, he wasn’t. And you know he ran in ’08, and he didn’t run in this this time — if he wants to run in the future, he can do that,” she said.

Comey, The Russians, Voter Suppression And Other External Forces

In an election decided by fewer than 100,000 votes in three states, Clinton argues any number of factors could have decided the election.

“I was on the path to winning, and I felt great about the three debates,” Clinton said when asked about issues of trust that dogged her campaign. “And then unfortunately the Comey letter, aided in great measure by the Russian WikiLeaks, raised all those doubts again.”

Less than two weeks before the election, then-FBI Director James Comey told Congress the Bureau would be revisiting its investigation into the handling of classified information in connection with Clinton. On Nov. 6, he said a newly discovered trove of emails did not change the FBI’s recommendation that Clinton not be charged. Nevertheless, Clinton has repeatedly placed blame on this sequence of events for undermining her candidacy at a crucial moment.

WikiLeaks’ release of thousands of emails allegedly tied to Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, is another frequent target of hers. The documents disclosed internal campaign deliberation about Clinton’s private email server and excerpts from her Wall Street speeches. The campaign linked the release to Russia.

In the states Clinton lost, she argues voter ID requirements and other changes in the law made it harder for people who supported her to vote.

“In Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania in particular, as well as North Carolina, there was a concerted effort to suppress the vote,” she said, recounting anecdotes about people whose identification didn’t qualify them to vote in Milwaukee.

As for Russian interference in the election, Clinton thinks that in addition to the investigation being led by special counsel Robert Mueller, there should be an independent commission, like the 9/11 Commission.

“And if we don’t come together as a country and with leadership from the White House and the Congress to combat it, to try to prevent it from happening again, we are really putting our democracy at risk,” Clinton said.

She has been following the twists and turns of the Russia investigations and devotes a chapter of her book to the topic.

“We’re only now finding out what we did try to warn people about starting last summer,” Clinton said. But back then those warnings were often dismissed as a campaign trying to distract from the damaging revelations from the WikiLeaks emails. “And I think because it was so surreal — how, what do you mean the Russians are influencing our election? Now we know. Not only were they, they did. And not only did they, they will continue to do so.”

Talking About Sexism And Misogyny

Clinton devotes a chapter of her book to being a woman in politics, and in conversations with NPR, she had a lot to say about it. Clinton said it is clear some share of the electorate “is just not ready” for a woman to be president. “They just cannot imagine it, and they are resistant to it. And I want in this book to make it very clear that what happened to me was not just about me,” Clinton said.

There were some voters who said they were open to a woman as president, just not that woman, in reference to Clinton. But she doesn’t buy that a different female candidate would have had it any easier.

“Look, if you think it’s just about me, you don’t have to deal with it. … OK, I lost, you know? Have a nice time walking in the woods. But if you think it’s endemic as I believe it is, and that when a woman sticks her head up, she gets hit from both the right and the left by men who — primarily men — who do not want to accept the reality of a woman being a leader, an executive,” Clinton said.

Her reference to men on “both the right and the left” isn’t without purpose. In the book she has harsh words for supporters of Bernie Sanders, so-called Bernie Bros, who intimidated her supporters online to the point that they hid their feelings in private Facebook groups.

“I want people to understand sexism and misogyny are real,” Clinton said. “They’re real in business, they’re real in politics, and people have to start standing up against it. And we have to equip young women to be able to ward it off and speak out, and we have to encourage men, particularly young men, not to buy into it. And we have to recognize there are deep stereotypes.”

As to the claim from some Sanders supporters that Clinton ran with a sense of entitlement, she said, “I just totally reject that.” Clinton called the criticism “off base.”

Even after she clinched the nomination, she said, Sanders “just kept going, and he and his followers’ attacks on me kept getting more and more personal, despite him asking me not to attack him personally. And you know, I really regret that. But now he’s got a chance to prove that he’s something other than a spoiler. And that is to help other Democrats. And I don’t know if he will or not, but I’m hoping he will.”

Out Of The Woods

Immediately following her election loss, Clinton returned home to Chappaqua, N.Y., and spent a lot of time hiking in the woods nearby with her husband, the former president, and their dogs.

“It was part of a process after the election to come to terms with having lost, and my personal disappointment in letting millions of people down. Also my fears about what a Trump presidency might mean for our country and the world,” Clinton said, back in the woods for her interview with Keith. “So I had a lot to think about. And I think well when I’m walking. I sort of clear my mind.”

That first day in the woods, she ran into a woman walking with her baby and dog. Her Facebook post spawned a meme, “HRC in the wild,” and rapidly led to people looking for Clinton in the woods.

“One time we drove up here to go for a walk, and there were about a dozen people lying in wait, and I thought, ‘OK we’re gonna go somewhere more peaceful than that,’ ” Clinton said.

As the interview wrapped up, Clinton was approached by two women and a yellow Labrador.

Either could have used their status as permanent members of the Security Council to veto the measure.

The original demands from the United States for a new resolution, made by the American ambassador, Nikki R. Haley, were toned down in negotiations that followed with her Russian and Chinese counterparts.

Late Sunday night, after a series of closed-door meetings, a revised draft emerged, setting a cap on oil exports to North Korea, but not blocking them altogether.

The resolution asks countries around the world to inspect ships going in and out of North Korea’s ports (a provision put in place by the Security Council in 2009) but does not authorize the use of force for ships that do not comply, as the Trump administration had originally proposed.

The resolution also requires those inspections to be done with the consent of the countries where the ships are registered, which opens the door to violations. Under the latest resolution, those ships could face penalties, but the original language proposed by the United States had gone much further, empowering countries to interdict ships suspected of carrying weapons material or fuel into North Korea and to use “all necessary measures” — code for military force — to enforce compliance.

The resolution also does not impose a travel ban or asset freeze on Mr. Kim, as the original American draft had set out.

And the new measure adds a caveat to the original language that would have banned the import of North Korean laborers altogether, saying that countries should not provide work authorization papers unless necessary for humanitarian assistance or denuclearization.

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The resolution does ban textile exports from North Korea, prohibits the sale of natural gas to North Korea and sets a cap on refined petroleum sales to the country of two million barrels per year. That would shave off roughly 10 percent of what North Korea currently gets from China, according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency.

Even so, American officials asserted that the resolution would reduce oil imports to North Korea by 30 percent.

China had long worried that an oil cutoff altogether would lead to North Korea’s collapse.

And even some British officials warned, in private, that if the original American proposal went forward, this winter the North Koreans would be showing photographs of freezing children, and portraying the West as architects of a genocide.

A recent analysis by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies suggested that an oil embargo would not have much impact in the long run anyway; Pyongyang, the analysis said, could replace oil with liquefied coal.

Despite the weakened penalties, Ms. Haley cast the resolution as a victory in her Security Council remarks.

Ms. Haley credited what she called President Trump’s relationship with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, in achieving the toughened sanctions — the second raft of United Nations penalties against North Korea since August.

Ms. Haley said the resolution demonstrated international unity against the regime in Pyongyang, and she claimed that the new sanctions, if enforced, would affect the vast majority of the country’s exports.

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But in contrast to her assertion last week that the North was “begging for war,” Ms. Haley said on Monday that Pyongyang still has room to change course. “If it agrees to stop its nuclear program it can reclaim its future,” she said. “If it proves it can live in peace, the world will live in peace with it.”

Ultimately, analysts said, diplomatic success would be measured not by the strictness of sanctions, but by the ability of world powers to persuade Pyongyang to halt its nuclear and ballistic missile tests.

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“There’s no only-sanctions strategy that will bring the North Koreans to heel,” said Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, a disarmament advocacy group based in Washington. “It has to be paired with a pragmatic strategy of engagement. But those talks are not yet happening.”

In a nod to Chinese and Russian arguments, the resolution also calls for resolving the crisis “through peaceful, diplomatic and political means.” That is diplomatic code to engage in negotiations.

In his remarks, the Chinese envoy, Liu Jieyi, warned the United States against efforts at “regime change” and the use of military force. “China will continue to advance dialogue,” he said.

China and Russia have jointly proposed a freeze on Pyongyang’s missile and nuclear tests in exchange for a freeze in joint military drills by South Korea and the United States. The Americans have rejected that proposal.

Russia’s envoy, Vassily A. Nebenzia, said it would be “a big mistake” to ignore the China-Russia proposal. “We will insist on it being considered,” he said.

Diplomats said the language in the new resolution, which was negotiated surprisingly swiftly after the North’s latest nuclear test, reflected a tough but balanced measure designed to address Chinese and Russian concerns.

The French ambassador François Delattre, told reporters that a unified Security Council position was “the best antidote to the risk of war.”

“By definition, this is a compromise in order to get everyone on board,” he said before the vote.

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“Everyone should be able to live with the resolution as it now stands,” said the Swedish ambassador, Olof Skoog.

There was no immediate reaction to the new resolution from North Korea. But on Sunday the North warned that it would inflict the “greatest pain and suffering” on the United States, in the event of tougher international sanctions.

The fact that Russia and China did not veto the resolution suggested that both are increasingly concerned about the behavior of Mr. Kim, who has often taunted his neighbors and suppliers. But the Chinese in particular were reluctant to pass any sanction that could destabilize Mr. Kim’s regime.

American intelligence agencies say they are expecting North Korea to test another intercontinental ballistic missile, building on two tests in July. But the new test, they speculate, will not be into a high launch into space, but will be flattened out to demonstrate how far the missile can fly.

Mr. Kim has said he would consider landing test missiles off the shore of Guam, the Pacific island where an American air base is used to fly practice bombing runs over the South Korean side of the Demilitarized Zone with the North.

In reality, the Trump administration has relatively low expectations for the new sanctions, American officials say.

But it is discussing how to use them, the officials say, with a mix of overt military pressure, covert action, and steps to punish any Chinese banks that do business with North Korea, by banning them from also doing business with the United States.

That is exactly the combination of actions that was used by the Obama administration to drive Iran into negotiations over its nuclear activities for what became the 2015 deal that Mr. Trump has often denounced as a giveaway.

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Two cranes atop high-rise buildings under construction collapsed Sunday in downtown Miami amid strong winds from Hurricane Irma.

The cranes were among two dozen such heavyweight hazards looming over the city skyline as the monster storm powered across the state.

No injuries were reported after either crash, said Miami City Manager Daniel Alfonso.

A third construction crane toppled at a project on Fort Lauderdale beach during the storm later on Sunday.

NBA’s Miami Heat play.

It was stationary after the collapse, according to the contractor operating the crane.

“All possible preparations and precautions were taken, but we believe that a micro-tornado struck this area, compromising the crane. Again, we’re grateful there have been no injuries,” said John Leete, Moriarty executive vice president.

It’s all about the wind.

That’s why we’re seeing the footage of extreme low tides associated with Hurricane Irma. The same thing happened in Alabama’s Mobile Bay during Hurricane Katrina. In fact, the same thing happens here and in most other parts of the Gulf coast on a regular basis.

Strong winds, such as those associated with Irma, can override the effect of the tide. It doesn’t take much. In Mobile Bay, a stout north wind of 25 miles per hour or so for two days in a row will cause a similar effect, though not as extreme. We see it every winter. The longer the wind keeps up, the lower the water level gets. In some bitter cold winters, such as those in the early 2000s, when the north wind blew for days and days, water receded close to 1,000 feet from the normal shoreline, four to five feet below normal.

With the hurricane, what we are seeing has to do with which side of the storm various places are seeing. Because a hurricanes winds blow in a circular pattern, the winds in each quadrant of the storm are coming from a different direction. For Tampa and cities on the west coast of Florida, their initial exposure to the storm is coming from the Northeast. That’s perfect to push water out of Tampa Bay.

As the winds change, that water will come rushing back in. I’ve seen a storm surge rise and the fall. It was an awesome sight.

During Hurricane Katrina, the news crew stayed in the Press-Register’s newsroom. We had a ringside seat to watch Katrina’s water rise from our glass-windowed, third floor newsroom on the edge of the Mobile-Tensaw Delta. Amusingly, the newspaper’s address was on Water Street. The name proved prescient during the storm, as Mobile Bay rose up and surrounded us. The newspaper, built at 15 feet above sea level, was rendered an island unto itself.

Early in the storm, I remember driving out to look at Mobile Bay and seeing gigantic mud flats where the water had retreated in the early part of the storm, when winds were from the north at 50 miles an hour.

Then, as the storm moved over us, the surge came in. As it crept down six lane Water Street, standing waves developed from the current. The water rose 15 feet in two hours, or about an inch and a half per minute. It was a stunning sight. The road was rendered a rushing river. All was still for a moment, as the eye passed. Then, as we pushed through the back of the eye wall, the water rushed away as quickly as it had come.

The surge is magnified in coastal bays, where the water is forced into a giant funnel as the bay’s narrow. The newsroom and downtown Mobile were at the head of the funnel when you look at a map of Mobile Bay. Tampa is similarly positioned on its bay.

People walk out onto what is normally four feet of water in Old Tampa Bay, Sunday, Sept. 10, 2017, in Tampa, Fla. Hurricane Irma and an unusual low tide pushed water out over 100 yards. (AP Photo/Chris O’Meara)(AP Photo/Chris O’Meara) 

For a moment, imagine the storm surge of Katrina in Biloxi. 28 feet. That is a tsunami-size wall of water. As happened in Mississippi, all that water that rushed out along the Florida coast, is rushing back in right now. The surge is usually the most dangerous part of any storm.

I hope for the best for those folks we saw on all the news networks out on the dry bay bottom. They are definitely in harm’s way tonight. Godspeed.