Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign

[anatta]

By Rebecca Savransky - 04/18/17 07:38 PM EDT
343

Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign was dogged by power struggles and overly optimistic expectations on its way to a surprise defeat by President Trump, according to a newly released book on Clinton’s failed run.

“Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign,” by Sidewire’s Jonathan Allen and The Hill’s Amie Parnes, chronicles the inner workings of the Clinton campaign. The book follows repeated missteps from Clinton, her staff and Democratic allies, nearly all of whom expected Clinton to handily win the Oval Office in November.

The book goes through the night of Clinton’s defeat in the 2016 presidential election, which was widely expected to be a victory for the former Democratic presidential nominee. But as the results continued to come in, that outcome started to look less and less likely.

“Shattered” includes three momentous calls Clinton took on the night of the election. In the first, with former President Obama, Obama urged Clinton to concede to her rival.

Then Clinton called Trump, conceding the race to him and ending her campaign.

After acknowledging her defeat, according to the book, Clinton took a call from Obama and apologized for losing.

When Clinton received the call, handed to her by aide Huma Abedin, she realized how many people she had let down by botching the race.

“Mr. President,” Clinton said when she got on the phone with Obama. “I’m sorry.”

Clinton’s eventual defeat came after a series of internal campaign blunders.

“Shattered” depicts Clinton as still agonizing over her failed 2008 presidential bid, sifting through top campaign staffers’ emails to figure out what went wrong.

Clinton had one of her aides download the emails of her top campaign staff to find leakers from the 2008 campaign, a source told the authors of the book.

“She had a mosaic pieced together that if you read a transcript of it, you would have thought it was someone who had sat at headquarters every day, and it was remarkably accurate,” a Clinton aide told the authors. “She just had it pegged.”

When Clinton again chose to run in the 2016 race, she was met with an unexpectedly tough primary rival: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

The Vermont senator had policy differences with Clinton and didn’t want to let her run on her more moderate economic ideas unchallenged, according to the book.

“His feelings about her, which were less than positive, revolved around policy differences and revolved around her allegiance to an old form of campaigning relying on big money and the people who raise it for you,” said one Sanders confidant.

When speaking in April 2014 with liberal radio talk show host Bill Press, who is also a columnist for The Hill, Sanders said he had been thinking about running for president. He said he wanted to ensure progressive issues were “front and center in the 2016 campaign.”

“Hillary’s not going to raise them on her own,” he reportedly said. “Somebody’s got to do it.”

The Vermont senator “couldn’t stand the idea of Hillary pulling the country back into the Clinton White House years,” according to the book.

Sanders launched his campaign shortly after Clinton in early 2015. After a long primary competition that saw Sanders end up being a competitive challenger, the progressive Vermont senator endorsed his Democratic rival.

But even after conceding, Sanders wouldn’t totally walk the Clinton campaign line. In September, members of the Clinton campaign contacted Sanders aides and shared a script of an ad they wanted Sanders to record.

At the end of the script for the ad — which would have Sanders touting Clinton for certain policy positions — Sanders was expected to use one of the campaign’s slogans:

“I’m with her.”

But Sanders objected.

“It’s so phony!” he said. “I don’t want to say that.”

The Vermont senator didn’t use the slogan in the recorded ad, which never ended up running on television after focus groups found Sanders’s endorsement insincere.

“People didn’t feel that it was an authentic pitch for her and what she wanted to do,” said one Clinton aide familiar with focus group responses. “It even had some backlash in folks saying that he’s not really supporting her.”

Clinton faced another growing challenge throughout her run: the controversy over her use of a private server while serving as secretary of State.

Former President Bill Clinton originally did not want his wife to apologize for her use of a private email server, even as many of Hillary Clinton’s top advisers told her to apologize and get past the issue.

But the former president said his wife, rather than apologize, should explain what she was thinking and why she “didn’t see anything wrong with it,” according to the book.

In August 2015, during a visit to Iowa, Hillary Clinton took responsibility for her decision, saying it “clearly wasn’t the best choice” and noting that she should have used two email accounts instead. The issue lingered.

During a later interview, Clinton went even further and apologized.

“That was a mistake,” she said. “I’m sorry about that. I take responsibility.”

Obama thought Clinton badly mishandled the controversy over her email server, according to the book.

“He couldn’t understand what possessed Hillary to set up the private e-mail server, and her handling of the scandal — obfuscate, deny, and evade — amounted to political malpractice,” the authors wrote.

Still, Obama felt good about her chances. Campaigning against Trump, Obama boasted that it was “too easy” and assured one financier that Clinton had the race in the bag.

That was despite campaign shake-ups that saw campaign manager Robby Mook sidelined, with the candidate frequently lamenting that she lacked a clear message. Clinton’s kick-off speech was considered so directionless, according to the book, that Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau quit working on it and refused to be paid — a move that also kept his name off of campaign finance filings.

On the night of her defeat, Clinton pushed for a conciliatory concession speech.

“Look, I really just want to concede gracefully, wish him the best, thank everybody, and get off the stage,” she said. “This is not a moment for me to do more than that.”

But aides urged her to use the speech to take a more combative stance against the new president.

“Everything you said, we’re going to do in the speech,” chief campaign strategist Jake Sullivan said, according to the book.

“But you have been saying for many months that he’s temperamentally unfit and that he would be dangerous, and if you meant it, you should say it,” he told her.

“And you made a case that all these people’s rights and safety are in danger — if you meant that, you should say it.”

Clinton responded that it wasn’t her “job” anymore to come out against Trump.

“Other people will criticize him. That’s their job. I have done it. I just lost, and that is that,” she continued.
“That was my last race.”
http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign...overconfidence

[tsuke]

i want to find out why she couldnt do a concession speech on election night Was it a woman thing?

[Getin the ring]

Hillary became the most despicable, sad, pathetic not only politician, but woman, mother, wife to ever walk this earth over the course of her Presidential run. Culminating in the shocking election night defeat with all of her supporters breaking down emotionally for all the world to see.

Following politics most of my adult life I have to say this has been my pinnacle, my crème de creme

[MAGA MAN]

i want to find out why she couldnt do a concession speech on election night Was it a woman thing?

She never planned for it. That, and she lacks the capability to speak unprepared.

[tsuke]

She never planned for it. That, and she lacks the capability to speak unprepared.

ehh all the other male candidates were able to concede.

[anatta]

she ran a crappy campaign. her message was "i'm with her"..WTF is that.
The book says at one time there were 20 people writing a speech! She offered nothing except "im not Trump"..

it wasn't the Russians,it wasn't Comey -it was all hers.

[Stretch]

She put no real effort into her campaign, took the rust belt and unions' support for granted, totally unable to relate to common Americans' concerns & issues, didn't pay attention to the messages which were overwhelmingly well-received by tens of thousands of human beings at DJT rallies.
She remained stuck in her snowflake bubble of a fantasy world ignoring concerns of the working class and just regurgitated all the old Dem play book pandering to minority "box groups" (women, blacks, Latinos, gays, etc.) while turning a blind eye to the working class majority.
And, for the New World Order promoter that she was, she chose to remain ignorant of the growing opposition world-wide to the world's dissatisfaction with that idea...a.k.a. Brexit. She followed Soros to her doom.
She's a washed-up, bitter, complaining, whining old nag stuck in the past while the world passes her by.

[anatta]

She put no real effort into her campaign, took the rust belt and unions' support for granted, totally unable to relate to common Americans' concerns & issues, didn't pay attention to the messages which were overwhelmingly well-received by tens of thousands of human beings at DJT rallies.
She remained stuck in her snowflake bubble of a fantasy world ignoring concerns of the working class and just regurgitated all the old Dem play book pandering to minority "box groups" (women, blacks, Latinos, gays, etc.) while turning a blind eye to the working class majority.
And, for the New World Order promoter that she was, she chose to remain ignorant of the growing opposition world-wide to the world's dissatisfaction with that idea...a.k.a. Brexit. She followed Soros to her doom.
She's a washed-up, bitter, complaining, whining old nag stuck in the past while the world passes her by.

other then that....lol..

[MAGA MAN]

ehh all the other male candidates were able to concede.

They all planned for it.

[blackascoal]

:0) I guess right-wingers have to find something to talk about.

Current events does not scream for their thoughts and opinion. :0)

[tsuke]

:0) I guess right-wingers have to find something to talk about.

Current events does not scream for their thoughts and opinion. :0)

they just released the book i believe.

[Stretch]

other then that....lol..

LOL!!!! Yeah and communing with the dead Eleanor Roosevelt couldn't even conjure up a win for this bedraggled witch.

[blackascoal]

they just released the book i believe.

Understood .. but current events stand as a repudiation to all the noise about how failed a candidate she was.

She was running against a clown that almost no one believed there were that many people dumb enough to elect him.

Current events demonstrate that Trump is the clown everyone knew him to be.

Does the book mention that?

[cawacko]

Understood .. but current events stand as a repudiation to all the noise about how failed a candidate she was.

She was running against a clown that almost no one believed there were that many enough people dumb enough to elect him.

Current events demonstrate that Trump is the clown everyone knew him to be.

Does the book mention that?

She was a hated candidate and lost to a clown. What does it say about the Democratic Party that they only had one candidate who could run and that person couldn't beat a clown?

[Cancel 2018.1]

She never planned for it. That, and she lacks the capability to speak unprepared.

She needs polling data before making a speech.