7 Takeaways From a New Book on the Clinton Campaign
The first signs came just after 7 p.m. on Election Night, a trickle of tepid polling returns out of Virginia. From there, things went sideways in a hurry. Huge Republican turnout across rural Florida prompted a top Democratic Florida sage to phone Hillary Clinton's advisers before 8 p.m. to inform them that she had lost the Sunshine State. Within a few hours, the coronation was off, Clinton was prodded by Barack Obama into making an unthinkable concession call, and a campaign convinced it was on the brink of electing the first female president was left puzzling over how it had all gone awry. This is the question at the heart of Shattered, a new autopsy of the campaign by authors Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes. Told largely through background interviews with campaign staff and a tangle of Clinton insiders, the book is a comprehensive chronicle of how her quest for the White House lurched and sputtered toward ignominious defeat. Richly reported, if not often revelatory, it portrays a campaign beset by strategic errors, a factional staff consumed with power struggles and a candidate with a poor feel for the electorate. Here are seven takeaways from Shattered