Shattered or Contorted? What a New Book Gets Wrong about the Clinton Campaign

[stevenleser]

Shattered” or Contorted? What a New Book Gets Wrong about the Clinton Campaign

https://medium.com/@creynoldsnc/shattered-or-contorted-what-a-new-book-gets-wrong-about-the-clinton-campaign-7c566a4fa786

Update - Better link: https://goo.gl/pV6c0C

In politics, as Winston Churchill once noted, history is written by the victors. Pundits and politicos take that one step further, framing the winning campaigns as geniuses and the losing campaigns as the Keystone Cops. In a new book, “Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign,” the overarching narrative paints a picture of a campaign bogged down by infighting which as a result is paralyzed, leading to its own eventual demise.

I’m not writing to debate where the blame lies for the loss. While I’ve certainly got opinions (and a list of my own mistakes I’d love to take back), I’ll leave that debate to the media. And I’m not here to fact check, except to note that contrary to the book, I was not the research director — that was a talented man named Tony Carrk who led a terrific team.

I wanted to speak out because after spending most of the campaign watching some people question the enthusiasm and our supporters, it’s hard to read a depiction of the campaign that paints a dedicated, cohesive team as mercenaries with questionable motives who lacked a loyalty to a candidate described as “imperial” and removed from the campaign.

That’s just not the campaign, the staff or the candidate I was in the trenches with for 18 months.
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[Cary]

1. "Shattered," Sowing Discord and Discontent!

Yes, indeed. What we really need is more negativity! Let's create new negative spin. Let's do KKKarl Rove's dirty work for him. The poor boy must be tired after years of lies and smears against us.

[stevenleser]

2. Agreed. I'm just glad we now have a senior staffer on record correcting the lies.

That book smelled from the getgo.

[Cary]

11. It's amazing how the radical left has no problem coopting tactics of the radical right

If they can't sell their whatever (and I really don't understand what it is exactly they're trying to sell) honestly then what's the point?

[Warren DeMontague]

3. I just finished reading the book, and I have to wonder if the critics read the same one.

I didn't think it painted a particularly damning picture of her campaign; it suggested there were organizational difficulties and strategic errors and maybe a few personality conflicts, but I would think that kind of thing is more the rule than the exception with any group of humans involved in such an arduous and stressful task.

My quick rundown on how it makes the principal characters come off:

Barack and Michelle Obama probably come out looking the best. Dedicated, enthusiastic, hitting the ball out of the park when needed for the campaign. Obama's sole fault may have been too much optimism.

Joe Biden comes out looking fine, apparently came closer to running than was believed at the time.

Hillary Clinton comes off as easily the most prepared, hard-working, knowledgeable candidate in the race. Her mistakes are not portrayed as actions of malice but maybe misreading the electorate or else overcompensating for mistakes of the 2008 campaign in ways that hurt the 2016 one.

Bill Clinton comes off as slightly unpredictable, committing a couple unforced errors we know about, the biggest one the tarmac meeting with Lynch. Nevertheless his political instincts were probably more accurate than some of the younger leaders of Hillary's campaign, but unfortunately his advice was not always listened to.

Bernie Sanders is not portrayed as a hero- he is shown to be difficult, obstinate, hard to work with, not entirely prepared, and his primary attacks on Hillary's credibility are posited to have done real damage to her perception in the general, a point I see made here repeatedly.

Robby Mook gets a bit of a drubbing for being overly analytical and data-focused, to the point of making what would turn out to be some strategic errors. But even he isn't crucified by the book.

The only two people who come out of the thing looking like human train wrecks are Donald Trump and Debbie Wasserman Schultz.


It's hardly some right-wing hit piece on HRC or her campaign.

[ProfessorPlum]

4. thanks for the quick overview

[QC]

5. Hmmm, are people who have actually *read* books

allowed to comment on them here?

[Warren DeMontague]

6. Im sure I will find out.

[librechik]

10. Thanks Warren! I didn't want to pick it up myself.

now I won't automatically hate the authors. I have fierce biases.
Cheers

[stevenleser]

7. What did it say about the Comey letter and Russian meddling?

Did they, as Nate Silver just did, say she would have won without the Comey interference, or did the book blame her and her campaign for the loss?

The excerpts I read suggest those other factors were ignored by the book in terms of analyzing the why of the loss.

[Warren DeMontague]

13. No, it pretty clearly states that the Comey letter took the wind out of her campaign's sails and

lopped a few percentage points off her numbers, enough to make the difference- and states that Comey's "exoneration", what, 72 hours later only had the effect of, paradoxically, enraging Trump supporters and driving them to the polls- so it just made it worse, according to the internal polling or data.

One point the book made that had completely escaped me- because October was such a fucked up, crazy month-- the information about Russian involvement came out on the same day as the pussygrabbing tape. So while we were all like "holy shit he's done" oddly enough the timing of the release had the effect of drowning out this other potentially earth-shattering piece of data.

[OKNancy]

8. Thanks for this. Jonathan Allen has written favorably about Hillary in the past

So, I was surprised when some people called him nasty names. From all I've read by him in the past, he likes and admires Hillary.

[stevenleser]

9. If the book ignores Comeys interference and Russian meddling in assigning blame for the loss

then the authors deserve criticism

[stevenleser]

12. Crickets to my question? nt

[Warren DeMontague]

14. I think I keep different hours than you, Steve.

Not a whole lot I can do about that.

[beam me up scottie]

15. Thanks for your unbiased summary.

The more I'm told NOT to read this book the more likely I am to read it just to see what all the fuss is about.