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May 13, 2017 - January 31, 2018
We’re not allowed to have nice things.
Jake Sullivan
In early March, just as she was planning to reintroduce herself to a nation that felt it knew her all too well with a video announcement of her campaign, the New York Times reported that Hillary had used an e-mail address tied to a personal server at her family home in Chappaqua to conduct official State Department business.
The Mook Mafia,
The State Crew,
The Consultants,
The Communications Shop,
But even as Podesta provided guidance to Mook, the two clashed stylistically from the outset.
In addition, the people close to Clinton didn’t know politics, and the political pros she’d hired didn’t know her very well.
the failure of the speech to connect Hillary to a cause larger than herself.
Reporters immediately noticed that an overflow area set up with massive TV screens was empty.
some of the topics outside Mook’s authority: “e-mails, the foundation, speeches, candidate time, policy.
a scrappy grassroots super PAC called Ready for Hillary. And not even the expressed wishes of Bill and Hillary Clinton could keep Mook from crushing it.
She had set up rival power centers everywhere. And no one had enough authority to make the others play nice.
Nor was anyone empowered to both enforce Hillary’s will and tell her when she was wrong without fear of reprisal.
As she had at State, Abedin concerned herself with elements of the operation for which she had no credentials.
She had the final say on where Hillary went and who had access to her. Rather than just being a gatekeeper, Abedin took on the role of channeling Hillary for the rest of the campaign. That created internal resentment, as it had at the State Department.
Abedin was a walking political time bomb.
She couldn’t be counted on to relay constructive criticism to Hillary without pointing a finger at the critic.
His desire to help Hillary win and his defense of his own legacy would be in constant conflict throughout the campaign.
And the specter of his extramarital sexual activity, and Hillary’s response to it, would become a major theme of the Republican strategy to defeat her.
Much of this infighting might have been avoided had someone been given the authority to have the final say on matters large and small. But Hillary distributed power so broadly that none of her aides or advisers had control of the whole apparatus.