Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign

by Jonathan Allen

It started with the “blue wall”—eighteen states, plus the District of Columbia, that had voted for the Democratic presidential nominee in every election since 1992. They accounted for 242 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. From there, you expanded the playing field of battleground states to provide as many “paths” as possible to get the remaining 28 electoral votes.

Hillary knew she hadn’t won over a lot of the veterans. No matter what she tried, it was hard to convince people who didn’t want to envision her as president that they should vote for her anyway. This was as true for a group of mostly conservative veterans as it was for many other Americans, including a lot of less-educated whites who had long ago made up their minds about her. For some, her education, privilege, and perceived sense of entitlement were more off-putting than her agenda, her secrecy, or even the way her voice hit their ears. She wasn’t like them.