Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign

by Jonathan Allen

By announcing a strategy to make Hillary seem more real, her team had actually achieved the opposite effect.

Here she was, six months into her campaign, having traveled the country, and she still didn’t quite grasp the underlying sentiments of the electorate.

“I don’t understand what’s happening with the country. I can’t get my arms around it,” Hillary confided.

Hillary still couldn’t figure out why Americans were so angry or how she could bring the country together.

it wasn’t at all clear to them that she was on their side.

see that she was doing nothing to inspire the poor, rural, and working-class white voters who had so identified with her husband.

Fundamentally, she was misreading the mood of the voters.

By ceding the reformer mantle to Sanders—and to Trump—Hillary was dismissing a whole world’s worth of evidence that she was running into the headwinds of history.

It was highly unusual, if not unprecedented, for the FBI director to read out the findings of an investigation when the target wouldn’t be charged.

Another potential candidate who had surfaced during the selection process—largely under the radar—was Joe Biden.

By mid-July, it was basically down to Virginia senator Tim Kaine, New Jersey senator Cory Booker, Vilsack, and Warren.

More important, she’d reinforced the public perception that she was always hiding something.

DNC chairwoman Donna Brazile became even more worried about the absence of ground forces in major swing states.

Despite a major field operation in the state, her organizers were frustrated that Mook wouldn’t provide basic resources like campaign literature so they could try to persuade voters to back Hillary.

She put a fine point on the factors she believed cost her the presidency: the FBI (Comey), the KGB (the old name for Russia’s intelligence service), and the KKK (the support Trump got from white nationalists).