First published 2017
Hillary Clinton expected to win. The polls showed her ahead. The pundits called it inevitable. Then November 8, 2016 arrived, and everything fell apart. Political reporters Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes reconstruct how Clinton's presidential campaign collapsed from the inside out. They trace the missteps that began before the campaign officially launched and followed through to election night. The authors argue that Clinton herself created the conditions for defeat. Her struggle to define a clear message left voters unmoved. Her team failed to learn from Bernie Sanders' populist challenge in the primary. FBI Director James Comey's interventions damaged her, but the deeper problems lay within. Through interviews with campaign insiders at every level, Allen and Parnes reveal the strategic errors and missed chances that turned a winnable race into a devastating loss. The book chronicles Clinton's difficulty connecting with an angry electorate and her campaign's inability to adapt to the political moment that Donald Trump seized.
Genres: political-science, politics, biography-memoir, 21st-century, american-history
Vibes: emotional, fast-paced, thought-provoking
Tropes: insider-perspective, political-intrigue, strategic-errors
Setting: United States
Period: 2016
464 pages · Hardcover · Crown