"Shattered" by Jonathan Alan and Amie Parnes.

Above: "Shattered - Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign." Jonathan Allan and Amie Parnes. 402 pages.
I completed reading this book today.

I had a hard time restraining my schadenfreude (but, I did!) in reading the book's riveting accounts of the shock, tears and disappointment of Hillary's supporters on learning that she would lose the election.

Which one is true:

1. Hillary World.

The media bought into an absurd and partisan Republican-led investigation into her e-mail server that combined with Bernie Sander's attack on her character and a conservative assault on the Clinton Foundation's practices to sow a public perception that she was fundamentally dishonest. From there, Comey's unprecedented public condemnation of her handling of the server, the Russian cyberattacks on the DNC and Podesta's e-mail account, and new voter ID laws suppressed support for her. Comey's final exoneration of her enraged Trump backers pushed them back to the polls in droves. Misogyny played a quiet role in turning men against her without an offsetting boost in support for women. She nailed every major moment of the campaign. She won all three debates. Her convention speech was masterful.

2. Real World (?)

Hillary bears blame for her defeat. Her actions before the campaign hamstrung her own chances so badly that she couldn't recover. eg. setting up the private server, putting her name on the Clinton Foundation, and giving high payout speeches to Wall Street at a time of rising populism. While she had visions of power, she was unable to show voters she had a vision for the country. She couldn't cast herself as anything but a lifelong insider when so much of the country had lost faith in its institutions and yearned for a fresh approach to governance. All of this fed a narrative of dynastic privilege that was woefully out of touch with the sentiment of an increasingly restive American electorate, particularly a middle class whose economic position fell further and further behind the American rich.

The authors interviewed "hundreds" of campaign insiders, most of whom insisted on anonymity.

Readers will make up their own mind after reading the book as to which camp per the above two interpretations of Hillary's loss they belong to, but, several insights coming from the authors' research stand above interpretation.

To wit:

Analytics versus gut. Campaign manager, millenial, Robby Mook, was a data nut. Though many campaign players were doubtful of his effectiveness, Hillary stayed with him. Obama had used big data analytics to his benefit, with Mook's help. The Big Dog wasn't totally comfortable with Mook. Gut told him that blue collar voters in big, midwestern states were restive... notwithstanding, Mook's models and projections said that those states (Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania) were "in the bag." Gut feel people, including the Big Dog, thought the the campaign, and the candidate, should be spending more money and energy talking to the restive, white, working class voters. The Big Dog worried that the populism of Brexit had spilled over into the US, and that Mook's models hadn't picked it up. Models with bad assumptions... in this case, not factoring in the populist movement throughout the world... delivered bad forecasts. Hillary paid a heavy price for over-reliance on data analytics and not enough on gut, including her husband's gut.

Deplorables. Hillary, followed in Obama's footsteps in attempting to marginalize white, working class people... people who owned guns, raised families, worked for a living, and played by the rules.. the very people who had been loyal democrats in the past. Obama talked about the white, non-educated segment of the country as being "clingers to their Bibles and guns," Hillary labeled the same segment as "deplorables." Obama was successful in marginalizing the white, working class voting cohort substituting Blacks, Hispanics and Millenials as strong Democrat voting constituencies, where Hillary was not. Hillary was unable to capture a comparable level of the "minority" vote as Obama did, while the "deplorables" had been through another four years of the economic doldrums under Obama. The less educated white working class, once burned, twice shy, this time, ignored and marginalized by Hillary, came out in droves to vote for Trump.

Campaign Organization. No one individual in Hillary's campaign organization was vested with strong authority. Hillary's campaign staff spent as much time in self dealing, internecine squabbling as they did advancing the candidate. Insiders say that campaign organization dysfunction hampered Hillary's messaging. There is much in the book chronicling staff infighting.

Bernie Sanders. Sanders had a populist following that overlapped Trump's following. His primary successes bedeviled the Clinton campaign. His insistence in not ending his campaign when it was generally perceived that he had no chance of winning the nomination, slowed the momentum of Hillary's campaign in shifting her campaign's emphasis to go against Trump.

Externalities. Loretta Lynch's ill advised meeting with the Big Dog on the Phoenix Airport tarmac and Comey's insertion of himself into the vacuum created by Lynch's "recusal," may have influenced voter turnout in Trump's favor. However, Hillary supporters acknowledged to the authors that Comey's investigation of her use of a private server for e-mails was her own fault. Even Obama questioned Hillary's judgement in using a private server.

Candidate Likeability. Hillary's negatives were among the highest of any candidate who has run for the presidency in modern times. She could not shake the voter perception of her being untrustworthy.

I confess to being a biased reader of this book. Back at the time of Hillary's scandals as first lady (missing Rose billing records, Whitewater, and Cattle Futures) I sent a good sized check to Judicial Watch who put forward a good case (so it seemed to me at the time) that they could stymie the Clintons with fraud cases. They were unsuccessful and, in acute disappointment, I never sent them money again. My antipathy to HRC is long felt.

I viewed HRC's ascendancy as a left wing created narrative... smartest woman in the world, first woman president, yada yada. I, on the other hand, saw her as a harpy having no accomplishments of her own while riding on the coattails of her husband.

Furthermore, her politics were globalist and secular where Trump's are nationalist. I feel that the smaller government proposed by Trump will give rise to more individual freedom, religious freedom (stronger culture) and greater economic growth. So, I would have voted for Trump had even a more credible candidate with HRC's politics run in her place.

I had a hard time restraining my schadenfreude (but, I did!) in reading the book's riveting accounts of the, shock, tears and disappointment of Hillary's supporters on learning that she would lose the election.

Its a good, page turning, read. Laced with anecdotes and speculations from many key campaign players and Clinton associates, the book was hard to put down, and easy to get back to when time allowed.

Boy, people, including Hillary, are using the "f" word a lot these days, aren't they?