Shattered - BookWyrm

No cover — Jonathan Allen: Shattered (2017, Crown, Broadway Books)

464 pages

English language

Published April 23, 2017 by Crown, Broadway Books.

ISBN:: 978-0-553-44711-8
OCLC Number:: 981761495

(6 reviews)

"It was never supposed to be this close. And of course she was supposed to win. How Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election to Donald Trump is the tragic story of a sure thing gone off the rails. For every Comey revelation or hindsight acknowledgment about the electorate, no explanation of defeat can begin with anything other than the core problem of Hillary's campaign--the candidate herself. Through deep access to insiders from the top to the bottom of the campaign, political writers Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes have reconstructed the key decisions and unseized opportunities, the well-intentioned misfires and the hidden thorns that turned a winnable contest into a devastating loss. Drawing on the authors' deep knowledge of Hillary from their previous book, the acclaimed biography HRC, Shattered will offer an object lesson in how Hillary herself made victory an uphill battle, how her difficulty articulating a vision irreparably hobbled …

"It was never supposed to be this close. And of course she was supposed to win. How Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election to Donald Trump is the tragic story of a sure thing gone off the rails. For every Comey revelation or hindsight acknowledgment about the electorate, no explanation of defeat can begin with anything other than the core problem of Hillary's campaign--the candidate herself. Through deep access to insiders from the top to the bottom of the campaign, political writers Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes have reconstructed the key decisions and unseized opportunities, the well-intentioned misfires and the hidden thorns that turned a winnable contest into a devastating loss. Drawing on the authors' deep knowledge of Hillary from their previous book, the acclaimed biography HRC, Shattered will offer an object lesson in how Hillary herself made victory an uphill battle, how her difficulty articulating a vision irreparably hobbled her impact with voters, and how the campaign failed to internalize the lessons of populist fury from the hard-fought primary against Bernie Sanders. Moving blow-by-blow from the campaign's difficult birth through the bewildering terror of election night, Shattered tells an unforgettable story with urgent lessons both political and personal, filled with revelations that will change the way readers understand just what happened to America on November 8, 2016"--Provided by publisher.

1 edition

DaveNash3 reviewed Shattered by Jonathan Allen

Review of 'Shattered' on 'Storygraph'

4 stars

Very much a pulp-politico but that doesn't mean its not an addictive read for political junkies and those searching for meaning in the 2016 election results.

Uninspiring campaign speeches like HRC’s kickoff on Roosevelt Island and DNC acceptance speech serve as microcosm of the flaws in her campaign. The speeches had too many cooks in the kitchen, too long on policy details and too short on vision, and tried too hard for the headlining sound bite. Reaching for that bite perpetuated her phony image. People get vision, but not policy details. Too many layers of consultants and managers and fiefdoms is exactly what kills big government and big business.

Her manager over-emphasized data. HRC took a beating because Bernie hung in the primary all the way to the convention. The data was right: the laser focus on super-delegates gave Clinton an insurmountable advantage as early as March 15. The data …

Very much a pulp-politico but that doesn't mean its not an addictive read for political junkies and those searching for meaning in the 2016 election results.

Uninspiring campaign speeches like HRC’s kickoff on Roosevelt Island and DNC acceptance speech serve as microcosm of the flaws in her campaign. The speeches had too many cooks in the kitchen, too long on policy details and too short on vision, and tried too hard for the headlining sound bite. Reaching for that bite perpetuated her phony image. People get vision, but not policy details. Too many layers of consultants and managers and fiefdoms is exactly what kills big government and big business.

Her manager over-emphasized data. HRC took a beating because Bernie hung in the primary all the way to the convention. The data was right: the laser focus on super-delegates gave Clinton an insurmountable advantage as early as March 15. The data missed the story: Bernie scored media victories every time he won a state, every time he held a packed rally of Bernie Bros.

The data was against ground games. The data supported not spending money. The data backed the irony - no other candidate raised as much money or was so tightfisted with it. You can’t take the money with you, but Presidents live on forever. HRC's inability to see the forest for the trees is a recurring theme.

The 2016 lesson should be – run a candidate with a clear vision, who connects to voters, and who has a pitch besides “I’m not Trump”. Voter turnout is the most difficult metric to predict and the Achilles heel to data models. Unexpected voter turnout levels kills the predictions. As Nat Silver finds in The Signal and The Noise, the best in any game use a hybrid quantitative and qualitative approach. And Silver predicted the Trump victory.