Review of Clinton Campaign Book, Part III, Odds and Ends
[guest post by JVW]
I wanted to finish up my three-part review of Shattered by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, the book that chronicled the collapse of the campaign of the Past, Present, and Future Inevitable Next President of the United States, First Lady/Senator/Secretary Hillary! Rodham Clinton, Her Royal Clintonic Majesty. The book has been sitting on my table for a month now, and I plan to send it off to my dad as a Father’s Day present. Part I of my review is located here and Part II can be found here. In those two parts I recounted many of the personalities involved in the campaign, as well as the inside info the authors provide on some of the pivotal moments in the run-up to the 2016 elections. What is left to report are some interesting anecdotes that did not make it into the first two parts, so here they are:
1) The authors mention that the campaign’s chief strategist, Joel Benenson, had a $1 million win bonus written in to his contract. Presumably this is standard operating procedure in Washington and the other campaign flacks had similar bonus structures. This makes me even happier to see them lose.
2) I mentioned in Part I of the review that the First Creep, Bill Clinton, found himself continually flummoxed that what he and Clintonland always believed had been a successful eight year reign in the White House had somehow turned into a liability. On the primary campaign stump for his wife in South Carolina, Bubba got into it with a Black Lives Matters member who told him that his crime bill had been racist. Bubba left that encounter believing that he had deftly parried the attack and exposed the crybully as being shortsighted and obtuse, only to have the campaign team “[light] into him” and tell him that he’s pushing young blacks to the arms of Bernie Sanders.
3) Allegedly, Hillary hates Chris Van Hollen, a member of the House Democrat leadership team, who at the time was running for a Senate seat in Maryland. Van Hollen had been one of the first Democrats to jump off her bandwagon in 2008 in order to catch the Obama Express. At one point the authors quote Hillary as blurting out, “Who gives a fuck about Chris Van Hollen?” The White House and the Maryland Democrat Party try to grease the skids for Van Hollen to defeat his female African-American opponent in the primary race by not doing the traditional get-out-the-vote campaign in the black community. Hillary’s team cried foul, and after tense negotiations a bare modicum of the get-out-the-vote campaign was put in place, though Van Hollen won pretty handily anyway.
4) I mentioned in the past two posts that the authors are certainly politically-sympathetic to Hillary and the Democrats. It often allows them to overlook some ideas that might be obvious to the rest of us. For instance, the never once mention the scandal uncovered by the email leaks that Donna Brazile was feeding debate questions in advance to the Clinton campaign, yet they praise Hillary for delivering fully-conceived and detailed responses to debate questions. Later the authors tell us that “a question [debate prep head Ron] Klain asked behind closed doors about a possible no-fly zone over Syria was repeated almost verbatim by moderator Chris Wallace in the third [Presidential] debate,” yet the authors don’t stop to wonder if perhaps the Hillary campaign was still being fed questions.
5) A very telling anecdote here: Hillary in her acceptance speech at the convention wanted to put in a quote from the popular Broadway hit Hamilton, a musical that coastal progressive elites shell out $1000 to see. Hillary naturally had already seen it twice. Some alert staffers wondered if the reference will go over the heads of the vast majority of the public who are not able to jump on a plane and spend an expensive weekend in Manhattan purchasing scalped tickets to see that show, but Hillary overruled them and the reference stayed in. It serves as a great metaphor of what is wrong with today’s Democrat Party.
6) Ah, Chelsea. This is just perfect. The authors speak of a gathering of the Clinton brain trust with Chelsea and her husband in attendance. Without a trace of irony, they report the following: “As Chelsea nursed her infant son, Aidan, and asked her daughter , Charlotte, if she wanted auga — Clinton and her husband, Marc Mezvinsky, were raising their kids to be bilingual. . .” Can’t you just see Chelsea speaking a handful of Spanglish phrases to her daughter — “Do you want some agua?” “Come on honey, vamos.” — and pretending that they are raising her to be bilingual? But hey, maybe Elena, the Dominican nanny that they no doubt employ and pay under the table just like the other rich progressive parents in Manhattan, is carrying the load in young Charlotte’s linguistic upbringing.
7) Having suffered through financial problems in her 2008 campaign, Hillary was obsessed with fundraising. Immediately after the convention, at a time when she should have been out trying to connect with voters in Middle America, she instead embarked upon a series of fundraisers in Manhattan, Washington, Palm Beach, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Silicon Valley. At that point she had about 800 staffers on her payroll, as opposed to her opponent’s 130, and she really freaked out when the Republican nominee raised $80 million in July.
8) The relationship between Robby Mook and John Podesta never healed. They engaged in a nasty pissing match in front of the rest of the campaign staff at a retreat in upstate New York in June, and thereafter both men fought to freeze each other out of key decisions. That’s a preview of the kind of dysfunction that Hillary likely would have brought to her White House staff.
9) Regarding the “deplorable” remark, it was made at one of the first Hillary campaign events open to the media, and the authors claim that Hillary didn’t realize that the media was there. She was used to those types of events being closed, which makes you wonder what other sorts of things she said behind closed doors.
10) Be glad you are not this guy: “The most spirit-crushing job in modern political history — managing the Podesta email portfolio — fell on the shoulders of Glen Caplin. Every morning, for the full month before the election, 44-year-old former spokesman for Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, would put on his hipster-style black-framed glasses, roll out of bed, and come into the Brooklyn office knowing that he and his team of as many as a dozen staffers would spend the day reading hundreds or thousands of Podesta’s emails.” The part about the hipster-style glasses is perfect.
11) Huma Abedin “was such a powerful force within Clintonworld that few of her colleagues dared to cross her. But some of them had always viewed her as a major vulnerability — even a ‘national security threat’ because of her potential to prevent Hillary from winning the Presidency. [. . . ] Regardless of her level of culpability — and her defenders say she’s unfairly targeted because she’s so close to Hillary — Huma was a disaster waiting to happen.” She botches the Hillary collapse at the 9/11 memorial service because (allegedly) Hillary had been given the (alleged) pneumonia diagnosis a couple of days earlier but Huma had failed to alert anyone in the campaign and that’s why several hours went by without the campaign being able to explain Hillary’s collapse.
12) Despite what the media was confidently reporting, both campaigns knew in late October that the race was tightening. The authors report on a GOP operative “with ties to the campaign” saying on October 26: “If he keeps his fucking mouth shut for the next twelve days, there are a couple of states that are going to surprise you.” The Republican nominee’s campaign was tracking a surge in Michigan and Pennsylvania, but didn’t announce them because they didn’t trust their own data and thought the numbers might be overly optimistic. At the same time, HRC campaign knew those states (and North Carolina and Florida) were getting shaky.
13) Much has been written about Hillary’s decision to forego visiting Wisconsin (Mook wouldn’t even send campaign collateral to the local offices there), but she actually wanted to campaign heavily in Michigan in the waning days, but the Michigan staff bluntly informed her that her numbers improve in the state when the election is not on people’s radar. Besides, the campaign had already grandiosely announced that they would be targeting Arizona, and to have suddenly changed plans would have alerted the suck-up media to the idea that maybe her position wasn’t as strong as they had been led to believe.
14) For all the claims that James Comey’s “October surprise” announcement lost the election for Hillary, the authors remind us that it was a fund-raising boon for her as angry liberals sent in donations to combat what they saw has outside interference.
It’s been fun reliving this campaign, and I am hoping that we learn even more in the months and years to come. We cannot be rid of the corrupt, nasty, awful, brutish Clinton Empire soon enough. Good riddance to those people and all the empty works and all of their hollow promises.
[Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.]
– JVW
Thanks for reminding me why I felt elation as well as terror last November 8.
harkin (299d24) — 5/27/2017 @ 3:57 pmso it was more like the 72 campaign in retrospect, just the rizzotto tray gang, was unwilling to describe it as such,
narciso (d1f714) — 5/27/2017 @ 4:27 pmThe Clintonians cannot fail hard enough or fast enough to compensate us for their existence.
Ronald (deada0) — 5/27/2017 @ 5:05 pmJVW,
You have done a superb job reviewing this book. I especially appreciate you breaking it up into three sections.
My takeaway, overall, is that Hillary’s campaign was mired by dishonesty and lack of trust. In other words, she set the tone and example for others. She was both dishonest and untrustworthy, as well as trusting no one around her, at least when push came to shove?
Dana (023079) — 5/27/2017 @ 5:14 pmHillary lost because it was fated that she would lose. That was the “inevitable” thing. Her campaign was just along for the ride, like Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark. As irrelevant and inconsequential as the extra 2 million votes from California.
Trump ran a chaotic, shoestring campaign, cobbled together with chewing gum and baling wire. (Or duct tape in this day and age.) How much of his own money did he have to put in? (Over $50 million.) How much turnover did he have in his campaign staff. (Lots.) How much positive press did he have? (Little.) How much opposition and negativism from inside his own party? (Lots.) Yet he still won.
nk (dbc370) — 5/27/2017 @ 5:34 pmYes, nk, and 800 staffers! Trump’s chaotic out-of-the-box campaign style will likely not be evidenced in future presidential elections. My guess is that without his prior reputation, his showmanship and shocking behavior, that he would have failed. He played a smart game and zeroed in on that which Hillary couldn’t be bothered with, but it was Trump the reality star that gave the campaign the momentum and the showmanship that Americans seem to crave. Cult of personality.
Dana (023079) — 5/27/2017 @ 5:43 pmI disagree it’s how the issues he focused on will be carried out in the next four years,
narciso (d1f714) — 5/27/2017 @ 5:47 pmAs I said, the book will be a classic in terms of studying American political campaigns. Thanks for the great review.
bfwebster (c3c3ef) — 5/27/2017 @ 5:48 pmNice series of overviews, JVW.
“But… but she can’t sink. She’s unsinkable!” – Captain Edward Smith [Laurence Naismith] ‘A Night To Remember’ 1958
DCSCA (797bc0) — 5/27/2017 @ 6:05 pmDana, I agree with every word you said, but that only describes the particular iceberg that the “unsinkable” Hillarytanic collided with. There were many others out there besides Trump that would have sunk her as well, in my opinion.
nk (dbc370) — 5/27/2017 @ 6:07 pmHeh! I swear, DCSCA, I hadn’t seen your comment when I posted mine.
nk (dbc370) — 5/27/2017 @ 6:08 pmone suspects, that there is a mole in the dnc, how could they continue to narrowcast with willful blindness, the woman’s march, and other denial of the underlying issues,
narciso (d1f714) — 5/27/2017 @ 6:08 pmShe’s still blaming the Russians. Blame it on the video, Hillary.
[FLASHBACK] Hillary blames an awful internet video when the bodies of 4 Dead Americans arrive home
(just watched 13 Hours The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi)
papertiger (c8116c) — 5/27/2017 @ 6:13 pm@11. LOL Great minds amuse alike. nk. Blind arrogance, insular over confidence and positively wretched pantsuits should have signaled a disaster in the making.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 5/27/2017 @ 6:18 pmit was the board room of 20th century vole,
narciso (d1f714) — 5/27/2017 @ 6:23 pmthe other Rs Mr. Trump ran against sucked balls and so did Hillary
Hillary even moreso cause she had all the cnn anderson cooper fake news propaganda sluts going to bat for her
the lesson then is that if you want to run against President Trump you should not suck balls
happyfeet (28a91b) — 5/27/2017 @ 6:28 pmis it weird that this is the first time i’m hearing the name “Joel Benenson”
happyfeet (28a91b) — 5/27/2017 @ 6:30 pmif perhaps the Hillary campaign was still being fed questions
it’s also very possible the Hillary campaign fed fox news propaganda slut Chris Wallace some questions
happyfeet (28a91b) — 5/27/2017 @ 6:33 pmthe campaign had already grandiosely announced that they would be targeting Arizona
you can bet Meghan’s coward daddy way bad wanted her to win
i wonder if he encouraged her to do this
happyfeet (28a91b) — 5/27/2017 @ 6:39 pmway bad wanted her to win Arizona i mean to say
happyfeet (28a91b) — 5/27/2017 @ 6:40 pmMy schadefreude du jour is still the French election. In the final debate, Marine LePen said: “In any case, France will be led by a woman. Either me or Mrs. Merkel.” And 2 out of 3 French voters said: “We’ll take Mrs. Merkel.”
nk (dbc370) — 5/27/2017 @ 6:47 pmand what did the great hollandaise premiership yield, ftr I’d have preferred dsk because he understood economics, despite being a jackass, they ignored the event in Toulouse, and history came calling at Charlie hebdo and the bataclan,
narciso (d1f714) — 5/27/2017 @ 6:51 pmNk, I don’t get that either wrt icebergs. All but Jebbers could have put it together a little differently and kept some of us up till noon, but still would have done it.
urbanleftbehind (847a06) — 5/27/2017 @ 6:51 pmShe was deplorable as a candidate, wonder how Bill would describe her as a wife?
mg (31009b) — 5/27/2017 @ 6:56 pmWell, some Trump supporters are monotheists. “There is no Savior but Trump and Kellyanne is his prophet.”
nk (dbc370) — 5/27/2017 @ 6:57 pmhe was Obama’s pollster back in 2012,
it really is extraordinary as they can’t credit the candidate or his campaign manager, hence the grishenko gambit,
narciso (d1f714) — 5/27/2017 @ 7:01 pmNice summary. My wife is reading it and I do so when she is finished.
Mike K (f469ea) — 5/27/2017 @ 7:03 pmGreat post, JVW! Whatever one thinks of President Trump, the simple fact that Clinton did not win the election is a wonderful thing. Good riddance to the bad rubbish of ClintonLand.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 5/27/2017 @ 7:26 pmQuite an indictment of the reality TV game-show host who said “I know Hillary and I think she’d make a great president.”
Dave (711345) — 5/27/2017 @ 7:28 pmHillary failed to convey any energy or vision, as she drifted left she alienated the white lower class.
mg (31009b) — 5/27/2017 @ 7:29 pmMrs. Stiff had little chance with that shrill style she has mastered.
LePen was not swarthy enough for some.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 5/27/2017 @ 7:30 pmMy gosh, with a speaking voice like this, if she would’ve won, there would’ve been a steady increase in the suicide rate for at least the next 4 years… https://youtu.be/YrO7KDMfx_0
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 5/27/2017 @ 7:36 pmYou do realize people are paid to say stuff like that on TV, don’t you? Or do you think TV is “real”? You talk like you never heard a TV game show host bull$hit before. Listen to Colbert sometime . Everything from “welcome” to “good night” is crap, lies and innuendo.
Rev.Hoagie® (630eca) — 5/27/2017 @ 7:57 pmDave is slow on the ball, he thought jon stewart was real news, yes trump supported Hillary, and then maverick in the general, and slobbered over Obama for the better part of a year,
narciso (d1f714) — 5/27/2017 @ 8:10 pmStill waiting to hear how Putin hacked the Clinton brain trust into not allowing the candidate to campaign in Wisconsin.
“How we deal with matters here must be held secret from our enemies. We control events better when we control opinion.”
General Reinhard Heydrich – Conspiracy – 2001
harkin (9fca6c) — 5/27/2017 @ 8:17 pmYes; and the technical term for those people is “shill”.
You’re saying you think Trump took money from the Clinton crime family to endorse Hillary? So much for “Trump can’t be bought”…
But in reality, money flowed the other way, from Trump to Clinton, not the other way around. In addition to bankrolling her campaigns, he had to bribe them with a huge donation (of other peoples’ money, of course) to the Clinton Foundation in order to get them to attend wedding #3.
And in this case, Trump didn’t say it on TV; he said it on his personal blog at Trump University.
Dave (711345) — 5/27/2017 @ 8:28 pm“Let’s start with the most salient point: it is utterly shameful for the defeated candidate to join a “resistance” against the lawfully elected winner, for no other reason than she lost. Americans despise a sore loser, and both Clinton and her entire graceless party have been wailing since last November about the cosmic unfairness of it all — all the more because they fully expected that the fix was in, and she would cake-waddle into the White House. As Johnny Caspar complains in Miller’s Crossing: “if you can’t trust a fixed fight, what can you trust?”
https://pjmedia.com/election/2017/05/27/extraordinary-delusions-and-the-madness-of-hillary-clinton/
harkin (9fca6c) — 5/27/2017 @ 8:38 pmDoes the news have to be fake all the , and it’s not even good fiction.
http://warnewsupdates.blogspot.com/2017/05/did-jared-kushner-want-secret_27.html?m=1
narciso (d1f714) — 5/27/2017 @ 8:42 pmR.I.P. Gregg Allman
Icy (155446) — 5/27/2017 @ 10:18 pmJVW,
In your 3 posts, you left out my favorite anecdote in the book. She was angry with her speech writer because he couldn’t articulate why she was running for president in her campaign announcement speech.
Xmas (3a75bb) — 5/28/2017 @ 1:43 amI respectfully ask everything to just stop for a second.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Waldron
I plan on barraging this space with tribute to LCDR Waldron and Torpedo 8 on the anniversary of The Battle of Midway.
4 June 1942.
Steve57 (0b1dac) — 5/28/2017 @ 2:00 amhttps://pbs.twimg.com/media/DA3APNJUMAA45hT.jpg
Steve57 (0b1dac) — 5/28/2017 @ 2:09 amCool, fire away, Steve57.
mg (31009b) — 5/28/2017 @ 3:12 amLove your military posts.
mg (31009b) — 5/28/2017 @ 3:16 amhttp://www.barstoolsports.com/boston/barstool-pizza-review-from-the-intrepid-taking-you-into-memorial-day-weekend/?utm_campaign=desktop&utm_source=featured&utm_medium=primary
mg (31009b) — 5/28/2017 @ 3:20 amSteve, do you have a favorite anecdote of military sacrifice I can share with my sons at dinner on Monday?
Thank you.
Simon Jester (473673) — 5/28/2017 @ 5:43 am46 – I’ll offer two, both from Saipan.
Even though sacrifice is obvious, I think this is more about leadership:
https://dmna.ny.gov/historic/reghist/wwii/infantry/105thInf/obrien.pdf
And the second is a remarkable story of humanity over sacrifice:
http://www.strangehistory.net/2013/06/28/the-greatest-marine-of-wwii/
harkin (299d24) — 5/28/2017 @ 6:16 amOT but….Yesterday, the New York Post reported that a 29-year-old member of Bill DeBlasio’s administration was arrested on child pornography charges.
Jacob Schwartz, a “leading young Democrat,” had more than three thousand images and 89 videos of girls as young as six months old engaging in sex acts when men.
To quote Cordelia Chase, “There’s not enough ‘yuck’ in the world.”
There is something amiss with the Jewish, leftist, Democrat lawyers that inhabit New York. Is this crap taught by the schools or is just that when you don’t have a moral compass everything in life is relative?
Rev.Hoagie® (630eca) — 5/28/2017 @ 6:37 amNo, the shiksa dream girl has been leaving the party and the deviancy is the canary of that (as is the creep away of younger black males).
urbanleftbehind (638303) — 5/28/2017 @ 7:38 amWhat the heck does being Jewish have to do with it?
Leviticus (2f73ae) — 5/28/2017 @ 7:46 amInstapundit’s Sarah Hoyt points to a very curious claim attributed to Seth Rich’s girlfriend about what he really knew about HRC and the DNC primary – a totally corrupt process from beginning to end, if true.
crazy (d3b449) — 5/28/2017 @ 8:52 amThat makes sense. Of course the language behind closed doors was different. It makes sense that Hillary didn’t realize this was not behind closed doors.
This was after the account was broken into? It was indded a full month before the election. October 7.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/dec/18/john-podesta/its-true-wikileaks-dumped-podesta-emails-hour-afte/
The access by the spies had been cut off in August.
Sammy Finkelman (0c3646) — 5/28/2017 @ 4:55 pmpolitics, particularly left wing politics has become religion, hence the subsequent primal scream therapy after a loss
narciso (d1f714) — 5/28/2017 @ 5:01 pmsammeh, there is no proof it was Russian spies, it is more likely the ‘humpty dumpty’ hacker syndicate that was at fault, again a flawed document like the crowdstrike report, that helped them garner their billion dollar valuation is at the center of this,
narciso (d1f714) — 5/28/2017 @ 5:04 pmwithout zuckertwat’s help (and the help of all of his users)
they could never sustain their sick twisted hate-cult
happyfeet (28a91b) — 5/28/2017 @ 5:05 pmWhy is Chris Hansen always in the suburbs?
Pinandpuller (8f614f) — 5/28/2017 @ 5:46 pmI guess it’s hard to catch a bus and three trains with a box of condoms and a six pack.
Pinandpuller (8f614f) — 5/28/2017 @ 5:48 pmquestions, as Taranto put it, no one was asking,
narciso (d1f714) — 5/28/2017 @ 5:50 pmWho has two thumbs and was asking?
This guy.
Pinandpuller (986b5e) — 5/29/2017 @ 12:40 am^ ^
35. harkin (9fca6c) — 5/27/2017 @ 8:17 pm
Sammy Finkelman (0c3646) — 5/29/2017 @ 6:21 am54. narciso (d1f714) — 5/28/2017 @ 5:04 pm
I don’t know what the huumpty dumpty hacker syndicate is, but I don’t believe there’s any hacker group based in Russia that’s independnet of the Russian government.
So what’s the humpty dumpty hacker group.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38930627
Yes, something based in Russia. I read that the Russian government gave some hackers government jobs, and it probably was encouraging hacking before – it was too big, it was too punlic – only it’s possible some of them went to far stealing money on their own account or stealing from the wrong places.
Sammy Finkelman (0c3646) — 5/29/2017 @ 6:27 amThe shaltar Boltoi are Russian hackers that operate inside corporate officers and govt institutions.
narciso (d1f714) — 5/29/2017 @ 6:35 amThis is the truly thing, like assume they are not beholden to any govt, they are transnational.
narciso (d1f714) — 5/29/2017 @ 6:43 amApologies this was taranto’s rejoinder to not takes in the journal or the times
narciso (d1f714) — 5/29/2017 @ 6:46 am63. narciso (d1f714) — 5/29/2017 @ 6:43 am
If they werren’t beholden to any government, or if they balanced one government against another, they wouldn’t be physically ocated in Russia. They’d be in some more independent country – that was also free from legal action by any of the western democracies.
Sammy Finkelman (0c3646) — 5/29/2017 @ 11:05 amJVW, I too commend you on this series of detailed reviews! I read the book closely and have enjoyed our discussion about it in comments here. You’ve made several excellent points that I haven’t seen made as well, or in some instances at all, in other reviews. This has been a very good example of how a good book review (or three of them!) can generate excellent adult conversations.
Thanks very much, and congratulations. This is a nice blogging achievement of which you, your co-bloggers, and of course our host ought be justly proud.
Beldar (fa637a) — 5/29/2017 @ 1:08 pm