Five things we’ve learned about Hillary Clinton’s failed presidential campaign from new inside account – The Independent
It is tempting to think that if only Bon Jovi, at the election eve rally for Hillary Clinton, had played just one more encore song with the volume cranked all the way up to 11, Hillary would have swept the rust belt and won election to become the 45th President of the United States.
Of coursethe explanatory factors behind an election result which elicits the vote of over 130m people after a campaign lasting over a year, featuring two candidates who had both been in the public eye for decades, will be numerous and varied. In Shattered: Inside Hillary Clintons Doomed Campaign, reporters Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes use unprecedented access inside Hillarys team throughout the election to reveal some of the failures specific to Clintons campaign and strategy that brought about one of the least predicted and, for the liberal world, most calamitous election defeats in modern political history.
There are broadly five takeaways from Allen and Parnes mammoth work of reporting on how an election result, that can somehow seem at once utterly unfathomable and deeply inevitable, came to pass.
Hillarys failed campaign in 2008 to be the Democratic nominee for president was famous for its infighting and soap opera feuds that often went public. Hillary had those failures in the forefront of her mind as she began her 2016 run, but failed to prevent a similarly conflict-ridden personnel structure plague her campaign, with interdependent, destructive power struggles play out between rival factions.
The map of Clintonworld looked like a traffic jam on a Venn diagram. Hillary had a huge network of advisers, staff and confidantes whose collective contribution was cacophonous, with many chieftains but no clear leader. With warring groups fighting for power to the detriment of effective messaging to the public, no single authority or campaign leader had control over all the big decisions, nor was important information shared across factions.
Ruthless Democratic party operative Robert Mook, only aged 35 when the team assembled, was campaign chief, but his Mook Mafia still had to contend with campaign chairmanJohn Podesta and the older advisors, a competing State Department team led by Huma Abedin, as well as a team of consultants and communications personnel.
It was unclear who was really running the campaign write the reporters, and few factions could be fully trusted, as advice came laden with the baggage of the advisers agenda, of either pleasing Hillary or undermining a rival factions power. Mook began to develop a reputation for caring as much about his own brand, and promoting his own people, as he did about getting Hillary elected.
Clinton campaign chief Robby MookGetty
Mooks relationship with Podesta wasfraught throughout the campaign, as Mook would hoarde information he was privy to, away from Podesta, as would Abedin.
The campaign was an unholy mess, fraught with tangled lines of authority, petty jealousies, and powerdistributed so broadly that none of her aides or advisers had control of the whole apparatus. Major decisions had multiple clearances required, with speech-writing often done by committee, leading to flat, unmemorable messaging. This was not a luxury the campaign could afford given the difficulty Hillary already had articulating why she should be trusted or had the best plan for America.
For all the strategic and structural faults of the campaign, the lack of vision or platform from the candidate herself was a particularly jarring theme. When Hillary announced her decision to run, it wasnt immensely clear to many of her aides, let alone the public, why her, and why now.
Clintons aimlessness was typified by her Roosevelt Island speech formally announcing her candidacy in the summer of 2015, when she whimpered her way into the election. The speech contained no overarching narrative explaining her candidacy, no framing of Hillary as the point of an underdog spear, no emotive power.
To her critics, including many Sanders supporters, this betrayed a Clintonian entitlement to power, without having to convince the electorate of quite what made her the best person to shape Americas future. America cant succeed unless you succeed. That is why I am running for president of the United States of America, she pronounced in that speech, in a trite tautology that did as little to strike a chord with an electorate as her campaign slogan Stronger Together.
This was an electorate that had lost huge amounts of faith in political and economic institutions, and in addition to the danger of fielding a candidate that embodies the establishment so thoroughly as Clinton, it was often hard for voters to name a concrete policy or change that Clinton was proposing.
Despite Clinton being a self-professed policy wonk, who lives for the complexity, she didnt like taking issues shed been working on for years and boiling them down into little sound bites. As a result, chief speechwriter Dan Schwerin complained repeatedly that Hillary was not doing enough to find a vision of her own that he could help her put into words. More than a year into the campaign, her staff didnt know her well enough to turn her candidacy into a compelling narrative for her.
As much as there was someone in charge of campaign strategy to get 270 electoral college votes, it was Mook, whose game plan rested on a simple premise: prioritize turning out those voters sympathetic to Hillary, instead of trying to convince anyone who is undecided or antagonistic to Clinton to get behind her.
Persuasion, they concluded, just wasnt feasible, for the amount ofmoney it cost to send out door-knockers for what might be pointless conversations. The team aimed to mobilize the Obama coalition, of African Americans, Latinos, women and college-educated whites, but the more she catered to them, the more she pushed away other segments of the electorate.
This was a racial dynamic to the coalition that worked differently for different candidates; Obama could focus on white voters without alienating his African-American stronghold, while Clintons attention to ethnic minorities came at greater risk of alienating white voters.
From a huge office hub in Brooklyn, the Clinton campaign were confident of winning big, against a candidate whose behaviour they believed to be immediately disqualifying to the American electorate on a number of counts. As a result, early on in the campaign they took for granted the blue wall of states that have voted Democratic since 1992, including Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania (all of which she would go on to lose), attempting to enjoy a sizable winning margin by breaking into states often won by the GOP such as Florida and North Carolina.
This quickly proved overly ambitious as November approached and Trumps poll numbers gained ground on Clinton. Its a bizarre strategy for a candidate for whom the American people have some of the strongest preconceptions of mistrust and careerism of any public figure in history. Polling showed the first word people associate with Clinton is liar -the number of voters who were either undecided, sceptical or antagonistic to her were huge. The team rarely if ever devoted extra resources to trying to get them on side.
Mooks cautious strategy worked for the primary campaign for Hillary to be the Democratic nominee over Bernie Sanders, because she already had the backing of a majority of the partys base, so purely focusing on turning these voters out worked. Clinton was sent to big cities during the primaries where a concentration of black and Latino voters would mobilize. But Sanders appeal to millenials and working-class whites, who were more prone to be sceptical of Clinton, had damaged her support amongst them, and thus in the general election, this caution and lack of work in creating a dialogue with said swing voters proved fatal.
While there was no single campaign leader, Robby Mook liked to be the only one with a full view of the campaigns arms, from budgeting to polling, data analytics, and field organizing. And from this position of power, Mooks strategy was almost exclusively based upon a particular analyticsmodel from data chief Elan Kriegel, which gave them their information on voter intentions, opinion and reaction to messaging.
They declined to spend money on third-party polling in the swing states, and refused to use pollsters to track voter preferences all through the final three weeks of the campaign, such was the faith in their own modelling. Senior Democratic operatives with more experience begged Mook to poll states like Florida in October, but Mook thought it was a waste of money, seeing the analytics as cheaper and quicker.
Unfortunately, the model drastically misread the electorate across many states, on many issues. John Podesta was one of a significant contingent of older consultants and staff on the campaign, including Bill Clinton, who mistrusted Mooks religious loyalty to their model which drove so many decisions.
Clinton campaign chairmanJohn PodestaGetty
Mook rolled back older forms of messaging like extra spending on television advertising at inflexion points in the campaign cycle, to the older crews chagrin. Focused on efficiencies in savings, the campaign declined to spend extra money on direct mail or digital advertising in several key battleground states, two methods crucial for targeting older voters and millenials, amongst whom her support was shaky.
There were no checks and balances and transparency on Mooks modelling that drove so much strategy, and so very few face-to-face conversations from the central campaign or on-the-ground operations happened. There was a networked organization ready to work on the ground, across the states, in the super PAC Ready for Hillary, that Mook declined to make use of because his modelling didnt say he needed to, such was their supposed polling lead. (Mook was also in no mood to empower another organizer in his own campaign headquarters.)
This is a model that meant Clinton herself never set foot in the state of Wisconsin after becoming the nominee, a model that showed Clinton had a comfortable lead to win in the months and week preceding election day, and why Clintons team could be so confident on victory even after exit polls started coming in on election night.
Robby Mookdirecting staffGetty
Not only did Clinton not set foot in Wisconsin, but Mook wouldnt even send basic resources like campaign literature for on-the-ground activists to make the case for persuading voters. This complaint of declining to fund even the most basic resources for grassroots activists to engage in any kind of voter persuasion in states like Colorado and New Mexico, two states that Clinton narrowly won, echoed those of campaign leaders across battleground states in which she was less fortunate.
An inability to measure the opinions and mood of the electorate, along with an inability to craft an inspiring, coherent message from the candidate, paints a bleak picture of a blind, disempowered candidate.
Loyalty is everything to Hillary Clinton. Her closest and most trusted advisors were those who had been most loyal to her, rather than necessarily being the most politically astute or competent. Political advisers with decades of experience and election-winning records often failed to get facetime or influential lines of communication with the candidate.
As few people had meaningful access to Clinton, those who did rarely told her something that would upset her, and possibly make oneself an antagonist to Clinton, lose proximity to her, and thus also lose power.
It was a self-signed death warrant to raise a question about Hillarys competence in loyalty-obsessed Clintonworld write Allen and Parnes. In addition to the muddled sources of power discussed above, this loyalty fundamentalism created a toxic atmosphere in which a bonfire of the vanities raged inside the campaign, while liabilities or incompetence might be given a pass.
Huma Abedin and Hillary ClintonGetty
Though largely no fault of her own, Huma Abedins connection to scandal-riddled Anthony Weiner and his resurrection of the e-mail scandal with one week to go meant that Abedin was a disaster waiting to happen,. She would have been cast aside long ago, Allen and Parnes argue, by any political operation that was appropriately sensitive to political risk, and uncompromising in its pursuit of winning votes.
When James Comey revealed the source of that late email fiasco to be Anthony Wieners laptop, Clinton agonized over removing Abedin from the campaigns centre, despite the absolute necessity of doing so, due to Abedins unrivalled loyalty to her, and an almost maternal compassion Clinton felt for Abedin.
Moreover, when Hillary was diagnosed with pneumonia by her doctor, the closest advisor to her, Huma Abedin, kept this information guarded, with most of the rest of her team in the dark about a significant change in the candidates health.
As a result no-one stopped Hillary from intense debate preparation and then attendance of a September 11 memorial service, which made Clinton stagger and faint on the way to her car, giving Trump political meat to question her fitness for office. The campaign team misled the press in their initial response because Abedin hadnt properly briefed their spokespeople, and not for the first time. Like with the Clinton campaign's first response to the e-mail scandal, this only further cemented the impression of the Clintonworldmisleading the public andhiding the truth.
This was one of a number of times that misinformation and silence, motivated by loyalty and power-hoarding, severely hurt the campaigns ability to engage in crisis management.
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Five things we've learned about Hillary Clinton's failed presidential campaign from new inside account - The Independent
- EXCLUSIVE: Hillary Clinton Stabs Bill in the Back How Former First Lady Showed No Mercy for Hubby in Epstein Deposition - AOL.com - March 26th, 2026 [March 26th, 2026]
- Hey, Look! Hillary Clinton Was in Humboldt and Del Norte Again Over the Weekend - Lost Coast Outpost - March 24th, 2026 [March 24th, 2026]
- 'I am done: Hillary Clinton bangs table, yells, walks out as GOP grills her over Epstein ties - The Economic Times - March 24th, 2026 [March 24th, 2026]
- Hillary Clinton's Transformation Since Meeting Bill Has Been A Sight To See - women.com - March 24th, 2026 [March 24th, 2026]
- Hillary Clinton caught on video stepping back after pushy former president nudges her at busy NYC intersection - Fox News - March 13th, 2026 [March 13th, 2026]
- Viral Video of Bill Clinton Nudging Hillary Clinton at Busy Intersection Sparks Buzz Viewers Think It Was Intentional - Yahoo - March 13th, 2026 [March 13th, 2026]
- Hillary Clinton And Her Husband Bill Live A Wildly Lavish Life - glam.com - March 13th, 2026 [March 13th, 2026]
- 42nd US President Bill Clinton was caught almost pushing his wife, former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, at a NYC intersection. The moment was... - March 13th, 2026 [March 13th, 2026]
- Hillary Clinton Shows No Mercy for Husband Bill During Deposition Regarding Jeffrey Epstein Ties - National Enquirer - March 13th, 2026 [March 13th, 2026]
- Bill Clinton Nudges Hillary Clinton Into Busy NYC Intersection, See Her Fiery Reaction - Wide Open Country - March 13th, 2026 [March 13th, 2026]
- A House Oversight deposition of Hillary Clinton became a reminder of the leadership America lost and must regain - Northwest Progressive Institute - March 11th, 2026 [March 11th, 2026]
- Bill and Hillary Clinton Enjoy Date Night in NYC - Reality Tea - March 11th, 2026 [March 11th, 2026]
- Hillary Clinton 69 testifies before Congress on Jeffrey Epstein - The Wellesley News - March 11th, 2026 [March 11th, 2026]
- Bill and Hillary Clinton Have NYC Date Night Days After Being Grilled On Epstein - AOL.com - March 11th, 2026 [March 11th, 2026]
- Look Closely And You'll See Hillary Clinton Used 1 Subtle Tactic To Own Lauren Boebert In Her Deposition - HuffPost - March 11th, 2026 [March 11th, 2026]
- Hillary Clinton told lawmakers during closed-door testimony that she 'never met Jeffrey Epstein' - NBC News - March 2nd, 2026 [March 2nd, 2026]
- Bill and Hillary Clinton set for Epstein deposition: What to know - Al Jazeera - March 2nd, 2026 [March 2nd, 2026]
- What happened during Hillary Clinton's closed-door deposition on Jeffrey Epstein - PBS - March 2nd, 2026 [March 2nd, 2026]
- Hillary Clinton derides her Epstein deposition as GOP political theater - The Washington Post - March 2nd, 2026 [March 2nd, 2026]
- Hillary Clinton accuses Republicans of fishing expedition in Epstein testimony - The Guardian - March 2nd, 2026 [March 2nd, 2026]
- First Thing: Hillary Clinton accuses Republicans of fishing expedition in Epstein testimony - The Guardian - March 2nd, 2026 [March 2nd, 2026]
- Hillary Clinton's Epstein deposition ends after hours of questioning - LiveNOW from FOX - March 2nd, 2026 [March 2nd, 2026]
- Bill and Hillary Clinton, battle-tested, gear up for another Washington fight - AP News - March 2nd, 2026 [March 2nd, 2026]
- Hillary Clinton tells congressional panel she has no information on Epstein - Reuters - March 2nd, 2026 [March 2nd, 2026]
- Hillary Clinton Tells Congress She Had No Relationship With Ghislaine Maxwell In Epstein Testimony - Forbes - March 2nd, 2026 [March 2nd, 2026]
- Hillary Clinton asked about husband's ties to Epstein after her deposition - CNN - March 2nd, 2026 [March 2nd, 2026]
- Hillary Clinton reignites convo about women answering for their husbands - CNN - March 2nd, 2026 [March 2nd, 2026]
- For Hillary Clinton, an Epstein Deposition Is the Latest Stand by Your Man Moment - The New York Times - March 2nd, 2026 [March 2nd, 2026]
- Hillary Clinton testifies she has no information on Epstein's crimes and doesn't recall meeting him - KCRA - March 2nd, 2026 [March 2nd, 2026]
- Hillary Clinton to testify in congressional Epstein probe - Reuters - March 2nd, 2026 [March 2nd, 2026]
- Hillary Clinton speaks after testifying behind closed doors in House Epstein investigation - CNN - March 2nd, 2026 [March 2nd, 2026]
- Boebert on Hillary Clinton questions in Epstein probe: I think everybody wants to know about UFOs - The Hill - March 2nd, 2026 [March 2nd, 2026]
- Hillary Clinton tells panel she had no knowledge of Epstein crimes and calls on Trump to testify - Euronews.com - March 2nd, 2026 [March 2nd, 2026]
- Hillary Clinton's neighbors sound off on her Epstein testimony - USA Today - March 2nd, 2026 [March 2nd, 2026]
- Hillary Clinton says she is confident her husband knew nothing about Epsteins crimes - The Times of Israel - March 2nd, 2026 [March 2nd, 2026]
- 'I never met Jeffrey Epstein' Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke to reporters after being questioned by members of the Republican-led... - March 2nd, 2026 [March 2nd, 2026]
- In tense deposition, Hillary Clinton denies knowing Epstein or his crimes - The Seattle Times - March 2nd, 2026 [March 2nd, 2026]
- Video: Hillary Clinton Denies Ever Meeting Jeffrey Epstein - The New York Times - March 2nd, 2026 [March 2nd, 2026]
- Mace calls on Lutnick to face Oversight questioning, says Hillary Clinton was 'unhinged' - WCIV - March 2nd, 2026 [March 2nd, 2026]
- The questions Bill and Hillary Clinton need to answer about Epstein files - The Times - March 2nd, 2026 [March 2nd, 2026]
- Republican Oversight Committee Members on Hillary Clinton Deposition in Jeffrey Epstein Investigation - C-SPAN - March 2nd, 2026 [March 2nd, 2026]
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- Bill and Hillary Clinton to testify on Epstein ties. Here's what to know. - USA Today - March 2nd, 2026 [March 2nd, 2026]
- Sky News Australia. . Sky News host Danica De Giorgio has examined bombshell testimony from Bill and Hillary Clinton at a closed-door House Oversight... - March 2nd, 2026 [March 2nd, 2026]
- Hillary Clinton says she answered every question on Epstein and decries GOP for keeping deposition private - CNN - March 2nd, 2026 [March 2nd, 2026]
- Hillary Clinton shouldve heeded my reality Czech to save the West - New York Post - February 22nd, 2026 [February 22nd, 2026]
- Trump news at a glance: Hillary Clinton urges Trump administration to release millions of withheld Epstein files - The Guardian - February 22nd, 2026 [February 22nd, 2026]
- Hillary Clinton: Trump administration perpetuating Epstein files cover-up - The Hill - February 22nd, 2026 [February 22nd, 2026]
- Hillary Clinton accuses Trump administration of cover-up over Epstein files - CNN - February 22nd, 2026 [February 22nd, 2026]
- Hillary Clinton accuses Trumps justice department of Epstein files cover-up - The Guardian - February 22nd, 2026 [February 22nd, 2026]
- Hillary Clinton gets in testy exchange with European leader over Trump - The Hill - February 22nd, 2026 [February 22nd, 2026]
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- Hillary Clinton tells BBC "we have no links" to Jeffrey Epstein - CBS News - February 22nd, 2026 [February 22nd, 2026]
- Hillary Clinton says Trump administration is covering up parts of Epstein files - Action News 5 - February 22nd, 2026 [February 22nd, 2026]
- Hillary Clinton accuses Trump administration of Epstein file cover up in BBC interview - USA Today - February 22nd, 2026 [February 22nd, 2026]
- Hillary Clinton accuses Trump of Epstein 'cover-up' in BBC interview - France 24 - February 22nd, 2026 [February 22nd, 2026]
- Hillary Clinton accuses Trump admin of Epstein cover-up - The Independent - February 22nd, 2026 [February 22nd, 2026]
- Hillary Clinton returned from the grave to remind us that she's still insufferable - facebook.com - February 22nd, 2026 [February 22nd, 2026]
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- Comedian Alex Stein reacts to former US first lady Hillary Clinton claiming she had no links to Jeffrey Epstein. - facebook.com - February 22nd, 2026 [February 22nd, 2026]
- Hillary Clinton accuses Trump administration of a cover-up over its handling of Epstein documents - KTVZ - February 22nd, 2026 [February 22nd, 2026]
- Hillary Clinton accuses Trump of Epstein cover-up in new interview - MS NOW - February 22nd, 2026 [February 22nd, 2026]
- Hillary Clinton accuses White House of Epstein files cover-up - WPLG Local 10 - February 22nd, 2026 [February 22nd, 2026]
- Mrs. Nita and Mr. Mukesh Ambani warmly welcomed Secretary Hillary Clinton to their home for a celebration of friendship and culture. The evening was... - February 22nd, 2026 [February 22nd, 2026]
- Sky News host Rita Panahi has blasted Bill and Hillary Clinton for their lies surrounding their association with Jeffrey Epstein. - facebook.com - February 22nd, 2026 [February 22nd, 2026]
- Sky News host Rita Panahi has hit out at Hillary Clinton following her appearance at the Munich Security Conference. - facebook.com - February 22nd, 2026 [February 22nd, 2026]
- 'Get the files out': Hillary Clinton calls out Trump over redacted names and Epstein 'cover-ups' - Women's Agenda - February 22nd, 2026 [February 22nd, 2026]
- Trump betrayed the West: Hillary Clinton - CNN - February 22nd, 2026 [February 22nd, 2026]
- Trevor Noah straight up asked Hillary Clinton on live TV, How did you kill Jeffrey Epstein? She was on The Daily Show with Chelsea promoting their... - February 14th, 2026 [February 14th, 2026]
- Bill Maher Has Wild Theory Linking Hillary Clinton to Epstein Death - TV Insider - February 9th, 2026 [February 9th, 2026]
- Hillary Clinton calls for public hearing in House Epstein investigation - PBS - February 9th, 2026 [February 9th, 2026]
- Hillary Clinton continues to push for public hearing ahead of Epstein probe deposition - ABC News - February 9th, 2026 [February 9th, 2026]
- Bill and Hillary Clinton agree to testify in House Epstein investigation - BBC - February 9th, 2026 [February 9th, 2026]