Out today --

(or at least according to Amazon) is a new book, Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign. This book is no doubt for those who are still amazed at what a loser Clinton was and is. The authors' previous work includes a hagiography of Hillary Clinton, so I guess I'd rather trust them than Doug Wead, author of Game of Thorns: The Inside Story of Hillary Clinton's Failed Campaign and Donald Trump's Winning Strategy. If Donald Trump had a "winning strategy," it would look something like "spend half of what your opponent spent, run a campaign that would be a sure loser under any other circumstances, and wait for your opponent to lose her core voters to 'none of the above.'" That's the heroic Donald Trump in a nutshell.

At any rate, one thing that's weird about this book is that (on Amazon at least) it's only out in hardcover or in Kindle. Usually when a book isn't released in paperback it means the publishers have no faith in the public's willingness to buy the book.

At any rate, I'm sure there's a fair share of melodrama in this book as well as a lot of details. The New York Times review is indicative of this:

The authors of "Shattered," however, write that even some of her close friends and advisers think that Clinton "bears the blame for her defeat," arguing that her actions before the campaign (setting up a private email server, becoming entangled in the Clinton Foundation, giving speeches to Wall Street banks) "hamstrung her chances so badly that she couldn't recover," ensuring that she could not "cast herself as anything but a lifelong insider when so much of the country had lost faith in its institutions."

I do agree that Clinton bears the blame for her defeat, which is why I think the book is probably worth reading. But my guess is that last year's Clinton campaign was in no sense "doomed," and that there were a number of things Clinton herself could have done to win against an opponent of Trump's caliber. In the end, she did none of them.

Why the publishers can't issue a paperback, OTOH, is beyond me. Maybe we'll all just wait for Doug Henwood to host one of the authors on his radio show.

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Hawkfish's picture

Like smacking partisans upside the head with. Paperback just isn't as ahem impactful.

I'm probably going to get a copy so I can lend it to well meaning acquaintances and relatives.

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We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg

The pains pols go to obfuscate is bewildering.
"cast herself as anything but a lifelong insider when so much of the country had lost faith in its institutions."
Cast herself as anything but a lifelong crook in a town full of crooks.
Fixed it.
They can never bring themselves to tell the full truth.

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Solidarity forever

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Solidarity forever

detroitmechworks's picture

Was of course, running Hillary Clinton.

There are many, many other Hillarys with MUCH better chances of being elected.

/snark

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

CB's picture

@detroitmechworks

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gulfgal98's picture

We could see what nearly every one of us here said about the Clinton campaign from the very beginning. I will start with her egotistical campaign slogan of "I'm With Her" which epitomizes everything wrong about the campaign and mostly about the candidate herself. In a Salon article out today, Bernie Sanders said of that slogan "It's so phony."

The campaign was ALL about HER, not about the voters or what she intended to do to help so many struggling Americans. It was all about her and her desire to become the first woman President. Former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau was asked to help write her announcement speech, but dropped out instead.

The former speechwriter for the prior two presidential campaigns, Favreau reportedly dropped out of the announcement speech because the campaign did not have a “common purpose.”

There is a line in the Times review that describes the Clinton campaign as "shockingly inept campaign hobbled by hubris and unforced errors." The one word I have used for years to describe the Clintons, Hillary in particular, is "hubris." Hubris laced with a very strong dose of entitlement. This is a candidate who could not bring herself to actually get out and campaign among the people, but instead held small, private fund raisers among her real constituency, the well to do.

I despise the Clintons to no end and am still angry that the Democratic party cannot admit that Hilary Clinton and her arrogant and inept campaign are responsible for Donald Trump in the White House today.

Edited to remove bad link and story.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

k9disc's picture

@gulfgal98 But that would be completely un-believable, right, @gulfgal98 ?

Laughable, even...

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“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu

CS in AZ's picture

Paperbacks typically come out months later than the hardback because people who really want to read something will pay more to get it sooner. Even though paperbacks are actually preferred by most readers. In the used book trade, paperbacks are much more popular, while people's expensive hardbacks become doorstops. In the early days of ebooks, the download version was usually delayed until the paperback release, so as not to interfere with first run hardback sales.

I'm sort of tempted to read this, but not sure. I already despise her, but a dose of truth about the campaign might be beneficial to my state of mind. I like the one star reviews on amazon, complaining that the book fails to provide the approved talking-point excuses. So that's a plus.

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@CS in AZ and I was just going to post the same thing re: hardbacks and paperbacks.

As for this book, I read a teaser last week and it sounds like the Clinton chapters of Game Change with slight updating. In other words, pretty much what I expected. Sigh.

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Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.

I think Clinton would have been a (just barely) palatable option to many progressives if Obama hadn't gone out of his way for the past eight years to assure us that there was no reason whatsoever to get our hopes up.

In 2008, Democratic voters had delivered the House, Senate, and Presidency, and almost immediately the backtracking and excuses started - our majority wasn't a "real" majority because Conservadems (supposedly a different breed from the usual name brand), the President has to represent all Americans (especially the powerful and wealthy), etc.

The fruits of their two years of legislative majority was a sop to the insurance companies devised by the Heritage Institute, and making sure no banksters or war profiteerers were prosecuted for their Bush-era crimes. Oh, and Lily Ledbetter!

Obama could've squared the deal with much of the base as late as 2014 by killing DAPL, TPP, and Keystone, but he just couldn't bring himself to cross his corporate masters (and naturally Clinton wanted those things too).

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Amanda Matthews's picture

@FutureNow
have EVER been acceptable to me. I was a young mother when I started watching the two Clintons pulling their shit to make their political bones. I watched as those two slugs VICTIMIZED those who had the least, were the most vulnerable in this country, like women on welfare. Hungry kids were no problem for Hillbillary. That's what dirty poor people who breed deserve, no fiod, no healthcare, no shelter from the elements. Those two fucks CRIMINALIZED POVERTY.

Then there were those who had done 'bad' things so to show what tough law-and-order guys they were, they pushed laws that made damn sure minorities and the poor (the super predators) went to jail for a long long time. Sell a dime bag, get caught with a joint, steal so that you can eat, do 20 years. (And that Biden fuck with his coke snorting kid is just as bad.)

When people saw what her friends Lloyd, Richard, and Jamie did to the economies of half the planet, and considering how much money she was taking from them during and after their financial rampage, the horrid wretch was doomed right out of the gate. In addition, once people saw the lengths she'd go to to hide what she was up to as SOS and after the two years of her lying about that server (just like she lied about the Rose Law Firm billing records for two damn long years) rational people didn't want her anywhere near the WH anyway. She was the most distrusted and disliked politician in America today.

I always laugh when I think about those two and the fact that if she hadn't lied about those billing records for two long years and had turned them over when she was originally asked for them, there would not have been an open investigation into those two and old Linda Tripp wouldn't have anyone to go tattle to when she found out about Monica and Bill's cigar fetish. She is due a big thank you for that one!! I wonder if Clenis ever thinks about that,

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

WaterLily's picture

@Amanda Matthews Thanks for the righteous rant!

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@Amanda Matthews

Thanks you so much! The American people never should have been limited to a no-choice selection between a destructive psychopath and a destructive sociopath for President.

And I am still so very grateful that the Clintons did not get rewarded by successfully being cheated in and that we're all still around to read about people objecting to things that Trump's doing which would have been Top Secret/fine under Hillary, at least until the celebration nuclear fireworks went off and the world of life shut down. This gave us a little extra time, if nothing else.

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

Socialprogressive's picture

You don't need to waste your time or money reading a couple of hundred pages to know why Her lost. Her lost because she was a shitty candidate. Simple as that.

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When I offer to wash your back in the shower, all you have to say is yes or no.
Not all this "who are you, and how did you get in here?" nonsense.

Cassiodorus's picture

@Socialprogressive Rather:

This book is no doubt for those who are still amazed at what a loser Clinton was and is.

In short, the intended audience for such books is not you. It's people who still can't believe that a candidate with so many advantages could have thrown them all away so heedlessly.

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

Socialprogressive's picture

Efing computer.

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When I offer to wash your back in the shower, all you have to say is yes or no.
Not all this "who are you, and how did you get in here?" nonsense.

Azazello's picture

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_4NzaPSVB4 width:500 height:300]

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We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

It's on my Kindle. I love this book!

I highly recommend it.

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So I'm trying to avoid the headlines about it.

**spoiler alert**

Bill Clinton is disgusting: "Mick Jagger used to give my mother-in-law wet dreams." He said that to his pals backstage before a fundraiser when he found out an aide was going to a Rolling Stones concert.

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Again, buy this book! It's also what happens when you don't use common sense or critical thinking.

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Cassiodorus's picture

@nedsdag

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama