Jon Allen (2017)

She didn't kill anyone. She's not in a relationship with Huma Abedin. She didn't set up a private email server so that she could leak to the press or share classified information with people who shouldn't have had access to it. Pizzagate is disgusting.

It would be hard to find a slogan that did more to reinforce a negative perception of a candidate. It told voters the campaign was about her. Amie and I report in "Shattered" that Bernie Sanders refused to say it when he cut an ad for her (one that her campaign never broadcast). He told his consultant it was "so phony" that he couldn't bring himself to say it. So, yeah, I think your diagnosis is right. If she didn't like it, it wouldn't have stuck around.

Clinton was definitely in a hardened bubble and unable to really react or predict the evolution of the electorate. So, I think it emanated from her. But the Brooklyn staff didn't heed warnings from people on the ground in the states—or from Bill Clinton, who often had his knuckles rapped for saying things that were "off message" but in line with the feelings of swing voters in what turned out to be swing states. "Obamacare is the craziest thing," he said, in the kind of words a voter might use before turning to a few minor alterations that he thought could change that.

I think, in addition to the email server that was pre-campaign, the biggest mistake was not coming up with a reason why she was the right candidate for 2016. Some of her aides said they had trouble figuring out what her message was, and she confided to friends that she didn't really understand what was happening in the electorate.

All of the above. I think everyone who's ever thought about running is at least leaving the door open—and, in some cases, they're opening doors right now. I don't think that will shake out for a while. One set that I find fascinating: Democrats from red states who wouldn't normally get the time of day. Mayors, like Buttigieg, Landrieu (my wife worked for his sister in the Senate, as a disclosure) et al. Maybe even House members. Democrats don't often look to red states for candidates, but I think some of those folks will get a chance to make their case in 2020.

There's still a lot of finger-pointing. She has said she is accountable for her campaign but not been specific about it. Rather, she's pivoted from that to blaming Russia, Jim Comey (who wouldn't have played a role without the email server or the Bill Clinton/Lynch tarmac meeting), and even the DNC.

I certainly think Bernie Sanders benefited from his stance on money in politics as a contrast point to Clinton, who denounced Citizens United but took money from all available sources (both political money and personal money). And Trump's message that he couldn't be bought helped him make a contrast against Clinton on that score. So, in short, yes.

These experts deserve to be compensated for their unique insights and knowledge. And the paywall helps separate the signals they're sending out from the noise that one can find anywhere.

Another point on this that I haven't done enough reporting/thinking on to own completely yet: It seemed that a pro-Russia line was politically unthinkable in the post-WWII era. But there are elements on both the left and the right that at least tolerate Russia now and, in some cases, want to see the United States have a much stronger relationship with that country. That is, it's not clear to me how much strong ties to Russia, as a policy matter, are harmful to a candidate. Trump seemed to do just fine with it. The question of interference, or possible collusion, is a related but different one. I think if there were evidence of collusion, the public would not be on board with that.

One of her longtime advisers sent a memo when it was clear that Trump would take the GOP nomination that said he could be the next president and laid out the argument for that. One of the bullet points: Add three or four points to his performance in any poll. But the campaign ignored what it considered unscientific musings. At different points during the campaign, there was more or less concern, but they all went into election day confident that she would win.

Shotgun marriage that improved over time. They're so different, and I think they respect each other. But they're so different.

It doesn't make sense to campaign on Russia right now because there are federal investigators (both Mueller and the intel committees in Congress) who are doing that work for them. I think the Democratic Party doesn't really exist in the way that it did before the combination of McCain-Feingold, which killed soft money, and the Citizens United batch of Supreme Court decisions that empowered outside groups. Who is the leader of the Democratic Party? Tough question to answer. I'd submit that it's no one right now.

I don't believe that the United States should gauge its foreign and national security policy by such a standard. America should protect its physical and electoral security without regard to whether Russia doesn't like our policies.

I'm also a baseball obsessive (I played Division III college ball for a couple of years, but I'm a much better fan than a player), and I liken politics to baseball in this way: In an election, like a ballgame, there are a very limited set of outcomes; but there are an infinite number of ways to get to them. I'm fascinated by how the stories unfold. There's a lot at stake in an election—or in the political battles of legislating and policymaking in Washington—so, it's serious stuff. I hope I'm able to learn things about the decision-making and share them with the people affected by the decisions.

I think it's tough for that to happen in a country that has been stabilized by a two-party system over the course of its history. That is, it's hard to make radical change, for good and ill. But if ever there were an opening, now is the time. The two parties are weaker than they have been at any time in my lifetime, and there is so much opportunity for outside groups (or other parties) to influence who wins and which policies are enacted and defeated.

Amie Parnes and I go into this in great detail in Shattered—the unfolding of election night. The truth is that when her team saw what was happening in Florida, the feeling quickly changed from confidence to thinking that the results there could be echoed in a lot of other states. So, it was more of a change from a confident state to one of being behind the eight ball and the slow realization that the results were, in fact, being repeated in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

I don't talk about who I vote for (with the exception of having written in the Washington Post's Paul Kane for an office in the District of Columbia).

It's very consistent. On election night, they were talking about Russians, Comey and Brexit. And she kept talking about the Russians and Comey to friends in the days after the election. We report that the narrative was set within 24 hours of her defeat, and we've seen that play out. That's not to say that neither Russia nor Comey affected the election, just that there were a number of other factors—Amie and I argue bigger factors—that put Clinton in a position to lose and Trump in a position to win.

I don't have any more information than you do on the state of her health. She was obviously able to sit in the Benghazi hearing for half a day, campaign for a year and a half and perform at a high level during the debates. So, I'd say the evidence is that her mental agility is strong. Plus, playing doctor on Reddit seems like a terrible idea.

There's obviously a kind of grayscale of influence for anyone involved in a campaign. Amie and I report in the book that Bill Clinton felt like he'd shouldered too much of the blame for her 2008 campaign, and there was a perception that he had been too heavy-handed in working the staff that year. This time, he didn't want to be responsible for a loss and he was respectful of the roles his wife wanted her aides to play. So, you could say he was much more hands-off this time. That doesn't mean he faded into the backdrop. He made his views known, particularly about the need to try to persuade swing voters rather than just trying to turn out base Democrats, and about putting boots and literature on the ground in key states, but he did not force his views on the people making decisions. And it's not clear that Hillary Clinton would have let him do that.

Ultimately, she's responsible for the direction of the campaign, but she wanted the professionals she'd hired to shape it. I don't think that's very different than other candidates in most areas (I mean, none of them are data analysts). But the one key difference is this: Other candidates set the mission for the campaign with their overall message. Donald Trump presented a new nationalism into which most of his policies could easily fit. Bernie Sanders wanted to take money and power from the few and distribute them more evenly. It was easy for the people working for them, and for voters, to understand what the campaign was about for the American public. That wasn't the case with Hillary Clinton's campaign. She never set that mission.

He's certainly a better natural politician, and I think she listened to him at times. But she stuck with the idea that evidence from her data team should guide her strategy and tactics. Bill Clinton had a different approach, and she largely sided with the folks she'd hired.

That's a great question. After the primary, she didn't want to have anything to do with him, and I think that was evident to his most ardent supporters.

We write about this a lot early in the book. Clinton was definitely afraid that Biden would get in and shake up the dynamics of the race. He had the capacity to win people of color that Bernie was not connecting with and to engage working-class white voters. As for her perception of the way she was perceived, Amie and I have a scene in which she's talking to an aide a couple of days before the election and says something to the effect of: I know I bring out the worst in some poeple. I don't know why that is, but it is. The aide replies that it will be worse when she's in the White House. And she says she knows. Telling both on her perception of the degree to which some of the voting public disliked her and the fact that she thought she was going to win.

Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone has some of that Hunter S Thompson flair. I think he would enjoy covering Trump. He could make mountainous characters out of molehill politicians, so Trump would be the ultimate profile subject.

They don't have control over the Democratic Party. No one does right now. As for the progressives, I'm not sure that taking over the Democratic Party is necessarily all it's cracked up to be. It's a weakened institution. But the Clintons' influence is waning. For 25 years, there was the promise of reward or the the threat of potential retribution to use as tools for influence. But without holding an office, or the prospect of holding an office, that influence has diminished.

I'd have to do a little research to go back to the Clinton presidency and see who got support and who didn't. But after 2008, Bill Clinton campaigned in primaries for a series of Democratic candidates who had backed Hillary Clinton and against those the Clintons felt had betrayed them. WJC, for example, helped Brad Sherman against Howard Berman, Bill Pascrell against Steve Rothman, Kathleen Kane against Patrick Murphy, and Mark Critz against Jason Altmire. Amie and I write about that dynamic extensively in "HRC: State Secrets and the Rebirth of Hillary Clinton." One Democrat told us at the time that it was creating a chilling effect within the party because elected officials knew that there was a cost associated with being seen as anything but loyal to the Clintons.

It's amazing to me that the campaign staff was running a base campaign and the candidate picked someone seen as a moderate as the vice presidential nominee. But I think that ultimately shows one thing: The VP pick was Hillary Clinton's, and Hillary Clinton's alone. Amie and I report in Shattered that she was unhappy with her short list before she made the decision and that Elizabeth Warren got a long look before Clinton decided she couldn't fully trust Warren as a governing partner. Another possible mistake: Sherrod Brown was excluded because there was concern about his Senate seat turning over to a Republican. Bet Democrats would trade that Senate seat for the presidency right now.

In the weeks after the election, she came to believe that Obama didn't do enough to let the public know about the extent to which Russia was attempting to interfere in the election ... I don't think there's a lot of love lost between Barack Obama and Bill Clinton (or that they'll spend a lot of time vacationing together). Bill Clinton did what he had to do for Obama to ensure that Obama's donors would pay off Hillary Clinton's campaign debts—and a little more in terms of the 2012 Democratic convention speech. And Obama did what he needed to do to show preference for Hillary Clinton in 2016. It was a political partnership between the two presidents.

A lot of voters concluded it was more about her than about them—even some who voted for her.

Libya is a disaster. It's hard to know how many would have died had Gaddafi been left in place. There were a lot of problems with the Libya mission, including but not limited to: American leaders convinced themselves and each other (and Clinton was at the center of it) that they could stand up a stable government in Libya; the U.S. didn't do what it would have taken to try to stabilize Libya; and it exposed the loopholes through which a president can conduct war without the explicit direction or assent of Congress.

Thank you! Sidewire's an awesome platform and it's about to get better with the feeds readers can get from their favorite experts. Great question: It's impolitic of me to pick favorites among the Newsmakers, but I'll do it anyway. I think you have to listen to anything Josh Holmes, former chief of staff to Mitch McConnell, says about what's going on in Congress. Ellen Tauscher, Jamie Kirchick and Tom Nichols are brilliant on national security policy. Lis Smith is one of the smartest Democratic strategists around—and, importantly, very funny. There's really a great cast of characters.

Oh, and I almost forgot: For the best quips, The Rick Wilson.

My sense is that it matters more what the approach is to these foreign countries than whether a candidate already has ties to them. Clinton had ties to practically every foreign country as the former secretary of State. Back in 2008, she thought it was a mistake for Obama to say he would meet with the leaders of nations considered to be bad actors, but it didn't prevent him from winning the primary or the general election. And he left office with a positive approval rating, despite the clamor against his Iran, Cuba and Russia policies (not to mention the extension of the Afghanistan war and the change in America's footing in Iraq).

I do think she left a lot of space for others to define her.

Yeah, I take most of what I read on MSM news websites at face value. but I read carefully and understand that it's my responsibility as a consumer to assess what's being reported based on its credibility and the evidence that the reporters present.

Robby worked on Clinton's 2008 campaign and later for Obama. Then he was the top aide at the DCCC and ran Terry McAuliffe's campaign. Like HRC, he liked to pin his decisions to data an evidence. He treated the Midwest states as places where she was fine, but the data didn't end up reflecting what was really going on. He was getting warnings from people who didn't have data to back them up but instead had a feel for the ground (Bill Clinton, Rep. Debbie Dingell in Michigan, et al). Mook stopped doing tracking polling, relying instead solely on data analytics surveys at the end. It's not clear that polling would have shown anything different or helped guide different decisions, but it was a check that was not used. And he also decided that it was a fool's errand to spend a lot of money and man-hours on trying to persuade people to vote for Hillary. He preferred finding people who agreed with her and trying to get them to turn out to the polls. Was it impossible for her to persuade undecided voters or those who leaned against her? Some campaign aides argue that it was. Some went so far as to contend that she was better off not going to Rust Belt states because her presence would alert more potential voters that there was an election going on and that they would then come and vote against her.

indeed

Are you talking about Libya broadly or Benghazi specifically?

In the interest of disclosure, I briefly worked for Wasserman Schultz in 2010. So, I'll sidestep that part of the question (as awkward as I am at ballet). I really think it was the failure to make the case for why she should be president.

Such dangerous territory! Perhaps it's a false choice. Presumes Nixon didn't have strengths as well as weaknesses. Maybe this will sound like bullshit (sure looks like it as I type it), but I do think people who subject themselves to the brutal personal challenge of running for office tend to want to help others—even if they lose sight of that along the way or have difficulty articulating it.

no worries

Clinton focused on who she thought would be the best governing partner and do the least to disrupt what looked like a better-than-even chance of winning the presidency. There were some people internally who argued for Warren or another progressive (Brown had his supporters), and Clinton really gave Warren a look, but Kaine was the safe, establishment choice. It reflected who Hillary Clinton is.

I think her foreign policy would have been inherently different for two reasons: the world and its hot spots have changed since she was secretary, and, more important, she was executing (and informing) Obama's foreign policy, but it wasn't wholly her own.

I can tell from your handle that YOU'RE the expert on this one. My hope springs eternal that the football team will make a bowl game that doesn't sound like the toilet bowl and that the basketball team will make the tournament and catch fire. One of the saddest days every year (save, 2002) is when the Terps get eliminated from the tourney.

Good question. Anyone who signs up for the Stitch can answer the trivia question. Just this week, Gila Jones, who is not one of our Newsmaker experts, won the trivia contest. The number of answers ranges depending on the question: really tough ones can go unanswered and easier ones can get double-digit answers.

Oh, and whoever wins gets to ask the next day's trivia question. So, yes, readers can ask the question.

McCartney, but I prefer the Rolling Stones (and The Kinks and The Who).

I'd fit in well with the Nationals bullpen.

I've known reporters who take a variety of approaches to voting (only in races they're not covering, not at all, voting for every office for which they're eligible to cast a ballot). I'm fine with any and all of it. My personal feeling is that reporters are best off not revealing who they vote for, but that it's OK to exercise our rights as citizens. The key is not whether reporters have opinions or political leanings, but whether they report objectively. Even in the modern era, facts are facts. The closer reporters get to simply taking relevant information from a small number of people and giving it to the broader public, the more they are doing their jobs in a way that reflects creditably on the reporting, the reporter and the publication or TV outlet. And, as someone who has written news, analysis and opinion, I think we can all appreciate the difference between them.

I prefer the commentary and analysis I get on Sidewire ;) ... It depends on the subject. Here are some of the reporters I follow closely: Maggie Haberman, Phil Rucker, Jake Sherman, James Hohmann, Paul Kane, Del Wilber, Rich Rubin, Steve Dennis, Matt Fuller, AMIE PARNES. I think David Frum is a brilliant analyst. Matt Lewis. Greg Sargent. I like the op-ed guys from the NY tabloids (Seth Mandel and Josh Greenman). It's really a long list.

Our first mission is to have sophisticated and civilized discussion on the Internet. We looked at what was going on in other social media forums and thought there was a better way to put a spotlight on people with expertise and to foster constructive dialogue. It's tough to do that when every other thought is interrupted by hateful messages. Our Newsmaker community includes a wide range of ideologies but everyone is respectful of each other and, I find, very capable of engaging in intelligent commentary on the news. Additionally, we've built (I say 'we,' but it's really our incredible engineering team) a new way for readers to ask questions in our expert chats. The experts can decide whether to bring those questions into the chat. That is, if it's just some nasty insult, they can leave it alone. But if a reader has a thoughtful question or insight, the experts can bring it in.

The email server story broke in March 2015, a month before she declared her candidacy, and stuck with her through the very end of the campaign. She didn't respond to it well and her trust ratings suffered mightily for it. The whole story reinforced the narrative that both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump pushed that she had something to hide.

The Wall Street speeches, delivered at a time of rising populism, fed a similar narrative and were a point of emphasis for those who believed she was hiding something and/or corrupt. And both of those (hiding something/corrupt) tie into a candidate's trustworthiness.

Both of those were unforced errors that hurt her throughout the campaign.

But the messaging failure—her inability to say why she should be president in a way that resonated as being about the public rather than herself—was the most important, according even to some of the people who worked for her. This was the second straight presidential campaign in which she struggled with that. "I would have had a reason for running," one of her senior aides told us, "or I wouldn't have run." Her strategy in the general election was to disqualify Trump, but she failed to make the positive case for herself. Something like one-fifth of his voters said they didn't think he was qualified for the presidency. She portrayed him as unqualified successfully, but didn't make herself a better alternative for enough voters in the right set of states.

I think McCain does what McCain wants to do in the moment. Sometimes that's to toe the party line (which, by the way, is a manner of retaining influence) and sometimes it's to pitch a fit about one issue or another. He's a savvy guy, and I'd say he does more with his talk than some lawmakers do with their action. That is, he can influence the debate on a given issue by talking.

Stephen Miller. I'm fascinated by how someone of his limited background in politics and policy—not to mention his worldview—has gained so much influence.

Thanks for asking. I believe reporters can build some of the lost trust by talking more openly about how they approach and do their jobs.

There are lots of off the record conversations between journalists and political players. One reporter I admire gave me good advice a long time ago: The best journalists are often the ones who have the smallest gap between what they know and what they can find a way to put into print. In Shattered, Amie and I granted anonymity to all of our sources because we believed that no one would talk with us—and certainly not candidly—if they were concerned there could be blowback from Clintonworld (or in the cases of people involved with other campaigns and institutions from their bosses).

I don't know enough about her to form an intelligent opinion. But I'll take a look.

I cannot.

I think the best way to look at it is that they both traveled in elite circles that were different but touched. It was possible that Trump could be helpful to the Clintons or that they could be helpful to him at some point. They were cordial/friendly but not friends. The Clintons went to Trump's most recent wedding, and Bill Clinton counseled Trump when Trump was getting ready to run in 2016 (we talk about that conversation in the book). But I don't get any sense that they were actually close.

I thought you (or someone) had asked a Russian disinfo question, too.

No, I don't think the Democratic Party, as a whole, has focused yet on learning what internal factors - related to the candidate, her campaign and the party - contributed to its 2016 defeat. I not-so-humbly submit that there are a lot of lessons in "Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign."

If you go way back, she worked for the Children's Defense Fund and was chairman of the Legal Services Corporation. In the White House, she was instrumental in the children's health insurance program. I think she spent a lot of time and energy trying to improve the lot of the voiceless.

Thanks for the kind words. Will raise that at our next all-hands meeting.

Thank YOU. Hope you enjoy.

I think that our institutions, and the people who serve in them, are the check against a president's power. So far, I think they're standing up well when Trump moves toward coloring outside the lines. The beauty of the republic is that it is designed to prevent any one person from unraveling it. BUT, it depends on the observation of both laws and norms by the various players. I also think there is some hyperventilation over certain things Trump has done that doesn't merit the level of backlash. He's following through - or trying to follow through - on a lot of what he promised on the trail. It's important to keep that in mind in assessing his rhetoric and his actions. I'm not fond of a lot of his rhetoric, but I was encouraged by the eloquence of his statement after the shooting yesterday.

I do. I'll say it again: Hillary Clinton didn't kill anyone.

I think the book has a lot of relevance for future campaigns. And while Hillary Clinton has said she won't run again, her strengths and weaknesses as a candidate, and the way she ran her campaign, offer a lot of insight for both political insiders and voters. Plus, I like talking on the Internet whenever I can.