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What Went Wrong? The 'Perfect Storm' That Doomed Hillary Clinton's Campaign

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WASHINGTON – The first book of its kind, Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign offers new insight into the 2016 presidential campaign of the candidate who, by most accounts, was the candidate to beat.

Written by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, the exposé details a campaign plagued by confusion and chaos.
 
In an interview with CBN's Jenna Browder, Allen explained exactly what went wrong, beginning with Clinton's infamous email server scandal.
 
"In addition to that (email scandal), you've got this issue where she had trouble articulating the message," Allen told CBN News. "Her speech writers couldn't do it for her. They needed to know: why you, why now?"
 
Allen recalled a former speech writer for President Barack Obama quitting before Clinton's campaign even got off the ground.
 
"He basically threw his hands up in the air and said, 'I can't do this. There's no clear plan here and there's no organization to this group and the speech is lackluster,'" said Allen.
 
There was also heavy infighting between senior staff members.
 
Allen described how it pitted young campaign strategists like Robby Mook, who pushed data and analytics, against experienced politicos like John Podesta and Bill Clinton, who leaned on tradition.
 
"So all these groups were sort of jockeying for power and the lines of authority weren't clear," Allen explained.

"It even got to a point fairly late in the campaign, in June of 2016, where they had a senior staff retreat and John Podesta stands up in front of the entire senior leadership and he says of Robby the campaign manager, 'Robby is passive aggressive and I'm just aggressive.' And there he's explaining this tremendous tension," said Allen.
 
These revealing moments seem almost nonstop, with some of the most shocking unfolding on election night.
 
Allen and Parnes write about Clinton's reluctance to concede and the moment she knew it was over and had to take a dreaded phone call.
 
"Huma Abedin comes up to her with a phone in hand and says, 'It's the president.' And Hillary Clinton just visibly recoils and winces. She doesn't want to take this call," Allen recounted.
 
"It's really the moment of reality when the president is calling the losing candidate as a consolation and it hits her," he continued. "She's let herself down. She's let her party down. She thinks she's let the country down and she thinks she's let Barack Obama and his legacy down."

"She takes the phone, she walks toward another room and says, 'Mr. President, I'm sorry,'" Allen said.
 
It was a crushing moment for the woman who had effectively been pursuing the White House for more than a decade.
 
Allen said many things contributed to her shattering defeat, but at the end of the day she had no one to blame but herself.
 
"It is a much bigger story than James Comey or the Russians or the media or even misogyny," he said. "This was a perfect storm and the biggest factors in that perfect storm were self-inflicted wounds."

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