The question is, are we going to appeal to the pocketbooks of that part of the country and use their self-interest to drag them into modernity? Or are we going to stamp our feet and keep losing elections?

By October, the Clinton campaign was focused on winning a landslide mandate and lost sight of the fact that she actually needed to win. We live in a world where the electoral college matters — she needed to focus on the states that would take her to victory instead of states she hoped would flip blue and be bragging…

It’s amazing, it’s like the Democrats learn it and then forget the next election. That’s how you end up with Walter Mondale, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton.

But the Obama campaign used data to identify support and to complement, not replace, the ground game. Obama for America did the leg work and knocked on a lot of doors and handed out a lot of yard signs.

It sounds like Robbie Mook was too clever by half and overthinking things in terms of strategy. The best data in the world won’t do you any good unless you put it to good use.

I volunteered in North Carolina during early voting and on election day. I was surprised how bad the voter data was that close to election day. Their call and canvas rolls had not been cleaned up suggesting that most of them had not been called or canvassed before that week.

So much this. The author is the perfect example of the mindset that lost us the election.

“I suspect most of the people working for her didn’t feel impassioned the way they did for Obama”

Here’s how I’d campaign in 2020. First, don’t assume ‘data’ accurately measures what it thinks it is measuring. There’s a reason all the social sciences but the INCREDIBLY STUPID Political Science have strongly embraced mixed methods, both quantitative AND qualitative approaches, in their work. Boots on the group…

I think part of the problem is that the state-level campaigns were very decentralized, and so could be hit or miss. Your friend did an amazing job in one town, but not enough places in Michigan had awesome organizers like him. For example, I volunteered for Hillary in Massachusetts, and even in strong blue Boston it…

None of your points conflict with what I said.

I don’t know that they’re blaming the organizers, but the national campaign itself. My mom is in rural Michigan, and she stumped for both Obama’s campaigns and Hillary’s this year. She said the difference between the two was staggering.

Trump was also up against basically the worst candidate the Democrats could have put forward. No personality, decades of baggage, averse to transparency, motivates the other side against her, unwilling to change or listen to others, and spent her time running a victory lap instead of a campaign.

I can’t tell you much about Michigan but I am from Wisconsin, a state that until recently had a long history as a Blue State. I think a couple things happened.

I think that is somewhat distinguishable. The primary polling was based in large part on the assumption that the demographics of the state would be the same as in 2008. But 2008 was an anomaly because the state had no competitive primary (because it moved its election up) and Obama/Edwards were not even on the…

I will concede that even during the election I was concerned with the odd nature of her campaign. One case: Minnesota. They didn’t even send anyone to Minnesota, assuming they had Minnesota in the bag. While they did win Minnesota, they came very close to not winning (1.4 point difference). When they finally did…

It sounds like the Clintons fucked up in the same way they did back in 2008's primary campaign, screwing up the mobilization/state-by-state game and letting their central office people screw things up at the local level. That’s troubling, although I still think Comey was the bigger proximate cause why Clinton lost.

This may be too big of a leap, but is it possible ambivalence was somewhat to blame for the lack of strong local leadership/organization? I voted for Hillary and donated to her campaign, but some part of me dreaded the idea of the Clintons back in the White House. I suspect most of the people working for her didn’t…

I think “feeling the pulse on the ground” is something they definitely missed, which influenced the way in which they deployed all the other strategies.

Icarus got a little too close to the sun this year.