I saw this story the other day and I can’t get it out of my mind.
BY AMIE PARNES
“It was a mismanaged campaign from the start, 150 percent,” one aide said. “There was so much stuff that needed fixing. I thought we might have learned some lessons from the primary. But as you can tell from last night, probably not.”
One surrogate blamed the poor sampling models and analytics that the campaign was so reliant on. It hadn’t done traditional tracking polls for the last month.
Other aides and surrogates pointed to an arrogance that came from the top.
Some faulted the top brass for not properly allocating the resources they needed to win states.
Given Clinton’s primary loss to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in Michigan, allies questioned why the Democratic nominee didn’t double down in the state much earlier.
Allies on the ground complained for weeks that they weren’t getting the resources they needed.
“The big question is ‘How much money did you spend? And what’s left in the bank?’ ” said one Clinton surrogate. “Because there were states like Michigan that kept sounding the alarm and no one was taking it seriously until the very end. They never really got everything they wanted.”
“We underestimated the Midwest,” acknowledged one longtime Clinton friend.
Clinton became the first Democratic presidential candidate since 1984 to lose Wisconsin, and the first since 1988 to lose Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Democratic strategist Jim Manley, another surrogate, pointed to Wisconsin as proof of the broader point that there was a disregard for that part of the country — including in down-ballot races.
“Russ Feingold sent a flare up and said ‘I need help,’ ” Manley said, but it went largely ignored.
This level of incompetence by the DNC is inexcusable, whether it was a result of arrogance at the top or not.