Move on

Does Trump (“Tiny”) really think it’s right to get in a Twitter fight with a porn star (“Horseface”)? Does Mitch McConnell (“Turtle”) really think it’s right to say the deficit is so big (thanks to Republican tax cuts) that Congress has to cut Social Security and Medicare? Does Elizabeth Warren (“Pocahontas”) really think it’s right…

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Do a poll

Carter and I disagree on most every issue, but we agree on one big thing: Good polling is essential in a campaign. Which is why I’m obsessed with why Hillary Clinton’s campaign stopped state-level polling in the final weeks of 2016. I think about that decision every time Trump does something dumb, despicable or dangerous…

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Why Hillary lost, continued

Bill Clinton’s old pollster Stanley Greenberg joins the pile piling onto Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. Greenberg’s most striking point is the campaign’s overreliance on “data analytics” and under-reliance on polls, focus groups and good old political gut. In other words, the campaign abandoned the very same techniques that made Bill Clinton a winner in 1992…

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What happened? One word: Race

Hillary Clinton’s book scrolls through a long list of reasons why she lost. But the real reason may boil down to one simple fact: race. Specifically, the fact that the President she wanted to succeed – the President who endorsed her and enthusiastically campaigned for her – was black. Plus the fact that her opponent…

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Throwing the book at Hillary

Hillary is getting pilloried. Again. This time for having the effrontery to write a book about the election, “What Happened.” Even Democrats are jumping and dumping on her for “reopening old wounds,” “refighting old battles” and making them relive the awful experience of seeing Trump elected President. Lay off her. Three points here: First, she…

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Quick hits

So much is happening so fast. So let’s fire away at several juicy targets – er, topics. Trumped Just when you think he can’t get worse, he does. His 77-minute tirade in Phoenix was True Trump. The estimable Economist pegged him for who and what he is: “politically inept, morally barren and temperamentally unfit for…

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Why the polls were wrong

Nate Cohn of The New York Times Upshot column has an eye-opening analysis of why so many state-level polls were wrong about Trump and Clinton last year. More on that later. But bad polls aren’t to blame for Hillary Clinton’s loss. Because her campaign didn’t do polls. That’s the most shattering revelation in a new…

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The Greening of Trump

Harrison Hickman, my genius pollster friend, told me a simple fact about the 2016 presidential election that I had not seen anywhere. The votes that Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, got in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania were enough to swing the election from Hillary Clinton. And make Trump President. Here are the numbers.            …

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Clinton shattered

A new now-it-can-be-told book performs the requisite autopsy on why Hillary Clinton lost. Judging by the reviews, “Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign” is the kind of political porn we junkies eat up. No doubt it’s filled with delicious dirt dished out by dueling staffers exacting revenge and blaming each other. Yum! It’s a first stab…

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How did Hillary lose to him?

A Democrat watches Trump and wonders, “How did Hillary lose to this guy?” A political pro wonders, “How did Hillary lose to this guy after running so many more TV ads than he did?” She ran 200,000 ads to his 76,000. Was it Twitter? Comey? Putin? Or was it the ads themselves? A new study…

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