The 2016 election cycle was unlike anything we have ever seen in American politics. We can talk all we want about elections or movements from 100 years ago but there is really no denying that 2016 was one for the ages. Hillary Clinton was handed the White House on a silver platter and her disastrous decisions that followed are going to be talked about for decades to come. A new heavily sourced book, “Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign“, is giving us fascinating insight into just how badly Hillary Clinton squandered her long-awaited opportunity and what was going through her head on election night.

We knew that Hillary was dejected when she realized she had lost the election to Donald Trump. We didn’t know what the conversation sounded like when she was on the phone with Barack Obama that night. It looks like she was very aware that she had failed to successfully spin Obama’s failed policies.

From The Daily Mail:

Hillary Clinton phoned Barack Obama on election night after conceding defeat and told him: ‘I’m sorry’. The Democratic Presidential candidate stepped into an anteroom for the conversation to apologize for losing to Donald Trump in a conversation which has never previously been reported. As she took the call Clinton knew she had ‘let her country down’ and that Obama’s legacy lay ‘shattered at Donald Trump’s feet’, a new book reveals.

You know how we were always told that experience and political savvy were some of Hillary’s strengths? Turns out the exact opposite was true. Her experience meant little to nothing when it came to running an effective campaign.

Robbie Mook might be the worst campaign manager in human history and that was evident when we learned awhile back that the Clinton campaign spent more money on ads in Omaha than they did in Michigan and Wisconsin. COMBINED. Yes, you read that right.

“Shattered” provided some more insight into Mook’s awesome job running Hillary’s campaign and it directly ties into Hillary’s stunning inability to win in solid blue states.

From Washington Examiner:

5. Two key Clinton staffers, campaign manager Robby Mook and Marlon Marshall, had a system for placating the candidate and her closest advisers: They’d do just enough to make it look like they were following orders to a T. In reality, they often ignored directives and acted on their own. For example, after Clinton lost Michigan to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., in the Democratic primary, Mook and Marshall hired just enough staffers for the five states in the upcoming March 15 primaries to make it look like they were doing something in response to losing the Great Lake State. But they never actually deviated from the set campaign strategy. 6. After listening to weeks of complaints and second-guessing her own decisions, Clinton reportedly lost confidence in Mook. She stopped speaking directly to her campaign manager by the end of February 2016. 7. Also that same month, Mook and campaign chairman John Podesta were “in all but open warfare.”

Yikes. On the flipside, you can argue that Trump’s campaign leadership was one of his strengths. There is no doubt that the campaign took off when Bannon and Conway joined and it is pretty clear they were all on the same page at least compared to Mook and Clinton. That flies directly in the face of the media narrative that the Trump campaign was in disarray.

One of the more fascinating aspects of the 2016 campaign was the obvious takeaway that the polls couldn’t be trusted when it came to Donald Trump. The “Shy Tory” theory speaks to the idea that some voters aren’t comfortable talking about who they are voting for with pollsters and many people voiced suspicion during the 2016 season that Trump supporters weren’t telling pollsters the truth due to fears of being ostracized. The liberal media assured us that wasn’t the case all the way up until Election Day but clearly there was something to be said for that theory. In fact, Hillary was warned by her aides that she could lose and she still refused to take Trump seriously.

9. As Trump continued to dominate the GOP primary, a longtime Clinton aide circulated a memo warning he could defeat her in the general election. “FACT: Donald Trump can defeat Hillary Clinton and become the 45th President of the United States,” it read, adding Hillary should not, “underestimate his capacity to draw people to the polls who normally do not vote. [It] could tip the scales in key states (and put certain states in play that would otherwise be more safe Democratic).” In reference to the polls, the same adviser added, “I’d routinely add three or four points to whatever they say about his support.” The warning was, of course, ignored by Clinton’s campaign, which continued to rely heavily on its data models.

The part that’s even stranger about these revelations is that Hillary and her family are still acting in the same indignant manner months after the election. You would think that the kind of pain and embarrassment Hillary clearly felt combined with the many glaring problems we are learning about the campaign would have been enough to spark a change of heart. That’s not happening at all. In fact, just this week we learned that Chelsea Clinton is still blaming sexism for Hillary’s loss.

From Heat Street:

Speaking to Variety magazine (she graces the cover in a white t-shirt, motorcycle jacket and a lot of Photoshop work), Clinton says she’s definitely not interested in running for office, but if she were, she’d have to contend with American voters who stubbornly refuse to acknowledge exactly how much she and her family have contributed to their lives. The former First Daughter says she was “not surprised” at the blatant sexism she encountered on the campaign trail with her mom, Hillary Clinton, and warned the magazine that the country is “going backwards” on civil liberties (though, it seems, Donald Trump has yet to provide Chelsea with any specific examples).

Gee, real sharp political commentary there Chels.

Hillary has been singing the same tune. Since the election, Hillary has blamed Russia, Comey, misogyny, and everything else under the sun while basically skimming over the revelations from this book as well as the information in the WikiLeaks emails. We also learned from this new book that the media knew Hillary wasn’t confident and that they knew she was a flawed candidate. Yet, they helped her push her weak agenda anyway. Rush Limbaugh had a great take on it.

From RushLimbaugh.com:

You get a book on a campaign following an election written by journalists who knew all this stuff during the campaign but held it for their book but knew it all along. So all the while Hillary’s campaign is known to be a clunker, while all along, while she is known to be a bad actor, all along known that Trump’s campaign is real and these rallies are substantive and he’s got all of the energy. And his campaign has all the excitement. They knew all of that, and they knew she was cruising for trouble, but they maintained the myth that she was still headed for a landslide win because she was Hillary Clinton, smartest woman in the world.

This book has succeeded in exposing a variety of issues with Hillary Clinton’s campaign that we all suspected but are now confirmed. How in the world did Hillary not see her loss coming? It’s really astounding. Bill Clinton even said on election night that the loss was “just like Brexit“. Yeah, Bill. It was. Kinda strange how two “political geniuses” like you and Hillary couldn’t figure that out until it was too late.

At the end of the day, Hillary’s downfall came down to one word: arrogance.

Here’s a fun little update.

From Page Six: