So, who has read SHATTERED yet?

[zipplewrath]

131. Yes and no

The margin of victory was so small, maybe 100K votes or so spread over 3 or 4 states, that just about anything can be looked at as having "made the difference". That kind of difference can be explained by weather in certain areas. So Russia, Comey, or pant suits can be explained as the "cause". The authors of this book, out of the marketing necessity of needing to get a book out in a timely fashion, basically wrote about what they saw through their "soda straw".

However, almost all of the explanations being thrown about, have a hard time coming up against to realities. 1) More than just HRC lost that day. Races were lost across the country such that the party ended up in the minority in both houses. The performance at the state level wasn't very good either. 2) This isn't a one time event. The party has been losing ground for several election cycles. We kind of fool ourselves because we get momentary upticks in one cycle or another, but the GOP has been running the House for a approaching a decade now. And our performance at the state level has been on a severe slide for the better part of the last two decades.

There are a lot of reasons for this, and many of them are in essence "structural" to our election system. It's not that there isn't value in looking over mistakes in the last election. One can just delude oneself that they are core issues, instead of symptoms, not causes, of a larger problem. There hasn't been a perfect campaign yet.

We'd be foolish not to notice how bad of shape the Democratic party is. We'd be equally foolish to look to short term excuses for this condition. They are deep and structural and won't be easy to fix.