Joshua Green, a senior editor at the Atlantic, invites OffTheBus members to dig through memos and emails leaked by some of Senator Hillary Clinton's senior staffers. In his most recent piece, "The Front-Runner's Fall," Green provides a chronology of Clinton campaign mishaps and debates, all set in a memoranda backdrop. Here, Green dishes on how his story came into being and appeals for your help:
Earlier this summer, the Atlantic set out to examine exactly why Hillary Clinton's campaign fell apart. Two years ago, Clinton was considered all but inevitable -- she would win the Democratic nomination and probably the presidency. The epic nature of her campaign's collapse was something we felt had not been satisfactorily explained. I spent the last few months interviewing current and former Clinton staffers and outside consultants with a goal of trying to elicit anything that would provide a contemporaneous account of what happened and what they were thinking and saying to each other -- I asked for memos, emails, letters, even diary entries if they'd share them. The result was an unprecedented leak of very senior-level internal documents.
The thought behind the piece was to take the great stuff we'd been leaked and use it in the most innovative way we could find. In addition to our heavyweight lineup of bloggers and web video, we've been giving a lot of thought to how best to present pieces from the magazine on our website in ways that take full advantage of the platform and the readership. I've long been a fan of sites like 'OffTheBus' and 'TPM Document Dump' and 'Smoking Gun,' so I thought it would be cool to scan and post the campaign's internal documents in an easily browse-able format. The idea is to throw open the reporter's notebook, as it were, and let readers see the primary materials for themselves. Let them make up their own minds about what happened to the Clinton campaign and who is to blame. Of course, I'm not looking to put myself out of work here, so there's also an accompanying magazine piece that lends a broader context, includes additional reporting, and links to the relevant materials. I hope people will read it. But if you'd rather not settle for a writer's interpretation of what is or is not important, you don't have to. You can click through the materials in chronological order and see the campaign unfold that way. This was essentially the Mt. Vesuvius of campaign leaks: there's tons more stuff than could ever fit into a single magazine piece, and we fully expect that readers and bloggers will find all kinds of stuff buried in these memos and emails and help advance the story.~~ Joshua Green
Is Green's hindsight 20/20? Take a look for yourself. Then write up your findings and publish them at OffTheBus.
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I believe in a historically critical context, it's important to purvey....
Nothing's pulling my focus off Obama's win, so, no problem, here.
Right off the bat, I can see that Mark Penn shrouded Clinton's campaign with an obnoxious supremacy that ill served her. His thinking he had it all figured out, was in a way commendable, but actually, without an impenetrable, resilient staff, was naive at best.
Any feelings they had it all figured out was poison because it detracted Hillary from building a roots campaign, as many've said, from the bottom up. Had Hillary established herself with total progressives, this would have taken place naturally. She would've had to apologize for her vote on the Iraq war, which was never really such a big deal, after all. She would've naturally assumed places with other WOMEN in the news like Arianna, Amy Goodman, - the roots format would have begun to gell on its own, having a flexibility that would've made things a lot easier for her staff and everyone to get along.
A lot of the "rigidity" formatted in her campaign which denied her this flexibility was because of too much made of this being about Hillary. Hill should have avoided that like the plague, and instead, always, make this about the American people. Negativity actually hurt her more then anything, at that stage. She was always my favorite until she started attacking Obama, which I felt was scurrilously beneath
We all know Hillary has those 18,000,000 supporters that LOVE her to death. So please help her by showing your love...
This is my challenge to Clinton supporters...
If you like Hillary please send her $1 this month...
If you really loved her please send her $5….
If you really - really - really loved her send her $10...
And all of you McCain supporters that are thankful to the bitter Clinton supporters please send her $100, you could afford it much more then the poor uneducated, white, bitter Clinton followers...
By next month all eighteen plus million of you will pay off her debt and we will not have to listen to her begging anymore...
This will also be an indicator of how many people truly care about the Clintons...
Stop the Drama!
0bama 08!
What concerns me is not the post-mortem on her campaign, but the abyss-like division between Dems . I'm ashamed of the slurs and barbs thrown around between party members here on HuffPo, never mind the broader national scale.
The thing is done, people. Get the hell over it: move on; we have much bigger fish to fry. We have REAL worries, like keeping the Republicans out of the White House and rescuing our nation from the economic tailspin we're whirling downward in. Who gives a rat's ass if they read her name on the ballot at the DNC ? They want to make noise, let 'em. Take it with a measure of grace; get about the business of supporting our candidate. If Clinton supporters are nursing a case of sour grapes, too bad. Now's the time for genuine unity; it's inappropriate to attempt to further the agenda of the losing candidate. She oughta have enough class/ concern for the nation to ask her supporters to throw their weight behind Obama, but if she can't manage it, we're still going forward. Deal with it.
I started out as a Clinton supporter. I was turned off by the arrogance, disarray, etc. If the tables were turned and Obama had lost, I would have voted for Clinton (despite many misgivings) because I have a son and a daughter. I don't want my son to go to a stupid war of McCain's making, and I want my daughter to have choices in life - be it birth control or abortion. It's as simple as that.
Here's an idea: how about focusing on the real "enemy" of the Democratic Party, McCain and the Republican Party. Maybe then you'd not antagonize equally "worthy democrats" who happen to think a little differently than you do.
nice post, fabienne
Is the story more important or electing a President who will be best for the country? Actually it appears neither democrats or republicans are too sure of their candidates and feel they'd like a do-over.
I am shocked that Senator Clinton put her trust in someone so clueless.
Just read the first paragraph of Penn's first memo, entitled "The Plan". What serious candidate for President of the United States would even bother reading beyond the first page and taking the advice offered here? It's insane.
Seriously...Mark Penn does not deserve one dime of the $5m that Senator Clinton owes him.
Clinton's remark was racial, not racist. A huge difference. Up until Obama's "famous" cop out speech, we were still asking if Obama was black enough for AA's. AA's threw their biggest presidential ally in history under the bus. No wonder Bill was so hurt & mad.
Brave of him to address it.
The answer is that Obama supporters and campaign officials built up such a hatred towards Hillary that they can't let it go. It's not enough that she endorses and campaigns for him, she has to fall in love with him. But Obama supporters are only interested in engaging in ridiculous conspiracy theories about her.
If Hillary can supposedly wave her hand and get all 18 million of her voters to do whatever she says, then why can't Obama wave his hand and have his supporters stop calling the Clintons racists? I give Hillary extra credit for campaiging so vigorousaly for Obama after the slimy, race based campaign he ran.
As an Obama supporter, I am not insulted. Please don't assume that you understand me, and please stop speaking for me.