Inside Clinton’s Struggle to Find a Strategy for Trump

Politico: “Even with that view emerging so early in the contest (it would be 16 more weeks before Trump clinched his party’s nomination), Clinton’s team would struggle in the ensuing months to land on a strategy that would stick. Within days of that February GOP debate, Clinton’s aides started considering how to redraw the battleground map it had been relying on for well over a year, assessing Colorado’s and Virginia’s swing-state status and re-running the numbers on suburban white women and young Latinos. They would direct the Democrat to try out, and ditch, one campaign slogan after another. And as she finally wriggled out of the primary to face Trump, the strategy was still evolving, producing dramatic tactical shifts — from embracing disaffected Republicans to firing up liberals, from previewing an uplifting closing stretch to savaging Trump with an unprecedented television ad barrage.”

“It was a great paradox after nearly a year of virtual certainty—and outright enthusiasm—about their ultimate opponent that her team would swing between overconfidence, denial and disbelief as it struggled to concoct an electoral formula for stopping Trump.”