10 wild new revelations about Hillary Clinton's doomed campaign

…Friends and advisers think that Clinton "bears the blame for her defeat," arguing that her actions before the campaign (setting up a private email server, becoming entangled in the Clinton Foundation, giving speeches to Wall Street banks) "hamstrung her own chances so badly that she couldn't recover," ensuring that she could not "cast herself as anything but a lifelong insider when so much of the country had lost faith in its institutions." [The New York Times]

[Abedin] couldn't be counted on to relay constructive criticism to Hillary without pointing a finger at the critic. [Axios]

Hillary distributed power so broadly that none of her aides or advisers had control of the whole apparatus. [NPR]

Bill Clinton's chief of staff, Tina Flournoy, "mentioned to him and a small group of his aides that she was going to see the Rolling Stones in Europe. 'Mick Jagger used to give my mother-in-law wet dreams,' Bill offered." [Axios]

[Shattered is] the story of a wildly dysfunctional and "spirit-crushing" campaign that embraced a flawed strategy (based on flawed data) and that failed, repeatedly, to correct course. A passive-aggressive campaign that neglected to act on warning flares sent up by Democratic operatives on the ground in crucial swing states, and that ignored the advice of the candidate's husband, former President Bill Clinton, and other Democratic Party elders, who argued that the campaign needed to work harder to persuade undecided and ambivalent voters (like working-class whites and millennials), instead of focusing so insistently on turning out core supporters. [The New York Times]

Worried about leaving his supersecret [debate] prep materials in an Uber, [Philippe] Reines [who played Donald Trump] bought a heavy-duty tether so that he could lock his briefcase to his waist. He actually acquired two different versions — one of which was originally designed for bondage enthusiasts. [Axios]

Allen and Parnes report that Donna Brazile, the Democratic National Committee chairwoman, was worried in early October about the lack of ground forces in major swing states, and that Mook had "declined to use pollsters to track voter preferences in the final three weeks of the campaign," despite pleas from advisers in crucial states. [The New York Times]

At one point, the authors describe how, in the early hours of Nov. 9 — not long after The Associated Press officially called the race for Trump, and hours after most of the Clinton camp had all but given up hope of winning — the 2016 Democratic nominee got a call from President Obama."You need to concede," Obama told his former secretary of state, according to the authors. The president, who had hit the campaign trail hard for Clinton, now believed the race was over and was determined that she accept her defeat with "dignity.""After Trump had questioned the legitimacy of the election, the last thing Obama wanted was for Hillary to reinforce that message. As president, it was his job to safeguard the integrity of the political process," the authors write. [People]

"Mr. President, I'm sorry." [Axios]

"Look I really just want to concede gracefully, wish him the best, thank everybody, and get off the stage ... This is not a moment for me to do more than that."Jake Sullivan, [Clinton's] chief strategist took the lead in defending the tone. "Everything you said, we're going to do in this speech ... But you have been saying for many months that he is temperamentally unfit and that he would be dangerous, and, if you meant it, you should say it." […]"It's not my job anymore to do this," she said, her voice growing more forceful ... "Other people will criticize him. That's their job. I have done it. I just lost, and that is that ... That was my last race." [Politico]