Tag: Hillary Clinton

With Trump, There Is No Crystal Ball

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NewCo Shift Forum Dialogs, in Partnership with Work Market

Political veteran John Heilemann frames the consequences of an unexpected election

John Heilemann


For more than 20 years, journalist John Heilemann has covered America’s presidential elections. He was the very first online journalist accredited by a presidential campaign (in 1996, by Bill Clinton’s White House, as a correspondent for Wired and Hotwired), and went on, with his colleague Mark Halperin, to write two New York Times No 1. best selling books on the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections (Game Change and Double Down). In the past two years, Heilemann has established himself as a quick-witted host on Showtime’s acclaimed documentary series The Circus, as well as Bloomberg’s With All Due Respect.

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Russia Hacked Our Election. So When Are We Going to Get Serious About That?

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NewCo Shift Forum

A conversation with the key players in last Fall’s biggest election controversy

L to R: Shawn Henry President & CSO, CrowdStrike Services Marc Elias Partner, Firmwide Chair, Political Law Practice; Member, Firmwide Executive Committee, Perkins Coie — John Podesta Chair, Hillary Clinton for America

Following the explosive interview with Clinton campaign chief John Podesta at NewCo Shift Forum last month, a panel of experts sat down with Podesta and moderator John Heilemann to discuss the implications of Russia’s hacking on the US election process. Shawn Henry, president of the firm which identified the hackers, and Marc Elias, general counsel to the Clinton campaign, discussed Trump’s claims of voter fraud, whether the hacking will effect the 2018 midterm elections, and more. Below is the video and the full transcript, edited for clarity, of the conversation between the three.

John Heilemann (JH): We have here Marc Elias, who’s part of Perkins Coie, which is one of the sponsors of this forum, was also the chief election lawyer for the Hillary Clinton campaign, and a colleague of John Podesta’s.

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Still Angry: John Podesta’s First Interview Since the Hacked Election

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NewCo Shift Forum Dialogs

The Chair of Hillary Clinton’s campaign and former Chief of Staff to Bill Clinton joined John Heilemann for a candid conversation about “The Hacked Election.” His commentary is not to be missed.

John Podesta at NewCo Shift Forum

In his first interview since the November election, John Podesta, the Clinton campaign chair whose hacked personal email arguably changed the course of last Fall’s election, suggested a strong remedy for the distrust in democracy sown since Trump’s surprise win: Establish a 9/11-style commission to investigate all the unresolved questions about Russia’s meddling in the election, its role in the hacking, and its possible ties to the Trump campaign.

Below is the full, unedited conversation between Podesta and John Heilemann, author of Game Change, Double Down, and co-creator and host of Showtime’s The Circus. The interview begins with particularly poignant footage of Podesta on election day, and charges through his anger with FBI director James Comey, the role of Russia in the election, and the “vile stream” of fake news driving today’s political discussion.

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Valerie Jarrett, John Podesta, Janet Napolitano, Robert Reich Headline Shift Forum’s Policy …

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Valerie Jarrett, our dinner speaker on day one.

When we started planning the program for the Shift Forum nearly a year ago, we knew politics would play a critical role. Shift’s core thesis — that we’re in the early stages of renegotiating the contract between business and society — demands that we engage with politics at a local, regional, and national level. I knew we’d want to include policymakers, political journalists, and regulators in the lineup this February.

To help, I turned to long time friend and storied colleague John Heilemann, who had just embarked on a remarkable political journey: Not only was he the co-managing editor of politics at Bloomberg, but he was also shooting a new kind of political documentary series— Showtime’s The Circus — which offered intimate and candid insights into what was quickly becoming one of the most divisive, fascinating, and important election seasons of the modern era (if you’ve not watched The Circus, you must put it on your binge list, it’s beyond great).

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Valerie Jarrett, John Podesta, Janet Napolitano, Robert Reich Headline Shift Forum’s Policy &…

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Valerie Jarrett, our dinner speaker on day one.

When we started planning the program for the Shift Forum nearly a year ago, we knew politics would play a critical role. Shift’s core thesis — that we’re in the early stages of renegotiating the contract between business and society — demands that we engage with politics at a local, regional, and national level. I knew we’d want to include policymakers, political journalists, and regulators in the lineup this February.

To help, I turned to long time friend and storied colleague John Heilemann, who had just embarked on a remarkable political journey: Not only was he the co-managing editor of politics at Bloomberg, but he was also shooting a new kind of political documentary series— Showtime’s The Circus — which offered intimate and candid insights into what was quickly becoming one of the most divisive, fascinating, and important election seasons of the modern era (if you’ve not watched The Circus, you must put it on your binge list, it’s beyond great).

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Make America Great: The Answer is Us

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We the People

By coincidence, not design, I spent the two weeks after the election in the Bay Area, Sacramento and Washington, D.C., engaging with over 100 groups and leaders about the future of our country— bipartisan leaders in media, foundations, think tanks, NGOs, businesses, labor, technology, the academy, public service and the faith community. What I discussed with them is what we do now to move the United States forward. Is the American Dream dead? As we move beyond shock (and for many of us grieving), is there a constructive path out? Can it be bi-partisan? I believe so — it is called Progressive Federalism (a term coined by Andrei Cherny in the Democracy Journal and Joel Rogers and Richard Freeman in an important book on inequality).

The Original Progressive
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Secession Is a Cop-Out. Back to Work, Everyone.

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Hakan Dahlstrom | Flickr

Don’t like how the election turned out? Let’s secede! American history has a long tradition of threats like that, but people almost never act on them. That’s a good thing — since the one time it happened, we got four years of war, misery, death, and wounds that still haven’t healed a century and a half later.

Still, secession cries are ringing out again, and not from Dixie. Shervin Pishevar, the investor and Hyperloop One founder, has called for California to leave the Union, and he’s picked up some support in Silicon Valley (Fusion).

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What I Discovered About Trump and Clinton From Analyzing 4 Million Facebook Posts

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On Facebook, headlines are often more important than the articles themselves. Most headlines are browsed, not clicked — think about your own Facebook behavior; How often do you click on links? Because of this, the headlines frame our positions on topics without even having to read the content. It’s quick, simple, and we feel informed. But with respect to politics, this news feed browsing behavior creates an electorate that can become dangerously uninformed.

These same headlines also leave breadcrumbs of the 2016 political narrative, which we can analyze. For this study, we focused on four things:

  1. Exploring media coverage frequency and bias of “Trump” and “Clinton” across different media sources (Headlines)
  2. Comparing social media attention in 2016 to social media attention during the 2012 Obama vs. Romney campaign (Headlines)
  3. Describing other topics the mainstream media brought up when describing Trump and Clinton during the 2016 election (Headlines)
  4. Quantifying the differences in Facebook audience engagement for Clinton and Trump (Facebook Post Engagement)


Analysis Setup

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If Trump Wins, Data Loses

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Gage Skidmore | Flickr

Donald Trump won the primaries by thumbing his nose at political convention, including the idea — personified by the folks who steered President Obama’s two winning campaigns — that data science can be used to optimize a presidential campaign. If Trump wins tonight, that upset would also spell a profound defeat for this data-driven mindset (Backchannel).

For one thing, the polls and prediction sites run by numbers nerds all tell us that Trump’s headed for defeat. But proving them wrong is only the beginning of the challenge to a scientific, evidence-driven worldview that a Trump victory would represent.

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Several Hundred Votes

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Our Endorsement for Hillary

Al Gore acknowledges the crowd at Web 2 Summit, November 2008

One of the most indelible images of my career was backstage at the Web 2 Summit, the day after Barack Obama was elected president in 2008. I was in the wings of the main stage at the Sheraton Palace hotel in San Francisco. Out in the ballroom, a thousand of technology’s elite stood roaring and jubilant, delivering a standing ovation to the man who had just walked on stage.

Al Gore strode to the podium, grasped it on both sides, looked out into the lights and the crowd, and suddenly — it hit him. Eight years before almost to the day, several hundred hanging chads fluttering in the Florida breeze had stolen his Presidency. The Supreme Court then delivered it to George Bush.

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