Lanny J. Davis, "The Unmaking of the President 2016"

Lanny J. Davis discusses his book, "The Unmaking of the President 2016", at Politics and Prose on 2/19/18.

Davis’s analysis of the 2016 election argues that the contest was effectively over, decided in Trump’s favor, on October 28. That day James Comey informed Congress that the FBI would be investigating additional emails possibly relevant to Hillary Clinton’s email case, which had been closed in July. Until this announcement, Clinton had been ahead in many polls and in the battleground states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. After it, headlines about the “criminal investigation” dominated the media, overshadowing other significant factors such as Russian hacking. Davis, who served as special counsel to President Clinton and was appointed by President Bush to the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, goes state by state, tracking data that shows decisively how Clinton’s support built steadily from July to October, then fell precipitously in the final eleven days before the election.

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