• "If this election proved anything, it's that there are more of them than us, meaning there are a lot more voters out there who feel that they are, as Mr. Trump says, the forgotten man, forgotten woman, voiceless, invisible, to people are in-to coin a term-elite structures or elite institutions, which would include politics and media and all of that." - Kellyanne Conway, Campaign Manager, Donald J. Trump for President

  • "'Do you trust this man with his finger on the button?' At the end of the day, what a lot of voters didn't buy was that there was ever going to be a time when you had to worry about his finger on the button." – Tony Fabrizio, Pollster, Donald J. Trump for President

  • "One thing was abundantly clear when we got to the general election, which was that young people-this is a generalization-weren't supporting Trump... Our problem was that too many of them went to third-party candidates at the very end." - Robby Mook, Campaign Manager, Hillary for America

  • "If he's going to be my president, he's going to need to show me that white supremacy isn't acceptable, just steps from the Oval Office." - Karen Finney, Senior Advisor for Communications and Political Outreach & Senior Spokesperson, Hillary for America

  • "We knew the 14 million people we needed to win 270. We targeted those in over 1,000 different universes with exactly the things that mattered to them. We didn't let the media go to them. We went straight to them." - Brad Parscale, Digital Director, Donald J. Trump for President

 

The Oral History of the 2016 Presidential Election

After every presidential election since 1972, all of the major players have gathered at the Institute of Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School for a “first draft of history”. The 2016 Campaign Managers Conference was particularly intense, following one of the most vivid and unusual presidential campaigns in American history. It is hard to overstate the number of firsts: first woman nominee of a major party; first president elected with no prior military or public service; first winning presidential campaign run by a woman; first openly gay campaign manager for the presidential nominee of a major party; and finally: no candidate in American history has ever won this many popular votes and lost the presidency.

In Campaign for President: The Managers Look at 2016, a distinguished group of presidential campaign staff, journalists, and political observers take us inside the 2016 race for the Republican and Democratic nominations and general election, guiding us through each candidate's campaign from the time each candidate announced his or her intention to seek the presidency through the primaries, conventions, and up to election day. Campaign for President: The Managers Look at 2016 is essential reading for anyone interested in the inner workings of national political campaigns. 

An invaluable guide to one of the strangest, most bitter elections in U.S. history, as it was seen from inside the campaigns themselves. I attended this event. Even the winners were angry.
— David Fahrenthold, Pulitzer Prize winning reporter for the Washington Post

 

People will be studying the 2016 American presidential election for centuries to come. This book lets readers hear directly from those who had front row seats to this election, offering an unparalleled view of the series of events that brought us to two words: President Trump
— Kristen Soltis Anderson, Republican pollster