2016 Postmortem

The primaries are an opportunity for candidates to demonstrate their resilience and strength. I thought Bernie may have been too kind to Hillary when he refused to make the emails an issue. If nothing else, when you deal with an issue in the primary, it's old news by the time you get to the general election. Dealing with issues in the primary is good practice and lays the groundwork for dealing with the same issues in the general. It's an inoculation.

I was particularly disappointed by Hillary's refusal to release transcripts of her Wall Street speeches during the primaries. She was sitting on her lead and didn't want to risk losing ground. Unfortunately, it came off like a coverup and the coverup is generally assumed to be worse than the original sin. Her refusal to release those transcripts offset the advantage she could have reaped from Trump's refusal to release his tax returns.