The Irish Times's Washington Correspondent Simon Carswell identified a weakness in Hillary Clinton's presidential election campaign when he brought his young daughters to one of her campaign events last year.
His daughters - Hillary fans - had made a sign for the event with the slogan: “Go Hillary! No to Trump.”
It was the kind of grassroots enthusiasm that characterised Bernie Sanders’s and Donald Trump’s campaigns, but was clearly lacking in Clinton’s.
“A fairly preppy Clinton staffer objected to the sign on the way in . . . [it was] a real eye-rolling moment.”
As he approaches the end of his tenure as Washington Correspondent, Simon Carswell talked to the World View podcast about what has been a tumultuous year in the US and how he and his family experienced the 2016 race to the White House.
He also tried to answer the questions - Is the US a country gone mad? What does Donald Trump represent? And for our friends and family who are still migrating there in large numbers, is there such a thing as an Irish-American community?
World View is a weekly foreign affairs podcast from The Irish Times. You can download or listen to episodes via iTunes, Stitcheror Soundcloud.