Are you able to take some reasonable analysis?

[Political Heretic]

You can take this, or choose to just ignore it because I have an Obama icon by name. But believe it or not it is possible for some people to think beyond just trashing the "other guy."

If I was consulting with the Clinton campaign, I would say that the biggest worries for the Clinton campaign in these states are the following:

1) Trend data
2) Ground organization / mobilization
3) Avoiding a spending war

1) Tend data has Clinton's numbers in states she must win either stagnating, declining or in the absolute best case scenario, only marginally increasing at a pace that does not keep up with her rival. On the other hand, Obama's trend data in Ohio for example is not only continually increasing over the last month, it is increasing at a much greater overall rate. This is bad news when you are still 2.5 weeks away. Thus the Clinton campaign has to find some way to reverse that Obama trend and/or reverse (or best case, improve) that Clinton trend. And that's what we see going on - the campaign has been backed into a corner where they feel forced to "go negative" to try to shake something up. Obviously it would be a major win if they could have somehow pressured the Obama campaign into agreeing to a lot more debates, but they shouldn't have expected that to work - it would be idiotic for her rival to agree to any of that in the position he is in: it would be nothing to gain and lots to lose.

2) Ground organization / mobilization - yes, Hillary Clinton can draw a crowd. But like it or not, the reality is that Clinton has never been strong at the ground game. These are people who have intense media and message discipline, and are used to running a very top down campaign with large figure donors, national media strategy and message event after message event. Start talking to them about field organizing, precinct captains, CATS and RATS (county action teams and regional action teams, respectively) and they are not so experienced. Part of that is because of the kind of people Hillary Clinton chose for her campaign. She planned a campaign that would have been completely different from the kind of campaign she is now forced to run. The Obama campaign has a massive, massive, ground organization and planned to run a ground-based campaign from day one. They have the infrastructure and the mobilization. And with the major union endorsements the Obama campaign just got effecting upcoming state battles, they now have state of the art mobilization support from them as well.

I'm not sure what to advise other than to tell the Hillary campaign to start pleading for their supporters to drive to Texas and Ohio and help. Don't get me wrong - Clinton has an infrastructure. Especially in Texas which I sincerely believe she should take. But the campaign wasn't as prepared for the "ground game" as her rival, and that is going to be a major challenge from here to the end.

3) Avoiding a spending war - the Obama campaign is out raising the Clinton campaign. If Obama manages to turn any state into a massive spending war, Clinton will be in serious trouble because her already lagging resources will be strapped even further. Getting into a negative ad tit for tat in Wisconsin is a good example: the Clinton campaign needs to be willing to cut that off soon, even if they don't get the last word, before they end up blowing huge amounts of money for media markets where it won't make a significant different. Obama can afford it, she can't. It's a bad place to be I admit, because to some extent the campaign with the most money can kind of dictate how much you have to spend to have a chance. If Obama camp is covering targeted districts with direct mail, you've got to have something there too. If they are mass phonebanking, you've got to have something porportional as well. It's tough, because he can outspend her.

These are the things I would be worried about.

[lligrd]

1. But Clinton Has All That Experience

I wonder what happened?

[grantcart]

2. Its not day one yet