McClatchy: How Hillary Clinton blew a sure thing

[babylonsister]

How Hillary Clinton blew a sure thing
By Steven Thomma | McClatchy Newspapers

* Posted on Thursday, February 21, 2008


WASHINGTON — She had everything going for her. The most famous name in politics. A solid lead in the polls. A war chest of at least $133 million.

Yet Hillary Clinton now finds herself struggling for political survival, her once-firm grasp of the Democratic presidential nomination seemingly slipping away.

What happened?

Barack Obama, for one thing, a uniquely gifted speaker with a face that appeals deeply to the Democratic Party. He also had a better-organized campaign.

But Democrats say that Clinton, whose central theme is her readiness to be president, also made blunder after blunder. She chose an inexperienced campaign manager, crafted a message that didn't match the moment, fielded poor organizations in key states and built a budget that ran dry just when she needed money most.

"She got outmaneuvered," said Mark Mellman, a Democratic strategist who isn't aligned with any of this year's candidates. "Her campaign allowed her to be outmaneuvered on several fronts."

"To think that someone named Clinton with $130 million could end up here is amazing," another neutral Democratic strategist said. He spoke only on the condition of anonymity to permit more candor, as did many party insiders quoted here who dare not offend the still-powerful Clintons.

more...

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/28357.html

[lligrd]

1. I Think She Lost It When She Lost Her Most Ardent Supporters

on the left when she voted for the IWR. She sold us out and she is paying the price. Bending over for the other side is not a policy I can endorse.

[ingac70]

2. Yeah. He candidacy was never "a sure thing".

The expected us all to act like lemmings because her last name is Clinton.

Anyone who voted for the IWR has no moral high ground while facing off Republicans.

[KittyWampus]

9. The Clintons drank the Power Kool-Aid many years ago. They assumed voters would bow to them

the way so many pols have been forced to in the last several decades due to the Clintons' use of money as a weapon.

The Clintons have hoarded Democratic money for their own selfish goals.

Sadly, they came to see what was good for their own careers as synonymous with what is good for the Democratic Party and the country.

[LakeSamish706]

3. I also think that she lost ground when she refused to apologize for...

her IWR vote. Many Democrats I think felt that if John Edwards can apologize, so should she be able to.

[Flabbergasted]

39. She figured that in the GE she would have been ridiculed as a "flip flopper"

if she had apologized and since she figured she had a lock on the nomination she opted to not apologize.

I think she was correct in this but miscalculated the primary.

[Egnever]

8. She certainly lost me then

as did many others. Kerry was the last one that voted for that I will ever pull a lever for. I only did it for him because Bush was that bad.

Thankfully It doesn't look like we will be faced with that prospect this time.

[Arugula Latte]

34. When I think of how the millions of anti-war Democrats were treated in that

run up to the illegal bombing, slaughter and occupation of Iraq, I get a tiny bit of satisfaction thinking that at least one person seems to have paid the price for hubris.

It's a small speck compared to a hundreds of thousands of dead, injured and suffering people, though.

[leftofthedial]

36. I agree. I think she is paying a price for the IWR, BUT

had she been honest with her current position on it instead of trying to patch it over with shallow lies and preposterous whoppers, she could have survived it. It was her current position on her old position that has done her in.

I actually find it encouraging that Amurkan voters would hew to a principle like that, when they've been such apathetic, self-obsessed putzes for so long.

[bvar22]

37. Playing it "safe" while in the Senate also hurt.

I was overjoyed when she won her Senat seat from a powerful state like New York.
I expected to see her "leading the charge" on BIG issues.

I expected to see her commanding time on the talking head shows to advance progressive legislation in the Senate.

I expected to see her use her Senate seat to LEAD, and confront the Republican agenda from the floor of the Senate.

I was extremely disappointed.
Go along to Get along.

[Vinca]

4. If you have all the advantages going in and run the campaign

so badly you blow it, we can't be expected to buy the "day one" line of attack. As I recall, the first Clinton presidency was chaos at the beginning - maybe the second one would be, too.

[Egnever]

5. He spoke only on the condition of anonymity

as did many party insiders quoted here who dare not offend the still-powerful Clinton's.


That part is very telling I think. They have been browbeating people into supporting them for a long time now. It will be nice to see that power eroded once and for all. It is one of the things i dislike the most about their style of politics.

I remember early on their attempt to make their large donors sign a pledge to only support her. It was the beginning of my distaste for this campaign and her actions since then have only reinforced that early distaste

[Elidor]

6. A similar analysis from The Atlantic

Teacher and Apprentice
by Mark Ambinder

Clinton, focused at the time on the challenge posed by John Edwards, was blindsided. She, too, could have run for president shortly after winning a Senate seat. In 2003, Bill Clinton suggested that his most discreet pollster, Mark Penn, measure how his wife would fare against the Democrats then running for president—and confirmed that she would handily defeat them all. But Clinton herself was not ready. Even after the 2004 election, both Clintons feared that if New Yorkers caught wind of her presidential preparations, they would conclude that the ever-ambitious Hillary Clinton was using New York as a stepping-stone. Nothing was more important to Clinton’s presidential prospects, they calculated, than establishing her own political identity. So, while maintaining her popularity with the Democratic base, she spent six productive, if unglamorous, years in the Senate.

Obama’s starkly different choice had several immediate effects. It forced Democrats to think anew about Clintonism, not in comparison to a Republican alternative, as would have been the case, but to a Democratic one whose chief attributes—freshness, vigor, reform—put Clintonism in a harsh light. More broadly, it threatened to upend the way politicians have traditionally pursued the presidency: through years of careful preparation and positioning. But first he would have to get past the woman whose advice he solicited, then spurned.

<snip>
One of the mysteries of this presidential cycle is how the Clinton operation, with its vaunted foresight, failed to see Obama coming. Politically, the Clinton presidential team did very little early on, aside from holding a series of meetings among a very small group of advisers: Penn, campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle, communications adviser Howard Wolfson, media strategist Mandy Grunwald, and occasionally the veteran Democratic operative Harold Ickes and a few other confidants. In the spring of 2006, they were still eyeing John Edwards. After Edwards took a far more aggressive policy approach than Team Clinton had anticipated, Hillary Clinton responded by delivering a series of policy speeches, now largely forgotten. (Aides insisted she was not responding to Edwards, but many Clinton insiders say otherwise.) Barack Obama barely registered. Penn had not yet included him in his occasional surreptitious polls of the primary electorate.

<snip>
One Clinton adviser admitted to me that it wasn’t until late January of this year when, in a short period of time, Obama got fund-raising pledges from four of the party’s top fund-raisers—Orin Kramer, a New York hedge-fund manager; Alan Solomont, a Boston venture capitalist; Mark Gorenberg, who was one of John Kerry’s top bundlers; and Steve Westly, the former California controller—that Clinton’s inner circle finally understood the threat Obama posed.

Obama’s rise was particularly worrisome for two reasons. First, money is the mechanism by which the Clintons exert leverage over the party. Some Clinton supporters believed the couple’s sway over the party’s money machinery is even more important than their popularity with the Democratic base. So the defection of major fund-raisers was a serious blow.

Second, part of the grand strategy for Hillary Clinton’s run at the White House was to build a movement around her gender and the possibility of electing the first female president. Penn, the campaign’s visionary, believed that presenting Clinton’s candidacy as a historic occasion would reinspire voters badly disillusioned after eight years of George W. Bush. But Obama, the first credible black candidate, assumed the symbolic role that Clinton’s team had in mind for her. His reception by voters and the media was rapturous. Obama’s potential appeal had occurred to Clinton’s advisers, but as several of them later admitted, they failed to anticipate the intensity with which the Democratic Party and the national media would embrace him.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200712/clinton-obama

It's a couple months old and has been posted before, but still gives a good look at how they both got to where they are now.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

7. she can't manager her campaign finances

she spent her campaign finances on the top, making some advisors rich
while ignoring infrastructure.

Her refusal to launch a 50 state campaign meant that many states
would not have infrastructure to push turnout.

But then again, maybe thats a blessing.

Her presence in many states would just fuel GOP turnout big time.

[AtomicKitten]

10. The demise of her once thought to be formidable campaign is nothing short of spectacular.

[bunnies]

11. Man. That title is really tempting.

must. resist. urge. to snark. arrrgghh. :banghead:

[Bucky]

14. You need to swallow that impulse; really bury it deep.

Don't even think about leaking it.

[TeeYiYi]

17. Oh, come on... spit it out.

TYY :D

[bunnies]

29. But you're making it harder

for me to resist! See?

[Bucky]

12. Two things wrong with this analysis. She hasn't lost yet and it was never "a sure thing"

I was saying this three years ago when people first started calling her "inevitable". Clinton was never inevitable. I thought she had a "glass jaw"--that once she started losing, it'd all crumble for her. I was wrong about that. She ran a great campaign and may yet pull it out. If she thought she was inevitable, then she made some very bad calculations. But in the meantime she ran a near flawless campaign that squeezed out competitors, compensated for her weaknesses, and highlighted her strengths.

In the end, if she loses it'll because, as from the beginning, there are more Democrats who don't want her nominated than there are those who do.

[AtomicKitten]

19. She has run a terrible campaign.

She ran a great campaign and may yet pull it out. If she thought she was inevitable, then she made some very bad calculations. But in the meantime she ran a near flawless campaign that squeezed out competitors, compensated for her weaknesses, and highlighted her strengths.

She had every advantage from the onset: Name recognition, party backing, money. She walked in the door, took off her coat, and was at 50%.

The piece de resistance was not planning after February 5th, Super Tuesday. She arrogantly thought she had it in the bag, and she blew through $140 million in doing so.

The nomination was hers to lose ... and she is.

[Egnever]

31. wow ran a great campaign?

It will go down in history as one of the worst run campaigns in history.

[dysfunctional press]

13. and i thought it was going to be a sex scandal about her and obama...

:evilgrin:

[Bucky]

16. Gulp!

That could end up messy!

[dysfunctional press]

18. that's what she said...

sorry, couldn't resist.

[tularetom]

15. A number of things have combined to kick her ass

Primarily the vote for the IWR and refusal to renounce it, but also the whole "35 years of experience" line of bullshit, the failure to rein in Bill clinton (and the fear that a Pres. Hillary would not be able to keep him under control), the poor choices of campaign staff and consultants, which reflects poorly on her administrative abilities, her misunderestimation of Obama's abilities and appeal, etc. etc.

She seems the most phoney when she advocates things that you know she doesn't believe but supports positions because she's been told by bill or her dumb advisors that AAmericans in the "heartland" want her to support these positions.

I don't dislike her but she appears awfully plastic. There is no genuineness to her at all.

[KT2000]

20. She made it about her

and Obama made it about us - the people.
She wants us to vote for her because of what she can accomplish and Obama wants us to vote for him because of what WE can accomplish. Obama has the better narrative for this election year. He captured the "left out feeling" of the electorate.

[KhaOZ]

21. I think she lost it "on day one": link

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x4573084

[catagory5]

23. Her most ardent supporters?

Doesn't she carry the Democratic vote? Isn't obama winning because of the Indie vote and Refugs crossing over to vote? I don't think that is selling out. Remember, obama will vote one day against something you believe in. It will happen. Even to the ones who have drunk the kool aide.

[cali]

38. um, NO.

sorry, you need to hang that old rag up. He's won the majority of the dem vote in state after state now, from Maine to Maryland, from SC to Wisconsin. And Presidents don't vote. Of course, Obama has voted against things I disagree with. He's not perfect and I don't expect to agree with him on everything.

[RoadRage]

22. She had Titanic Syndrome... she thought she was unsinkable..

and all of those "little states" ended up to be her icebergs.

[Mme. Defarge]

26. It's time for her campaign

to stop looking for deck chairs, and to start lowering the life boats.

[The Backlash Cometh]

24. It's not amazing. We have been trying to tell her that her message

and methods were not hitting the correct chords. It's not that she isn't capable, but that she was too comfortable in her small niche, and when you run for president, you have to try to reach out to everyone. She shoud have connected with Dean, instead of the DLC.

And right now, everyone in the DLC that she was loyal to, is probably blaming her, when the reality is that they helped sink her. It's not Hillary's failure, it's the failure of a Democratic philosophy that no longer works.

[tinrobot]

25. Maybe this year was just not her time.

All that experience, money, and name recognition means nothing this year.

She could have certainly run her campaign better, but her basic selling point is always her experience, her connections, and her history in government. That's her strength. But running on "experience" just doesn't speak to people in a time when they want "change." She's selling something that simply isn't in style this year.

[Carolina]

30. and the experience is questionable

since it is derivative... from being First Lady for 20 years while the 7 years in the Senate are notable primarily for sucking up to Bush (IWR, Patriot Acts I & II...)

[FraDon]

27. Hillary has become the Hubert Humphrey in this campaign,

and as one old enough to remember the 1968 Democratic convention, it would be SO much better to have a candidate before the opening gavel (the savings on tear gas alone).

[Major Hogwash]

28. Her sense of entitlement was too obvious in the debates.

It was "owed to her", which is why she tried to say she was "an agent of change for 35 years".

That "agent of change" meme was stupendously stupid.

Sleeping with the President isn't being "an agent of change".

[RoadRage]

32. Sleeping with the President isn't being "an agent of change".

Yeah.. and it's not like she was even the only one to do that.. :eyes:

Sorry.. was that out loud? Must be a Friday! :)

[BeyondGeography]

33. On one level, she blew it, on another, she may have been doomed all along

Fact is, there were always a lot of strong reasons why she shouldn't be the nominee: the war vote, Clinton fatigue, and unfavorable ratings that never seem to get lower than the mid-40's chief among them. Then she did choose to run a campaign that reinforced some of those problems; emphasizing experience over change and focusing on big blue states, which did nothing to make her more popular in areas of the country that still resist her.

And then along comes Obama...

[Bullet1987]

35. I think a lot of people have said it all already pretty much

But I also think their miscalculation that trying to turn Obama into the "Black candidate" wouldn't have a negative effect on Black voters was also incredibly stupid. But again, it was entitlement. They figured that since the Clinton name was so popular amoung Blacks that they could get away with anything leading up to SC. Pre-SC, Clinton split or LEAD the Black vote with Obama...post-SC, Obama beats her everywhere with 75%-90% of the Black vote. They alienated an entire voting bloc, and many Dems (who aren't even Black) began looking at them differently.