Why couldn't Hillary Clinton close the deal?

When this campaign started, she had the money, the endorsements, she had a huge lead in the polls over all of her primary opponents. She had Bill Clinton, the most popular and most successful Democratic President of the last 40 years on her side. So why did she fail to blow Obama out of the water? I think her campaign made a strategic error in pinning all their hopes on just that - blowing Obama and the other candidates out of the water with the final blow falling on Super Tuesday. When she got at best a wash on Super Tuesday she would have still had a chance if she had campaigned harder in many of the caucus and little state primaries. By allowing Obama to have a free ride in so many states she lost the nomination that would have been hers with a little better strategy.

Not a flame fest. Please.

I voted for Hillary on Super Tuesday, but now I back Barack. OK? OK.

Now that is out of the way, I'd like to discuss what I think was Clinton's monumental oversight in this campaign.

Many people have talked about her shortsighted game plan of everything being over by Super Tuesday. Her lack of ground game, thus conceding caucuses, her funding problems, and many other problems, but I have not really seen much discussion of this: This year is about CHANGE. She conceded the the CHANGE meme to someone instead else. She didn't sense that above all else, people were SICK of George Bush and wanted CHANGE from the way things have been.

She could have emphasized her being woman as HISTORIC CHANGE, but instead she relied on her name and her history and her experience, when hardly anyone wants that. THEY WANT SOMETHING DIFFERENT.

She could have been different.
She could have been historic.

Instead, she was more of the same.
She panders and obfuscates, lies, blusters, and offers more of the same old inside the beltway way crap that people are sick to death of in the country.

So, she is going to lose.

Sad, really, because I had so much HOPE in her campaign last fall. I thought she was different. I thought she offered CHANGE.

Instead, she conceded that to someone else who really does offer HOPE and CHANGE: Barack Obama, the presumptive nominee of the Democratic party and the next President of the United States.

Her vote for the Authorization to Use Military Force in Iraq put her in a position where she couldn't say what the rest of the country felt: that this war was a monumental blunder and should never have been authorized.

She ended up having to thread the needle of supporting the decision to authorize war, but not supporting the way the war had been waged, and many voters just balked at that distinction, and wanted someone who would say unequivocally that the Iraq invasion was wrongheaded from the start.

If Hillary had voted against the AUMF, there's no doubt in my mind she'd be the nominee.

I am interested in what people think.

with all candidates on the ballot and tv ads etc., the race would have had a different dimension.

candidate who wouldn't spend his political capital sabotaging them and their efforts.

We needed a party with a strong infrastructure and what we ended up was a weak party infrastructure that only had Clinton loyalists working to protect the Clintons' position in the party.

That focked over every other Dem who stood to oppose BushInc the last 8 years by denyng them a strong backup from the party holding itself in reserve.

Thank Undergod, we broke the grip of the Clintons by 2005.

:)

and the voters could see that. Just because she is a Clinton and was the annointed one by the media doesn't mean she was the better candidate to run the country. Her planning was terrible, her financial backing couldn't cut the mustard, calling herself a fighter wasn't a winning strategy..people are sick and tired of the word fighter. They've had enough of that from Iraq and Afghanistan. She had no prevailing message to put out there, when change and hope were Obama's words and he won in Iowa, she adopted them for hers as well as "yes we will" from his "yes we can". Voted for the wars, didn't read the NIE that was essential to making an informed decision on it...that's not only a lazy way to make a decision, it's a dangerous way. That's almost as bad as when Bush ignored the one that said Osama was determined to attack the U.S.

staying in the race this long and winning a lot of primaries shows that she is a good candidate. If she is flawed, John Edwards should wish he had her flaws.

She's MRS. BILL CLINTON and that alone kept her afloat this long