*** Does Hillary play nice? The big question if Clinton stays in the race is this: Just how will she campaign? Yesterday, there were no negative TV ads or attack mailers. But Clinton did stress that she can win the general, implying that Obama might not be able to. "I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she told USA Today, citing her support with white working-class voters. It's comments like that one that might drive more supers toward Obama pretty quickly. Why? Because they know the math, but they don't want her to spend three weeks making a case that Obama can't win. It will only weaken him. Here’s what Obama backer Chris Dodd said yesterday, per NBC’s Ken Strickland. "You're going to be asking a bunch of people (in West Virginia) to vote against somebody who's likely to be your nominee a few weeks later? And turn around and ask the very same people a few weeks later to reverse themselves and now vote for (Obama) on election day?"
<...>
*** Bill’s kill rate: As we and others noted in the build-up to Tuesday’s contests, Bill Clinton worked his tail off campaigning for his wife. According to NBC/NJ’s Carrie Dann, Bill famously did more than 50 campaign stops in North Carolina – all told, they encompassed a whopping 41 of the state's 100 counties. BUT: Only 18 of those counties went for Hillary Clinton.
(The former president actually spent more than one long day campaigning in a string of towns, which all eventually went for Obama and by no small margin either.) For her part, Hillary Clinton did 22 stops in the Tar Heel State, for a total of fifteen counties. But she won only THREE of the counties she visited (Gastonia, Iredell, and Henderson). But where she did win, she won by a wide margin. Of the counties in her column where she or her husband campaigned in North Carolina, her AVERAGE margin of victory was almost 20 points. What about Indiana? The former president hit 35 of the state's counties during his visits to the state. His wife won all but eight.
link (emphasis added)
Not a good sign for the Clintons.
Posted: Thursday, May 08, 2008 9:16 AM by Mark Murray
Lots of Clinton backers and
undecideds are talking on the record. “‘The air is completely let out of them,’ said first-term Rep. Jason Altmire of Pennsylvania, who is uncommitted to either candidate, referring to the Clinton supporters among his congressional colleagues. ‘They are resigned to the fact that it's probably not going to work out.’”
<...>
The
Los Angeles Times: “‘It's a tough race,’ said
Don Fowler, a former national Democratic Party chairman and Clinton superdelegate from South Carolina. ‘If things had been a little better in North Carolina, we would be stronger than we are today. But the game's not over till it's over.’”
“‘She has to look realistically at the vote (Tuesday) and decide what's best for her candidacy, what's best for the country, what's best for the party,’ said Democratic Rep. Dale E. Kildee, a longtime Clinton backer.”
<...>
“‘It’s hard to answer that question; she has lost in North Carolina, but it looks like she won Indiana, which everyone expected,’ said Alan Patricof, one of Mrs. Clinton’s national finance chairmen. ‘I think she’s committed to going forward, but it’s hard to know. She is the one to make the decision about what she does. And a lot of us have trust and faith in her to make the best decision.’”
more, Fowler now sees writing on the wall. Evidently, it was a case of loyalty trumping common sense.
Posted May 8th, 2008 at 8:30 am
Hillary Clinton’s campaign hasn’t given the slightest indication that she’s thinking about withdrawing from the race. No slow-down in the schedule, no anonymous leaks about heated discussions, no rumors about a graceful exit. Nothing. NBC’s Andrea Mitchell said on the “Today” show yesterday that Clinton is “
ready to give up.” Given what we’ve seen over the last 24 hours, doesn’t even appear close to true.
That said, the campaign is not blind to reality, and the
NYT noted that some members of the Clinton team “acknowledged privately that they remained unsure about the future of her candidacy.”
Some top Clinton fund-raisers said that the campaign was all but over and suggested that she was simply buying time on Wednesday to determine if she could raise enough money and still win over superdelegates, the elected officials and party leaders who could essentially hand Mr. Obama the nomination. <…>
One Clinton adviser said the campaign was struggling to arrange meetings with large numbers of uncommitted superdelegates. This adviser said that at least a few superdelegates might not want to meet with Mrs. Clinton because they did not want to hear another pitch or because they had all but decided to go with Mr. Obama.
Congressional Dem leaders indicated they were content to have the race continue, but “attacks on Mr. Obama by the Clinton campaign or its surrogates could lead to a leadership push for superdelegates to show their hand and bring the race to a close
moreThursday, May. 08, 2008 By KAREN TUMULTY
1. She misjudged the moodThat was probably her biggest blunder. In a cycle that has been all about change, Clinton chose an incumbent's strategy, running on experience, preparedness, inevitability — and the power of the strongest brand name in Democratic politics…
2. She didn't master the rulesClinton picked people for her team primarily for their loyalty to her, instead of their mastery of the game. That became abundantly clear in a strategy session last year, according to two people who were there. As aides looked over the campaign calendar, chief strategist Mark Penn confidently predicted that an early win in California would put her over the top because she would pick up all the state's 370 delegates. It sounded smart, but as every high school civics student now knows, Penn was wrong: Democrats, unlike the Republicans, apportion their delegates according to vote totals, rather than allowing any state to award them winner-take-all. Sitting nearby, veteran Democratic insider Harold M. Ickes, who had helped write those rules, was horrified — and let Penn know it. "How can it possibly be," Ickes asked, "that the much vaunted chief strategist doesn't understand proportional allocation?" And yet the strategy remained the same, with the campaign making its bet on big-state victories. Even now, it can seem as if they don't get it. Both Bill and Hillary have noted plaintively that if Democrats had the same winner-take-all rules as Republicans, she'd be the nominee. Meanwhile, the Clinton campaign now acknowledges privately:
3. She underestimated the caucus statesWhile Clinton based her strategy on the big contests, she seemed to virtually overlook states like Minnesota, Nebraska and Kansas, which choose their delegates through caucuses. She had a reason: the Clintons decided, says an adviser, that "caucus states were not really their thing." Her core supporters — women, the elderly, those with blue-collar jobs — were less likely to be able to commit an evening of the week, as the process requires. But it was a little like unilateral disarmament in states worth 12% of the pledged delegates. Indeed, it was in the caucus states that Obama piled up his lead among pledged delegates. "For all the talent and the money they had over there," says Axelrod, "they — bewilderingly — seemed to have little understanding for the caucuses and how important they would become."
By the time Clinton's lieutenants realized the grave nature of their error, they lacked the resources to do anything about it — in part because:
4. She relied on old moneyFor a decade or more, the Clintons set the standard for political fund-raising in the Democratic Party, and nearly all Bill's old donors had re-upped for Hillary's bid…
5. She never counted on a long haulClinton's strategy had been premised on delivering a knockout blow early. If she could win Iowa, she believed, the race would be over. Clinton spent lavishly there yet finished a disappointing third. What surprised the Obama forces was how long it took her campaign to retool…
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