I can't fault the Clinton campaign for underestimating Obama's campaign

It is true that they made a lot of mistakes (some detailed here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x5883262), but Obama's campaign has done some amazing things and I don't think that the Clinton campaign could have been expected to predict its success (that doesn't mean that Penn wasn't a huge waste of money, of course).

I've been involved in politics a while and I understand the narrow targeting, big-state, 50+1 strategy that has characterized politics for years. I understand why the Clinton campaign would focus on likely voters (historically, new voters and young voters don't vote). In any other election against any other candidate, it probably would have worked.

I was an Edwards supporter to begin with, but Obama won me over. Not necessarily because I find him inspiring, although I do at times. But because I find his campaign amazing.

It's amazing on two fronts. The first is that his campaign does transcend politics. Not because of any particular policy issue. Policy-wise and in voting records, he and Clinton are very similar. His campaign transcends politics because it isn't the narrow targeting strategy. He has been able to get new voters and young voters to actually turn out. Howard Dean tried in 2004, but he couldn't make it work. Obama has been able to make it work.

Secondly, the Obama campaign has had a remarkable ability to predict voting outcomes, which is all the more remarkable because of high turnout. There is a reason that Tim Russert keeps pulling out that delegate total spreadsheet that got "leaked" in February. There is a reason the talking heads kept marveling at how close the Obama campaign's updated Indiana prediction was. It's because people who have covered politics for a long, long time are surprised at how good they are.

I also understand why Clinton supporters, especially experienced political hands, are so frustrated and don't "get it". On paper, there is no reason why Obama should have been as successful as he has been. A unique confluence of events and a remarkable campaign have pushed him over the top.

I don't think that it will be easy to beat McCain (it wouldn't have been easy for Clinton, either). McCain's a lousy candidate, but the electorate is highly polarized, because of the narrow targeting political strategies both parties have used for years. But Obama and Obama's campaign have been surprising so far. I'm excited about where it will go from here.

The Obama camp treated this as an election that needs to be won and we need a new way to win it.

Although I agree that the campaign arrogantly assumed that they were much better than any other campaign and therefore inevitable. The fact is, her campaign was much better at the typical political process. Obama's campaign blindsided them by changing the process (in business parlance, it would be called a "blue ocean strategy").

Where did we hear this phrase before???? Yeah, that's right from the lips of Condi Rice "No one could have predicted that they would fly airplanes into buildings."

We all know how this story ended.

is an incompetent asshole.

Not being true once doesn't mean that it's never true.

Personally, I think it diminishes the remarkability of Obama and his campaign to say (I believe erroneously) that its success should have been obvious.

Not everything is predictable.

I don't think the Clinton campaign was stupid or incompetent because they didn't predict Obama's success (although there are arguably other ways that they were stupid and incompetent). They lost because they didn't predict it, but that doesn't mean they should have been expected to predict it.

Obama's success is due to his campaign's ability to do what it wasn't expected to be able to do, not because Clinton's campaign was bad.

There is a lot of talk about how great Obama's campaign is and she didn't foresee it. Lack of preparation, underestimating your opponent, doing what you thought was a "good enough" job really is what cost her this race. She thought she had it won before it even began.

an outdated strategy.

As I said somewhere else in the thread, I think that it does Obama's campaign a disservice to fault Clinton's campaign for underestimating them. Obama's campaign outsmarted them, which is why they won, but it outsmarted a lot of people, not just her.

I'm looking forward to the Obama campaign outsmarting McCain's, too.

his campaign. In addition, Hillary had some very bad advice from her campaign managers. I am disappointed that she followed such advice. If she hadn't, she may have been leading, and even if not leading, a better campaign would have made her a more acceptable VP candidate.

Of many reasons Obama took this lead, I'd like to point out one, not the most important, but worthy of thinking about.

In an election where people were just sick of Washington and wanted to get their hands dirty, Obama came in with the "i need you" message. Hillary came through with the "i've done this before, let me take the wheel" messaging (which is fine, a good experience message).

After 911 all we were asked to do was to go shopping and the country went to hell. We'd seen enough incompetence to know we could do it better. Obama's message resonated. I just think Hillary's, in this election, was just a bit off. She got a bit more of the base, but couldn't mobilize the young and the activists.

I am not surprised that the Clinton campaign (and everyone else for that matter) was taken by surprise with Obama. He did that same exact thing here in Illinois with his Senate Primary. My husband has been saying from the get-go that IF Obama ran he was gonna win. Hubby's attitude was formed by working as an area coordinator for Dan Hynes who was the second place finisher behind Obama in the Illinois Senate primary.

Hynes is a multi term State Comptroller here in Illinois, and he is well respected. He's a good man, and I respect the hell out of him on a personal level. Hynes had huge Labor support here in Illinois and he had good name recognition due to having held office at a state level. I know Hynes' campaign folks and they are very good at what they do, yet Hynes lost that race to a guy from Chicago that very few people had heard of prior to the race. Hynes carried most of the counties in this state, but it didn't matter because Obama had a huge margin in the big counties he did win.

I have seen my husband target races, and I have been with him on any number of election nights when he'd be able to call a race before ANYONE else could--based on performance in specific precincts. There have been more than a few times when we'd know a race was won (or lost) based on results already in. A couple of times I have seen him tell a candidate down by a few hundred votes that they were winning--and it has always been true. You KNOW how many votes you need to pull from specific areas if you want to win. You know what areas are "good" for you and which ones are gonna be "bad" ones. If your guy comes in a couple of hundred votes UP in an area that usually sucks, and the pattern holds you are talking about a huge win.

The night of that Primary we were watching that race (we kind of wanted to because I had been working with the Obama campaign and we had a side bet going on the outcome) and hubby was sucking air just as soon as the collar counties started to hit. Obama's numbers were HUGE there--way higher than anyone had expected. Similarly, there were some downstate counties that had a metro component that came in with higher numbers than anticipated. Maybe not enough to carry the county but enough to hold Obama's lead. In all the years we've been doing this we had never seen anything like it. That race has become a benchmark.

Hubby made the comment that night that he would NEVER work against Obama in a race again.

Obama ran a smart race both in that Illinois Primary and in this Dem Primary for President. I just don't think anyone has ever seen anything like it before and I am not sure they will see another like it again any time soon.

Regards!


Laura