What Went Wrong...

The most common post mortem for the Clinton Campaign centers on the advice that she's received from our campaign strategists. The simple fact is that her advisors believed the nomination would be sewn up by Super Tuesday and that the didn't need a fifty-state organization. Mark Penn, et. al. simply didn't plan on a Freshman Senator, who nobody had ever heard of prior to the 2004 convention, being a serious contender in this election cycle.

While their strategy was wrong, it wasn't totally wrong-headed. In most recent primary seasons, the Democratic nomination has been sewn up by Super Tuesday or shortly thereafter. I think one could cut Hillary's Brain Trust a little slack assuming that the primary season would run its normal course. With the exception of John Edwards, there wasn't much else out there in terms of contenders who could go the distance. She had the early money and she had the name recognition -- nine elections out of ten you have the nomination.

So what went wrong? I think for starters you can point to a failure of the Clinton's legendary ability to focus on a simple message. The War in Iraq was the wrong message for Hillary for two reasons -- the first of which is that it could never be simple. She had her own "I was for the war before I was against it" muddle that hamstrung John Kerry in 2004. Any position too complex to put on a bumper sticker is usually bad politics.

She could have avoided this problem, at least a little bit, by forcefully stating that her vote on IWR was a terrible lapse in judgment and one that she won't make again. But for some reason, she was unwilling or unable to confess to voters that she is capable of making an error. And that inability to admit a mistake would be one of the more irritating and frightening characteristics or the current administration.

The second reason that Iraq was a poor choice for Hillary is that, as the economy continued to sour, people started to be more concerned about keeping a roof over their heads than they were about the war or terrorism. Unless that 3:00 a.m. phone call was coming from a bill collector, people were somewhat less than electrified by her experience.

And speaking of the economy, stupid, Hillary has a similarly mixed message about some of the red meat issues that concern liberal and progressive voters. Did Hillary favor NAFTA back in 1995 or didn't she? More to the point, does she favor NAFTA now or doesn't she? During the last two months, Hillary has adopted a much more populist tone in her stump speeches -- but by that time, Obama already owned that issue.

Note to the Obama Campaign: Populism Works! Mike Dukakis made a similar late run at George H. W. Bush in 1988 by rolling up his shirt sleeves and talking to real Americans about real issues.

And one last thing. Remember in 1992, how Bill Clinton's promise of "Change" trumped the Elder Bush's guarantee of "Experience?"

The times, they are a'changing.

EDIT: Typo.

as well as Hillary's "35 years of experience" have played a major role. Free Trade, Telecom Act of Act, Most Favored Trade w China, Banking Merger policies of the Clinton years might have had positive short term benefits (especially for the investor class) but we are now feeling the economic effects of them implemented and most people did not benefit. Hillary's "35 years" includes promoting the corporate clients of the Rose Law firm that again have hurt many. The progressive movement has stood up to the Clintons and their DLC cronies and said ENOUGH! imho

then Bill Clinton was never your favorite Democrat. NAFTA? Welfare Reform?

He was better than the Republican alternative (by a long shot), and I love the big guy for the good that he did for working people. But he could have done more -- possibly had he kept his pants on.

From a progressive/liberal POV there is nothing wrong with free trade and breaking down borders. It's not a populist position though.

From a liberal/progressive POV, there's a hell of a lot wrong with NAFTA, including the fact that it looted the manufacturing base in the United States and allowed companies to ship their jobs elsewhere. At the same time, there was nothing in NAFTA to prevent these companies from exploiting the workers and the environment in their new locations.

If you think that progressives support NAFTA, then you really haven't been paying attention.

All it has done is send our jobs elsewhere, and contributed to stagnant or falling wages. We need agreements to protect our jobs with good wages and benefits.

She and her handlers had no clue how the game was going to be run until it was too late. Even late last year, Penn didn't know it was not winner take all. What went wrong for her can be boiled down to one sentence: Hillary ran a 1996 campaign in a 2008 world.

Seriously, Penn should refund his consulting fees for being that clueless. It also speaks to the lack of a fifty-state organization. Had her campaign empowered local leaders in each state, surely that mistake would not have happened -- somebody in California would have known how their primary worked.

1. At the end of 2007 the Clintonites were fully ensconced in believing their own propaganda: Hillary was inevitable.
Hubris is corrosive.

2. She lost Iowa because the Clintonites simple did not understand the depth of antiwar sentiment; Obama turned out to be the beneficiary of that misjudgment.

3. The Clintonites really did not have a credible ground game in caucus states and were not prepared for a real campaign through and up till Super Tuesday.

So, the Clintonites lost the narrative of her candidacy after Super Tuesday and Obama won thirteen in a row. It really was finished for old Hill on Super Tuesday, but the first seeds of her defeat were planted in the fall of 2007.

I think the nature of the primary changed in midstream (depending on where you place the "middle" of a process that has been going on for two years). In the fall and early winter, it really was about Iraq, but by the time Iowa had come and gone and the mortgage crisis deepened, it became about the economy. Hillary was still trying to sell her national security bona fides at a time when people were caring more about their paychecks.

Of course the MSM was only too happy to push the inevitability of the Clinton "brand name"--after all, someone so corporate-backed could only be good for future business. But try as they might, they just couldn't get the message to stick. Why? Because since Kerry's time, the political netroots have grown to the point where the public isn't totally dependent on the MSM anymore. From Gannongate to Trent Lott's "problems" to the Mission Accomplished banner to Kaloogian's Baghdad photos, the netroots can now directly examine--and undermine--the MSM's precepts. Which might explain the increasingly hysterical edge in Bill O'Reilly's voice.

:headbang:
rocknation

But I think you're right that the internet has changed political campaigns. I'm a member of the Obama quasi-Facebook Site, and even a month after the Wisconsin Primary, I still had 15-20 people sign up. Campaigns that figure out how to fully exploit the internet (and Obama's people seem to be building on what Howard Dean pioneered) are going to win.

Personally, I wouldn't have believed that being lied to accounted for her shameful vote, but I expect that millions of other Democrats would find this believable -or at least find it a good enough excuse to forgive her.

But being pledged to the path of obliteration, she just couldn't do that.

As Bill Maher observed, do you REALLY want a president who can be fooled by George W. Bush?

but because they need to accept them and move on. By leaving her vote unrecanted and unexplained Hillary Clinton left it to voters to puzzle out whether she was really stupid enough to be fooled by Bush or fully complicit. Now, I don't know anyone who thinks she's stupid. So she needed some form of defense, an apologia against those who would say "She must not have seen anything wrong with what happened in the run-up to the war." It's not enough for her to say as a candidate that she'd begin bringing troops home soon, since A) Anybody can promise that and what matters is when the last troop comes home from Iraq, not when the first one leaves. And B) voters have already heard that promise in various forms from the Bush Administration now and then over the past 5 years--it's shopworn. It's not enough to just criticize the "poor planning" for the occupation phase. Since before it even began, a majority of the Democratic Party has been disgusted, outraged, and ashamed at the Iraq War and the fraudulent way it was forced on the country and the sinister motives that appear to lie behind it. Clinton had to address her portion of blame in how the troops got there to begin with-- and any excuse, however unconvincing it may be to you, or me, or Bill Maher, would at least demonstrate an awareness that she needed voters to forgive her to some degree for something. With no apologies made of any kind she just looks uncaring, and stubborn, or worse.

In Obama, primary voters had a candidate who didn't need any excuses for Iraq. Voters could turn the page on Iraq in turning to the outsider Obama, and many did. The message sent was NO, YOU DIDN'T HEAR US - WE SAID "CHANGE". That advantage needed to be recognized & neutralized by anyone from inside Washington running against him. Hillary simply failed to adapt.