I recommend reading The Front-Runner's Fall. by The Atlantic's Joshua Green
I enjoyed reading it. After reading it, i felt relieved that Hillary Clinton is not our nominee for reasons i will explain.
That said, every one is entitled to their opinion.
Nobody really asked, but here's mine.
First of all, don't you just love the people Hillary chose to build her campaign around? Not only do they seem petty and vindictive, but they also can't find the "delete" button on their emails.
The second was the thought: Wow, it was even worse than I’d imagined! The anger and toxic obsessions overwhelmed even the most reserved Beltway wise men.
Hillary trusted these people with her campaign, with her tactics, and with her policies. And presumably, these were the people who would help run her administration. However, she can't even trust them to delete their memos and emails. Or at least, not to leak them to the press en masse.
Can you imagine what kind of a nightmare it would be to have to be GOVERNED by these people for four or eight years?
Hillary may have passed her own "commander in chief" threshold, but I also think its pretty clear she failed the "cheif executive" test. she was indecisive on tactical matters, and on personnel matters, she was hesitant to make any changes (perhaps due to her loyalty to certain people) even though its clear they were desperately needed.
One of the most glaring instances of her indecision came when her advisors actually gave her good advice. She either didn't take it, or she decided to take it when it was too late to do any good.
On February 25, her advisors were already making a case for Michigan/Florida.
They proposed that Clinton, from a position of strength immediately after her wins, challenge Obama to accept Michigan and Florida revotes. Such a move "preempts Obama’s reiteration on March 5th that they are still up 100 plus delegates and that we can’t win," they noted.
But No decision was made.
The campaign did not launch an organized offensive until nine weeks later, on May 21. But by then Clinton was operating from a position of weakness. Rather than greeting it as Rocky II, the press covered her bid for a revote as a "last-gasp strategy," which soon failed.
It's 3 am. And somewhere in the white house the phone is ringing.
Nine weeks later, it might get answered.
And Hillary's core strategy was there very early on. Woman, working class, unions. Mark Penn wrote memos about it dating back to March '07.
As this race unfolds, the winning coalition for us is clearer and clearer. There are three demographic variables that explain almost all of the voters in the primary—gender, party, and income. Race is a factor as well, but we are fighting hard to neutralize it.
We are the candidate of people with needs.
We win women, lower classes, and Democrats (about 3 to 1 in our favor).
Obama wins men, upper class, and independents (about 2 to 1 in his favor).
Edwards draws from these groups as well.
Our winning strategy builds from a base of women, builds on top of that a lower and middle class constituency, and seeks to minimize his advantages with the high class democrats.
But she didn't really campaign for them until AFTER she had lost and it was like she realized "hey, i really do need a strategy. let's implement mark's." She really thought she was an inevitable figure.
One last thing: Can anyone tell me how it is possible to spend 100 million dollars on a primary campaign (before any one votes, even) and not have any ground game or organization outside of your "core" states? Well maybe I should ask Hillary Clinton.
The campaign wound up raising more than $100 million—but, according to The New York Times, by the time Iowa was lost, $106 million had been spent. The $25 million reserve had vanished, and the campaign was effectively insolvent.
Did you catch that? Her campaign was "effectively insolvent" after the first contest.
Now, we saw signs of this in her Senate campaign in which she spent exorbant amounts of money in a non-competitive race. But come on! 106 million dollars?! And you have nothing to show for it?
The more i find out about the Clinton campaign, the more relieved I am that she is not our nominee.