Cross Posted at Daily Delaware
"We didn’t put any resources in small states."
-- Clinton Finance Chair Hassan Nemazee, quoted by the New York Observer, on why Clinton might lose the Democratic nomination.
There is a reason why Taegen Goddard has this listed as the quote of the day over at Political Wire. Because this one sentence reveals both all that is wrong with the Clinton Democratic Party machine, and all that is right with the netroots, the Dean 50-state strategy and the Obama campaign.
When the Clintons rescued the Democratic Party from its electoral coma in 1992, they never sought to cure the patient by revitalizing it at the cellular level. Instead, the Clintons and the Democratic establishment at the time only sought to keep the patient barely alive and breathing, so as to suit the very narrow and vain electoral success of one man. There was never any effort to build the party. To use the capital of the Clinton's electoral success in 1992 and 1996 to reach new voters and bring them into the Democratic fold for good. There was never any effort to build the party at the local level.
It is clear now why the Clintons never did that. For if they gave voice to new Democrats, they would lose control over that voice. They would lose control over the message. Thus, the Democratic Party, and more specifically, the DNC, existed only to serve the electoral prospects of the Clintons during the 1990's, and not to serve the future of the Democratic Party. Indeed, it did not even serve the present of the Democratic Party, for the Party, through this neglect, suffered worse electoral losses nationwide than it ever suffered under the Reagan Revolution, which, ironically, was the disease the Clintons were brought in to cure.
No, the Clintons kept the Party alive to serve them, and in the process, the Party grew weaker. No attention was paid to the smaller states. No attention was paid to the local level. No resources were spend unless they advanced the interests of the Clintons.
Eventually, the Clintons left the scene, and a new doctor was assigned to treat the patient. This doctor quickly diagnosed the problem and prescribed the "50 State Strategy" and reserved the OR for a spine implant. The party is still in rehabilitation, but it is getting better finally.
Alright, enough with this metaphor. My point is, how the Clintons campaigned and governed as Democrats in the 1990's is precisely why they are losing now. They have reverted back to the old days when they concentrated on winning big states and big cities rather than building the party infrastructure and attracting new voters in all states, big and small, cities and towns.
Over at MyDD, there is actually an honest diagnosis of how the Clinton campaign went wrong. Psericks posts the following:
The Clinton campaign made clear that it planned to win Super Tuesday based on a tight four-state strategy, focusing on California, New York, New Jersey, and Arkansas, which, they frequently cited, made up 40% of the delegates assigned --- a strange strategy in a system that isn't winner-take-all. Clinton's name recognition and her general support level across the country would have to hold her up in the vast swaths of the country that she had already conceded.
See that, a concentration on big states and a concession of the small states?
This strategy of focusing hard on winning the biggest states turned out to be one of this campaign season's great blunders, and it is one that the Clinton campaign seems to make repeatedly. The Obama campaign has repeatedly found ways to get ahead in the delegate count, out-organizing rural areas of Nevada to win an extra delegate while the Clinton campaign won Clark County, and then repeating that success to run a field campaign across 22 states that kept the delegate count close in states Clinton won and racked up the delegates in states Clinton did not bother to contest.
...
It was not a lack of funds that led the Clinton campaign to ignore rural areas, to write off multiple states. Rather, the Clinton campaign seemed oddly unprepared, clinging to a misjudgment, counting on national poll numbers, unwilling to run the expansive grassroots national campaign that the Obama campaign had been preparing for for months.
By the time Super Tuesday was over, it was clear that the Clinton campaign had done little to build organizations in the subsequent primaries and could do little to contest them. Yesterday alone, they fell an additional fifty delegates behind. Ignoring states you think you will lose only means that you lose them more badly --- instead of trying to even up the delegate count.
They were not oddly unprepared. They were completely prepared to run their campaign. A national campaign that focused entirely on large populations and big states. They were completely prepared to reject the 50 state strategy in its entirety, almost, I think, to prove Howard Dean and his progeny wrong. Hillary Clinton wanted to win this race the Clinton way. Indeed, you hear time and again that Bill Clinton looks at his wife's campaign as some sort of vindication of himself and his presidency. Thus, there was never any chance that the Clintons would ever follow the sound advice of Dr. Dean and the 50 state strategy. For they viewed that strategy as a challenge to them and their accomplishments in the 1990's. In fact, I think they viewed Howard Dean the 50 state strategy as a repudiation of everything they stood for.
So it is not odd that the Clinton campaign was unprepared on the local level in small states to garner as many delegates as they could.
Despite Howard Wolfson's claims post-Iowa that the delegate count was paramount, the Clinton campaign never seemed to act like it, as Obama won a pledged delegate lead in Iowa and simply never let it go, adding a delegate here and a delegate there, slowly running up his count, patiently organizing future contests. There's talk already that this lead in the delegate count is, or soon will be, insurmountable.
The Clinton campaign might just be learning its lesson:
In addition to focusing on the large states -- something Cecil admitted had been their focus -- they are "opening offices" and "hiring staff" in Wyoming, Montana and even Puerto Rico to try to get every delegate possible in "congressional districts where we can be successful."
Though you have to wonder if it might be too late.
It is too late.