I am going to draw comparison that is sure to elicit howls of protest from many Democrats, including both Clinton and Obama supporters. However, as I have watched the Clinton campaign fail in primary after caucus after primary to fully appreciate the challenge they face, this comparison has become not just more credible, but downright obvious.
Senator Clinton has surrounded herself with, and become trapped in, a bubble that bears a striking resemblance to George W. Bush's bubble.
Anyone who gets their news from a source besides Fox News knows that our current president lives in a very insular bubble. It has been widely reported that Bush takes only the new and information that is given to him and does not seek out any additional information.
While reading the following post at AmericaBlog, it suddenly became obvious that Senator Clinton is currently living in a very similar bubble:
For the past year, we were led to believe that Clinton had built an incomparable campaign team. That's proven not to be true. Top aide Mark Penn is a disaster (and according to Fineman, Penn is the one who wants to go really negative - good luck with that.) The Clinton team simply had no plan for any of the states after February 5th - they knew, and loudly told everyone who would listen, that they were going to win on Super Tuesday. Now that we're far beyond Super Tuesday, with Hillary falling more and more behind (the AP tonight called her "fading"), her campaign's bizarre response has been to dismiss any state won by Obama. Just this weekend, The Washington Post reported that the Clinton campaign just figured out the rules in Texas (the primary/caucus is only two weeks away). And, Clinton didn't field a full slate of delegates for Pennsylvania. Those are supposed to be rookie mistakes.
We all know that Senator Clinton is a very, very smart person. She clearly understands the ins and outs of politics. She continues to put forwards ideas about how we can improve the U.S. and fix the disasters of the last 7 years.
Why then, does she appear to be so blinded to the realities of the current campaign? Does she really believe that her campaign is doing everything it can to organize voters in caucus states? Is the obvious conclusion from WI really that negative campaigning works?
The best thing Senator Clinton can do is to burst her own bubble. I suggest she start by firing Mark Penn and reaching out to someone like Joe Trippi.