The BBC has just run this story:
"The Conservative MP Simon Burns has been campaigning in American presidential elections since he backed George McGovern in 1972. This year he is backing Hillary Clinton, and he tells us why."
The article is interesting reading: http://news.bbc.co.uk/...
They do explain this:
It is too easy and wrong to generalise that the Republicans are the Tory party in the US and the Democrats are New Labour or Lib Dem.
We need an America that is once again respected, not hated, in the world; an America where everyone has access to health care rather than the current situation where approximately 40m working Americans cannot afford health insurance and an America where all benefit from its economic success - not just the super rich who have disproportionately benefited from the Bush tax cuts.
Then the rest of the article goes horribly wrong. My analysis is below:
There are a number of incorrect items in this article that should be corrected.
"It is ludicrous that Hillary Clinton could win ... the primary election in Texas and yet come out ... with fewer delegates than Obama."
In Texas they allocate delegates from both a primary and a caucus. This is admittedly an arcane mechanism, but an MP campaigning Clinton based on the vote in Texas should understand the dynamics of that state before using it as an example in the press. The Republican party in Texas (and radio talk shows, etc.) strongly promoted Operation Chaos, encouraging Republicans to vote in the democratic primary (which is allowed), specifically to support Clinton in order to keep the democratic primary running longer, which they felt would benefit the republican candidate in the general election. The republican primaries were essentially over by then, making it painless for republicans to "switch parties" for one day. However, only Democrats participate in the caucus, filtering out the effects of this interference. The result was that an estimated 10% of the primary voters were Republicans who had no intention of voting for Clinton in the general election, throwing the primary vote narrowly to Clinton. But Obama won in the caucus by a much wider margin than Clinton won the primary. The result of this is that Obama won the Texas "primacaucas", not Clinton.
"It is equally worrying for the Democrats that a candidate - Hillary Clinton - can win all of the largest states in the Union by substantial margins except Illinois and still be behind in the delegate count."
What actually happened is that Clinton won a small number of very large states by (on average) small margins, while Obama won a large number of smaller states by (on average) much wider margins. So while Clinton got 43 more delegates than Obama in California (a 10% margin) he got 26 more in Virginia (a 28% margin) in Virginia. And since Obama was won in about twice as many states as Clinton, the end result is that he's well ahead of her in the delegate count.
This raises the question as to why a relatively unknown, untested junior senator from Illinois has captured the imagination of the voters.
How could he be the nominee even though most people will accept that Hillary Clinton is far more experienced, has achieved far more over her 35 years in public life and is infinitely better qualified?
It's also incorrect to refer to Obama as a "relatively unknown, untested junior senator from Illinois" while Clinton is "far more experienced". While Clinton has certainly done many fine things in her personal life, the only experience that she has in government (as opposed to being married to someone in government) is being the junior senator for NY, for fewer years than Obama has been in government. She's been through fewer elections, served fewer years, and gotten less legislation passed.
Finally could Hillary Clinton have played her cards better?
The answer is undoubtedly yes.
She should have skipped the Iowa caucuses and not put herself through the arcane caucus system that immediately put her on the back footing when she came in a narrow third.
Instead, she should have started her campaign with the primary election in New Hampshire, where real voters were actually casting a vote for a candidate.
Similarly she spent too much time in the early days campaigning as the nominee and pursuing the Republicans as if it were the general election.
She should have gone after Obama earlier and with more vigour so as to stop him in his tracks.
The author of the article also missed the key mistakes that cost Clinton the nomination. As a baseline, we should remember, she started with over 100 super delegates before the voting started, all of the big donors, tons of money, massive name recognition, and the support of the people who run the party (the DNC) as well as the most popular living US president. So she started out with the party united behind her.
Then she made mistakes that destroyed all of that.
First, she ran as the "experienced" candidate in an election where everyone wants change. Being this out of step with the voters cost her the early primaries. Being pro-war when 70% of the american public disagrees is also not a winning position.
Second, she assumed that she would easily win the primaries by Super Tuesday, so she didn't bother to set up any campaign staff outside of that small number of early states. When she was forced to campaign where she was unprepared. Similarly, she structured her fund raising so that she got as much money early as possible, to try to scare off opponents. This meant that she "tapped out" her donors, so when the strategy failed, she ran out of money. This result of this was that after "super tuesday" she had no campaign staff in place, and no money, and lost 11 primaries in a row, generally by huge margins.
Third, she has been incapable of admitting when she is wrong, and is willing to say anything, no matter how implausible, in order to avoid admitting a mistake. This alienates voters who are sick of Bush having the same flaw. And it's lead her to hurt herself badly (e.g. continuing to defend her vote for the Iraq war, continuing to claim that she was under sniper fire in Bosnia for weeks after the opposite was clearly the case, using RFK's assassination in June as a reason to stay in the campaign) when a wiser politician would have admitted the mistake and moved on. But because she's so committed to being "right" all of the time, even her apologies are vague and evasive. For example, she never apologizes for what she's done, but vaguely expresses regret "if she has offended anyone". This personal flaw has resulted in her retaining a failed team and a failed election strategy when a wiser politician would have admitted the mistake and corrected it. And it certainly didn't do her credibility any good when she continues to claim that she "opposed NAFTA" when we all remember her promoting NAFTA and then taking credit for its passage. If she knew how to recognize when she'd made a mistake, and admit it, she would be in much better shape, politically.
The result of this is that Clinton started with all of the advantages one could possibly wish for, and she's managed to lose to a relatively unknown candidate who started with no money, no connections, no endorsements, and who is half-black (a big deal in the US) and has a foreign sounding name.
Looking at their campaigns, Obama has out-executed Clinton every step of the way.
Would we rather have a President who can take a sure thing and blow it, or a President who can take nothing but hope and turn it into a victory? I know which one I'd vote for.