The wreck that is Hillary's campaign
Mon May 12, 2008 at 07:09:32 PM PDT
One of the standard movie cliches is the "no brakes on the car." You know the one: Someone is driving down a twisty mountain road with cliffs on on one side, when the brakes go out, usually because the brake line was cut. We're treated to watching the frantic driver desperately stomping on the brake pedal, while frantically steering the ever faster car down the mountain. You know how it ends - the car goes through a guard rail, over a cliff and (usually) explodes spectacularly. In real life, one would expect that person to use the emergency brake, let off the gas, downshift, or even jump out. Watching Hillary's campaign this year has been like watching that cliche.
The set-up came in Iowa. Instead of winning, or coming in second, she was a distant third. The winner was a young senator who gave an absolutely magnificent victory speech. Suddenly, she was fighting to stay ahead, and barely eked out a win in the next contest, New Hampshire. She won the "popular" vote but lost the delegate race in Nevada. Then the brakes failed, as Bill antagonized black voters, and Obama won by a large margin in South Carolina. Super Tuesday rolled around, and instead of dominating wins across the board, she ended up with a split decision. Which turned out to be when her campaign started speeding up down that mountain road. She was low on money. Somehow, she'd managed to spend over 100 million dollars in a very short period of time. She had no plan, no organization in place for the upcoming states. Obama reeled off a string of victories for the rest of the month, and her campaign started careering wildly down the road. Go negative. Go positive. Spin. Change messages. On and on it went, until North Carolina and Indiana. Just like in the movies, you knew it was coming, it was just a matter of time before she went off a cliff, and this was it.
If you'd told me last year that she would have this sort of campaign, I'd have thought you were crazy. After all, I'd seen her run a campaign before. Twice. Her 2000 campaign for the Senate was great. She had identified the issues, crafted her message, and stayed "on message" throughout the campaign. She went throughout the state, meeting with and listening to people, touching base with local officials, and getting the local party officials behind her. Despite incredibly high negatives coming in, and somewhat of a cynical reputation as a "carpetbagger," she still managed to win office. In 2006, she was re-elected with a solid margin of victory.
So I knew her to be an articulate, focused, hard-working candidate with a great organization behind her. She had the proven ability to raise huge sums of money, and had connections throughout the Democratic Party. When you added in that she'd been through her husband's two winning Presidential campaigns, she was obviously going to be a formidable candidate. I had no doubt that she'd have organizations on the ground in most states, that she'd have a rock-solid strategy for winning, and she would make her case quite well.
I had only one major qualm. That was that Hillary was almost certain to draw out the radical right in droves, and her campaign might energize them enough to make a Republican candidate a strong contender. Inside the Party, I thought John Edwards would be her most serious competitor. He had similar capabilities, and didn't have the negatives that she did. I felt that most of the others in the race were unlikely to be serious challengers. Which was pretty much the way everyone else seemed to think. If you look at the polls up until January, Hillary had a commanding lead. She had the money. She had the establishment behind her. She had the best organization. Or so we all thought.
The post-mortems of her campaign (including this one) have started. Her supporters, many of whom still think she has a chance, and even those who accept that she doesn't, have any number of reasons. The press wasn't fair to her. The country didn't want her because she was a woman. She really won, but "the establishment" robbed her. The excuses all seem to be variations on those themes. The press has started to come up with their own reasons. A really good analysis is available at Time - The Five Mistakes That Clinton Made.
What all the current excuses and analyses are missing is the real reason her campaign failed: Hillary Clinton. She is the one who made the decisions on who would be her senior campaign staff. She is the one who had to set strategy. She is the one who determined the tone.
Let's look back at that. Her senior campaign staff was chosen for loyalty. Not competence - loyalty. Loyalty is all well and good, and a necessity. Competence is also a necessity. If you're running a major campaign, you choose people who are both loyal and competent. Look at the Time article - her chief strategist didn't know how the primaries allocated delegates! Her campaign manager was inexperienced.
That's just one of many blunders she made. For whatever reason, this smart woman picked a campaign team that not only wasn't competent in areas, but also had problems working as a team. It showed up in the management of the campaign. Just think about it - she raised as much, if not more than Obama by the start of the year, yet when the end of January rolled around, he had money in the bank, she had to loan herself money. After Super Tuesday, they had to scramble to put organizations into states. That's strategical blunders, as well as fiscal blunders. Yes, it falls on her. Her campaign staff bears its share of blame, but they were all people she had chosen, and she had determined the overall strategy.
She also bears the responsibility for the bewildering array of changes of message and tone. The question became: Which Hillary would we see today? The erudite policy wonk? The down and dirty political brawler? The good ol' gal who could knock back a boilermaker with the gang? The sensitive and gracious candidate? The cold-blooded triangulator? The whiner? The shameless panderer? Which was the real Hillary, or were they all? This didn't strengthen her case, but made a different one: She'd do or say anything to win.
Right now, the Hillary supporters are angry. They're upset, and bitter. They're looking for someone to blame, and they're lashing out. Unfortunately, they're not looking in the right direction.
Here it is for them: Hillary did not get to this point because the Democratic establishment "annointed" Barack Obama, or because the media was unfair to her. She did not lose those primaries because she was a woman. There is only one person to blame for it, and that's her. She's where she is now because she didn't run the campaign she was capable of running.
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