Did Mark Penn really not know the first thing about Democratic primaries?

Time’s analysis of why the Clinton campaign failed is well worth reading.  One anecdote in it, in particular, is generating a lot of buzz here in DC:

As aides looked over the campaign calendar, chief strategist Mark Penn confidently predicted that an early win in California would put her over the top because she would pick up all the state's 370 delegates. It sounded smart, but as every high school civics student now knows, Penn was wrong: Democrats, unlike the Republicans, apportion their delegates according to vote totals, rather than allowing

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Sisters, we're not finished yet

There’s no sign yet that Hillary is preparing to exit the race. Last night at a fundraiser for her female supporters she declared:

“When I was counted out in New Hampshire, it was the women of New Hampshire who came back and said no, she’s not finished yet,” Clinton also said. “When I was counted out before Super Tuesday, it was women from

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The Clinton campaign's initial and fatal mistake

With the Clinton campaign almost done, the post-mortems are starting. There’ll be lots of hand-wringing about why the Clintons ceded a bunch of states to Obama, why the message was so confused until March and why the campaign shied away from humanising her. But I think the campaign’s fundamental error actually happened at the very start of the process, just after Obama declared he was running. At that point, the Clinton campaign had two options: kill him by kindness or just take him down. The former would have been the best option...

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Hillary lends her campaign $6.4 million

The Clinton camp are desperate to show she's not giving up. They've just added an event in West Virginia, the next state to vote, to her schedule for today and revealed that she has loaned her campaign $6.4 million and is prepared to lend more.

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Obama wins big in North Carolina while Clinton edges home in Indiana

It might have been a split decision but with Obama winning North Carolina by 14 points and coming within twenty-odd thousand votes of Clinton in Indiana it was an emphatic points victory for Obama that puts him on the brink of winning the nomination. Hillary Clinton’s downbeat appearance tonight suggested that she knows the game is almost up.

On Tuesday morning, the rough metric everyone was using was would Clinton win Indiana by more than Obama won North Carolina. In the end, there was no contest: North Carolina was called...

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