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 as it would have avoided bad feeling within the party and racial polarisation.
If Hilary from the beginning of her run had praised Obama as a future leader of the party and dropped heavy hints that she would pick him as her VP, primary voters wouldn’t have felt that they had to pick between hope and experience. Such a strategy, would also have made it more difficult for Obama to go after Clinton as hard as he did in the run up to the Iowa caucuses. Seeing as she was the de facto incumbent in this race, he had to make the case against her—which he did effectively—but it would have been difficult to do this without appearing churlish if she had been busy showering him in compliments.
Now, the reason she didn’t do this was that the Washington conventional wisdom was that a woman and an African American on the same ticket would have been too much. All the talk of her running mate back in 2007 centred on white Southern or mid-Western males who it was thought would reassure precisely the white working class voters who are now, ironically, her base.
The other option was to hit Obama so hard early that he never recovered. This was possible. When you think about the stories that have done the most damage to Obama , they were already out there in 2007. Obama had written about Jeremiah Wright in his books and Wright’s church has long sold videos of his sermons, how did no Clinton staffer think to buy a job lot to see what was said? Equally, Obama’s connection to the unrepentant leftist terrorist Bill Ayers was also in the public domain, if the Clintons had gone looking for it.
Obviously, knee-capping Obama like this would not have been pretty. Many of those turned off by the Clintons would have been disgusted by it, many party big-wigs would have thought it excessive and undignified but it would have been effective: Obama wouldn’t have been able to get out of this box if he had been put in it early.
Instead, the Clinton camp—perhaps lulled into a false sense of security by Obama’s unimpressive early polling numbers—let Obama get airborne. The rest is history.
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murray
May 7th, 2008 6:02pmJames, when Obama becomes McGovern '72 all over again, perhaps you can enlighten us all with more of your profound post-mortems.
Trafalgar
May 7th, 2008 6:30pmJames is a journalist Murray so if Obama implodes (and I don't think he will - but that's my opinion so deal with it) then we can expect exactly that. There's nothing more tiresome than people posting comments here accusing James of being either wildly pro-Obama or wildly pro-Hillary. He's being even handed and I find his commentaries compulsive reading.
Chris
May 7th, 2008 6:31pm...why the campaign shied away from humanising her...
Does not compute. Permanent fatal error. Shutting down.
murray
May 7th, 2008 10:02pmTrafalgar, point well taken. James my apologies. I do appreciate your analysis. Too much politics, need to give it a rest. Goodnight all.
Hal
May 8th, 2008 6:14amThese are interesting speculations, but not quite convincing. Throughout this long campaign, there has been a niche among Democrats for a candidate who was not Hillary Clinton, and who opposed the Iraq War. I think that Obama saw that opening when he decided to run.
On top of that, Hillary never articulated a convincing reason for her candidacy. "Experience" is usually a flaccid slogan in a campaign, and hers was especially doubtful. Being next in line matters in the Republican party, but not on the Democratic side, thankfully.
Obama has run a better campaign, which seemed to work much harder in Iowa than Clinton's did.
At bottom, he is simply the more talented at politics. If he were white on both sides of his family, he would have clinched the nomination a long time ago.
Ganpat Ram
May 8th, 2008 9:53amHillary never found her true voice - that of defending white middle-class and working class values - until it was too late.
Don't forget that she will still win big in West Virginia and Kentucky and in Puerto Rico, and will only be marginally behind Obama in votes and delegates when the convention opens in Denver.
She has had the momentum on her side in the last few weeks, and her victory in Indiana was impressiove as it was previously taken for granted that Obama would win there.
Yet it is all too, too late.
There are simply not enough states left for Hillary to catch up a faltering Obama.
The Democrats have messed up badly. They will lose handily to McCain because they have picked a candidate Middle America despises.
Too bad.
2012 is the date to watch: Hillary versus Al Gore !!!!
Trafalgar
May 8th, 2008 12:50pmI'm amazed that Hillary hasn't thrown in the towel now.
Hints yesterday from the Hillary camp that another skeleton is due to emerge from Obama's closet must really be the last throw of the dice. And it would have to be seismic to change superdelegates' minds now.
Murray - sorry if I came over too heavy last night! Tough day at the office.
Ian C
May 8th, 2008 2:42pmI would recommend that you read Karl Rove (Bush's strategist) in the WSJ - http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121020471141475293.html?mod=djemITP (sub. service)but pick up a copy on the way home if in London.
He disects the situtaion very interestingly, basically saying that by going with Obama the Dems. are handing an innate advantage to McCain, as Hillary would compete very well with him in his strongholds but BO will not. But he backs this up with figures which I cannot check. This argument will be the basis of Hillary's fight to stay in the race and maximise her % of the vote, especially when Fla. and Mich. eventually get included, which they must be if she is to ever to go quietly or be tempted by the VP slot.
Ganpat Ram
May 8th, 2008 2:55pmeveryday Hillary stays in the so-called race is a huge help not for McCain but for Obama.
It focuses the media's attention on the fight with Hillary instead of comparing Obama and McCain - a comapsrison Obama dreads.