The strategic error of the Clinton campaign

Not a flame fest. Please.

I voted for Hillary on Super Tuesday, but now I back Barack. OK? OK.

Now that is out of the way, I'd like to discuss what I think was Clinton's monumental oversight in this campaign.

Many people have talked about her shortsighted game plan of everything being over by Super Tuesday. Her lack of ground game, thus conceding caucuses, her funding problems, and many other problems, but I have not really seen much discussion of this: This year is about CHANGE. She conceded the the CHANGE meme to someone instead else. She didn't sense that above all else, people were SICK of George Bush and wanted CHANGE from the way things have been.

She could have emphasized her being woman as HISTORIC CHANGE, but instead she relied on her name and her history and her experience, when hardly anyone wants that. THEY WANT SOMETHING DIFFERENT.

She could have been different.
She could have been historic.

Instead, she was more of the same.
She panders and obfuscates, lies, blusters, and offers more of the same old inside the beltway way crap that people are sick to death of in the country.

So, she is going to lose.

Sad, really, because I had so much HOPE in her campaign last fall. I thought she was different. I thought she offered CHANGE.

Instead, she conceded that to someone else who really does offer HOPE and CHANGE: Barack Obama, the presumptive nominee of the Democratic party and the next President of the United States.

I think that she does not thrive being the focus of attention, and I believe that threw her off her game. Even in the Senate she is one of 100, but once she was out in the spotlight, I think she may have discovered she was not a political animal feeding off the limelight in the same way Bill does. He positively comes to life, whereas people who meet Hillary say she comes to life in the intimate settings.

Something like 200 million dollars were raised. She misspent that money on Bellagio suites, the friggin' Hillocopter, and other wasteful spending like Mark Penn etc. She had more money, name recognition, political machinery than anyone ever before in history, she just ran a piss poor campaign.

..but she pretty much dashed those - and then some.

And it's TRUE. She doesn't offer change. Not only did she not point out what a big change a woman in the Oval Office would be, but she also used the same old tired, race and class-baiting, lying, triangulating, fear-mongering, self-centered, "I want it MY way", nasty right-wing smear tactics, and got into political bed with the Republicans - even Scaife for chrissakes. She went through every trick in Karl Rove's playbook and I'm not sure she didn't come up with some new ones.

As a woman, I WANTED to support her or at least have a choice between two decent candidates. What I ended up with instead, was only ONE choice and it could not be Hillary - not after the way she's run her campaign and I'm pretty sure she'd run a White House the same way. I don't like that. We've had eight years of that.

Time for CHANGE. Not more Republicanism.

It seems to me that analysis over the next few days will focus on "what went wrong."

I think it was short-selling how radical a change it would be to have a woman president.

that experience argument sunk her. her shortsightedness in general, was just so obviously a mistake, its ridiculous. her campaign was run very poorly.

I was a huge Hillary fan one year ago (a big Obama fan, too). But, as she inched further and further to the right, I moved from concerned to frustrated to outraged.

Clearly, I wasn't alone.

The more she went off-message, the more disenchanted I was with her and her campaign.

Nasty and mean and disengenuous it was.

Another big mistake I think she made early was making such a big deal out of "ready on day one", and the whole "I know the rules and he's a newbie" bit. Following that up with the early mismanagement of money and the big losses in the caucuses just made her look silly and fed a lot of the early media speculation about her campaign imploding.

It wasn't media prejudice, it was raised expectations that weren't lived up to and she in large part raised them herself. After that the feeding frenzy was inevitable.

She emphasized experience, when really her experience was nominal at best.

That cuahgt her inflating bosnia trips and making other gaffes and ads about 3AM phone calls that seemed like Rovian wetdreams.

She really should have said "I AM A WOMAN AND THAT IS A BIG CHANGE AMERICA."

Instead she said "I AM A CLINTON" louder and louder, riding her name and husbands coattails instead of standing on her own.

I was saddened, then angered at her tenor and campaign over the last couple of months.

Then she had to run, not walk, through the race. This caused her to quickly look for wedge issues to use against Obama, to identify with polls her target voters, to identify with polls what words, thoughts and phrases those voters would respond most favorably to.

This process meant she was ever changing, depending on the next audience. That's how she started pandering. If you think about it, these two campaigns have been polar opposites. Obama has set his course on a point, and he has been steadfast in guiding his ship to it. He has been Mr. Consistency.

She has been all over the place, trying to exploit his weak points in each given market.

It's really come down to simple math. She wins over 65 voters overwhelmingly, and that is a demo that votes big time, especially in the Democratic party, where 55-60% of the voters are women. Obama could beat her in every other demo, but her lead in that demo was as hefty in raw votes as his edge in the black voting community.

He wins most demos except whites over 65, and she rakes in over two thirds of those votes, plus the Limbaugh cross overs.

right, there was almost too much cleverness going on in the Clinton camp...too much mental energy spent on how to trip up Obama rather than defining Hillary's virtues.

An image that popped in my mind is the brilliant samurai swordfighter who exhausts himself with his own
attacks and feints, while his opponent conserves and waits for the one really effective move.

Also the cartoon somebody posted --with Obama as the Roadrunner holding Coyote (with a Hillary mask on) over the edge of a cliff--kinda says the same thing in a simple way too....

Steadiness and focus rather --than over-reaction/hysteria/trap-setting...

And this is how we should defeat McCain.

That's what Obama represents. Hillary and her tactics? Very Rovian, 20th Century style politics. She and Bill love the fight, the dirt, throwing the mud. They don't get that the American people are weary of all of that. We're seeing a new dawn in this nation. And the Clintons, for whatever reason, want to hold on to the past.

Hillary caved on the IWR.

She has a record of lying and pandering.

She insulted liberals.

It's not the campaign's fault she lost, it's Hillary's.

She was a flawed candidate at a time when voters are paying attention.

Instead of being "your gal" for a NEW world...which she could have been, dammit!...she dragged a lot of chains (and people it seems) from the old world. She bet on nostalgia for a Clintonian second coming after the ravages of Bush. But a lot of voters appear to know that we can't go back to those happy days all that easily. Even Kansas isn't Kansas anymore.

One mistake Hill made was archetypal for a female candidate but a lesson she should have learned by now. In trying to appear "tough" she became ruthless, a zealot, Rethugish. She took the low road....proudly I might add. Maybe this worked with some of her supporters, but not for others. Obama came off as a more balanced individual without hardly trying, showing restraint and good judgment when under attack. I think he obtained the critical margin with that demonstration of civility, which now gives credibility to his platform of unifying the country.

It's time to talk about what attracted voters to Hillary in the first place and how the positives she represented can be addressed and extended without the divisiveness. If anyone was unsure about how much the voters want BIG change, I think at this point they can have no doubts. So for all we have learned, I'd say this grueling contest has been more worth it than not. Hillary deserves the charge that she got it wrong. I think it's fair to say that, for all the upbeat rhetoric, she represents the way NOT to go strategically, for a woman or any other candidate in these dark times.

The best human won, it appears. Let us unite behind Obama now.

Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth.

~Rudyard Kipling

I agree.

Too much reliance on Mark Penn I think.

And wasting upwards of $20 million on one state that she had no shot in hell of winning.

There were some in her campaign telling her to skip it completely and put everything she had in New Hampshire. She did not listen. She gave Obama the opening he needed to declare his first real victory, and she had to struggle to take NH a few days later.

McCain skipped it, and it worked out well for him.

in the Dem primaries. Who would have thunk?

is she didn't try hard enough to win those states Obama won 11 straight in (Mississippi, Louisiana, etc.). The strategy for Clinton seemed to be win the big states and hope the Super Delegates would see that.

she was told early on that Americans don't like feminists (you know, that whole Tammy Wynette thing), and running as The First Female President would have turned too many voters off. IMO.

Which is too bad, because I think that advice is incorrect.

People are sick to death of the status quo and Mrs. Clinton emphasized the CLINTON part way way too much and ceded the "agent of change" mantra to someone else.

And then her campaign used the same playbook of rovian smears and lies and spin and it was clear she didn't offer change anyway.

Sad, pathetic, and game over.