The Slow-Motion Implosion of Hillary Clinton’s Campaign: It Took a Village

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The Slow-Motion Implosion of Hillary Clinton’s Campaign: It Took a Village

The Candidate AGAINST Hope And Aspiration?

By Oliver Willis on February 24, 2008

Wow, this thing is going of the rails. This seems to be the positioning Sen. Clinton wants to place herself in, and the exact opposite of the majority of the Democratic primary electorate to date. Clinton is essentially saying in this tirade that touting hope and aspiration isn't the job of the presidency.

Haven't we had enough of that for the last eight years? It was her husband, after all, who succeded by telling us that he "still believes in a place called Hope".

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Hillary's America based on her campaign talking point: Give us your tired, your hungry, your poor, but don't expect us to deliver hope, especially if you live in states where the majority of people voted for our opponent. Since Hillary's campaign strategy to demonized "hope" is proving a failure, she's counting on the strategy to work:

Ad shows Hillary's vulnerability dilemma

By: Kenneth P. Vogel

CINCINNATI — A new Hillary Rodham Clinton campaign ad featuring an emotional answer the New York senator gave during Thursday’s debate highlights a central dilemma that has dogged her slipping candidacy.

On the one hand, Clinton, who’s been knocked as overly scripted, seems to connect most — particularly with women voters — during the rare times she shows emotions, generally, and vulnerability, specifically.

On the other hand, the initial premise of her campaign was that she is the safe, steady choice for commander in chief, and vulnerability erodes that image. Though the campaign has embraced moments like Thursday’s answer — and Clinton’s now-famed pre-New Hampshire primary choke-up — it has framed them not as signs of vulnerability but as proof of her deep concern for, and identification with, the American people.

The Clinton campaign’s late — and inconsistent — emphasis on Clinton’s softer side reflects a staff that has been at war with itself over how to present her and over how to fight back the unexpectedly resilient onslaught by Illinois Sen. Barack Obama’s rival campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Clinton aides are hoping for a strong sympathy vote from women in the pivotal March 4 contests in Ohio and Texas, but she continues to mix emotional appeals with ferocious attacks on Obama.

That's the moment Hillary Xeroxed Bill and Edwards.

Can someone explain why the link above at "campaign ad" goes to Hillary's donation page?

In any case, Hillary went from that touching Xeroxed moment and this, "I am honored to be here with Barack Obama. I am absolutely honored," to this:

rovian highschool mocking mentality

coming from a candidate "some would say" is republican light.

"some would say, let's get everybody together, let's get unified. the sky will open. (crowd laughs). the light will come down. celestial choirs will be singing. and everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect."

mocking a fellow democratic party presidential candidate after saying that there was honor in being on the same stage as him. mocking americans who choose obama over her. mocking those who hold religious beliefs...on sunday no less. i don't know who is advising the clinton camp...but it seems that they really don't want the woman in the white house.

huffpo has the video up now.

Well so much for the "I am honored" moment, which was weird because she accused him of plagiarism earlier in the debate. All telling signs that something isn't right:

The Slow-Motion Implosion of Hillary Clinton’s Campaign: It Took a Village

February 25th, 2008 by SHAUN MULLEN

It’s not a good sign when the post-mortems are pouring in and you’re not dead.

But that is what is happening to Hillary Clinton although her latest and possibly last firewall — the Texas and Ohio primaries — is still eight days away and she still maintains the lead in some national polls.

As it is, some bloggers, myself included, have noted for some time that Clinton was in trouble. My own catharsis was expressed in a post headlined Why Hillary’s Coronation Is on Hold back on December 17.
Now the mainstream media has caught up and is echoing the obvious:

The strategy of running as Ms. Inevitable has been a disaster.
There was no Plan B for her to fall back on when Plan A came a cropper.
An inattention to detail, notably in organizing on the ground, matched by a misallocationof funds.
A fundamental misreading of the national mood.

The point at which the Clinton campaign’s slow slide became a headlong rush was the run-up to the South Carolina primary on January 19.

That was when her husband and other race-baiting surrogates unintentionally unleashed a backlash that reverberated far beyond that state that in the eyes of some voters contrasted the campaigns of a dirty-dealing Washington insider and a fresh-faced outsider.

Less obvious is that Clinton’s disastrous campaign has been a team effort and she could not have done it without the help of three other key players — George Bush, Barack Obama and an electoral pump primed for change.

Bush has been a disaster in so many ways in the last seven-plus years, Obama has caught lightning in a bottle with his vision of a new America and voters have transformed his improbable candidacy into a phenomenon.

Clinton does not need my sympathy. After losing the last 11 primaries and caucuses by wide margins, she needs a miracle. But while my head is with Obama and he is doing a pretty good job of winning my heart, I believe Clinton to be a decent person who did a lousy job of doing her homework.

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How much damage was done in SC: Hillary is still apologizing for Bill. Even so, Mullen's is generous criticism. This is blunt, from Andrew Sullivan:

Watching senator Clinton attempt to regain some lift as she paraglides into history is almost enough to evoke pity. Almost. The Clintons come with their own boundless reserves of self-pity so further reinforcements seem unnecessary to me. And I suppose they could somehow still find a brutal, soul-grinding path to the nomination. But we've learned something important these past couple of weeks.

Clinton is a terrible manager of people. Coming into a campaign she had been planning for, what, two decades, she was so not ready on Day One, or even Day 300. Her White House, if we can glean anything from the campaign, would be a secretive nest of well-fed yes-people, an uncontrollable egomaniac spouse able and willing to bigfoot anyone if he wants to, a phalanx of flunkies who cannot tell the boss when things are wrong, and a drizzle of dreary hacks like Mark Penn. Her only genuine skill is pivoting off the Limbaugh machine (which is now as played out as its enemies). Her new weapon is apparently bursting into tears. I mean: really.

It's staggering to me that she blew through so much money for close to nothing (apart from the donuts). Without that media meltdown in New Hampshire, she would have been forced to bow out much earlier. She didn't plan for contests after Super Tuesday. She barely planned for any before that. She was out-organized in Iowa and South Carolina, and engaged in the pettiest form of politics in Florida and Michigan. Her fundraising operation was very pre-Internet. She has no message that isn't about her and the Republicans. Her trump card - Bill - managed to foment a 27 point loss in South Carolina. The Clintons, we can now safely say, got lazy. Or rather their old and now forgotten lackadaisical attitude toward governing returned like a persistent flu to campaigning. We tend to forget that their entire governing agenda after 1994 was essentially finessing Gingrich and battling impeachment. (Their entire agenda before 1994 was successful Eisenhower economics, and disastrous Hillarycare). It's been fifteen years since the Clintons actually stood for a coherent message, and it turns out they had forgotten that you kind of need that for a presidential run.

How did they come this close to losing this? They had all the money, all the contacts, all the machine levers, the entire establishment, the biggest Democratic name in decades, and they've been forced into a humiliating death-match by a first-term black liberal with a funny name. It seems obvious to me that the Clintons blew this because they never for a second imagined they could. So they never planned to fight it. Once put in a fair contest, they turned out to be terrible campaigners, terrible politicians, bad managers, useless executives, wooden public speakers. If you're a Democrat, that's good to know, isn't it? All that bullshit about Day One and experience? In retrospect: laughable.

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There is another weird twist to Hillary campaign's attacks against Obama, the McCain factor. It appears there is collusion between
Hillary Clinton's chief strategist Mark Penn and John McCain's top adviser Charlie Black:

Plagiarism-gate: Before the Deval Patrick brouhaha, the McCain and Clinton camps both accused Obama of "stealing" policy proposals from Clinton in Wisconsin.
Both Clinton and McCain have challenged Obama's readiness to be commander in chief.
After Thursday's debate, both Clinton and McCain attacked Obama on Cuba.
Clinton's mocking attack today was very similar in tone to McCain's mocking attack after the Potomac Primary.

Hillary and McCain attack Obama on accepting public financing.

Way too many coincidences.

Bill Clinton: John McCain and Hillary are 'very close':

"She and John McCain are very close," Clinton said. "They always laugh that if they wound up being the nominees of their party, it would be the most civilized election in American history, and they're afraid they'd put the voters to sleep because they like and respect each other."

Hillary surrogate's McCain lovefest: Taylor Marsh smears Obama, praises McCain's character and Who Gets the Reagan Democrats?

To anyone watching this campaign, it should be clear that Hillary is not a victim. She is manipulative and prepared to go as nasty as required to try to win. She mismanaged her campaign and underestimated Obama and his campaign.