A campaign's demise

This is kind of an addendum to an earlier posting about the coming end to the primary season. Reading commentaries by Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich in the NY Times, the revelation is clear. The Clinton campaign was undone by two things -- a dour message and an incompetent campaign strategy.
Dowd notes that Clinton can't figure Obama out. He's an enigma to her and thus any of us who support him must be deluded -- bedazzled by the glitter.

She has been so discombobulated that she has ignored some truisms of politics that her husband understands well: Sunny beats gloomy. Consistency beats flipping. Bedazzling beats begrudging. Confidence beats whining.

Experience does not beat excitement, though, or Nixon would have been president the first time around, Poppy Bush would have had a second term and President Gore would have stopped the earth from melting by now.

What's so strange about this campaign is that Hillary consistently insults the electorate she hopes will put her into office. I find it funny that Obama's supporters are supposedly latte drinking intellectual elites and yet are so gullible that we'll drink kool-aide. I do drink lattes and have just a bit of an education, but I'm not drinking poison spiked kool-aide.
Rich points out that Clinton's campaign has a lot in common with the Bush led Iraq War. It has no strategy and collapsed when America didn't reach out and embrace her from day one. She thought that major combat was going to end on February 5th, but she was undone by an insurgency that is well planned and well run. The difference between the two campaigns is pretty simple. He was prepared for February 6th, she wasn't.
And so the question is: despite her considerable experience and talent, the manner in which she has run this campaign suggests that perhaps Obama is the better leader, the better executive. And as I said before, the fact is, the end is near. Hopefully she will recognize it and not keep believing her campaign gurus who seem oblivious to what is going on around her. She can't keep blaming the system -- if inexperienced and naive Obama can figure out the intricacies of the primary season, why can't she?

Comments

You're absolutely right. Hillary's not having a plan for Feb 6 calls into question the very experience she touts as being her main qualification for the presidency. One of Hillary's complaints about Obama has been that he's never run a national campaign against a serious Republican challenger. Technically, I suppose that's true. But his ability to outsmart and outrun one of the most formidable Democratic incumbents in history (who, in my opinion, is basically a closet Republican anyway) suggests that Obama will have no trouble running a competitive race against John McCain.

In the meantime, political junkies will have a heyday analyzing the various factors contributing to the demise of the Clinton campaign. Maureen Dowd, earlier this week, notes what I believe is one of the great ironies behind the Clinton implosion:

"And when historians trace how her [Hillary Clinton's] inevitability dissolved, they will surely note this paradox: The first serious female candidate for president was rejected by voters drawn to the more feminine management style of her male rival."

And this, of course, is only the tip of the iceburg.

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