The decline and fall of the House of Clinton has been fascinating to watch. I think it has been a perfect storm of events and decisions, perhaps none fatal by themselves but devastating in combination.
She Fell In Love With Herself She assumed that everyone would read her version of her resume and conclude that she was head and shoulders above every other candidate. All of her life experiences were presidential-qualifying experiences. Her agenda was everyone’s agenda. She developed a blind spot about herself and could not address her weak points.
**She Picked The Wrong Horse In Experience Vs. Change ** She assumed that the voters wanted experience over all other attributes. They didn’t. Worse, not everyone was willing to concede that being First Lady for eight years gave her experience by osmosis. The “Day One” line never gained traction, yet she refused to concede that and change strategy.
**Overconfidence ** She read the press clippings and gladly accepted the mantle of inevitability. She told Katie Couric quite matter of factly that “it WILL be me” when discussing the nomination. As a result, caucus states and post Super Tuesday states were thought of as unimportant distractions from the plan to wrap up the nomination on Super Tuesday.
The Howard Dean Factor The Clinton camp saw the Obama phenomenom as nothing more than a second incarnation of the Deaniacs. Their reading was “Yeah, we’ve seen the college kids go ape over someone before. They won’t be around for long.”
Misreading New Hampshire She saw the NH result as validation of her and repudiation of Iowa. In truth, she may have won due to a combination of feminine sympathy over her teary moment and the fact that Obama was leading so far in the polls that independents concluded that the Democratic race was decided and instead went to the Republican side to help John McCain. If Iowa was the wake up call, New Hampshire was the snooze button.
Lack of Plan B She was supposed to wrap it up on Super Tuesday. Only after then did the campaign start in the post Super Tuesday states, where Obama had already set up his organizations and both outhustled and outspent her.
Wild Bill Between Iowa and Super Tuesday, Bill Clinton became a human wrecking ball. His over the top statements (roll the dice, fairy tale, give me a break) backfired big time, and his attempts to paint Obama as “the black candidate” in the Jesse Jackson mold lost the black vote completely and gained little if anything among whites.
**Her Personality **Many who know her say she’s personable and warm with a good sense of humor in private. On the stump, she comes off as shrill and whiny. Dismissing out of hand every state that she lost as unimportant made her look like a sore loser, as did her failure to acknowledge her losses or to congratulate Obama.
Keep Hope Dead How do you run against a guy who’s saying things like “together we can make America great again”? It certainly isn’t by running a woman saying things like “I’m the only one that knows how to fix things and if you don’t vote for me, you’re gonna be sorry!” The optimistic candidate always tops the pessimist. Mondale and Carter can attest to that.
We Beats I In Obama’s speeches, you heard a lot of “we will do this, we can do that”. With Hillary, it was “you will vote for me because I know what’s best and I will do it for you and you will like it” In the end, I think this was the biggest factor. Hillary ran to be our mother, Obama ran to be our brother.
