| Two things: she's up against a once-in-a-generation political talent, and her campaign let her down.
I say that her campaign let her down for three reasons:
First, they didn't plan properly for the race to last much beyond Super Megatron Bag of Awesome Tuesday. Since the start of the race in February of 2007, Sen. Clinton has raised$175 million--mostly from medium and large contributors, but small contributors have given their share, especially since SMBOA Tuesday.
You would think that with those kinds of funds--unprecendented in Presidential primary politics, let alone Democratic primary politics--she'd be doing far better. Yet, even before February 5, Sen. Clinton had to dip into her savings and loan her campaign $5 million, just to pay for basic costs.
And evidence of their lack of planning continues to pile up--just this morning comes word that her campaign is just now realizing that far from being able to deal a momentum-shattering blow, a Clinton victory in Texas might still end up giving Sen. Obama more delegates from the state, thus rendering any victory moot.
Again, this isn't something that just popped up yesterday--Texas' primary & caucus rules (yes, Texas has both) have been public since September of 2007. And while Obama's campaign has been quietly conducting Powerpoint presentations all across the state, Hillary's campaign has instead been holding rallies in parts of Texas where even an overwhelming victory would be for naught--because those parts of Texas tend to vote Republican in the general election, and the Texas Democratic primaucus system rewards those parts of the state that reliably vote Democratic.
Second, her campaign has never come up with a rationale for why she's running--and what's worse, has not tried to re-engineer or remodel people's vision of Sen. Clinton.
Whether you agree with it or not (and I don't), most folks have a negative view of Sen. Clinton. We'll never know whether or not it would have been possible to change that image, because the campaign never tried to do so. Instead, especially lately, the campaign has been doing everything possible to reinforce those stereotypes.
Finally, there's the question of targeting. By putting all their money on running up large margins in big states, they left themselves no room for error should they fail to do so, and left the rest of the field wide open for Sen. Obama's campaign.
We know the rest of that story: the Clinton campaign won NY, CA, NJ and other states that night, but by smaller margins than they expected. Meanwhile, the Obama campaign cleaned up in places like Idaho and, yes, Colorado, often winning over 65% of the vote.
My concern is this: current polling shows Sen. Obama defeating the presumptive Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain, by a margin of 49% to 35%. The same polling shows Sen. Clinton losing to Sen. McCain in this state by an identical margin.
What are the odds that, should this pattern continue, that Sen. Clinton's campaign will write off this state (a state they already said "doesn't count")? Such a move would imperil organizing efforts in this state, and would make it harder for Democrats to continue their pattern of victories in Colorado.
Combining all three, Sen. Clinton's campaign has chosen to set up a firewall on March 4th in Ohio and Texas. Should she fail to meet expectations, or should she lose, this will mark the effective end of her campaign.
The thing is, it didn't have to be this way. Texas, despite its large Latino population, is a state that rewards careful organization--exactly the kind of thing that Sen. Obama's campaign has excelled at, and Sen. Clinton's has not. Ohio, in its demographic profile, resembles one state--Missouri, which Sen. Obama won by some 3,000 votes.
Sen. Clinton had the resources, and continues to have the popular support across the nation to allow her to fight all the way to the convention. Her campaign's lack of planning has boxed her in, however, and put her in a precarious position.
My greater concern is this: should she win the nomination, which she still can do, her campaign is proposing to navigate the same wickedly narrow tightrope that Democrats attempted to traverse in 2000 and 2004--and failed.
Given her campaign team's performance thus far this year, should we have confidence that they will succeed where others have failed?
Post Wisconsin, Pre-Hawai'i Update: With 87% of the precincts counted in WI, Obama's rolled to a 58%-41% victory.
Given the amount of money that she spent in the state--at least in the mid-six figures--and given the state's demographics, which seemed tailor-made for her, this result cannot be a good one for her. And given that allegedly she asked for donations in tonight's speech, the cost/benefit ratio has really got to hurt. I don't doubt that she's bringing in around $1M a day, but if she's asking for donations, then that money's being spent as it comes in.
The race will come down to, at least, Texas and Ohio. She has to win there by 'comfortable' margins--by her own campaign's admission. A failure to do so will lead, inevitably, to calls for her withdrawal.
It didn't have to be like this. Her campaign has left her, and her field lieutenants, like Ace Smith in TX and Robbie Mook in OH, with no margin for error.
Originally posted at SquareState
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