Her once-commanding advantage over Obama in Iowa and New Hampshire -- the two critical initial contests -- is evaporating. She has gotten the worst of recent exchanges over Iran and health care.
There are also political strains with her greatest asset and surrogate, Bill Clinton. The former president was quoted last month as saying he had really opposed the invasion of Iraq from the beginning; he later claimed he was misquoted.
Top Clinton campaign officials were privately furious at the former president, saying he had revived the complaint that the Clintons lack credibility, unfairly tarnishing his wife in the process.
For his part, the former president, one close associate says, has been bouncing off the walls at the campaign's ineptitude in the past few weeks. (It is not known if the Clintons shared any of these sentiments with each other)...
And her campaign has a near-obsession with what it perceives as a hostile press. They were incensed at a New York Times story that reported skepticism about Hillary's contention that her proposal to overhaul health care would help a lot more people than the plan of her rival. The best advice to them: Get over it.
It's a good bet that Clinton, encouraged by her husband, is weighing a shakeup, such as bringing in former White House Chief of Staff John Podesta to direct the overall campaign. The question is whether it's too late and too awkward before those first contests, which are to be held in 3 1/2 weeks.
There are several to note here. One, campaigns are garbage moving in the right direction, at best, and they are also very emotional. Two, everyone in Democratic politics is a 'close associate' of the Clinton's, so take that statement with a grain of salt. Three, the Clinton team really is paranoid about the press, which hasn't helped them considering Obama gets raves and Clinton does not. Four, this is further proof that policy doesn't matter to the electorate. Clinton is probably correct on the health care argument, and Obama pulled a hatchet job on Krugman for no particular reason. But it doesn't show up in the poll or probably on election day. Clinton may want to run on facts and evidence instead of ideology and politics, as the direct mail piece I'm holding in my hands says, but the voters don't seem to care.
It's useful to note that the press is writing the narrative of stumbling frontrunner, and Oprah is a genuine rock star bringing glamor to a surging Obama campaign. I would still give the edge to Clinton, since fear is a very powerful motivator for the electorate and the most primal urge among Democratic voters is to win the general election, not to have a fresh face in there. Obama's coalition, whether he likes it or not (and he doesn't like it), is the Lamont coalition. It's creative class whites, African-Americans, younger voters, and independents. Clinton's coalition is hard core Democratic partisans, older voters, and African-Americans. There are obviously fights within both coalitions, over African-Americans, a simmering boil for some time.
I don't really understand this Presidential primary. All the candidates look very similar. I like Obama's open internet stuff, I think his Social Security and post-partisan stuff is dangerous. I like Clinton's energy policy, but her top-down autocratic hawkish style is worrisome. My hope is that liberal cultural and political trends are so strong that leadership can come from outside the Presidential forum. |
