“What Went Wrong?”: The 5 Key Mistakes That Cost Hillary the Nomination

I want to start off this by stating that in now way is this an “anti” Hillary entry. With her gracious, and in my personal opinion -shining moment- moment thus far (or more specifically since New Hampshire) Hillary Clinton encapsulated earlier this afternoon a negative or anti Hillary article really is out of line. That said, this entry is more or less a cumulative break down of 5 instances, or actions which ended up working against Hillary and her campaign, and as you’ll see a couple of them really weren’t Hillary’s fault at all.

Politico.com, one of the most fair minded, and rational outlets out there published a piece which highlights, or should I say, points out 5 key campaign mishaps that really ended up costing her the nomination. These go without saying that Barack Obama ran a nearly flawless campaign, which in fact was the underlying factor which won him the nomination.

• Hubris: Hillary didn’t just sell the press and the public on her inevitability as the general election candidate; she sold herself the same bill of goods, telling George Stephanopoulos before the Iowa caucus that I’m in it for the long run. It’s not a very long run. It will be over by February 5.” Hubris was the campaign’s fatal flaw, from which the others, both strategic and tactical, derived.
  

• The Iraq War Vote: There is a straight line from Howard Dean to Ned Lamont to Barack Obama,” said Carter Eskew, the chief strategist for Al Gore’s 2000 campaign. The 2002 vote authorizing military intervention in Iraq has haunted Clinton since, and opened up a space for an anti-war candidate in this year’s primary. While John Edwards, who cast the same vote, later claimed to have made a mistake in doing so, Clinton looking ahead to a general electorate disappointed with the war in Iraq but still hoping for some sort of victory there (and perhaps also back to the 1990s image of the Clintons as serial parsers) continued to defend her vote even as she criticized the war.

• The Trouble With Iowa: Clinton’s deputy campaign manager Mike Henry wrote a May 2007 campaign memo arguing that the campaign should skip” the Iowa caucuses since they “will cost over $15M” but “we will not have a financial advantage or an organizational advantage over any of our opponents” and going all-out there may bankrupt the campaign [but] provide little if any political advantage.” (The memo, it should be noted, also offered the less prescient claim that In effect, the Democratic Party is holding a national primary with over 20 states choosing a nominee on Feb. 5.”)

• The Great Caucus Blunder: In the same interview with Stephanopoulos, Clinton shrugged off the effect of a potential loss in Iowa, saying I don’t think it’s a question of recovery. I have a campaign that is poised and ready for the long term. We are competing everywhere through Feb. 5. We have staff in many states. We have built organizations in many states.” But many states” turned out to mean organization myopically focused on big state and Super Tuesday primaries.

• An Old Fahioned-”Offline” Campaign: The spectacular internet fundraising success of Howard Dean’s 2004 primary run seemed to have had little impact on Clinton, who’d built a tremendous network of old-school big-money donors. Fundraising online might have been more difficult for Clinton, considering how much of her support came from the establishment. Trippi, though, disputes that assertion, pointing out that in February, when Clinton’s campaign adjusted to new-fashioned fundraising and she began mentioning her Web site frequently in her speeches, about half of the contributions she received were for less than $200 while only about a fifth of her contributions had been in that range in the last quarter of 2007. It wasn’t just fundraising, though.

There ya have it, Politico.com’s 5 key mistakes which subsequently cost Hillary Rodham Clinton the nomination. A list I would have to say is right on the mark in just about every instance of every aspect it notes as being a contributing factor to Hillary’s defeat.

That said, I would also like to say that there is no argument whether or not Hillary is a savvy politician, she is arguably the best politico mind we have seen in quite some time. And it is that and that alone why I am confident when I say that I really think we will see Hillary do big things in the future, and we will see her doing them in a fashion where the mistakes listed above will not take place for a second time. More or less I am saying that I think Hillary will take everything into account, fix them, re tool her strategy, and continue on with her successful political career.

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