Reply #15: NY Times: Deconstructing an Obama Victory

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

February 23, 2008, 5:34 pm
Deconstructing an Obama Victory
By Katharine Q. Seelye

Here’s further grist for the mill for anyone deconstructing how Senator Hillary Clinton lost so many states to Senator Barack Obama.
The story is starting to sound the same everywhere: slow start and outspent, if not out-organized. These are the details from Wisconsin, as culled by Ken Goldstein, director of the Wisconsin Advertising Project, which analyzes political advertising across the country.

...Half of her ads had “significant negative content,” Mr. Goldstein said, and they marked her most pointed advertising to date. About one quarter of the Obama ads “attacked or counterattacked” Mrs. Clinton.
She also went after Mr. Obama on relatively minor matters. While the conventional wisdom held that she should try to undermine him on his lack of experience, Mr. Goldstein said, she instead attacked him for not debating her and for not being liberal enough on health care reform.

And while 2008 is perceived to be a “change” election, her ads never mentioned the word “change” while his mentioned it 1,824 times. Her ads never mentioned experience and she never spoke in any of them, whereas Mr. Obama was regularly featured in his ads speaking on his own behalf.

“Her late entry and the inconsistency in the messages conveyed through advertising and in her speeches speaks to some confusion among Clinton strategists,” Mr. Goldstein said....