Clinton Squanders Support With Inept, Unseemly Campaign

[babylonsister]

Clinton Squanders Support With Inept, Unseemly Campaign
by Thomas F. Schaller


The big-state primaries in Ohio and Texas are less than a week away, yet Sen. Hillary Clinton has already forfeited.

Oh, she’s still running against fellow Sen. Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination - harder and nastier than ever, in fact.

But through a long and growing list of blunders, slights and nefarious maneuvers, Mrs. Clinton has forfeited her right to any remaining benefit of the doubt from Democratic voters.

She forfeited her “readiness to lead” image when she had to reluctantly and belatedly fire Patti Solis Doyle because the Clinton campaign manager’s leadership style created a dysfunctional atmosphere for top staffers. Are we to believe the New York senator is ready to “lead on Day One” a massive bureaucracy of recalcitrant federal employees when she cannot properly lead a far smaller staff of dedicated loyalists?

Mrs. Clinton also had to loan herself money for failing to manage her finances properly. When things looked bleak on the eve of the New Hampshire primary, Clinton staffers gave assurances that her campaign was paid in full through the Feb. 5 “Super Tuesday” primaries. But we now know that little, if anything, was budgeted for the 11-state contest to follow because Team Clinton apparently expected to have wrapped up the nomination by then. A $100 million campaign, mind you, is a pittance compared with a $2.5 trillion federal budget.

Then there is the matter of deploying her husband, former President Bill Clinton, to play the race card. Three days before the South Carolina primary, I attended an event at which Mr. Clinton opened his remarks by boasting that the Palmetto State gave him only his second primary win in 1992, at a moment when his nomination seemed imperiled. Yet three days later, on the morning of the primary, Mr. Clinton made a semi-coded reference to the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, the 1984 and 1988 winner of that state’s primary, as if to imply that South Carolina merely goes for the black candidate.

more...

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/27/7326/

[blm]

1. She actually ran the campaign using Bush's Iraq war strategy.

TeamClinton expected to be greeted with flowers after spending her entire senate career supporting Bush on his terrorism and Iraq war decisions.

[babylonsister]

3. Yup. This is pretty telling...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x98066

[geiger]

2. she simply picked the wrong strategy, an unfortunately scorch and burn one.

[Warpy]

4. I hope this is the final nail in the coffin of all those DLC

political "handlers" who have ruined the last 2 presidential campaigns, packaging two very good candidates as bland, pro business drones who wouldn't change a single thing about Reaganism.

I hope Obama's team is watching this very closely. I hope Obama himself is wise enough to turn down the DLC's kind offer of help, although I admit I fear he isn't.

If we get a Democratic president into office, it will be in spite of the DLC, not because of it. They're losers.

[babylonsister]

5. I thought Obama had already turned down 'help' from the DLC.

(article from March 05)

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050321/berman


snip//

"Neither my staff nor I have had any direct contact with anybody at the DLC since I began this campaign a year ago," Obama wrote. "I don't know who nominated me for the DLC list of 100 rising stars, nor did I expend any effort to be included on the list.... I certainly did not view such inclusion as an endorsement on my part of the DLC platform." After realizing that his name appeared in the DLC's database, Obama asked to have it removed. The message was clear: The DLC needed Obama a lot more than Obama needed the DLC.