The post-mortems dissecting Hillary Clinton's loss to Barack Obama are beginning to trickle in, and for the most part what they have to say is unobjectionable. Whenever a contest is as close as the one between Obama and Clinton was, there are any number of things that might have tipped the balance one way or the other. Clearly, given strong anti-war sentiment in the country at large and in the Democratic base in particular, Hillary's staunch refusal to make a John Edwards-style apology for her vote authorizing the war is one of the main things that did her in. Oddly enough, however, most of the "why Hillary lost" narratives either don't mention the war at all, or downplay its significance.
One thing nearly all the post-mortems do agree on, however, is that Hillary's advisers did her no favors. For example, this Wall Street Journal piece argues that the "experience" message Hillary's team crafted did not resonate with voters, that her campaigned was poorly managed, and that her advisers made a fatal strategic error by assuming she'd have the nomination wrapped up by February 5th and failing to plan beyond that.
What hasn't been emphasized enough, however, is that the election results are a resounding affirmation of the netroots critique of the Democratic consultant class. One of the basic netroots arguments is that the Democrats have been ill-served by a grossly overpaid, out of touch, incompetent, and pathologically risk averse consultant class. The Clinton campaign provides some powerfully persuasive evidence in support of this critique. Hillary started out with every advantage: money, name recognition, the overwhelming support of the Democratic establishment, and enormous leads in all the polls. Yet her advisers somehow managed to burn through all that political capital in record time.
At a time when polls show the public moving significantly leftward on most issues, and with record numbers of Americans disapproving of Bush and the war and saying the country is moving in the wrong direction, there has never been a better time to craft a "change" message. Yet the Hillary people stubbornly insisted on sticking to the "experience" meme. They smugly assumed Hillary would have the nomination wrapped up after Super Tuesday and failed to draft contingency plans. Their fundraising aggressively targeted big donors, yet they ran out of money. The campaign reportedly owes $10 million to Mark Penn, a man so stunningly ill-informed that, according to the Wall Street Journal piece and other sources, he didn't realize that California's delegates are awarded proportionally, not winner-take-all.
Barack Obama's team, however, worked smarter and harder. They spent their money on grassroots organizing instead of bloated consultants' fees, a strategy that paid off spectacularly for them. They thought ahead and planned ahead. They poured resources into every state, and refused to give up any of them as "lost." Their fundraising strategy focused on small donors and proved wildly successful. Most importantly, rather than timidly adopting a "me, too" message on Iraq, Obama strongly defended his anti-war position and aggressively punched back when Republicans accused him of being weak on national security. In short, Barack Obama ran his campaign in the manner the netroots had always urged Democrats to do, and he won, defying the pundits and the conventional wisdom at every turn.
Of course, it remains to be seen whether Obama's style of campaigning will work as well in the general election as it did in the primaries. But his team has already provided strong reasons to believe that they'll be every bit as capable of dealing with McCain as they were with Hillary.
Finally -- how hard do you think John Kerry is kicking himself for hiring Bob Shrum instead of David Axelrod?
--K.A. Geier
