About a week ago, I said that the Clinton campaign had run a pretty good race -- their main mistakes were running against Barack Obama, and voting for the war in 2003. Thinking more about it, that judgment was a bit too simplistic. Early on, they ran well. The initial inevitability strategy was smartly carried out, and their fundraising operation truly was remarkable. But as they've come under increased pressure from Obama, they've started to fall apart, and that's had much broader relevance for the arguments underlying Clinton's candidacy. All of this is the subject of my column on last night's results. An excerpt:
Before this campaign, neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama had been tested in a tough electoral contest. Obama's path to the Senate largely required him to step over the bodies of establishment candidates who self-destructed in scandal. Clinton's 2000 victory over Rick Lazio, and her 2006 triumph over the forgettable John Spencer, demonstrated little about her readiness for combat. Thus, unlike John Kerry in 2004, we've not heard much about them as "closers" nor heard tell of their stunning triumphs in tough campaigns (it's easy to forget how much of the Kerry myth was built around his upset victory of William Weld in Massachusetts). Instead, there's been a lot of meta-campaigning—campaigns about what good campaigns they would run.[...]But a funny thing happened on the way to the nomination. Obama's campaign, in Iowa, South Carolina, and elsewhere, made good on their promises to excite new voters. Additionally, the Obama campaign ran a disciplined, forward-looking operation. It methodically organized—and, as a result, dominated—the caucus states; it predicted early on that the contest would drag beyond February 5 and were thus better prepared in the recent primaries; and the campaign ran a tight ship with little dissension, few gaffes, and no damaging leaks.Clinton's campaign has done exactly the opposite. Aside from an important win in New Hampshire, she has not overperformed in any state. Tactically, her strategists have made a series of massive errors: They were so stung by their loss in Iowa that they largely turned away from caucuses, a disastrous mistake as the race became more dependent on delegates; they thought the election would be over early on and were unprepared to go past February 5, which is why her organizing in post-Super Tuesday states has been so poor; they appear, only now, to be thinking through the implications of Texas's hybrid primary/caucus system—and Texas is must-win. No one thought to dispatch an intern to ask the state's Democratic Party how March 5 would work? How savvy of a campaign operation could this be?
