This race is electrifying, isn’t it? We went from an inevitable Hillary Clinton, to a surging Barack Obama in Iowa. Then came the teary-eyed moment in New Hampshire, and this race was essentially tied up until “Super Tuesday”. Barack Obama has since won a total of 10 straight states, from little Hawaii to the heritage-enriched state of Virginia. Someone asked me a few days ago, “What happened to Hillary Clinton’s campaign?”
This is a striking question. Exactly what happened? I can explain this phenomenon in great detail. The first mistake of the Clinton campaign was to label their candidate as the establishment, status-quo, and safe choice. For God’s sake, she is the first women to have a great shot to control the countries’ future in the forthcoming years! And they labeled her as more of the same? If this election was about political experience, our nominee would be Joe Biden right now.
The second mistake of the campaign was to assume that she could not be beaten. The word “Inevitable” frequently came from supporter’s mouths, these supporters obviously oblivious to what had happened just three years earlier to Howard Dean in the 2004 primary.
Hillary Clinton did not connect with voters in Iowa. She hosted large events, with over a thousand people attending while campaigning there. John Edwards and Barack Obama sat down with voters, in small groups; and addressed their concerns.
After losing Iowa, Hillary obviously adopted the “recipe of change” into her campaign tactics. This was a cheap attempt to steal Barack Obama’s base, and it backfired. The race was extremely close until South Carolina came along. The black vote was split approximately 50-50 before this primary, and now exit polls show blacks going almost 90-10 for Barack. Bill Clinton insulted millions of voters in calling Obama’s campaign a “fairy tale” and comparing him to Jesse Jackson; which was an obvious attempt to label him as the “black candidate.”
During the weeks before Super Tuesday, the campaigns cruised at a safe altitude, but after losing 8 in a row, Hillary falters again. She has numerous points of attack, inconsistent with each other, that just are not accurate. Political plagiarism? Are you kidding me? Politicians hire speechwriters for a reason, taking a line is not plagiarism, especially when Hill doesn’t even write all of her speeches.
This race is a good “Idiots guide to running a campaign,” and too bad for Hillary, she ended up in the “What not to do” chapter.
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