I am constantly hearing the Clinton campaign organization being ripped apart for the strategy of running on her experience. Clearly, the logic goes, when experience (Clinton) comes up against a true change agent (Obama), experience loses every time. Therefore, this logic says, it was a mistaken strategy from the beginning.

The problem with this theory is that the experience issue was a tactic, not a strategy. The strategy was that Clinton was a winner. To support that strategy, the campaign employed the tactics of establishing her as experienced, burnishing the legend of the Clinton political machine, and trying to create (through fundraising prowess, endorsements, etc) the aura of inevitability. As a reminder, when Clinton announced her candidacy online, her website didn't say "I'm The Most Experienced." The website read "I'm In It To Win It." Presumably, few people run with the intention of losing, so I assume the rationale behind the strategy was that Democrats were so desperate to win the White House after eight years of George Bush that anyone appeared a winner was golden.

Here's the flaw with the strategy: If your rationale for running is that you can win, as soon as you lose, you've lost more than a race (say, the Iowa Caucus), you've lost your core rationale. Ever since that first loss, the Clinton campaign has been desperately trying to convert their tactics into strategies with mixed to poor results. They still have yet to come up with a core rationale for her candidacy, while Obama has a transparent rationale for his.

Surely, the race is not yet over, though it may effectively be over next Tuesday. If it does end with Hillary Clinton returning to the Senate rather than running for President, that lack of a core rationale will ultimately be to blame... and you can blame a campaign organization for not executing an effective strategy, but you can only blame a candidate  for not having a clear rationale for running from the beginning.