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Hillary has never been campaign tested - she folds in battle
I, for one, never thought that Clinton’s election to the Senate was a difficult one. Rick Lazio was far from a formidable opponent. Tapped late into the process to replace Rudy Giuliani, who’d been diagnosed with cancer and who was dealing with his private life not becoming increasingly public, Lazio was an awkward rival who played out as part buffoon, and part goon. I remember cringing in horror as Lazio approached Clinton at the podium during a televised debate. He was so aggressive that I was sure he would take a swing at her. I gave Clinton enormous credit from not cowering at his advance. That moment was absolutely amazing for Hillary, and clearly the end of Lazio’s bid for office.
Jeanine Pirro, for all of Lazio’s faults, was an even worse opponent during Clinton’s reelection bid. Pirro’s campaign imploded for a myriad of reasons. You can view part of Pirro’s announcement HERE (you’ll see Mika Brzezinski in action as she talks about the match up between the two candidates and the problem each candidate has with a husband who behaves badly). No one has forgotten, I’m sure, Pirro’s rousing announcement speech ("just words") when, in the middle of discussing her vision for New York, she lapsed into a 30 second pause. She’d lost ‘page 10’ and had no idea what she was supposed to say. What an inauspicious beginning, one that would be indicative of the campaign in its entirety. By December of 2005, Pirro’s flailing campaign was over. Her family’s scandals and being ill-equipped to run for office gave her little to no option but to drop out of the race.
Both of these incidents, I think, help explain the ‘air of inevitability’ that took hold of the Clinton camp. The camp had conflated the ‘two Hillarys’. There was Hillary the strong woman - as evidenced by the fact that she was able to weather the worst of her husband’s storms and face the public with such steely resolve, no matter how deeply humiliated she’d been. There was Hilary the politician, who’d never faced a tough opponent. What Clinton, and Clinton, and Penn, and Ickes, and Lanny ‘Fox News guides me’ Davis, McAuliffe, Garin, Wolfson, and so many others refused to face is that Hillary Clinton is a smart and strong person who, as a politician, has faced weak opponents and is consequently a weak candidate.
Unfortunately for her, Clinton was presumed to be the Democratic Nominee, even from the time she ran for re-election in New York. The press was filled with articles about the First Lady-turned Senator-who would be President. The air of inevitability began long before the Presidential race began in earnest. Here’s why it matters.
I can only imagine that Clinton and long time campaign adviser Howard Wolfson viewed Obama as a cross between Lazio and Pirro. Young, bold, and perceived as arrogant- not based on his actual behavior, but that he, like Lazio, came out of nowhere to challenge a political machine. He didn’t ‘go squish’ as easily as Lazio, however. Pirro, an attorney with relatively decent oratory skills (if you were able to forgive the announcement pause) was a bit tougher. She was willing to take huge swings – some of them below the belt. She was a fighter. Obama, criticized for not swinging hard enough against his Democratic rival, was still willing to hit back. I think the Clinton camp assumed they would dispose of Obama in the way they’d disposed of Lazio, and Pirro, with roughly the same effort. They were ill prepared. The lack of fight from Lazio and Pirro had dulled their senses.
In the face of tough opposition, Hillary Clinton’s choices leave me questioning just how competent she is to hold office. I don’t think any of us doubts that she’s a scholarly person. She’s well read, she’s a great thinker (with regard to issues), and she’s accomplished. But even bright people do some wasteful and inappropriate things:
- When faced with what was perceived to be a much stronger opponent, Sen. Clinton caved on the toughest issue of her, relatively short, political career. Bush’s approval ratings were soaring at the time she voted to authorize the Iraq war, giving a strongly worded speech defending her support of the vote.
- A vote for the Kyl-Lieberman amendment which would set the stage for war with Iran.
- Supporting Cluster bombing in civilian areas
Add to the list:
- Firing Patti Solis Doyle. This is the move that should have troubled feminists far more than almost anything else Clinton has done (other than to allow mostly men to run her campaign in the first place). I don’t understand what’s happened to some in the feminist movement who seem to consistently exchange feminist principles for the "privilege" of being in Clinton’s camp, but this is the point when I was sure that most who were part of her camp had jumped the shark.
Remember, Clinton, the presumed nominee, declared the race ‘over’ by February 5th (prophetic, but not in the way she’d hoped):
Link if the video doesn't work
Solis-Doyle spent and allowed spending to occur based on the projections of the mostly male campaign advisers
Nearly $100,000 went for party platters and groceries before the Iowa caucuses, even though the partying mood evaporated quickly. Rooms at the Bellagio luxury hotel in Las Vegas consumed more than $25,000; the Four Seasons, another $5,000. And top consultants collected about $5 million in January, a month of crucial expenses and tough fund-raising.
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s latest campaign finance report, published Wednesday night, appeared even to her most stalwart supporters and donors to be a road map of her political and management failings. Several of them, echoing political analysts, expressed concerns that Mrs. Clinton’s spending priorities amounted to costly errors in judgment that have hamstrung her competitiveness against Senator Barack Obama of Illinois.
"We didn’t raise all of this money to keep paying consultants who have pursued basically the wrong strategy for a year now," said a prominent New York donor. "So much about her campaign needs to change — but it may be too late."
The high-priced senior consultants to Mrs. Clinton, of New York, have emerged as particular targets of complaints, given that they conceived and executed a political strategy that has thus far proved unsuccessful.
Sen. Clinton had a choice to make, Solis-Doyle, or Mark Penn. Penn, she seemed to believe, was the more powerful and successful of the two. Despite Mark Penn’s misbehavior, despite his failed campaign strategies (most notably the Feb. 5th disaster), despite the fact that he seemed to not understand the nature of Democratic Primaries, loyal long time supporter Solis-Doyle got the boot. Clinton’s deference to power is also probably the reason she would pay out 2.9 million dollars to Penn while smaller, more financially strapped, vendors continue to wait to be paid.
Add the various offensive statements about Obama, and implicitly about Obama supporters.
Add to that the now infamous Couric interview in which she insists she’ll be the nominee.
Add to that the various ‘misstatements’ like the sniper fire incident to show she was as tough as McCain, tougher than Obama.
Now add the tragic attempt to use the assassination of RFK for the sake of self-promotion and to defend her actions.
Don't confuse what's being said here: I am disgusted by Sen. Clinton's comments. I've been offended by the way she's run her campaign since S. Carolina. I think she's a dismal politician and has no idea what it means to maintain the trust of the people.
I'm not talking about Hillary Clinton the politician. I'm referring to Hillary Clinton, the woman, when I say this: I’ve regained my ability to see her as a survivor, and a brilliant woman, I’d lost that. I’d confused the strong woman for the weak politician who floundered when confronted for the first time by a strong opponent. It doesn’t make Sen. Clinton’s actions over these six months any less repugnant, but I have regained an ability to be sympathetic to her. The tough-as-nails survivor in her is probably as confused by "Hillary the candidate" as the rest of us are.
Ultimately, I'm exhausted. I have no more disgust and anger to waste on the Clintons. I'm turning THAT page and focusing on Nov. and working hard to help Sen. Obama win the White House and take this country forward.
Cross posted at Dailykos.
Comments (63)
One of the most insightful articles I've seen here in a long time. It should be front-paged! The best job I've seen of reconciling her considerable strengths with the reality of how poorly she ran the campaign.
Right on the money:
May 24, 2008 1:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well reasoned, original and well presented. Thanks!
May 24, 2008 1:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thats sound you hear? It's applause for a well written and thought out piece.
May 24, 2008 2:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you all for the positive feedback! It's much appreciated. (Btw, I accidentally 'recommended' my blog piece when I meant to his 'comments'. Any way to undo that? I'm still not yet use to the TPM format.
May 24, 2008 2:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Denni,
Thank you for your efforts. This is important background information and sheds light on what makes Hillary tick. I agree with you, it's time to move on.
But to lighten things up for a moment, let me refer to the other half of the team, Bill.
Although there hasn’t been a great deal of publicity surrounding Bill’s latest activities on the campaign trail, the "Aboulafia Blog" has attained an exclusive rendering of “Bill on the Trail” by a not so local artist (which I have no idea of how to reproduce on TPM)
So, please see http://msa4.wordpress.com/
May 25, 2008 2:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
I don't know that it's fair to say that she's a weak candidate as a consequence of having previously faced weak opponents. (I didn't know any of this NY senatorial race history, BTW, so thanks for the details.) I think it's more that she faced weak opponents before and underestimated Obama, mistakenly thinking he was just another weak opponent. I think she's proven she can be a strong candidate, though a bad manager. Under the right campaign management, she could have done much better. But none of that changes the fact that Obama was and is so much stronger than anyone she faced before. She simply wasn't prepared, refused to believe he was that strong and never changed her approach.
And, of course, she was so thoroughly convinced it was going to be a cakewalk, as was everyone around her. I think she would have believed that no matter who her remaining opponent would have been.
I wonder when the truly "Uh-oh" moment occurred for them? Personally, I think it was Super Tuesday, and I say that because I heard about a Web site called WriteHillaryIn (or WriteInHillary) promoting a write-in campaign, and that Web site was created only a few days after Super Tuesday. It must have hit them like a ton of bricks when she wasn't the landslide winner and Obama walked off with three more state wins than her (four if you count Texas in his column) and a net delegate gain of 12.
So I'm not sure she was inherently a weak candidate. I just think Obama was -- and is -- stronger.
May 24, 2008 2:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think she's proven she can be a strong candidate, though a bad manager.
But at the national level, being a strong candidate absolutely requires being a good manager. To me that's the only thing that makes sense about the way presidential campaigns are run. A candidate who can't handle the stress of the campaign trail, while consistently making good judgments, selecting good people, and delegating appropriately, is unlikely to win the nomination or the presidency.
However, Hillary almost did win just on the strength of name recognition, party insider support, and the initial funding advantage that came from all of that, plus having a popular former president as a husband. I'm still amazed that she turned out to be such an extremely bad manager, in so many ways, that it was even possible to squander those enormous advantages.
But just imagine what would have happened if she'd taken the nomination very early in the process. Then she'd have gone into the general election still believing in her own "inevitability," even more committed to bad advisors, and still essentially untested as a campaigner and manager. All the flaws that have come out in the nomination process would instead have come out in the general election. A scary thought.
May 24, 2008 3:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Indeed, a scary thought. So all this pain is worth it? heheheh
May 24, 2008 5:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
May 24, 2008 11:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
"But just imagine what would have happened if she'd taken the nomination very early in the process. Then she'd have gone into the general election still believing in her own "inevitability," even more committed to bad advisors, and still essentially untested as a campaigner and manager. All the flaws that have come out in the nomination process would instead have come out in the general election. A scary thought. "
Very true. As an Obama supporter, it would be twice the insult for me.
I honestly think that Mark Penn doesn't deserve even one more dollar, not ONE. He should donate the money he's made to the DNC to help undo the damage he's done
May 24, 2008 5:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not sure he's so strong. Hillary came back to now have the lead in the popular vote, and she's been counted out by everyone since January.
MI and FL may not count in the minds of Obama supporters, but they'll count on Nov. 4. She has ultimately run a very strong campaign, coming back as she has over an amazing amount of negative and hateful comments about her, ranging from MSNBC to Air America, to Time, and to Obamamania sites like TPM, Huffington, etc.
I wish Gore and Kerry had fought as hard and as long to win the Presidency. Kerry especially wimped out. We need someone like Hillary who won't allow McCain to win. If Obama had been as beaten as Hillary has been, he would have folded ages ago. He's been the darling of tv, radio and the written word, which serves to bolster him in his quest. That will all change if he's nominated, because all those media channels are corporate run, and that means Republicans on the warpath against him. The only support he'll get is from places like TPM and Huffington, not enough to reach the country.
May 24, 2008 11:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Excellent post.
May 24, 2008 3:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Solis-Doyle sucked, more than Mark Penn. Penn said not to contest Iowa - probably a smart idea that was ignored. Solis-Doyle put the Iowa chief back in charge of Wisconsin, a depressing loss again. Since she's gone, the Clinton campaign does better with the youth vote and is more nimble. The biggest problem was not firing Solis-Doyle earlier.
May 24, 2008 3:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
And by the way, if she'd never been tested, she wasn't inevitable, so she's learning as she goes along. And has done better since March. So give her credit for both making needed changes and for rising up from inexperience to make a comeback.
May 24, 2008 3:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
In other words, "Not Ready on Day One, But Sometimes Eventually Able To Learn From Severe and Recurring Negative Consequences".
May 24, 2008 3:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, "Ready on Day One" has always had its limitations, even in the sense that it's about governing, not campaigning. Even with time in the White House, the situation is always different when the final decision, the final judgment is yours. You can be better prepared, "ready", but you never know how good you are until you go live.
May 24, 2008 3:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's a fair point, but I think that the nature of a presidential campaign is such that a candidate's potential for being ready for the 3am phone calls is tested fairly well. At the very least it's difficult for a candidate to reach the presidency if they can't recognize and choose good advisors, can't delegate, can't make sound judgments under prolonged stress, etc. But it's by no means a complete demonstration of readiness to be president.
I should say the above largely applies just to Democratic candidates. For Republicans, someone like Bush still has a chance even though he has essentially none of the qualities that would make a good president.
May 24, 2008 4:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
A few weeks after Bush took office, the Chinese forced down one of our spy planes over international water, dismantled the plane in Hainan and handed it back in boxes with a humiliated crew. Sorry, nothing in a campaign prepares you to handle things like this.
May 24, 2008 5:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
O really?
I was completely prepared for war with Iraq and amazing fuck-ups and amazingly tasteless statements from the moment I knew he'd stolen the election.
I'm really surprised others weren't prepared.
I knew exactly what was going to happen. I turned to Mr. Tena the day the result was announced in Bush v Gore and said: "We're going to war with Iraq. And this will be the worst administration anyone has ever seen."
Of course, I'm Texas, and I already knew him. But anyone who had paid the slightest bit of attention should have known.
May 24, 2008 5:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'd read Molly Ivins (R.I.P) so I THOUGHT I was prepared. Now I realize that Ivins could have written a hundred more books about Bush and we still wouldn't have had enough information to prepare us. I thought that since Texas survived we all had a shot at making it... OY!
May 24, 2008 5:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
I was in Tallahassee and DeFuniak Springs, Florida the last week in October, 2000, spending many hours deep in the bowels of court record rooms in the court clerk's offices. As I drove north toward home, I phoned my sister in California, and I said, "They better count the votes in Florida". A couple of weeks later, well, I was considering myself pretty prophetic, but really had no idea how right that statement would be.....
it was just that I had been collecting records in numerous states, and was shocked, that in Florida, whole cases had disappeared from the clerks' computer logs. With no computer record and no paper backup [in DeFuniak Springs], of course, those case records were effectively gone.
May 24, 2008 7:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'd say the calendar...Unfortunately Hillary's team did not see nor mitigate the post Super tuesday flood and Obama's made it happen. My guess is that Obama's team may secretly have known/feared that it would drag out like this because of the demographics involved in the post March 4th primaries. I remember a quote from Alexrod "I'll be honest, I can't deny were' going to miss Feburary."
May 25, 2008 12:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
I was wondering if you could further give an opinion on this passage in your post:
"I'm not talking about Hillary Clinton the politician. I'm referring to Hillary Clinton, the woman, when I say this: I’ve regained my ability to see her as a survivor, and a brilliant woman, I’d lost that. I’d confused the strong woman for the weak politician who floundered when confronted for the first time by a strong opponent. It doesn’t make Sen. Clinton’s actions over these six months any less repugnant, but I have regained an ability to be sympathetic to her. The tough-as-nails survivor in her is probably as confused by "Hillary the candidate" as the rest of us are".
I am always confused at the description of Hillary being two separate personalities. Could not the tough-as-nails survivor and the Hillary the candidate be the same?
Not being able to have an integrated personality is part of the character of Hillary. This is why she can so easily "play the victim". It's part of the survivor act. "The weariness", "The I'm so tired but yet I continue", "The he did it to me first", " The somebody rescue me" syndromes that have many post modern feminist cringing.
She's never held on to a personality long enough. You can't be a leader of people in spite of yourself.
I think she's more manipulative and masked at this point and those aren't the trademarks of a survivor. She's an abuser because she has been abused. At some point you stop them and say "Look at what you've become", or "You're worse than your abuser".
She's a singular soul that hasn't the courage to face herself like all narcissists. And they continue trading one mask after another after another after another. This is what they do. Period. They are NEVER what they seem.
Hillary has never "said" she was a survivor. That's projection. What she has said is that she's a fighter. And she has shown us a warrior.
A feminine warrior. But still one who is not bothered by others destruction.
She doesn't want you to identify with her actions. Only identify with the image she sets in front.
May 24, 2008 3:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
By the way, narcissist DEMAND loyalty.
May 24, 2008 3:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
I really think you are correct in identifying mental illness as a factor here, and I say this as someone who started the primary process with a very open mind toward Hillary. Her behavior over time has shocked and saddened me, as time after time she takes the low road without any apparent concern regarding how she is perceived or how she is poisoning the atmosphere - and then plays the victim when she is called on it. I am no expert in psychological diagnoses, and I have generally concluded that Hillary's ego is so inflated and inflamed that it blinds her. Maybe narcissism is the accurate description. In any case, it's obviously disturbing to many of us to witness this spectacle. I think there is a tendency to attribute Hillary's more outrageous actions and words to poorly thought out political calculation, but it seems to me it's more a matter of the unfortunate eruptions of a disturbed personality.
May 24, 2008 4:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
ICAM! Isn't it telling that both Clintons and President Bush have that same trait. I can't remember if Bush Sr. did as well.
May 24, 2008 6:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
"But just imagine what would have happened if she'd taken the nomination very early in the process. Then she'd have gone into the general election still believing in her own "inevitability," even more committed to bad advisors, and still essentially untested as a campaigner and manager. All the flaws that have come out in the nomination process would instead have come out in the general election. A scary thought."
wow, never thought of that, excellent thought.
May 24, 2008 4:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Quasar, thanks for that question. I now realize that the comment could be taken to mean that I'm suggesting that Clinton is mentally ill, but that's not what I meant. I meant that when you think about who she was in the White House, and the tough as nails partner who helped her husband get elected, that's not the person who showed up on the campaign trail this past year.
Even Clinton's detractors were impressed with the sheer amount of information she had committed to memory during the hearings on universal healthcare. She never even the most minute details, without checking her notes. Even then there was a conflict in who she was because she knew so much, but yet had such a hard time working with even her own party on the matter. I still don't think Bill Clinton would have been President if she hadn't pulled the reins and worked as part of his election team.
Yet, when she ran her campaign, someone must have told her that 'brainy Hillary' wasn't good enough. I can't remember which speech this was, but I remember that in front of some crowd she said something like, 'Well, big crowds and big speeches are exciting, but I think talking about the policies that affect our lives are exciting too. That's what I care about.' I thought, 'how sad' because it's almost as if she was apologizing for what she knew.
She kept trying on different "Hillaries", looking for the one who resonated with the electorate. By the time she got to P.A. "man's man" Hillary showed up. She left being "heavyweight champ" who pretty much challenged Obama to get in the ring in Ohio.
It made her look weak, not strong. Sen. Obama was always consistent. You knew who was showing up from day to day, state to state. It's so clear that he has a strong sense of self and is a confident man. I think if Clinton had a sense of herself, she'd have assembled a better team and not the taken crap from Mark Penn. I don't think she would have sold out her principles and allowed the racially tinged campaign to happen. I don't think she would have turned balkanizing the Democratic party by race, age, education, etc and then attacking everyone who disagreed with her as sexist.
She, on one hand, claims that she's discriminated against and that the sexism is overwhelming. She, on the other hand, talks about how close the contest is and that there's almost no difference between her and Sen. Obama in terms of the vote. Unless she is narcissistic enough to believe that she would be running away with the vote because the nomination was destined to be hers, the conflicting Hillary accounts don't make sense -- and she's countered her own argument that she's 'more electable'.
Sadly, this campaign will most likely be her legacy and that of Bill Clinton's. Everything else will be marred by this race. She had choices to make and she made the wrong ones, in my opinion.
May 24, 2008 5:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think Quasar was suggesting that Hillary IS mentally ill. I believe that she is.
May 24, 2008 6:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you.
May 24, 2008 6:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Of course it takes a complete narcissist to have the chutzpah to think he/she can diagnose others as mentally ill.
May 25, 2008 12:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Since narcissism is a diagnosis, that's ironic.
May 25, 2008 12:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
And although you state that you are not suggesting mental illness, your words in your last post points to that conclusion:
"She, on one hand, claims that she's discriminated against and that the sexism is overwhelming. She, on the other hand, talks about how close the contest is and that there's almost no difference between her and Sen. Obama in terms of the vote. Unless she is narcissistic enough to believe that she would be running away with the vote because the nomination was destined to be hers, the conflicting Hillary accounts don't make sense -- and she's countered her own argument that she's 'more electable'."
May 24, 2008 6:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
I hate using this word, but I will. I have to wonder if there's a basic insecurity to Clinton that makes her so unsure of herself (no matter how bright she is) that she'll accept anything. Someone suggested using the terms cognitive intelligence and emotional intelligence to make the distinction. She seems to be high in the former, weak in the latter. She doesn's seem to know how to connect to people - Obama is a master of that. He's high in both.
Why else would she put up with Bill Clinton's philandering ways?
Why does she seem to want to mold herself to the group she's with and become 'one of them' to please them?
I don't remember any other candidate doing that, ever. I don't know if she's ill, just ill-equipped for office. Gore Vidal said that the election was making her crazy, but I don't know how he meant it when he used the term.
May 24, 2008 6:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Another thing.
Narcissist always create the scenario to have you second guessing yourself. They are MASTERS at gaslighting.
You walk on eggshells defending them emotionally because they cannot bear anyone knowing what their true self is. Which is actually non existent.
They acquire whatever emotion is needed at the time. Even using transference to duplicate yours as theirs. They allow you to make any kind of projection that you want. But they have to be TOLD what they should geniunely feel.
This is not an organic mental illness. This is a personality disorder. Usually brought on by a traumatic event during a child's phase of rapproachment. (That stage of growth in a child when he learns "other than").
I've mentioned before the Oracle pronounced to the mother of Narcissus. Which is that the mother was to protect Narcissus from knowing his true self. For if he was to know his true self he would die.
Narcissistic injury is the only thing that can thwart (but not cure) this cyclical redefining. I think this was it for Hillary.
May 24, 2008 6:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
To be honest I imagine that anyone that has the ability to attract hundreds of millions of dollars ($160 of mine included) so that you can go to the next round of a election process is most likely a bit nuts (both in having the ability and as a consequence of having done that). Some do it with style, others come off crazy.
And in Hillary's defense, its a lot harder to pull it off with style when you're losing.
May 25, 2008 12:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm sorry. "Its a lot harder to come off with style when you've lost."
May 25, 2008 12:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
Firing Patti Solis Doyle. This is the move that should have troubled feminists far more than almost anything else Clinton has done
Flat wrong here. I'm a feminist, male, Obama backer.
She didn't hire or fire Solis Doyle because she was a woman. She hired her because she was a close loyal friend who had previously shown tremendous abilities in tasks Hillary asked her to perform. She fired her for failing as campaign manager, a job she'd never held before. Women like men should succeed and fail based on success and failure not sex. Solis Doyle failed but she wasn't the only problem with Hillary's campaign by a long shot. Like baseball you can't fire all the players, you fire the manager. An even better comparison is boxing. A fighter can't fire himself but he can fire his manager.
Scott Harper's campaign manager (IL-13) Sarah Topy is topnotch. If he wins one of the big reasons will be because he hired her.
May 24, 2008 6:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Mark, I see what you're saying, but my full point was that both Solis AND Penn failed Clinton miserably. She felt Solis was expendable, and refused to give up on Penn - though he was the architect of her failure.
I'm a woman supporting Obama. I would never recommend that a woman be hired or fired just because she's a woman.
May 24, 2008 7:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
C'mon Denni this isn't that hard to figure out and
doesn't require psychoanalyzing her without a degree. It just takes a little empathy. Wouldn't you feel a little insecure if you were watching your lifelong dream go up in smoke? Wouldn't it make you just a little bit crazy? Or willing to grasp at some tactics that seem at the time in the last dying days in the campaign bubble to be salvation?
She put up with Bill's philandering ways because she always put up with them. She's been putting up with it for over half her life. Why should she destroy everything they built together personally and professionally just because others think it's what she should do?
Why does she seem to want to mold herself to the group she's with and become 'one of them' to please them?
If you're talking about becoming the blue collar champion over the last couple of months it was poltical calculation. In the early states Edwards had staked out that position literally for years.
Until TX and OH there wasn't a clear enough field
or a big enough vote to win that way. It was a deliberate decision to try for blue collar vote because Obama had the netroots, the leftwing and intellectuals sewn up. Trying it pre 2/5 would have lost her as many votes as it won.
May 24, 2008 7:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
"C'mon Denni this isn't that hard to figure out and doesn't require psychoanalyzing her without a degree. It just takes a little empathy. Wouldn't you feel a little insecure if you were watching your lifelong dream go up in smoke? Wouldn't it make you just a little bit crazy? Or willing to grasp at some tactics that seem at the time in the last dying days in the campaign bubble to be salvation? "
Of course it would, it would push anyone to the wall, but some of her actions are consistent with her behavior for some time, even as First Lady (the fights with Jim Cooper over Universal Care)
"She put up with Bill's philandering ways because she always put up with them. She's been putting up with it for over half her life. Why should she destroy everything they built together personally and professionally just because others think it's what she should do? "
Protecting what they built up explains why she continued to put up with it. It doesn't explain why she STARTED putting up with it. She was highly educated, a bright woman, someone who could have made her way on her own. She had drive and ambition. It predated the White House years.
"If you're talking about becoming the blue collar champion over the last couple of months it was poltical calculation. In the early states Edwards had staked out that position literally for years.
Until TX and OH there wasn't a clear enough field
or a big enough vote to win that way. It was a deliberate decision to try for blue collar vote because Obama had the netroots, the leftwing and intellectuals sewn up. Trying it pre 2/5 would have lost her as many votes as it won"
But she wasn't just 'Blue Collar Hillary'. She was 'Emotional and Dedicated Hillary' in New Hampshire. She was 'Southern Drawl Hillary' in places like TX where she picked up a 'twang' in her voice. She was 'Conciliatory Hillary' once or twice on the trail. Every state or region brought a new Hillary with her.
I think 'smart to the point of knowing policy inside out Hillary' was good enough. It was the constant shifting of personality that helped do her in, I think. Earlier in this campaign, I could have been happy with either candidate, but then Sen. Clinton began to show that she really wasn't ready for the office on day one (or that's the way I've perceived her actions).
May 24, 2008 9:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ultimately you're exhausted. And yet all you've been doing is sitting at your computer typing. Hillary has been running a race on a schedule that could kill many half her age. And yet you presume to judge her. You're a joke.
May 24, 2008 8:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
...Presume to judge her? What else are voters supposed to do, but judge one potential nominee against another? Yes. We judge her; we judge Obama, and we decide who we believe just as though we were in a jury room.
After that we judge whether the person whose argument/platform seems the most honest and closest to our own, can actually accomplish his/her goals.
Judging. That is what this is all about. What is wrong with that?
May 24, 2008 9:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Good post, Denni. I'm not sure, however, that the decisions you defined as "wasteful and inappropriate", while emblematic of her weakness as a candidate, really fit that description (or at least not my understanding of it, anyway).
Here's how I see it:
For Clinton and her team it was a political no-brainer to support the Iraq resolution and Kyl-Lieberman. She was angling to become the first female President of the United States, which, right or wrong, is viewed as primarily a military leadership position by a substantial portion of the American electorate.
Despite the fact that I completely disagree with both her votes, I understand why she felt they were politically necessary. She had witnessed how difficult it was for her husband to "pass the commander-in-chief threshold" and logically gathered that a quasi-hippie from Wellesley like her would have to go way right on defense issues in order to seem sufficiently "strong" enough to be taken seriously in a presidential election.
The problem here wasn't that her political reasoning was faulty, it was that it became outdated faster than she ever could have imagined. She and her advisors were planning for an election that would be more like 2004 than 2008.
The unmitigated disaster of Iraq and the abject failures of the economic policies of George W. Bush accelerated a long simmering shift in political landscape. While Obama recognized this shift was his opportunity as a truly anti-establishment candidate, Clinton did not and continued operating by the same old, largely obsolete, electoral playbook.
Regardless of how tone deaf her advisors-- Penn, Ickes, Solis-Doyle, Wolfson, Bubba-- were, the failure to recognize the coming change and adapt is ultimately her failure. And that, I think, is what proves she's not a great politician.
As a result of her misreading of the public's mood, her campaign was outflanked by Obama's. As further proof of how badly she had miscalculated she seemed stunned all the way through the Potomac primaries and increasingly desperate ever since. Her campaign's failures have exposed us to the astonishing depths of her ambition, which, at its ugliest, seems to reveal a person who believes it is her right to be elected. Maybe all front runners and "inevitable" nominees who fail have the same belief, but we rarely see it publicly. The only other politician I can think of who compares is a doozy: Richard Nixon.
May 24, 2008 8:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
I thought her Iraq vote was politically motivated, too, and it horrified me, and I still would have voted for her because the alternative was McCain (who would keep the war going, I believe and get us into new ones).
It's inconceivable to me that a decision could be made to send young men and women off to die for the sake of a political calculation.
It was the refusal to restrict cluster bomb in civilian areas that did me in (even McCain voted to restrict their use).
ICAM about the tone deaf advisors. It's just amazing that so many smart and well educated people were so clueless. Talk about an echo chamber!
May 24, 2008 9:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes. And her argument would be "No one could have foreseen the President using this resolution to take us into war." Which, besides being bullshit, simply further demonstrates what a poor candidate and leader she is by chalking her tragic vote up to some combination of ignorance and blind trust.
But she and her advisors were never intending project the qualities a C.I.C should have, including actual strength of character, they were only concerned with projecting a public relations version of "strength."
May 25, 2008 10:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yes. And her argument would be "No one could have foreseen the President using this resolution to take us into war." Which, besides being bullshit, simply further demonstrates what a poor candidate and leader she is by chalking her tragic vote up to some combination of ignorance and blind trust.
But she and her advisors were never intending project the qualities a C.I.C should have, including actual strength of character, they were only concerned with projecting a public relations version of "strength."
May 25, 2008 10:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think you're right about Hillary's reason for the votes.
But I would also say that this shows that she's not nearly as smart as she thinks. If you vote for something only to pretend you're "strong", it doesn't make you strong. In fact, it makes you look weak and lacking courage to defend your convictions.
In my view, Bush is a terribly weak and insecure president. That's why he's trying to project strength at all times, because he's afraid if he didn't, the house of cards he built would collapse. It takes strength to admit weakness.
May 25, 2008 5:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
I would never defend her thinking or her definition of strength, I was just trying to explain what motivated her votes.
I think HRC and 99% of political strategists assume most voters have a much less nuanced idea of what strength means. And, frankly, in 2004 they were right. But, unfortunately for Clinton (and fortunately for us) Dubya's failures demonstrated the limits of that horeshit kind of "strength" to the public. It's tragic it took so many people dying to open people's eyes.
May 25, 2008 10:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
Absolutely brilliant. I can understand what you mean in your final statements; what you say about Hillary the woman vs. Hillary the candidate. Today I attended the Democratic State Convention here in Vermont, and the speaker representing Clinton was former Governor Madeleine Kunin. When she spoke, a sense of sadness came over me. It wasn't what she said so much as how she said it. It was somber, unenthusiastic, and most of all, desperate. Like a desperate plea to see the woman Hillary really is. The woman whom Kunin described as (something along the lines of), "One of the smartest human beings I know. A true policy wonk."
Does this excuse what Hillary has done on her campaign? No. I have found her campaign as repugnant as dear Denni here (if not more so, part of me thinks). But she does, I'm sure, have a wonderful side to her, that she has just pushed to the shadows in her ambition.
In the end, though, I find that I must judge a candidate based on their campaign, and Hillary Clinton, though she may be intelligent as many people have said, and may be a very wonderful person, has ran an absolutely horrible campaign. I've said many times that, perhaps had she run a good campaign, I might have been a supporter of hers (not to say that I would be supporting her over Obama; he was always my first choice).
My hope is that perhaps she can realize and acknowledge her faults and her mistakes, her failures and shortcomings, and perhaps truly exit this with her shoulders held high, a last hoorah surrounding her.
May 24, 2008 10:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
Of course it would, it would push anyone to the wall, but some of her actions are consistent with her behavior for some time, even as First Lady (the fights with Jim Cooper over Universal Care)
Jim Cooper is no saint and his healthcare plan had the backing of HMOs and other big money players. It was in direct confrontation with her plan. I'd take his version of the story with a grain of salt. Not what she said to him but he'd said and done before and during that meeting.
Protecting what they built up explains why she continued to put up with it. It doesn't explain why she STARTED putting up with it. She was highly educated, a bright woman, someone who could have made her way on her own. She had drive and ambition. It predated the White House years.
I'd say it predated her married years. She knew what she was getting into when she married Bill. Sexual fidelity by him and maybe her for all I know wasn't part of the deal. I know a few people who have had open marriages for decades and they are still very happily married. And yes she's highly educated, a bright woman, someone with the drive and ambition to make it on her own. I've seen a bio about her agonizing over accepting Bill's proposal and moving to Arkansas from DC and subordinating her own ambitions to his. Must have been hard for her to make that decision. I've made the argument myself about how she in fact has never had to make it outside his shadow. If we could go to an alternative universe it would be fascinating to see how they would have turned out
if she'd said no.
But she wasn't just 'Blue Collar Hillary'. She was 'Emotional and Dedicated Hillary' in New Hampshire.
She was asked a question about managing her hair on such a brutal schedule by a woman who eventually voted for Barack in a sitdown group surrounded by teevee cameras. She momentarily broke character and revealed the human woman she'd been trying to hide for months. The cablenets went batshit crazy running it 24/7 on the day before the NH primary portraying her as damn near having a nervous breakdown for a few hours. Then realizing they were overplaying (possibly with their phonelines being flooded) they went into bizarro mode treating her like an exotic species unknown to man just discovered in the rain forest.
As an Obama supporter I thought they were killing us, Edward's boneheaded comment didn't help, and when they went to bizzaro mode I thought these people are from another planet. Hillary would have done much better if she'd run as the female human she is instead of neutering herself to appear more like a commander in chief, or whatever motivation there was for her initial sexless persona.
She was 'Southern Drawl Hillary' in places like TX where she picked up a 'twang' in her voice.
Don't know if she did that in TX but she sure did in GA for the MLK speech. If it works it works but I doubt it does. She probably figures she earned her drawl spending all those years in AR.
She was 'Conciliatory Hillary' once or twice on the trail. Every state or region brought a new Hillary with her.
I think I get your point. She's been sucking up to voters in the corniest ways possible for so long it seemed not only natural to her but mandatory. Looks pretty stale now but a year and a half ago nobody expected a fresh political star to outshine her.
I think 'smart to the point of knowing policy inside out Hillary' was good enough. It was the constant shifting of personality that helped do her in, I think. Earlier in this campaign, I could have been happy with either candidate, but then Sen. Clinton began to show that she really wasn't ready for the office on day one (or that's the way I've perceived her actions).
I agree. But when your candidacy is faltering you spend a lot of time locked in a room with expensive campaign strategists and you throw everything at the wall til something sticks. In the end I think that's the reason for her shape shifting.
May 24, 2008 10:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
But shape-shifting is what candidates do all the time, isn't it? Obama has done his share and Clinton has certainly done her share. I'd bet that both of them have had to ask an aide exactly which state's fair they're attending so they can reach into their regional bags of riffs to get just the right strokes for the erogenous zones of the local folks they're 'speaking at'. Hell, the locals demand it. And we're going to blame the candidates?
Clinton drawls in the South? And Obama race pimps in the South? Politics as usual as I've seen it.
May 25, 2008 3:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
Very, very interesting post. Hope you'll keep posting here.
May 24, 2008 10:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you, Josh.
May 25, 2008 10:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
Mark, I see what you're saying, but my full point was that both Solis AND Penn failed Clinton miserably. She felt Solis was expendable, and refused to give up on Penn - though he was the architect of her failure.
The full postmortem on what went wrong hasn't been written yet but did it really come down to a choice between canning Solis or Penn? Seems to me the loss in IA was pinned firmly on Solis. If you believe the report that Solis's move to IA came complete with a closed door office where she whiled away her time watching soap operas instead of taking calls from frantic aides and freaked out donors then that move sounds justified.
Penn made a laughingstock out of himself but in 1996 he was instrumental getting Bill re-elected. My guess is that as a "strategist" who controlled the polling he had a stronger position to win more arguments in those closed door meetings. We've seen reports saying that's exactly what happened.
More will come out and sadly that probably means we'll see more of Penn on teevee.
May 25, 2008 1:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
Let the truth be told - neither Obama nor Clinton were battle tested during their senatorial campaigns. Hence, this is the first opportunity for both of them to demonstrate that they have what it takes. And, guess what? Obama did admirably well while Clinton folded like a pack of lawn chairs. Thats why I find it hilarious when she keeps repeating that she's been vetted and tested for 35 years. What a pack of bull!!!
May 25, 2008 2:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thought-provoking post.
Thank you!
May 25, 2008 2:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
The compassion in your post is commendable. Particularly b/c everytime I start to feel it for her she does something that makes me lose empathy or sympathy for her.
She put up w/ Bill and helped to do the dirty work for him (ala Bimbo eruption detail which entailed bimbo destruction) in order to preserve her chance to ascend politically. And probably resented him b/c although she also had the intellect, she lacked the intangible gift of 'people-connecting' that he possessed. She also stayed b/c she came from an abusive home where her Mom stayed w/ her Dad - b/c that's what you did then.
But everything starts w/ a first event or choice. And to the commenter up-thread who wrote of her agonizing choice to follow Bill to AK - it was more pragmatic than that. She failed the D.C. bar and instead of re-taking it there, she went to AK w/ him.
It seems that she's finally unleashing her rage for past wrongs in this campaign. The victim role is new in that during Bill's crises she deliberately avoided that stance.
She seems in tone to see Obama as yet another 'man short-circuiting her dreams'. And he's getting the full-on, long suppressed blowback.
My lack of compassion for her results from (as mentioned up-thread in a psychoanalysis), her behavior is near sociopathic. The 'by any means necessary', scorched earth, everyone is merely a tool for my goal or an obstacle, and not taking responsibility for wrongs she commits, and lying. Much like the war vote and refusal to apologize. She saw the vote as tactical rather than the potential lives lost.
She s**ts and walks away - after every mis-speak and hurtful campaign tactic - and seems to care not about the larger picture - rescuing the country from the brink of irreversible decline. Knowing she can't win but still lashing out at the one who will - thereby aiding our opponent in the long run.
Although I appreciated your tone - I can't yet bring myself to get past all of her vitriol. That may change if and when she does the right thing and tries to salvage some semblance of a graceful exit.
With the RFK comment, that seems less and less likely.
Thank you for your good work though.
May 25, 2008 4:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
I know what you mean. I defended the possibility that her comments weren't as ghoulish as they seemed and then she wrote that belligerent explanation in the Op-ed for the NY Daily News and I'm back to realizing that Hillary the woman will NEVER escape Hillary the Candidate. The candidate has thrown the woman from the train.
May 25, 2008 10:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
I enjoyed the post Denni.
May 25, 2008 6:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
One of the best posts and best comments sections I've read. Keep up the good work!
May 25, 2008 9:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
I don't see Hillary as "folding" during the campaign. In fact, she is hanging on longer than reason dictates. But she did "fold" in battle as evidenced by her votes on Iraq, Iran and cluster bombs. I am not sure if those votes were a result of having less than tough opponents in previous campaigns. Others with presidential ambition also "folded" on Iraq- Gephardt, Kerry and Edwards just to name a few. Admitting they were wrong on that vote seemed to occur after they gave up on becoming the next prez. I think there is some kind of "McGovern Effect" that makes them do that. This election will hopefully end the delusion that a presidential candidate must go along with all proposed wars to be acceptable as a candidate.
Hillary's weak opponents in previous elections may have contributed to her being a poor campaigner. She didn't have to resolve who she was and how she wanted to run a campaign. I don't think her campaign was totally hers- there is that strong headed guy named Bill who seemed to be steering things his way from time to time. The Clintons relied heavily on the loyalties of anyone they had helped during their previous administration. And spreading the inevitability meme with the press. Hillary's weakness was believing that would be enough.
May 25, 2008 11:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
Denni, this is a wonderful post! It is so well written and clearly stated and insightful. It was a joy to read!
May 25, 2008 11:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
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