Telegraph UK: Mrs. Bill's Obit
Just not ready for prime time... Maybe a little more seasoning?
Telegraph UK: Clinton to be Offered Dignified Exit
after 17 months of campaigning, and $150 million (£76 million) spent, the question that haunts the Clinton camp is: how did someone who a year ago had unrivalled name recognition, a legendary campaign organisation and more money than her opponent contrive to throw it all away?
The answers come down to wrong message, wrong tactics, complacency, character - and, ultimately, the opponent. Even Clinton aides agree that she wrongly sold herself as a candidate of experience, when voters yearned for Barack Obama's message of change. Her campaign machine then failed to win January's crucial opening Iowa caucuses, handing lethal momentum to Mr Obama.
Her staff mistakenly believed they could knock her rival out by "Super Tuesday" on February 5, when 22 states voted. When that did not happen, she had neither the resources nor the organisation to compete in the succession of caucuses that followed, allowing Mr Obama to build the delegate lead he maintains to this day.
Mark Mellman, a Democratic pollster not affiliated to either camp, told The Sunday Telegraph: "We have known for two years that Democrats and voters in general are much more interested in change. Yet for reasons that are inexplicable, the Clinton campaign chose to be on the short end of that message stick."
Backed into a corner, Mrs Clinton responded with increasingly outlandish claims about her qualifications, including a ludicrous statement that she had braved sniper fire on a trip to Bosnia.
That, plus her subsequent insistence that she had merely "mis-spoken" rather than admitting she had got her facts wrong, raised new issues about her character.
In any case, Mr Mellman believes the decisive factor in her defeat was the one she couldn't control. "The most important thing was that she was up against Barack Obama. He is enormously talented."
