Sunday, February 24, 2008

Somber Clinton?

In today's New York Times, the article "Somber Clinton Soldiers On as the Horizon Darkens" is either an attempt to (really) lower expectations a week before a primary or the sign of troubled times for the Clinton campaign.

It is an odd article, especially in terms of the language and anecdotes by the Clinton campaign.

Frank Rich is also brutal against the Clinton campaign this morning, though the details are very important. From Rich
The gap in hard work between the two campaigns was clear well before Feb. 5. Mrs. Clinton threw as much as $25 million at the Iowa caucuses without ever matching Mr. Obama’s organizational strength. In South Carolina, where last fall she was up 20 percentage points in the polls, she relied on top-down endorsements and the patina of inevitability, while the Obama campaign built a landslide-winning organization from scratch at the grass roots. In Kansas, three paid Obama organizers had the field to themselves for three months; ultimately Obama staff members outnumbered Clinton staff members there 18 to 3.

In the last battleground, Wisconsin, the Clinton campaign was six days behind Mr. Obama in putting up ads and had only four campaign offices to his 11. Even as Mrs. Clinton clings to her latest firewall — the March 4 contests — she is still being outhustled. Last week she told reporters that she “had no idea” that the Texas primary system was “so bizarre” (it’s a primary-caucus hybrid), adding that she had “people trying to understand it as we speak.” Perhaps her people can borrow the road map from Obama’s people. In Vermont, another March 4 contest, The Burlington Free Press reported that there were four Obama offices and no Clinton offices as of five days ago. For what will no doubt be the next firewall after March 4, Pennsylvania on April 22, the Clinton campaign is sufficiently disorganized that it couldn’t file a complete slate of delegates by even an extended ballot deadline.


I would love to know why the campaign took this direction. It cannot just be hubris. They campaign could not have believed in the "inevitable argument" it tried to run on.

No comments: