It’s true that Mitt Romney, as a candidate, has many of the same vulnerabilities that Hillary Clinton failed to overcome in 2008. For one example, if Democrats were united in their opposition to a war that Clinton had authorized, Republicans are just as united in opposing a health care bill inspired by Mitt Romney. But, it’s really an insult to Hillary Clinton to compare her campaign to Mitt Romney’s. Clinton ran a strong campaign and would have probably won if she hadn’t had some really terrible strategists who were simply out-smarted by the Obama team.
What made Clinton a strong candidate was her tenacity and her ability to stay on message. She never could erase her Iraq problem, but she didn’t adopt twenty different explanations to try to excuse it. She was also the first obviously qualified serious female candidate for the presidency. That alone gave her candidacy a compelling aura and a ton of energetic support. Her hawkishness and her connections to the Democratic Leadership Council hurt her, but you can’t compare anything in her record to the flip-flops Romney has made on abortion, gay rights, and the environment. A small majority of Democrats wanted a more progressive candidate than Clinton, but few Democrats doubted that Clinton was with them on almost every issue. Clinton had a core, and people could sense it.
You just can’t say that about Romney. He will change his position on core moral issues whenever it suits him. That makes him impossible to trust. If he faced a challenger with one tenth of Obama’s talent, he’d be crushed. But he has no opposition. He appears to have competition, but it’s an illusion.
The only question is, will Romney win the nomination or will the Republicans nominate someone who never really had any intention of winning. Because, other than Rick Perry, none of Romney’s opponents are really serious about becoming president. And, so far, Perry’s potential as a candidate has proven illusory.
Well, that’s quite the contradiction.
Right. She could have run a far stronger and more appealing campaign but for the deadly heavy hand of fuddy duddy DLCer Mark Penn to whom Hillary was overly loyal. She needed Mandy Grunwald or Ann Lewis running the show with hubby Bill a little more present as unofficial overseer. And Pattt Solis Doyle should never have been given so much power to spend and squander.
Still would have been tough since the MSM were out to nail her as they and the younger hipper liberals in the blogosphere and on liberal radio also wanted to help nominate O.
well, it is a contradiction in a certain sense. But the truth is that her advisors doomed her campaign. If they had understood the delegate battle before Super Tuesday, she probably would have won because she performed at a very high level as a candidate and was winning more than she was losing at the end of the campaign.
The problem was that she was mathematically eliminated before she even knew what hit her.
they had no plan past FEBRUARY 5TH – by their own admission.
once Barack Obama played to a ‘ tie’ on February 5th, it was done.
whenever the Wisconsin Primary was – it was over-mathematically, but we had to suffer through until June because of some folks’ egos.
Think of a football team that plays a great game and is down 1 point to an excellent opponent with 1 minute left, and then the head coach screws up clock management and time runs out before they get within field goal range.
They were a great team that played a great game, but they lost because of bad coaching. Just like Hillary.
“If he faced a challenger with one tenth of Obama’s talent, he’d be crushed.”
Pretty much. It’s a natural tendency to overestimate the failings of a losing candidate’s campaign. So I think we can underestimate the extent to which Obama’s campaign did something unprecedented in the post-reform era: raised enough money and organized enough people in enough states so that an “insurgent” candidate could defeat the clear frontrunner.
(See Al Giordano’s October 2007 Boston Phoenix article for the most prescient account of the ’08 Democratic campaign: http://thephoenix.com/Boston/news/48290-damn-you-barack-obama/?page=1#TOPCONTENT )
Still, you’d think that with 9% unemployment and the Tea Party-led Republican resurgence of 2010, there’s be at least one conservative Republican who could adapt the Obama ’08 playbook and use it to defeat Romney. (It still could happen, but time’s running short.)
Obama, as a candidate in 2007-08 was the Secretariat of candidates. I’ve never seen anyone operate at such a high level for such a sustained period of time. And he still couldn’t put Clinton away. They were both extremely strong.
I disagree with you that he couldnt put Clinton away. Mathematically, it was over the night of the Wisconsin Primary. The only way Clinton was going to win it was to STEAL IT by destroying the Democratic Party in the process. I remember those times very well.
they never planned for ‘option B’. they were pretending that they did until June, but they had none.