If there was any doubt that the Clinton campaign is over, then The New Republic is working hard to spike those doubts. Michelle Cottle has published an article today filled with anonymous insider quotes that list as many of the Clinton campaign errors as Cottle could find.
While it is filled with a lot of score-settling statements by some people blaming others, a great deal of it sounds accurate. Everyone who writes a book about their experience in the Clinton campaign is going to have to read this article do see who to get back at. That said, there are several themes that appear quite reasonable.
First - someone reports that Hillary did not seem to really want to go all out to win the election at first, and only after she began to lose did she throw herself into the campaign fully. [Maybe. And maybe she wasn't sure what direction the campaign was going to take and was just being tentative.]
Second - it is reported that there was no real central top management and no real strategy. Hillary had no one at the top who could knock heads together and get everyone working for Hillary instead of their own pet projects. (*cough* - Mark Penn - *couch*) [This one would explain a great deal about the inflexibility of the campaign when it hit rough spots and the apparent awkwardness that at times seemed apparent.] Which leads to:
Third - the campaign is described as being staffed by Clinton loyalists rather then people experienced in running a nation-wide primary. Then, since it was run out of Washington, D.C. they were not aware of a lot of things that were going on in the various states and were not especially open to criticism from people out there. With the absence of primary campaign experienced leaders at the top controlling the Intelligence gathering, message and strategy, the entire campaign just never came together. [This one also seems reasonable. My impression is that the campaign and its top managers had a "tin ear" which this confirms.]
As I say, a lot of it seems pretty accurate. What's missing is is the dynamic and the personal stories that would make it a decent case study for education. Without the story over time and the personalities involved, it is difficult to discern which of the various quotes are score-settling and which are really core to the problems the Clinton campaign has had. I'd guess a lot of the quotes are accurate, but some are attempts at blame-shifting [Not MY fault.] while others really do describe core problem in the organization.
As for core problems - all organizations have them. Good organizations identify the critical problems that are impeding them and resolve them. Less good organizations do not. But there is one other element that is not addressed in this compendium of complaints - the Obama campaign has been run extremely well and Obama is both a highly gifted politician and is clearly a better public speaker than Hillary is. (Although Hillary is a better debater.) Had the Clinton campaign not come up against a gifted politician like Obama, the problems aired in this article would not be being presented at this time, possibly never.
Still, it's early yet. Clinton's campaign is not even dead and buried, as West Virginia proved. For the moment, this is an interesting set of (tentative) insights. But the article also says as much about the media as about the Clinton campaign. It says the media has gotten tired of the Democratic primary and is ready to declare it O*V*E*R!
Compare this article to the sweetness and light with which Richard Wolffe and Evan Thomas of Newsweek describe Obama's campaign management style, and you can see each of the media organizations announcing the end of the nomination process and their choice of the winner.
Not that the media are wrong, but can we trust them? We certainly can't trust their objectivity. It's clear that both Time and The New Republic expect to have to deal with Obama extensively in the future and don't want to offend him, while they see no real danger in piling on Hillary Clinton. The difference in tone of the two articles shows that. Time and The New Republic have publicly chosen sides.
Go read The New Republic article. It'll give you some perspective with which to deal with the wave of similar articles we will see appearing in the near future.
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