Why Clinton Lost: The Obama Express

by brownsox

Sun Jun 08, 2008 at 07:14:24 PM PDT

All day today, the contributing editors will be offering different takes on why Hillary Clinton lost the Democratic primary despite having started as the prohibitive favorite. These essays approach the question from differing angles and are not for the most part mutually exclusive, but attempt to address specific pieces of the complexity of this massive, drawn-out primary process.

To this point, a good bit of the focus of our symposium has been on the reasons Hillary Clinton lost the 2008 Democratic nomination, as opposed to the reasons Barack Obama won it.

This makes sense, in a way. From an analytical standpoint, it's probably best to focus on the tactical mistakes of the past, rather than the tactical successes. My father was a leading academic in the field of technology and operations management; he first became well known for a 1984 paper which posited that it is best to study "things gone wrong" on the factory floor, on the assumption that things that go well are already understood.

So it is, in a sense, with the Obama and Clinton campaigns. We can point rather easily to Obama's most striking successes; no Democratic presidential candidate in the near future, for example, will underplay the importance of caucus states in their election strategy.

Nevertheless, I think that it's somewhat difficult to analyze Clinton's downfall, without studying vis-a-vis the successes of her former opponent. So I'm going to pose the question of just how difficult, or even impossible, Obama's own strengths as a candidate and strategist made Clinton's ultimate victory.

Put another way: amid all the talk of Clinton's inevitability, was Obama the unstoppable one all along?

Some of you probably think that's a silly question to even ask, and I understand why. Despite Obama's political blessings manifold, Hillary Clinton had the kind of institutional support and engendered the kind of unswerving loyalty in such a broad base of supporters that only the best of candidates could have overcome her advantages.

Nevertheless, it is clear that Barack Obama is a genuine phenomenon, the greatest phenomenon in the party since at least Bill Clinton (and I seriously doubt that that has escaped the attention of Clinton himself). He has been a major factor in spurring Democratic primary turnout to record numbers (although Hillary Clinton and frankly George W. Bush deserve some credit for that too). He has raised astonishing amounts of money from astonishing numbers of individual donors. We've all seen the crowds large enough to fill football stadiums, the lines at school auditoriums wrapping three times around the block, all holding their breath for a glimpse of Barack Obama. We've all borne witness to the passion he engenders even in people who have not been especially political for most of their lives.

I was in college in Illinois, watching Obama's Senate race, when he burst onto the national political scene in 2004 with his now-legendary speech at the 2004 Democratic convention. Being on an Illinois college campus for Obama's birth as a political rock star was a political experience unlike any I'd seen. I got back for fall quarter in 2004 and the Obama buttons, stickers and signs were everywhere, rivaling even the Kerry stickers for prominence. Because of his victory that fall, and Kerry's loss, Obama became the most popular politician on campus even before he took office in the U.S. Senate; he enjoyed such widespread adulation that it was almost off-putting (in the way that you're almost annoyed when an indie band you know and love suddenly hits it big, and then everybody and his brother has their T-shirt).

On paper, it's difficult to draw up a more appealing candidate than Barack Obama. He is young, attractive, extremely intelligent and well-spoken, and has a fascinating variety of life experiences. Furthermore, his youth and relatively recent appearance on the national scene (though coupled with a very prominent national profile) left Obama in a uniquely strong position to position himself as a "change candidate", in a year when the electorate was desperate for anything other than what we've seen since Newt Gingrich became Speaker of the House.

Kos wrote "If Obama runs, he wins" in 2006. When Obama started to seriously consider running for the presidency, I myself assumed that he would be the nominee if he wanted to be (I didn't start to support Hillary Clinton until late summer 2007). I figured that Obama was the most charismatic figure in the party, had the largest and most flexible established following, and represented an obvious and appealing change from the last six years.

So I think that while several mistakes were made by the Clinton campaign, it's entirely possible, even probable, that Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic nominee today, four elections out of five. It so happens that this time, she went up against a candidate kissed by the gods, and even so, we saw a historically close result in the Democratic primary.

As georgia10 wrote earlier, it's arguable that the greatest failure of the Clinton campaign was to fail to recognize (or alternatively, to dismiss) the genuine movement that was Obama 2008. I'm not so sure. To me, the story of the Clinton campaign since the Iowa loss has been an effort to contain that movement, whether by publicly dismissing it, or by galvanizing other parts of the electorate by pursuing a demographic-oriented strategy, or by publicly dismissing the impact of Obama's victories in smaller states by claiming victory in larger ones.

You know, all the things that drove you crazy about the Clinton campaign if you're an Obama supporter.

All of them, I suspect, were reactive to having confronted the scope and depth of the Obama movement and trying desperately to minimize its impact.

I think that since Iowa, the Clinton campaign has been quite aware that they were up against a behemoth they could not control. They have used almost every strategy in the book to try and contain that behemoth, and they came damned close to so doing, but ultimately, not even a candidate with the strength and support of Hillary Rodham Clinton could contain the Obama phenomenon.

How long has the campaign been out of Clinton's control? Since Super Tuesday? Since South Carolina? Since Iowa? I don't know, although I'd say that given her early decision to abandon caucus states to Obama (she figured she'd never need them, and that was probably the most critical mistake her campaign made), her last real chance to win the primary was on Super Tuesday. She had many chances to win this race; hell, if she'd voted against the IWR initially, there wouldn't have been much of a 2008 race in the first place. Still, I seriously doubt that Hillary Clinton would not be the nominee today, if anyone other than Barack Obama had been her primary opposition.

As many of you probably know, I was an avowed supported of Hillary Clinton (which is interesting, because if you look at my profile as a young, well-educated, politically active, ethnic minority liberal male, I should by all rights be Obama's core voter). I supported Clinton more out of what I envisioned her presidency to be, rather than what I saw out of her as a candidate.

That is how she sold herself, too, from the beginning of her campaign; she was a future president first, a candidate second.

Generally, it may be a bad strategy to do this. But against someone like Barack Obama, almost no one in the world will ever be the stronger "candidate". So in a sense, perhaps Hillary Clinton made the only smart play in crafting her campaign strategy-she sold what she had to sell, and it just didn't work out.

Was Obama unstoppable? Certainly not. But Clinton's loss is, I think, as attributable to a freakish set of circumstances (the presence of an exceptional candidate uniquely well positioned to present himself as an agent of change in an election in which the nation was begging for change), as to any mistakes made by her campaign team (and there were several, as the other front-pagers have written today). She could have won this race, of course she could have, and she nearly did. But I think it's an open question whether Hillary Clinton lost this election, ultimately, or whether Barack Obama won it.

by openthread

Sun Jun 08, 2008 at 06:25:02 PM PDT

Why Clinton Lost: She Fought the Last War, With the Wrong Generals, and Not Enough of an Army

by DHinMI

Sun Jun 08, 2008 at 05:18:11 PM PDT

All day today, the contributing editors will be offering different takes on why Hillary Clinton lost the Democratic primary despite having started as the prohibitive favorite. These essays approach the question from differing angles and are not for the most part mutually exclusive, but attempt to address specific pieces of the complexity of this massive, drawn-out primary process.

One year ago I was advising someone pondering an endorsement of Barack Obama. I will not claim incredible prescience. I did not predict that Obama would become the Democratic nominee for President. But I did think he had the best chance of winning. I thought there would be an anti-Clinton candidate. I thought it would not be John Edwards. I felt Edwards' populism would not play well in New Hampshire, where he finished fourth in 2004, and that his fundraising wouldn't give him the needed resources for a strong showing on Super Tuesday.

By elimination if nothing else, I thought Barack Obama would become the alternative for voters looking for someone new. Obama proved he could raise a lot of money. I thought it was a "change election," and voters wanted something vastly different than their choices of recent elections, and that Obama offered the biggest break with the past that would be tolerated by the primary electorate. I thought that Democrats would hope for something more than the half-loaf we came away with from the Clinton administration; instead of rear-guard actions delaying the advancing Republicans, Democrats want bold change. And I thought that any campaign guided by Mark Penn, as was the case with Clinton's, was probably doomed to failure.

In 1940, France had the world's largest army. France, having been invaded twice in the previous seventy years by Germany, had also built the Maginot Line, a series of bunkers and obstructions designed to prevent a direct assault from Germany or Italy. The Germans avoided the Maginot line by invading with overwhelming force through the Low Countries and in through unfortified Northern France. The construction of the Maginot Line and the deployment of much of France's army in the wrong place to repel the German invasion is one of the most oft-cited examples of generals preparing to fight the last war.

Hillary Clinton did not become the Democratic nominee for many reasons. Barack Obama was simply the better candidate. Voters wanted change; people generally vote either their fears or their aspirations, for what someone might become and bring about rather than what they were, are or have done in the past. Obama appealed to and personally exemplified the aspirations of voters, especially younger voters and African-Americans. The Clinton campaign also committed many errors. They ignoring caucuses, didn't plan for the races beyond Super Tuesday, and didn't offer a compelling message beyond "the Clinton years were good, and voting for Hillary Clinton will bring back what was good about the Clinton years." Clinton had also alienated many activist Democrats with her vote for the Iraq War resolution, and exacerbated this problem by refusing to repent for her vote.

But most debilitating and pervasive within the Clinton campaign was the malady that afflicts many military organizations. Like the French in 1940, the Clinton campaign was built to wage the previous battle, in this case a 1990's-style Democratic primary campaign. The Clinton campaign was not prepared for the changes in the Democratic electorate or electioneering. Furthermore, too many of the "generals" leading the Clinton campaign, beginning with Bill and Hillary Clinton, were unable or temperamentally disinclined to complete the missions required of them in the modern campaign.

Personnel

A few years ago, while I was working on a campaign, one of my twenty-something staffers asked me what it was like to do campaigns before cell phones. It would have been an excellent question for Bill and Hillary Clinton. The 1992 Clinton campaign was innovative and tactically more modern than the Bush campaign. But watch The War Room, the documentary on the 1992 Clinton campaign, and you barely see a cell phone. It was before the spread of the internet, email, web browsers, blogs, online commerce and political donations, and YouTube. Despite all these changes, Bill Clinton, the NYT reported this morning, doesn’t use email or a blackberry. It is hard to believe that people such as Bill Clinton who have had such a hard time adapting to technology and tactics that are ubiquitous on campaigns can provide the best strategic and tactical guidance. And from all accounts, the biggest player in the Clinton campaign after the candidate herself was the former President.

Clinton's presidency is responsible for some of the other problems of Hillary Clinton's campaign. Bill Clinton insisted that Hillary bring on Mark Penn as pollster and senior strategist. Bill Clinton gives Penn great credit for his 1996 reelection, and Penn used that validation to prevail in intra-campaign disputes. Furthermore, where the Obama campaign used five polling firms, and none of the pollsters had preeminence in devising strategy, Penn had exclusive control over the polling, and used his own numbers to back up his arguments. There was little empirical data coming in to the Clinton campaign that didn't first go through Mark Penn, and Penn had that authority because Bill Clinton was too tied to a campaign from twelve years ago.

Penn's role was part of a larger problem: too little new blood. Most of the Clinton team had been in place for ages. It's important to have people loyal to the candidate, who know the candidate and those around her. But it appears that there were some orthodoxies that went unchallenged, while there were simultaneously raging battles between key Clinton aides that had been going for decades. The Clinton campaign, by relying so heavily on long-time staffers to the exclusion of new people, inherited the infighting but wasn't infused with fresh blood, innovative ideas and new perspectives. Even the decision to keep the campaign in suburban DC ensured that people tied to DC, often with conflicts from clients outside the Clinton campaign, didn't put their full attention to getting Hillary Clinton the Democratic nomination.

Understanding the Lay of the Land
The Clinton campaign doesn't seem to have recognized the huge change in Democratic party activism in recent years. Especially as unleashed by the Dean campaign in 2003-2004, and carried on through the 2004 campaign on behalf of John Kerry, literally millions of new or reinvigorated activists lent time to campaigns. The Obama and Edwards campaigns recognized this, and volunteer-driven activities were at the center of much of their voter outreach. But as MissLaura explained earlier, the Clinton campaign didn't capitalize on the new activism.

The Clinton campaign benefited greatly from independent expenditure operations by the likes of AFSCME, the American Federation of Teachers and EMILY's List. But they never harnessed the energy of volunteers like Obama and Edwards did. Not only did the mass of volunteers save the Obama campaign resources, the energy of his campaign became part of his very message and image.

Message
The Clinton folks also appear to have grossly misunderstood the Democratic electorate. Most Democrats recognize the achievements of the Clinton presidency, and are grateful for his competence, tenacity and spirit. The Clinton years were absolutely a time of sound and often wise Democratic governance. But Democrats didn't want a return to an era that was also full of frustrations, irritation with the Clinton battles, and Republican initiatives dominating the day.

Democrats and most independents were also sick of the war, and no longer wanted bellicosity or fear of looking like Michael Dukakis. Hillary Clinton's efforts to look tough may have been necessary for the first serious woman candidate for President, but they were in conflict with a Democratic electorate that opposed the Iraq war from the state, and is now adamantly opposed to it's continuation. Clinton and her campaign appeared to be still fighting the accusations that Bill Clinton was a draft dodger, something that most of the electorate left behind several years ago.

What worked for Bill Clinton in 1996—but even then only with a 49% win—wasn't enough for Hillary Clinton against the more charismatic and visionary Obama. Competence harkening back to the golden era of 1997 wasn't enough.

Fundraising
Clinton had a formidable fundraising network, and it's odd to critique the efforts of a campaign that shattered all previous primary fundraising records. But Clinton was outspent by Obama by a large margin. She had a huge inherent advantage due to Bill's networks and her aura of inevitability. But the donors who were key to Bill in the 90's included many who raised then-permitted soft money donations that could go to the DNC. Since McCain-Feingold, federal candidates cannot be involved in raising soft money, and 527's played a very small role in the Democratic primary.

The Obama campaign adapted better to the new emphasis on creating networks of raisers who can collect many checks in the $500 to $2,300 range. Obama, obviously, also far outraised Clinton on the internet. His campaign very early put an emphasis on small-donor fundraising, and it was small donors—especially donors who gave less than $200—that powered his campaign in the later months of the campaign, as both campaigns had largely tapped out the available pool of Democratic primary donors capable and inclined to give the maximum $2,300 donation for the primary season.

Targeting
If Obama hadn't won Iowa, he probably wouldn't have become the nominee. Iowa was the catalyst to his win in South Carolina, as African-American voters saw that Obama could get the support of white voters and had a chance to win. Obama's Iowa win was both the partial product of Clinton's backward-looking campaign and the result of further problems based on looking back to the 90's.

The Clinton campaign suffered the larger problem of not preparing for caucuses, which along with the Potomac and Wisconsin primaries allowed Obama to open up the pledged delegate lead he never relinquished. But the problems in Iowa weren't just about caucuses, it was that Bill had never seriously competed there in 1992. That the 1992 campaign was 16 years ago should have made Clinton people realize they were essentially starting from scratch in many places. But not having a built-in cadre of supporters—even though many of them would have been past their political prime, as was the case in many states, especially among their African-American supporters—evidently kept the Clinton campaign from diving in to Iowa until too late.

Once Obama won Iowa, one of the key assumptions of her campaign was shattered. Typically, if one primary candidate gets a large share of the black vote in the primaries, that candidate has won the nomination. It happened with Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Bill Clinton and Al Gore. The two times the Black vote was scattered were the years that sons of Massachusetts—Michael Dukakis and John Kerry—garnered the nomination. Clinton expected to keep the black vote that had been so loyal to her husband. Instead, it shifted to Obama in a huge way, first in the 80% range in South Carolina, and then typically over 90% in the later primaries.

Clintons' campaign also appears to have expected to compete for a largely static electorate. Her appeal was almost exclusively to the types of voters who had previously dominated Democratic primaries; reliable Democratic voters, mostly over the age of 35. Obama, however, was able to grow the electorate, by getting a huge increase in younger voters, and in the states without closed primaries, by winning a large share of independent voters. With many more independents voting in the Democratic primaries than in the Republican primaries, even before John McCain had secured the nomination, that provided a solid bloc of voters to Obama that Clinton never competed for, and may in many cases not even have expected to be voting.

All these reasons for Clinton's loss are secondary to the primary reason Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination: Barack Obama was the superior candidate. There were many other reasons, as my fellow contributing editors have spelled out in other essays today. One of the overriding problems, however, was that in many areas, the Clinton campaign didn't plan and wage a campaign for 2008, but one that was state of the art for 1998.

Why Clinton Lost (And Why Obama Just May Win Big In November)

by georgia10

Sun Jun 08, 2008 at 03:50:20 PM PDT

In "The Things They Carried," a short story about a platoon of soldiers during the Vietnam War, author Tim O'Brien describes in detail what the soldiers carry as they plod through the war. Aside from the weight of their equipment (mosquito repellent, weapons, first aid kits, etc.), the men carry with them the love for lovers left behind, daydreams of a world a thousands miles away, and hearts full of regret and doubt.

During this nomination battle, much has been said about Hillary Clinton's "baggage," about the things she carried over to the primary campaign from the political bloodfests of the 1990s. Reference was routinely made to her failed attempts at healthcare reform and the scandals of her husband's administration, and certainly these things weighed heavily on some voters' minds.

But as we lay the cold corpse of Clinton's candidacy on the examination table, as pundit and citizen alike dissects her maneuverings over the last 16 months and offer up a post-mortem, a reflection on the things Clinton carried into this campaign sheds light into why she lost a race she was supposed to win.

During the 1990s, the Clintons were victims of one of the most vicious and hellish campaigns of personal destruction in modern history. The scandal-thirsty media salivated at pursuing every salacious detail, while GOP operatives poured untold amounts of money and effort into generating a personal failing into a political firestorm. In 1998, Hillary appeared on the Today Show told Matt Lauer that the campaign to destroy her husband was part of a "vast right wing conspiracy." She was mocked mercilessly at the time for using the phrase. Time has proven her right.

Ten years later, Hillary once again found herself fighting a battle -- this time, for the Democratic nomination. Her opponent, Barack Obama, was described in the media as a "rockstar" and a "phenomenon." The airwaves buzzed about an Obama "movement." The same media that mocked and destroyed the Clintons in the 1990s was now eager to do again....right?

Time and time again on the trail, both Bill and Hillary Clinton lashed out at the press for being "biased" against Hillary. Hillary sourly and sarcastically asked at one debate whether the moderator would offer Obama a pillow. Bill frequently and angrily took on the press at town hall meetings. For the Clintons, Obama's success was part of a vast media conspiracy.

Nothing could be further from the truth. As a recent study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism found, the perception that the press was "soft" on Obama is utterly false:

From January 1, just before the Iowa caucuses, through March 9, following the Texas and Ohio contests, the height of the primary season, the dominant personal narratives in the media about Obama and Clinton were almost identical in tone, and were both twice as positive as negative, according to the study, which examined the coverage of the candidates’ character, history, leadership and appeal—apart from the electoral results and the tactics of their campaigns.

The trajectory of the coverage, however, began to turn against Obama, and did so well before questions surfaced about his pastor Jeremiah Wright. Shortly after Clinton criticized the media for being soft on Obama during a debate, the narrative about him began to turn more skeptical—and indeed became more negative than the coverage of Clinton herself. What’s more, an additional analysis of more general campaign topics suggests the Obama narrative became even more negative later in March, April and May.

For the Clintons though, who carried with them the battle scars of the 1990s, the media's coverage of the primaries was met with scorn and distrust. As such, they failed to appreciate that Obama actually did have a movement behind him.

That Hillary herself did not take the Obama phenomenon seriously is evident by the way she ran the last few months of her campaign. So many of her actions were geared not at influencing Obama voters or undecideds to vote for her, but at influencing the media to wake-up from what her campaign believed was a hope-induced stupor. Bill Clinton angrily referred to "fairytales" while Hillary argued that Obama needed more "vetting" (read: the same media scrutiny she survived in the 1990s). And all the while, while the Clintons were so focused on getting members of the press to change their reporting, they failed to recognize the change that was actually taking place.

But change was taking place. From coast to coast, red states to blue, ordinary Americans were called upon to do an extraordinary thing -- hope again. Obama's near-perfect campaign execution coupled with the very real desire to seek out fundamental change did indeed create a movement. This was not, as Hillary made it out to be, some sort of naive infatuation:

Framing Obama as both a deceiver and a dream weaver, Clinton said "none of the problems we face will be easily solved."

Then oozing derision, Clinton cracked, "Now, I could stand up here and say, 'Let's just get everybody together. Let's get unified. The sky will open. The light will come down. Celestial choirs will be singing, and everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect.'"

The Clinton campaign refused to believe in the authenticity of the "change" movement. For them, it was another manufactured story, hyped up by the "anti-Clinton" media. And while they failed to recognize that the wide-spread support for the skinny kid with a funny a name was indeed organic, and while they downplayed the idealism of Obama supporters, hope proved to be very contagious. And soon, it was apparent that the phenomenon reported by the press was indeed very, very real.

It was, in a word, a movement. And when that movement took to the polls, it beat in her in state after state, in caucuses and primaries alike, in small states and big states, and yes, in states that "matter." It was a conspiracy after all -- a conspiracy by millions of Americans to hope for and vote for something daring, and different, and desperately needed: a new politics for a new era in America history.

The millions of voters who carried Obama through to victory in the primary were underestimated by the Clinton campaign, and they'll likely be underestimated again in the general. The GOP is already deploying full force every lie and smear it can to attack Obama. The bruising fights of the primary will be child's play compared to the all-out ideological war we will face in the fall. Republicans believe that they can win the presidency by exposing the "real" Obama -- whatever lie that turns out to be. But this strategy is premised in the erroneous belief (that was shared in part by Clinton) that the man makes the movement. For those of us in the trenches, for the millions of us who believe "hope" is isn't a slogan but a way forward, this election is about so much more than one man.

It's about 160,000 men and women in Iraq, or about the 47 million Americans without healthcare. It's about one child going to bed hungry or one mother having to work two jobs to make ends meet. It is, in sum, about the things we carry, on our shoulders, in our hearts and in our conscience. And it is that movement which may well carry Barack Obama into the White House.

Why Clinton Lost: Too Soon a Bulldog

by Devilstower

Sun Jun 08, 2008 at 01:49:43 PM PDT

All day today, the contributing editors will be offering different takes on why Hillary Clinton lost the Democratic primary despite having started as the prohibitive favorite. These essays approach the question from differing angles and are not for the most part mutually exclusive, but attempt to address specific pieces of the complexity of this massive, drawn-out primary process.

I like Hillary. Really.

I think my admiration for her started with the clear intelligence she demonstrated right back to her first appearance on the public stage. It was nurtured by a nostalgic little biography that had lots of shots of this intense young woman in her college years and the service work she did then and after. And my fondness was fanned by the hatred she inspired from the spewing heads of the right. Anyone who can make Rush Limbaugh blow that many fuses is someone I just have to like.

Honestly, I could never discover the source of that right wing hatred. From the moment she first entered the spotlight, it was as if Hillary Clinton had personally kicked every Republican dog and snickered at the contents of every pundit's shorts. The silliness she had to endure was painful to watch. From the idiotic press over cookie recipes to the never ending scrutiny (and deep meaning assigned to) her various hair styles, it was sexism on parade, and she bore up under it well. Frankly, she was (and is) a brilliant, funny, competent, and attractive woman, and that combination scares the right to death.

Her politics never really thrilled me, but then I was never thrilled by Bill's, either. Both of them had a tendency to compromise when I thought they should stand tough, and stonewall when they should have been open. The whole third way / DLC tactic looked to me like nothing more than an excuse to call weakness a strength, and I could never see any relationship between what passed for moderation and the success that Bill Clinton had in 1992. Hillary's health care plan may look pretty good, especially in retrospect, but the process that produced it was both Byzantine and self-defeating. Bill and Hillary were as much responsible for its failure as Harry and Louise. But then my perfect politician probably doesn't exist, and when I compare the last seven years to the eight years under Clinton, it's like comparing midnight and noon.

I was ready to cheer on Hillary's 2008 campaign and excited to see a woman not just as a candidate, but as the early favorite. There was, of course, just one little thing: that vote. You know the one I mean. By 2008, I wasn't going to be satisfied with an "if I knew then, what I know now." I wanted a full out realization that pre-emptive war is wrong prima facie. Voting yes on going to war in Iraq wasn't a matter of being misinformed, it was a matter of making an immoral decision. Hillary's failure to recognize that rankled then, rankles now, and will continue to be a burr under my blanket until I die or she repents.

Even so, the excitement of having a woman and an African-American among the top three candidates was irresistible. When Obama took Iowa and Clinton took New Hampshire, I settled in for the best political show of my life.

But for me, the show ended in South Carolina. It was there that the Clinton campaign took two unfortunate and related turns. One was a shift away from ideological differences with the Obama campaign, and a turn toward basing her case along demographic lines. The second was the full emergence of Bill Clinton, bulldog.

In many presidential elections, the vice-presidential candidate often gets that bulldog job. It's the veep who throws out the tough statements, allowing the presidential candidate to glide along above the controversy. The veep who says the things that may be below the belt, but which leave doubt in the voter's minds. This season, Bill Clinton took on that role.

But there's no room for a bulldog in primary season. His actions served first to cause fissures in the party, and then the campaign became about those fissures. Tearing them open generated votes by causing the same kind of fear that's soured that last seven years.

There may be a need for a bulldog in the fall, but not in the spring. A campaign run on splintering along demographic lines caused a loss of faith among those who put the good over the party over any candidate, and for a primary campaign, that's a fatal problem.

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