Off The Grid # 2: An Anti-Obama Strategy

per trippi:

one million woman on line as supporters and small dollar funders....

Posted by heather | February 13, 2008 3:18 PM

Could Clinton have gotten Chelsea to do campaign stops in Iowa and emphasize youth issues (student loans, national service), and won Iowa, then rolled? Seems plausible.

Plan B is to bank the wins in CA and AZ on early votes, and then stop campaigning there in person. Spend more time in competitive territory: CO, CT, AL, maybe even GA. If she had picked up another 50 delegates there, she could have made the case the she would cruise to the nomination.

In addition, if it's still a contested nomination after South Carolina, Clinton should have started running negative ads about Obama's health care plan not covering everybody. Obama could kick up dust, but it's pretty clear it doesn't cover everyone.

If she's ahead after Super Tuesday, but doesn't have it sewn up, spend in Virginia, Maine, and Nebraska. Then compete Wisconsin, rather than skipping it so much.

Posted by Nicholas Beaudrot | February 13, 2008 3:20 PM

Fire at least half of the other people in that room, including the candidate. Then you might have a shot.

Posted by Jeff Larson | February 13, 2008 3:23 PM

Since you've invented a time machine here I suggest setting the dial for 2000 and have Hillary run for the Senate in Illinois, her home state, instead of New York. Senator Clinton (D-Il) means no Senator Obama (D-Il).

Posted by pt | February 13, 2008 3:29 PM

Ask Penn and Solis-Doyle to go spend more time with their families.

Posted by Geek, Esq. | February 13, 2008 3:29 PM

Bribe reporters into doing their jobs and asking Obama questions rather than simply gushing over his speeches. For instance, this question.

(I won't be voting in whatever award's mentioned above due to Ambinder missing a big story and showing no inclination to correcting his mistake. See my comment here: marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/01/on_the_road_with_john_mccain_1.php )

Posted by TLB | February 13, 2008 3:30 PM

I would suggest she do what Obama and Dean did regarding fund raising through the internet with small donations and large numbers of people. That in itself would have ensured the money was available and the there would be no questions regarding monies from lobbyists.

Posted by Mike Fisher | February 13, 2008 3:32 PM

Uh, change her name, assume a new identity, divorce her husband, and pretend she didn't vote for the war TWICE without reading the intelligence briefing. And oh yes, say that she voted for the cluster bomb ban before she voted against it. And invent a senate record that actually supports a claim of "experience" rather than negating it.

Posted by Rowena | February 13, 2008 3:40 PM

Pt had the best idea, run as Illinois senator.

My top ten ideas:

1. Usurp the mantel of change. After all, the only change needed is no more Bush. THAT IS the change. Everything else is just fluff.

2. Use the internet to generate grass roots support and raise money. Have Chelsea set up a website targeted at youth and college age voters.

3. Campaign in all states. Have organizations in all states.

4. Speak at Dodd's first filibuster over FISA in support of the filibuster.

5. Dont vote for Kyl-Lieberman. Its a nothing bill with no teeth or impact, but it looks bad. As soon as I heard she voted for it, I knew it was huge mistake.

6. Dont hire Patti Solis Doyle. Hire James Carville. Dont hire Mark Penn. Hire Paul Begala. Get Mandy Grunwald on TV as your principle spokesperson.

7. Stay on top of things and know what your campaign manager has spent.

8. Hire speech writers who are fluent in great rhetoric and come up with some snappy stump speeches that arent laundry lists of issues and solutions. Play to a grand theme. Speak of your vision for a different future and a different country. Speak about putting aside the divisiveness of the past.

9. Recognize that if Obama gets in blacks are lost to you. Its inevitable. Dont focus on it and dont worry about it and dont talk about it.

10. Dont go negative. Stay positive and keep up the mantel of change theme.

Posted by Jammer | February 13, 2008 3:48 PM

Spin the dial on the time machine a little further back. She should have run for president in 2004, and she'd be up for reelection now. Kerry was a corpse of a candidate, and probably any other credible democrat could've beaten Bush.

Posted by Randy | February 13, 2008 3:50 PM

Rowena, pretty arrogant to say divorce your husband. Its her marriage and her family. I admire someone who keeps their marriage together in the face of difficulty. Life isnt always about revenge, although many many women seem to disagree.

Posted by Jammer | February 13, 2008 3:53 PM

Simply for the candidate to be the better statesman, trying to do the right as they see the right, tempered somewhat by the demands of politics, and then let the people decide for themselves. If they don't choose you, then maybe Mencken had a point about how the people should get their democracy. Sic Transit Gloria Mundia.

You have to be willing to lose. If you are right, time will tell out and you'll get yours back on the rebound.

Obviously, my paid consulting career has been on the rocks...

Posted by S. Wallace | February 13, 2008 3:57 PM

Whatever number of field offices Obama has open in Iowa, out do him by 20%. She got her clock cleaned on organization.

Find a way to connect online fundraising to the gender gap. Woman often handle the money in the home. Make the most of that.

Tell Tom Vilsack to go away. Obama CRUSHED her in Henry County and Johnson County, his home county and Iowa City, because they can't stand him.

Move half of South Carolina and Nevada staff to Iowa on October 1.

Compare her Iowa JJ speech to his. Enough said.

Fire whoever was planting questions. Often overlooked, but if you look at the polling, when that story broke, that is when Obama started to really turn on the after burners in Iowa and nationally. it became a race the weekend of JJ with his speech and plantgate.

Open an office in every Super Tuesday state. Have HRC or Bill visit every Super Tuesday state at least twice. (Ok, maybe not Alaska, but Obama had THREE staff people up there- two who were from Iowa).

Make a big "to do" with several offices in Illinois. Go after the militant pro-choice vote in suburban Chicago.

Am I the only one who remembered how she was doing better when Bill was not around. When he started "rolling the dice" is when people had to ask, "Do we really want him around?" Put Bill in fundraising pictures only. Keep him off the trail.

Posted by david alexrod | February 13, 2008 4:20 PM

Steal Obama's message early, it will become yours.

Posted by Jay | February 13, 2008 4:22 PM

The biggest mistake HRC made in this campaign is believing their own inevitability spin. They had no plan B if the campaign lasted to February 6. And, in fact, they had no plan for a campaign that lasted after South Carolina.

I also think the campaign would have been better off in the summer and fall debates focusing their attack on John Edwards in an attempt to make him the chief rival instead of Obama. Clinton didn't show a willingness to take on anyone one on one in the early debates. If the order in the Iowa caucuses was EOC instead of OEC, this whole thing is entirely different. There is a chance you can paint Edwards as a regional candidate without playing the race card and keep the support of blacks, which was crucial.

All that being said, I don't think this was ever in the cards for her. Clinton inherited an an unprecendented position of being basically an incumbent with a lousy economy and an unpopular war. Even though those are Bush's fault, it is not the time to be the familiar face. People wanted change more dramatic than Clinton offered. And Obama is a real talent - TNR awarded him the Roger Federer award for his speech last week for being so much better than everyone else it looks like he's playing a different game.

Posted by Curtis | February 13, 2008 4:30 PM

Wednesday PM question: Imagine its October of 2007 you're sitting in a soundproof conference room with Patti Solis Doyle, Mandy Grunwald, Mark Penn and Howard Wolfson. They've told you that they think Barack Obama will be a big threat to Hillary Clinton in the fall. They've asked you to develop a strategy to defeat him. What's that strategy?

-----------
You all go out to lunch because you think this is hysterical and that Hillary is inevitable--

Isn't that what the problem is/was?

Posted by alison weil | February 13, 2008 4:42 PM

Concede the race now. Support Obama's campaign. Save your supporters millions of dollars. Have Mark Penn rely on his union-busting clients instead.

Posted by DSG | February 13, 2008 4:48 PM

LET OBAMA BECOME THE FRONT RUNNER AND FAVORITE.

Wait for BUYER'S REMORSE, CANDIDATE FATIGUE, and the MEDIA SPOTLIGHT to take him down but NOT TOO LONG BEFORE THE FINAL VOTES ARE CAST.

:)......Hey, that is exactly what's happening.

I'll have to come up with something a little more original. Hang on.

Posted by robert ethan | February 13, 2008 4:49 PM

Concede the race now. Support Obama's campaign. Save your supporters millions of dollars. Have Mark Penn rely on his union-busting clients instead.

Posted by DSG | February 13, 2008 4:58 PM

Only one thing was needed to hand her the election: get a second "mainstream" African American candidate to run. Obama wins very few states down south, Missouri, Delaware, etc. if he doesn't get 80-90% of the black vote. He doesn't win South Carolina or the South. Getting a John Lewis or Jesse Jackson or Al Shapton to run would prevent Obama from ever catching the lightning in a bottle he has.

Posted by JML | February 13, 2008 5:00 PM

1) Fire Mark Penn
2) Apologize for the AUMF vote
3) Attack Obama for not being audacious enough: Clinton could have locked up the affluent liberal vote early by going after Obama on health care, on the environment, and on tax policy from the left. Without the affluent liberals, Obama couldn't have stayed in the race long enough to broaden his coalition
4) Develop a campaign theme that is not based on inevitability and experience. Co-opt John Edwards early; talk about your vision for a better America. Eliminating even a small amount of the rhetorical gap with Obama would have gone a long way. Don't play into his message by attacking him for offering false hopes. Rather, attack him for offering *small* hopes.
5) Don't let Bill Clinton talk to the press; use him to GOTV and fundraise, not as your attack dog.
6) Go after the press hard, early, for there sexist coverage. Tap into the feminist blogosphere on this in particular.
7) Broaden your fundraising base early.

Posted by Tim | February 13, 2008 5:03 PM

setting the dial for 2000 and have Hillary run for the Senate in Illinois, her home state

Um, to wait 2 years to run against an incumbent Dem (Durbin)? Or are you suggesting a 4 year campaign for the seat Obama won?

Or was she going to have the Vince Foster assassins (kidding!) take out PeteFitz and get appointed as his replacement by a republican governor (Geo. Ryan)?

I don't doubt that had there been an opportunity to run in Illinois, she may have taken it, but it wasn't possible.

Posted by zaleriana | February 13, 2008 5:04 PM

From TheraP at TPM
In my view Hillary Clinton's mastery of knowledge, her legislative expertise and ability to speak the language of policy would equip her
to be a superlative "Prime Minister." What if we elevate her to Senate Majority Leader and have her lead the fight for all the good legislation that will be needed for change to come? Why not recognize what half the Dems have already agreed by casting a vote for her? Yes,
I understand they voted for her as a presidential candidate. But her debating skills have surely equipped her best for the Senate. Her rhetoric is surely the type that is works well in the Senate. And her long experience in government will surely help her pass the legislation we
all want so much.

While Hillary Clinton would make the better "Prime Minister," I believe Barak Obama would make the better President. Less polarizing than Hillary and by far the more gifted and inspiring speaker, Obama would, in my view, be better able to unify the country and mobilize popular support for the legislation tha Hillary could ably shepherd through the Congress. I'm viewing the Presidency as a means of gaining
power/influence and making use of that. The president has the bully pulpit. But needs a legislative ally. The bully pulpit works to reach
and inspire the citizens. Obama can do that. But as Hillary herself has made clear, inspiration is one thing and translation into
legislation is another. Let him inspire. Let her legislate. To me it would make a perfect combination.

Posted by Mageduley | February 13, 2008 5:14 PM

"If we don't give the voters a substantive reason to vote for our campaign, our girl's a loser. If our policy positions are essentially identical with Obama's, there's nothing left to choose between us except style, electability, and experience. But we can't beat Obama on style, our high negatives make the electability argument a hard sell, and experience has been a loser historically. That leaves us with substance. We have to retool our proposals and our message to give voters a substantive reason to vote for us, and that means running to Obama's LEFT on all the issues. I mean a lot to the left, not a little. A lot. I mean single-payer. I mean a big carbon tax. I mean pro-gay marriage. I mean out of Iraq in a year. LEFT.

"Quit looking at me like that, Mandy. We're
already widely viewed as the most liberal candidate in the race, so we can't very well be hurt by actually being the most liberal candidate in the race. And being to Obama's left allows us to open up an avenue of attack on Obama that we couldn't use before: He's a hypocrite. He talks the talk but he doesn't walk the walk. When he says he wants to bring America together, what he means is he wants to bring America together by abandoning progressivism. He's not a uniter, he's a capitulator. He's going to unite us, all right, unite us right out of our one shot at a progressive revolution.

And the great news is, it'll undercut him with exactly the people he's most popular with, young, well-educated, high-information voters.

"I know it isn't working for Edwards, Patti, but it'll work for us. Edwards was never gonna be a liberal firebrand. His whole appeal is that he's supposed to be electable because he SEEMS conservative. His policy is in conflict with his image. And so is ours. So let's change policy and at least reap the benefit of it.

"I know this'll be a hard sell with the Senator. Her instincts aren't to tack left in times of difficulty. But I just don't see another option. It's this, or screaming "experience" at the top of our lungs for the next four months, and I just don't think that's gonna get the job done.

"So, am I hired?"

Nate

Posted by Nate W. | February 13, 2008 5:21 PM

swiftboat = Rezko

Posted by DRinOH | February 13, 2008 5:26 PM

Just say no to licenses.

Posted by Jeff Morgan | February 13, 2008 5:44 PM

Marc,

She's toast. The one campaign mantra EXPERIENCE is done for. Her recent campaign shake ups have revealed a managerial style to her campaign that is unsettling and eerily like Bush in many respects. Her best option? Concede while she can still salvage.

Read the column in this very magazine by your collegue Josh Green:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200802u/patti-solis-doyle

Posted by mageduley | February 13, 2008 5:45 PM

"We need to develop a personality, not just a body of issues (a.k.a. ditch Penn). Senator Clinton has to be more than just a product that solves a problem. People like sprite because it quenches their thirst, but they won't become zealots for a product, they won't beg their parents to try a product, they will use it and discard it. This means Senator Clinton needs pets and hobbies. She needs to enjoy some things like sipping hot cocoa by the fire and not enjoy other things like waiting in traffic. The relationship with Bill must be clarified and established and demonstrated, even if just as a loyal friendship. Bill must reinforce the personality."

Posted by taricha | February 13, 2008 5:55 PM

Two words: WIN IOWA.

You can prove "inevitability" with the first win. When she came in third there, and Obama won, it launched him and crashed her. She wasn't out of it yet, of course, but frankly she hasn't had a good opportunity since to actually win this thing (whereas he has had two so far that could have clinched it: NH and CA, and will soon have three more match points: OH, TX, PA). It's been advantage-Obama ever since.

How could she have won Iowa? Well, I think she needed to do a better job fighting Obama for young women, tried harder to organize for them in the college towns and in younger communities. If Obama and Edwards were left splitting the male vote, she'd have been solid. But Obama beat her in Iowa amongst women by getting all the women under 40, and she ended up splitting votes with Edwards - older women for her, older men for him.

Posted by Jesse | February 13, 2008 6:01 PM

Could Clinton have gotten Chelsea to do campaign stops in Iowa and emphasize youth issues (student loans, national service), and won Iowa, then rolled? Seems plausible.

Chelsea's a goddamn hedge-fund manager -- and a rather insipid one at that. It's hard to appeal to regular folks and young folks when you're a fabulously wealthy and politically-connected lawyer who's supported by rich people fond of making high-risk/high-yield stockmarket gambles off-limits to anyone worth less than a million dollars -- just ask John Edwards. Chelsea has garnered the Clinton campaign exactly ZERO youth votes; Young people can smell a phony from a mile away.

Posted by Abe Gnomino | February 13, 2008 6:04 PM

First thing I'd recommend if I had been in the room when Hillary began her campaign: keep hubby Bill totally out of it. It's impossible for her to look Presidential with him hovering nearby.

And I'd agree with the posters upthread who suggested that the tired DLC advisors HRC brought on board are the root of the problem. They are getting their asses handed to them by a superior Obama team.

I keep waiting for Hillary's supporters to recognize that Obama's vastly superior campaign is a good reason to vote for him. If Hillary can't beat him with the enormous structural advantages that she enjoyed, then why should anyone believe that she would make a good President?

Posted by cousin vinnie | February 13, 2008 6:07 PM

Looking at these comments, many very good, reinforces my belief that when people say "political strategy" what they really mean is "political tactics". Then we have the case where the tactics drive the campaign--and somehow the campaigns become about nothing but the tactics. The tactization of strategy. Instead...

First know what you would be about. Then, and only then, figure out how to get there. That is how to defeat anybody, unless the civic mass just plain isn't going to buy what you are selling--in which case, once again, Sic Transit Gloria Mundia. The people have a right to be wrong.

Posted by S. Wallace | February 13, 2008 6:11 PM

Rezko=Keating=Hsu This is one area where none of them are clean.

Posted by zaleriana | February 13, 2008 6:24 PM

Step 1: Repudiate and apologize for her Iraq War Vote

That's it. That is seriously the only thing that Hillary needed to do to win this election.

Repudiate the war, and you don't lose the professional class. There was no necessary reason that Clinton had to lose among upscale liberals - and the reason she lost them was the Iraq vote.

Posted by DivGuy | February 13, 2008 6:28 PM

The fatal mistake was targeting "stupid" voters. There is a consensus among career politicians that there are substantially more "stupid" voters than reasonable ones.

If her speeches were crafted in a way that complex issues had complex solutions, instead of always going for a sound bite. She won the sound bite wars, but at the cost of alienating well-informed intelligent voters, who mobilized with Obama against her, and are a much more abundant and effective army than the insiders that support Clinton.

Posted by trox | February 13, 2008 6:30 PM

Swiftboat him with Rezko and nuclear power.

Compare his youth and inexperience more directly with that of George Bush. Make him look small.

Have a big idea.

but the HARD COLD TRUTH?

Hillary, like Kerry, like Gore, despite all their achievements, were always bad, bad candidates, because they are so personally unappealing. Not hatefully so, but certainly they lose the charisma debate with their opponents. They fail to inspire empathy. Their only argument is competence.

The most charismatic candidate has won every single election of my lifetime, and really every one since Harry Truman beat Dewey by a sliver....

So nothing would have really mattered. If she manages to win the nomination, I still say she loses to McCain, even McCain at 72 with representing a divided party that hates him.

Too much happened before 2007 with Hillary and the citizens of this country. To ever think that half of them was going to vote for her was always sort of insane just on the face of it. Worse was thinking she could win based on Bill's record, and run on experience. That was idiotic.

Anyway, it's all over but the counting now...

Posted by Eric Blair | February 13, 2008 6:40 PM

1. Repudiate her Iraq War vote.

2. Repudiate triangulation. Fire the pollsters and spinmeisters who told her to vote for the Iraq War, who told her to skip the telecom immunity vote, etsc.

3. Don't go negative unless you have a truly substantial charge against your opponent. "Present" votes and vague Rezko insinuations don't cut it.

If she'd done just one of those three things, it's possible she'd have wrapped up the nomination already.

Posted by Sylvan Migdal | February 13, 2008 6:48 PM

Most of these are worthless. They amount, more or less, to "do the things that (in retrospect) we know that Obama did to win."

The best real suggestion is the one to forge a unique niche for her on Obama's left - I'm not sure that that approach would have worked (Obama's base is too broad to hijack it at a single point) but the positions themselves would have lent some credence to Hillary being a real change candidate - which may have been enough to stop Obama from getting enough traction to make it a race in the first place.

Posted by Dan | February 13, 2008 6:51 PM

Since this is admittedly a hindsight operation -

1. Demonstrate that you believe in the most fundamental change and accept federal matching funds while demanding that all of your challengers do the same thing.

Senator Clinton was the candidate with the biggest name advantage and accepting public funds would have levelled the remaining playing field for everyone else. Granted, I don't think the Clinton team thought they'd ever face a well-financed opponent but had they anticpated this, shaming the rest of the field into accepting matching money. By the way, Sen. Obama likely would have followed suit given that he actually entered into a matching funds general election deal with McCain during 2007 - a deal which both men now intend to repudiate.

2. Specifically reject President Clinton's assistance as a surrogate.

You say that he's doing more good through his foundation and that you want to win this on your own. Everyone already believes that he will be involved in your administration (both positively and negatively) in any event and is factoring that into their votes.

3. Start rumors about the obvious attractiveness of Senator Obama as a national candidate and indicate that he is already on your short list as a Vice Presidential nominee. Talk him up like Mike Huckabee still talks up John McCain.

Posted by John C | February 13, 2008 6:56 PM

The problem wasn't that team Clinton didn't try hard enough to win Iowa (on the contrary, they spent an unreal amount of money there to the detriment of their ability to compete in February), but that there was no serious backup plan. Not even bothering with a huge number of states was a big mistake. You can't develop a ground game a week before an election - it seems like the Clinton strategists just couldn't believe that there could be a real delegate race.

Posted by ikl | February 13, 2008 6:57 PM

This repeats some earlier posts, but to consolidate:

1. Fire Penn
2. Repudiate the "Inevitability" Aura
3. Apologize for War Vote
4. Release Tax Information
5. Release White House Records
6. Invest more in caucus states, red states, and small states.
7. Go more populist

Posted by wj | February 13, 2008 6:59 PM

I'd have to go back to 2006 to offer her useful advice, which would be a) campaign with everyone Obama campaigned with and b) have Bill camp out in Tennessee to drag Harold Ford those last 3 points providing her with a Kathleen Sibelius (i.e. a presumptive running mate that could eat away at his identity vote)

As for October. She could have hired a 24 year old media consultant and done everything he said and kept anyone anywhere from photographing Mark Penn.

Posted by Dirk | February 13, 2008 7:10 PM

i) She should have gotten a complete makeover. Seriously. She looks and (especially) dresses in an absolutely ghastly fashion. Her wardrobe is unimaginably unflattering to her figure. It just looks sloppy and unprofessional. This may be a bit unfair -- a man can get by in a suit no matter what -- but life isn't fair, either. And the reality is she's up against a trim, elegant and attractive opponent. I think this costs her votes all around. It makes her look stale and frumpy, and reinforces the perception in the eyes of the voting public that she's yesterday's news. The woman is a millionaire. There's no excuse.

ii) She could have tweaked her healthcare plan a bit and marketed it as "optional single payer." This is kinda what Edwards was doing, and she basically stole his plan. As it happens, her plan already allows people to opt for a single payer-style government option if they want to. Why not take advantage of this feature for political purposes? Perhaps set a percentage of income cap on premiums -- and use this feature to sidestep the mandates issue -- and loudly market it as "single payer for anybody who wants it." This would have helped undercut some of Obama's early, surging support on the left.

iii) Also, the huge, early success of Obama's fundraising should have alerted them to the possibility that he enjoys very robust, grass roots support, and they should have foreseen the possibility he'd therefore be able to run roughshod in caucuses. She should have developed a detailed "caucus action plan" specifically charged with making sure they didn't get badly outgunned in that kind of environment (they obviously did fine in Nevada, they just didn't get it done anywhere else) -- and tapped a very seasoned operative to run it. I mean, whatever happened to labor unions? Couldn't she have courted the support of at least some segments of organized labor to act as organizing shock troops in caucuses? Even taking one or two of those caucuses away from Obama might have made a huge difference.

iv) Finally she should have seized upon Obama's national media buy (which insured spots were running in Florida markets) as an excuse to campaign there. In other words, do it in the open. Have a press conference and say something to the effect of "Senator Obama has chosen to violate the spirit of the DNC agreement with respect to Michigan and Florida by running hundreds of television commercials reaching millions of Floridians, and I am therefore going to be campaigning there starting tomorrow. The votes of the nation's fourth largest state are too important to exclude from the process. I invite Senator Obama to campaign there as well in person, since he has already started doing so electronically. Let's have an open debate, and let the chips fall where they may regarding the delegates." This would have put pressure on Obama's campaign to respond in kind, and the results of Florida would have been legitimized, and it would be very difficult under such circumstances not to seat them (Michigan, of course, would be a different story given the fact that only Hillary's name was on the ballot).

Posted by Jasper | February 13, 2008 7:22 PM

An addendum to my original post...

"Oh, and one more thing. We've got an image problem we've got to fix. Right or wrong, we've got to combat the perception that the Senator is a cold, calculating, poll-driven politician. I know Mark doesn't agree with me, but it's got to be done. And that means we've got to take a political loss in defense of principle, and so here it is:

"We've got to lose Iowa.

"I don't mean lose it in a squeaker. I mean, lose it big. We've got to walk right into Iowa, and we've got to campaign on ending ethanol subsidies. It's the right position, and it's uniformly known to be really unpopular in Iowa. We won't win there anyway. It's Edwards territory, and it's a lot more conservative than the rest of the nation. Our new, left-leaning agenda won't play well there. But if we campaign on it, we'll be asked about it in the debates, and that'll force Obama to take the pro-ethanol position, because he needs Iowa much worse than we do. And then we push the "Hillary stands up for what she believes in, and Obama's a snake-oil salesman who dresses up cowardice in dreamy rhetoric" position as hard as we can.

Iowa's lost to us anyway, so let's USE that loss to try to change public perception of the Senator. If she's gonna lose, let's make sure she loses on principle.

Nate

Posted by Nate W. | February 13, 2008 7:44 PM

1) lose new hampshire.

If the super tuesday results had been Exactly the same, but Barack had won new hampshire, then super tuesday woulda looked like a Devastating victory for Hillary. That woulda been a month's worth of Barack hype, sharply punctured by wins in big states coast to coast. the air would be out of his balloon. and then let demographics do the rest.

Posted by Mark | February 13, 2008 7:45 PM

1) Don't concede anywhere. Losses do look bad, but not fighting looks worse. And dismissing states, and entire segments of the population (i.e. Red States and African Americans, respectively), is not how you win the presidency, and apparently is not how you win the nomination either.

Posted by J | February 13, 2008 7:45 PM

I want to like Hillary, I really do. As a young, professional female I would love to see the smart woman win. But her problems are numerous. If these problems can indeed be "managed" then here's what she should at least attempt to do.
1. Admit mistakes. The first mistake being her Iraq war vote. Its too late now, of course, but if she had done it when it didn't seem politically expedient, it would have been a wonderful thing for her now.
2. Leave Bill out of it. Entirely. Some members of the democratic base were excited by the possibility of Bill in the white house again. And maybe initially it seemed like a good thing to have him out front and center. But as time has gone on its looked more and more like Hillary was riding on his coattails and depending on him to clinch her nomination. And it completely undermines her ability to be commander in chief.

Obama is tough competition though. He is smart as hell and has campaigned insanely well. So while hindsight is 20/20, there may actually not have been anything they could have done.

Posted by jsc2008 | February 13, 2008 7:55 PM

It's simple:

Step 1: Be Obama
Step 3: Win Election

Step 2 can be eliminated.

Posted by Chris | February 13, 2008 8:04 PM

I think a lot of this would have been solved had they simply defined what her campaign would be about. Sen. Edwards based his on fighting poverty. Sen. Obama bases his on getting past partisanship. Sen. Clinton's campaign based their campaign on the fact that Hilary Clinton is a fighter and gives the Democrats the best chance to win and chose to run her as the inevitable quasi incumbent.

However, this created a situation where Sen. Edwards and Sen. Obama fought for the nomination as underdogs, whereas incumbents are 'entitled' to the nomination. Second, once she didn't win resounding and repeatedly, the rationale for her campaign disappeared.

So if I were at the meeting, I would have stated that Sen. Clinton is running against one person - George W. Bush. Talk about how many gains were made in the 90's and how we need to finish the deal (especially health care... This should have been the campaign focus from Day 1... This is the crusade of her life and she won't stop until it's done, similar to Edwards' approach with poverty) That things were on the right track then Bush came along and ruined it. Her "takes a Clinton to clean up for a Bush" line should have been her motto all campaign. Summed up "Are you better off than you were 8 years ago?"

Sen. Obama would have been in no man's land, either arguing that the 90's weren't that good, that Bush isn't that bad, or, most likely, meekly agreeing to her points then trying to parse it in a way favorable to him.

Posted by Ben | February 13, 2008 8:11 PM

Oh heck, here's a retread of something I once wrote, that explains more of what I'm talking about. But to some it up--figure out where you want to go, then figure out the course and how to trim the sails, based upon principles of the trade, so that the boat sinketh not.

Message follows:

In the military world we talk of tactics--the individual battlefield stuff you do. We talk about strategy--how you maneuver armies/forces to the battlefield (today called the "operational art"). And then we talk about grand strategy--how you mobilize your national resources, how you deploy them, and what you are actually fighting for, anyway.

Clausewitz said "War is a continuation of policy by other means", meaning you don't just fight to fight (unless you are the kind that has a batlev as a decorative item). You fight to achieve a goal, an aim. That is what victory means--achieving the aim, not crushing the enemy (though that can really help out a lot).

Once upon a time there were a bunch of folks who somehow forgot that wars are fought for policy reasons, and not just to win. We know their time as World War I, and a point was reached in that war where the grand strategy of the war was left in the hands of the generals, and, via the dictum of "if you have a hammer in your hand, everything looks like a nail" the entire war became about winning 100 yards of ground. In my version of On War, this curious phenomena has got an appendix to its name--"the tactization of strategy." Making the strategy fit the tactics. Making the entire war fit the tactics.

Virtually all political consultants have infinitely more political cred than I do. And of those, the ubermensch is Karl Rove. But I ever-so-humbly submit that if Karl Rove is a genius, it's of the Marshall Foche kind. He and others have gotten us involved in political trench warfare that has bled the country dry and damaged the national spirit, and right now I feel like we are in the position of the Germans, somewhere around summer, 1918. He is not alone, of course, nor does he truly have the primary blame--that responsibility always lies with the commander--the candidate. Authority can be delegated. Responsibility, never. And Karl Rove is a good man, and I wouldn't mind having him as an advisor.

But it is always up to the candidate to figure out if the tactic doesn't meet the goal, and to reject it if that is the case. The candidate must have the coup d'oeil, the ability to see the 'battlefield" and recognize what is right, and what isn't. He must have some essence of statesmanship in him. Otherwise, why shouldn't the consultant be the candidate?

Thus, in that sense, this entire question of what "strategy" to use against Obama is false. The consultants cannot sit around an office and figure out how to win. They need to first know what the candidate wishes to achieve, and then figure out how to achieve those goals, if able, while also considering how the likely planned campaign of the other candidate is going to impact the operating environment, and to then consider appropriate countertactics that are themselves consistent with the overall goals and aim.

To summarize, in war, know what you are fighting for. That then governs the strategy and tactics you use. And so it should be in politics. Because it matters. It cannot just be victory for its own sake. The candidate must know when the tactic disagrees with his vision of statesmanship, and it should be that vision driving the show, not mere electoral victory. (Though 'mere' electoral victory does seem to go a long way in helping you out...)

War is to important to be left to the generals. Law is to important to be left to the lawyers. And politics is too important to be left to the politicians and political strategists.

Posted by S. Wallace | February 13, 2008 8:29 PM

Go nasty from the start and hammer him on no-show votes and drug use way before Iowa. Also, fire Doyle...

http://www.political-buzz.com/

Posted by matt | February 13, 2008 8:33 PM

First of all, throw out inevitability. Throw out 'iron woman'.
Hold a series of town halls where she spends hours upon hours answering every question from every voter. Everyone talks about her brilliant grasp on policy, let her prove it in an uncontrolled environment over and over and over again.
Allow OPEN access to all corners of the media and start to heal those 16 year old rifts. Answer questions until the reporters are all questioned out. Then invite them back for more.
Praise Obama at every turn as the 'future of the party'. Praise his vision, and look forward to the day when he has the experience to implement it. "Barack Obama will make a great President some day. He's good now, but he could be the best President EVER with just a few more years of experience. I look forward to voting and campaigning for him in eight years."
Smile and laugh a lot. When people get on her about how annoying her laugh is, laugh some more. "Yes, people say it's annoying. What can I do? It's not like I can change it." This suddenly gets her points for authenticity.
Whenever she makes a mistake, take responsibility. And, whatever else she does, DO NOT LAY BLAME. If the press says something unflattering, respond that she hasn't made her point well enough. Admit she was wrong about Iraq. "I was wrong to trust Pres. Bush. From being in the White House, I know how heavily the decision to invade a country should weigh on the President. Bill lost a lot of sleep over his military decisions. I mistakenly assumed that Bush took his responsibility to this country as seriously. I was wrong, and I apologize."
Find some reason, other than experience (where McCain kills her) being a woman (which is a pretty thin reason) and Bill (which is a mixed blessing), to be President. I don't know what that reason is, because she's never articulated it. My best bet would be to run as the smartest, savvyest political genius ever to run for President. "Yeah," she says, "I'm a wonk. I'd rather read an economic report than watch American Idol."
DO NOT try to be 'cool'. Obama is cool. Hillary is not. It's just the way it is, and trying to change it is unbecoming.
And did I mention, do NOT insult the voters?

Posted by EvilAsh | February 13, 2008 9:14 PM

First, I send Mark Penn off to the Strand to do book readings for the duration.

Then I focus on having a more grassroots campaign. Rather than having everything top-down, command-control, I actually let my local coordinators go to town.

Posted by Exile on Ericsson St. | February 13, 2008 9:14 PM

Hillary needs to begin with a narrative for America. Fit the personal thesis statements, "Ready on day one", etc. within the narrative for America. So far her campaign really looks like it's about Hillary, not America.

To this day I don't think Hillary has given us a narrative for America. Her campaign consists of lists of policy and the assumption of inevitability. If she had framed a narrative within which her lists and strength resonated with the American story she would be seen as a visionary leader. The trouble is, I simply don't think she has this in her. I think she has little sense of the scope of history or of the joys and sorrows of the human drama. Worse still, I think she lacks the humility to frame this moment within a much wider horizon. For now, I see her as a great Senator lacking the leadership abilities of a great President. I think this is becoming the consensus opinion of her: Hillary lack vision.

Posted by Dan in California | February 13, 2008 9:40 PM

I can't pretend to be a strategist, but I can share what turned my vote: Hillary had it until just before "Super Tuesday", and to put it simply, Barack wooed me away (I'd have a list for him, too). To get my vote back, Clinton would need to:

1. End the "black vote, latino vote, red state vote" rhetoric. It says nothing about bringing people together--it writes them off. Obama excels in this area, and (at least here in IL) he has a strong reputation for being able to hear all sides. Everybody's welcome. He's smart enough to listen to opponents, not just write them off and counter-attack.

2. Distance herself from the lobbyists and stop pretending that they represent "everyday Americans". It insults even my limited intelligence. For those concerned with corporate involvement in making U.S. policy, at home and overseas (as she says she is), it seems profoundly hypocritical to declare her support of lobbyists, and in the next breath paint big corporations and special interest groups as the enemy. Obama is loud and clear on this (as was Edwards), at least offering a vision of a more transparent govt. that an "everyday American" has a hope of understanding and being involved in, with or without the cash.
This is more of "the change" I believe he is speaking of, not just "no Bush" as an earlier post stated.

3. Drop the air of arrogance. Not the confidence, but the arrogance/smugness. She's been pushing my "Celene Dion button".

4. (Along those same lines) Drop the defensiveness. I'm impressed with the way she handled the Lewinsky madness years ago, but we need a candidate who is willing to talk with enemies first, and shoot only as a last resort. After the past eight years, our country needs to show the world some maturity. She seems to walk around with her subconscious "dukes-up", always calculating, always on her toes. She seems to have plenty of fortitude and attitude, but lacks the impression of quiet, grounded strength. I think that comes with humility.

5. Explain over and over again HOW she is going to push her healthcare initiative through. I'm not saying she hasn't, but if she believes it will work, she needs to hammer it home. It's more aggressive than Obama's, and I like her ideas, but in her first-lady experience on this issue, she lost (or caved-in, depending on who's talking) to the pharmaceutical and insurance industries in the mid-90's. What's changed? Will the lobbyists help her or hurt her this time?

6. Drop the first lady stuff. It got her free name recognition and a BIG head start on everyone else: now it's done. Focus on her record as an actual legislator. And she needs to leave Bill at home from now on. I never thought I would say that, but he's not helping at all. Man, how did that go so wrong, so fast? I mean...it's BILL!!

**6. Show the individual voters that we are more than just a means to an end.

**Show us that WE, the voters, matter more than the superdelegates.

Why Obama and not Hillary:

Whether or not he will follow through as president, Obama has offered the people back their voice. When he asks for money, he asks for anything from a dollar to the legal limit: Each SEEMS just as important. And as his campaign is proving, letting everyone feel like their vote still counts, during and after the election, can be a very successful thing. I feel Obama has invited me to participate in a govt., as opposed to merely electing him to office. Above all, I feel this man is doing it for the people--imagine a politician who still knows he works FOR THE PEOPLE. This is quite a change, indeed.

Posted by tastytone | February 13, 2008 10:02 PM

If I had to give just one recommendation, it would be, skip Iowa, citing 1992. The press will give you a free pass, on the rationale that there's precedent. Let Obama and Edwards fight it out there, and save money and staff for New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina. One on one, Edwards is likely to beat Obama by pulling in your base of working-class voters and core Democrats. Then once it's Clinton vs. Edwards, the fundraising edge kicks in big time, as Edwards has taken public funding.

If I were to add 9 more:

2. Build organizations to match Obama's in each Feb. 5th state. Track his campaign. If Obama has a presence in a state, you need a presence there too. Contest every shot; no easy baskets. At one point in early December, Obama had HQs in 17 states, while Clinton had HQs in only 6 (IA/NH/NV/SC, plus NY and CA)

3. Use some of that Iowa time to visit Feb 5th states. Be the first candidate on the ground in every Feb. 5th state, if possible. Send Bill as necessary, but let him know he's there as Emoter in Chief and to talk about the problems currently facing the nation, not to rehash the Clinton legacy. This is an election about the future.

4. Use all your resources, call in all your favors, and get Florida and Michigan to either move their primaries to Feb 5th, or broker a deal with the Democratic party to get some of their delegates counted.

5. Fire Mark Penn, and bring in someone with a less "demographic" and poll-driven outlook. Modern voters expect to be courted as individuals, not subsets of special interest.

6. Demote Patti Solis Doyle, and bring in someone who can balance a budget, and doesn't spend money like a drunken sailor on leave.

7. Much of Obama's advantage comes from his superior web site (in part because he has Chris Hughes, one of the founders of Facebook, in the fold). Build something with a social networking component that can be more competitive. Involve your supporters and build levels of engagement, so they're less likely to stray.

8. Web fundraising needs to be a priority and a "cabinet-level" position. Place greater emphasis upon growing the donor base, not just dollar amounts.

9. Don't go negative. It plays to your weaknesses, and Obama's strengths. Instead, drop the inevitability schtick, and engage the voters in the cause of reclaiming their government. People are yearning for someone to ask them to do something to help their country. Tap into that zeitgeist, and harness it.

10. Focus on microeconomic issues as they impact individual families, and especially women, but don't just launch into the laundry list of policies to fix them. Show that you understand their sense of lost opportunity. Empathize. Show some emotion other than righteous anger.

Posted by Tom | February 13, 2008 10:12 PM

Early oppo dump. Kill him in his crib.

Posted by southpaw | February 13, 2008 11:04 PM

Divorce Bill Clinton

Marry er.. no, not Edwards or Obama

Run a professional campaign (so sack PSD, MP etc)

Learn how to deliver a speech that is not sleep-inducing

Hope that Obama becomes available

Practise gracious acceptance of defeat speeches

Go back to Arkansas/New York/latest home

Hope that Obama becomes available

Posted by kritikos | February 13, 2008 11:18 PM

1. Move to Chicago in 2000 and run for governor. Barack would not have been a problem from the start. Then run against Washington.

2. Hire Rahm Emanuel as Chief Strategist, not Mark Penn.

3. Run on Clinton centrism: targeted tax cuts, middle class security. Be center-right, not center-left. Embrace your faith and show its positives. Make the GOP look secular. Positive is the word. Only go negative if absolutely necessary.

4. Never apologize for the Iraq vote, but develop a compelling narrative for it.

5. Provide a blistering critique for the Rumsfeld strategy.

6. Use your husband very sparingly.

7. Bring back Carville and Begala.

8. Hire a personal fashion/style, voice/diction coach.

9. Hire the best person out there for the netroots/internet fundraising.

10. Pick Harold Ford as VP.

Posted by Jeremy Bourke | February 13, 2008 11:30 PM

1. Move to Chicago in 2000 and run for governor. Barack would not have been a problem from the start. Then run against Washngton.

2. Hire Rahm Emanuel as Chief Strategist, not Mark Penn.

3. Run on Clinton centrism: targeted tax cuts, middle class security. Be center-right, not center-left. Embrace your faith and show its positives. Make the GOP look secular. Positive is the word. Only go negative if absolutely necessary.

4. Never apologize for the Iraq vote, but develop a compelling narrative for it.

5. Provide a blistering critique for the Rumsfeld strategy.

6. Use your husband very sparingly.

7. Bring back Carville and Begala.

8. Hire a personal fashion/style, voice/diction coach.

9. Hire the best person out there for the netroots/internet fundraising.

10. Pick Harold Ford as VP.

Posted by Jeremy Bourke | February 13, 2008 11:36 PM

If Hillary's advisors had seen Obama as a threat in October of 2007, they would have understood:

(1) "Change" was going to be a major issue in the election,
(2) Post-partisanism was attractive to votes,
(3) The inevitability strategy was failing, and
(4) A powerful candidate-story was a must for a winning campaign.

Hillary needed a narrative. Her time as First Lady was not, at least in the popular conception, a happy time for her. She should have focused on her Senate experience (I understand that she is actually a very effective legislator) and told something like the following story:

The Republicans tried to destroy my family. When I became a Senator, I had no idea how my colleagues in the Senate would see me: as a true peer or a as political celebrity who would never really be a "member of club." I was particularly apprehensive about developing a working relationship with the architects of my husband's impeachment. In 2000, that was still a fresh memory.

But I knew I owed the people of New York for giving me the opportunity to serve as their Senator, so I kept my head down and worked on the issues that were of special importance to me and to them: [health care and all the other big domestic issues].

I've done [list Senate accomplishments] by working with Democrats and Republicans. While I don't agree with the Republicans on all or even most issues, I've developed a professional, working relationship with many members of the other party, something neither I nor they nor really anyone else would have ever predicted when I started my political career.

To paraphrase Rocky: if they can change, and I can change, then maybe we can all change...

Posted by Dave in Texas | February 14, 2008 12:34 AM

Marc, I think you skewed the responses when you asked for "an anti-Obama strategy". What they needed was a pro-Clinton strategy.

Clinton seemed deadly dull while campaigning for the Iowa caucuses. "Let's have a conversation" bordered on the condescending. She was quasi-incumbent and inevitable, and that was supposed to be good enough.

Clinton has not been presented as the great leader our nation needs and deserves. She argues that she's a great tactician, but a battle-weary country seeks someone who can lead us from the killing fields. Clinton is left with no compelling narrative for her candidacy.

Furthermore, I think the Clintons underestimated the power of Clinton Derangement Syndrome and/or Clinton Fatigue on the left and among independent and swing voters. Clinton's campaign should have launched an aggressive, nationwide effort to rebrand her from the start of the campaign. They also needed to recognize she could afford no further negatives. Deliberate or not, the perceived race baiting prior to South Carolina confirmed the fears of many and drove some loyal Democrats from her.

CDS and Clinton fatigue sent people actively looking for another candidate to support, and the Clintons are unlucky that Barack Obama happens to be an exceptional candidate. Without the Clinton negatives, Obama might have been able to mature another 8-12 years before making his presidential bid. Clinton's negatives have given him an early shot at the White House, and Clinton has given us no compelling reason to think she would be a better leader.

Posted by Rachel Q | February 14, 2008 12:52 AM

all of the useful comments seem predicated on the idea that Hillary (and Obama too for that matter) is an entirely different person than what she is. call me a fatalist, but this election to date couldn't have worked out any other way in terms of campaign approach and style.

Hillary Clinton was always going to be the poll-driven, wonkish, sound-byting, micro-demographic pandering old style politician and Obama was always going to put emphasis on grassroots appeal, ground organization, a strong internet campaign and an unwaveringly positive message. it's not a question of political framing, its a question of who these people are.

so the best analysis of the situation prior to Iowa for Clinton would have been to not run, since this is a time in American history when we are far more receptive to the latter style and far more turned off to the former. had she run in 2004 she may have stood a chance, but not in 2008.

Posted by BA | February 14, 2008 12:59 AM

In addition to the ideas presented so far:

1. Never say that your policy and your opponent's policy is basically the same. There are always differences between policies. They may be small differences in reality, but discuss them and make a case for your policy being better. One of your strengths is your ability to dissect issues with great detail, use it. This will do more to prove your competence than any speech on experience will.

2. Talk to Democrats like there is no favorite, talk to Republicans like you are inevitable, not the other way around. This means treat early primaries seriously, travel Iowa like you are the candidate who needs to make a name there, not the candidate who really can afford to lose there. As to the second half of this: because you are the favorite in polls, Republican candidates will take shots at you early on in the race. Be selective, but respond to some of these. It doesn't matter if Mitt Romney fails to become the Republican nominee, if he criticizes your Health Care plan, come up with a detailed response and criticism back. If Giuliani and McCain call you a defeatist on Iraq, have a comeback for them. These kind of back and forths are the way to leave your primary opponents in the dust. There is no way they can criticize your responses as they defend the party, not just yourself. This kind of action is what will make people say "Wow, she's a leader" and that's what makes a front runner inevitable.

Posted by Dan L | February 14, 2008 1:03 AM

There was no way for her to win.

I find it interesting that there is so much obsession with how she supposedly "lost" this race. She didn't lose it -- she got beat. She's totally outmatched by Obama and she knew it. That's why they went negative so early -- all the mischaracterizations and the racebaiting and now, the complete reliance on her supposedly unbreachable hold on (increasingly older) white women and hispanics.

I mean, look, she is relying almost completely on getting delegates from places where she does not have to compete against Obama -- Florida and Michigan and the superdelegates. Does this not show that she cannot win by persuading people to actually vote for her?

She knew it and that's why her entire campaign was premised on forcing him out early with the "inevitability," negative nonsense and a Super Tuesday sweep that never materialized. She knew she could not compete so the only course was to become the only option.

Posted by Elissa | February 14, 2008 1:18 AM

A bit more:

1. If she's going to use the non-vote attack, and not be perceived as a hypocrite, she needs to show up for votes on issues like "illegal wire tapping". Yes, it's a pain to fly back and yes, it was doomed, but the layman will only hear: "Clinton", "non-vote" and "Illegal Wire Tapping". Especially important if her own explanation of a non-vote during her speeches remains along the lines of "He just didn't bother to show up that day".

2. Needs to explain logic behind her "cluster-bomb" vote. It did not make her appear strong--It made her appear to pander to the right. "Peacenik" on healthcare, "Hardliner" on civilian casualties?

3. Get THOMAS removed from the Library of Congress website, so people can't see congressional voting and bill introductions/sponsorships for themselves.

Posted by tastytone | February 14, 2008 1:26 AM

Best answer I've yet seen---and it's about what she should do NOW---comes from www.thecrossedpond.com

STEP ONE: REFRAME THE INEVITABILITY ARGUMENT—AND MAKE BARACK OBAMA ITS SUBJECT.

One of the reasons people are turning against Hillary is that she seems not to “get” the historical and transformative nature of Barack Obama’s movement. There is no constituency for obliviousness; when Clinton tries to pretend that Obama’s charisma is imaginary or somehow undesirable, she only makes new enemies. It’s time for her to recognize the skills, publicly and effusively. In fact, she needs to take it this far: “I think that Barack Obama is one of the most charismatic candidates of my lifetime, and I think his movement is a tremendous benefit to both the Democratic Party and the country as a whole. In fact, there’s no question in my mind that Barack Obama’s going to be President at some point in the not-too-distant future, and I’m looking forward to doing everything in my power to make that happen when the time comes.”

STEP TWO: LEVERAGE THIS ARGUMENT TO OFFER THE DEMOCRATS EVERYTHING THEY WANT.

Hillary’s greatest strength, from a core Dem perspective, is the historical nature of her candidacy as potentially the first woman to reach the Oval Office. She’s in the unenviable position, however, of running against possibly the first African-American to reach the Oval Office. The “making history” argument is at best a wash for her—unless she can somehow frame it in terms of making history twice. And as it happens, Obama’s youth and his charisma give her an avenue in which to do that. “I think it’s wonderful that America will have an African-American President in my lifetime. The only thing that could be even MORE wonderful is if we could have both an African-American President AND a woman President within my lifetime. The unique and historic opportunity that our party now has is that, if we play our cards right, we can guarantee ourselves both.” The unspoken argument here—which I think is nonetheless clear—is that Obama can wait. Clinton can’t; it’s now or never where she’s concerned. This is effectively an argument in favor of delaying Obama’s ‘inevitable’ Presidency in order to give Hillary the turn she’s earned, on the grounds that there is no other plausible woman contender on the immediate horizon.

STEP THREE: ADMIT MISTAKES, AND DEPLOY BILL TO DO THE SAME THING.

Both Clintons are notorious for their failure to own up to errors in judgment or policy. That has hurt them badly, and doing the opposite can help them. But there is a way to frame this “admission of error” in terms that actually help Hillary and hurt Obama: “When I started working on health care in 1992, I was full of hope. I had reason to be; the people who were working with me on this project were smart, capable, and above all else we were RIGHT. But I was foolish to think that those factors alone would be enough. I underestimated the level of political skill it takes to navigate a reform, however desirable, through the political minefields of Washington. In my inexperience, I made numerous mistakes. In the process, I squandered the hopes of a generation of people who urgently needed health care coverage. If I had it to do over again, I’d have done it much differently.” Needless to say, Bill needs to be doing exactly the same thing, portraying the first two years of his own Presidency, when he was busy converting a sizable mandate into a 39% approval rating, into a series of gaffes created by his inexperience in Washington. “I was smart, but I wasn’t yet wise, and I wasn’t smart enough to know I needed to be both.” I think that a lot of Democrats have been waiting for this kind of humility from the Clintons—and in this case, the implicit message it sends happens to serve their electoral interests.

STEP FOUR: IT’S THE ECONOMY, STUPID.

The sheer nastiness of the current economic situation actually helps to support the argument that the Obama administration would be better served by a later start: “The Republicans are handing us an absolute train wreck; possibly the worst incipient financial crisis since the great depression. Nobody knows just how badly our financial institutions are damaged at the moment; nobody really knows where the bottom is. I frankly don’t anticipate that the first two years of the next administration are going to be any fun at all—it is going to take somebody with a lot of policy experience to dig us out of this hole. Only through some very hard, tedious work on the economy are we going to be able to set things straight in order to build the economic foundation for more broad-based progressive reforms later on. Bear in mind that I was an integral part of the most economically successful administration in recent American history—we dug our way out of one Bush recession, and I know the people and the policies that will help us dig out of another.” Obama might be the ideal President for good economic times, but at the moment, we need a nose-to-the-grindstone technocrat. Obama’s great, but we can wait.

STEP FIVE: WIN OHIO AND TEXAS.

The above arguments are as far as the Clinton campaign can go while in a position of weakness. There are some arguments that would seem to be Hail-Mary bids if made by a LOSING candidate. For the rest of the strategy to work, Ohio and Texas must be won. As it happens, the economy argument is a good means here—Ohio is in the heart of the worst-hit parts of the country, and Texas is suffering disproportionately from the collapse of the housing market. Clinton needs to spend every remaining dime of her money in Ohio and Texas—losses there end the campaign.

STEP SIX: STRATEGIC LEAKAGE.

Having won at least one of these critical states, Clinton will be close to tied in the delegate count and in a position to benefit from apparent magnanimity. It will be time to reinforce the “you can have both” argument from step two above. Well-placed sources within the Clinton campaign will need to leak to the press that Clinton has already decided on her running mate—Barack Obama. The candidate herself will deny for the record that she’s already SET on Obama, exactly—all the while making clear that “he’s a very splendid choice for the position and a near-certain future President.” This puts Obama in the difficult position of having to either reciprocate (a virtual impossibility, given the way he’s been treated) or to seem comparatively petty. This can be the first blow against his “likability”.

The overall strategy is designed to give the Democratic primary electorate a choice they haven’t had before—the prospect of a Clinton/Obama administration in which Clinton handles a lot of the ugly policy realities and the post-Bush cleanup, while Obama continues to have a platform for his message of hope and a launching pad for a stellar reform-oriented Presidency once he’s fully groomed in an administrative role.

The Democrats will never be convinced to like Hillary more than Obama, but they might possibly be persuaded to like Hillary and Obama TOGETHER more than they like Obama alone.

Posted by Brad | February 14, 2008 1:30 AM

I would have decided to change the contrasting narratives between the two candidates. (This may require the time machine to go back to Jan. 2007)

0. Let Bill know that this will be her campaign.
1. I would have stepped back the 35 years of experience and "ready from day one" schtick. I would have advised her to not put her experience in terms of years but rather in accomplishments.
2. She should have co-opted his message much earlier. By expressing that all Democrats are ready for a change from Bush and the Republicans she could have, in effect, changed his change message.
3. During debates she should have embraced him, and pointed out that she shared his hope.
4. Basically she should not have let him be a contrast to her. She could have made voters excited about a Clinton-Obama ticket and lowered the expectations of his candidacy from his supporters.

The only problem is that she had no ability to shape the narrative of her campaign going into it. She is a soldier in the partisian wars, and a known commodity, she had no choice but to offer herself as a battle tested warrior to take on the mean Republicans. That left little room for messages of hope and unity.

Posted by Justin | February 14, 2008 2:31 AM

"Repudiate and apologize for her Iraq War Vote"

It's true. That's all she needed to do.

Posted by chris m | February 14, 2008 2:34 AM

I agree with Rachel Q. Long before Obama became a factor, Hillary had good news and bad news. The good news: she had a loyal base of support that would likely stick with her through thick and thin. The bad news: her support had a ceiling (even inside the party).

The only workable strategy was to make an all-out effort to close the sale in October/November and December.
First, pick your 2-3 issues and make bold policy proclamations on each;
Second, find another 1-2 mini-issues (a la Clinton '96) and find a way to make bones with Republicans on those;

Third, and most important, lower the guard. Hillary Clinton' path to the nomination (against any real opponent) would be to sell those in the party skeptical of her that she was a good candidate, a good person and someone we want in our living rooms for 4 years.

IMO, none of the attack politics espoused above would have worked. An attack by Hillary would have elevated any of her rivals to her stature. Once viewed as her equal, Obama's political gifts would inevitably make her look small. The only way to quash Obama's rise was to rise higher before he ever got off the ground.

Posted by Adam | February 14, 2008 2:41 AM

Is “Racial politics” too easy an answer?

I'm not saying she has to stoke anti-black hatred or fear to win - probably not enough of that to carry anyone over the finish line these days even in the general, let alone the Dem primary. All she has to do is stoke Americans' disgust with racial politics.

Obama has brilliantly avoided this trap, and Team Hillary didn't try to force him into it until far too late. They started in mid-December with that adviser's "oops...did I say that?" cocaine-use flap. By the time they really got serious about injecting the racial angle in the campaign, (LBJ vs MLK? WTF?) Obama already won Iowa, and the media generally reported the back-and-forth as a pathetic rear-guard attack from a desperate Hillary. By being late in the game and failing to use proxies for their dirty work, they got hurt by the media instead of leveraging it effectively.

Here's how they could have played it -

-In October you start the inappropriate, racially-charged quotes from easily-resignable junior staffers.

-You spend November getting your proxies out there making more inflammatory comments, forcing Obama to respond, and playing the public you-started-it-no-you-started-it between the two campaigns.

-Because the media a) eats racial politics up with a spoon and b) is incredibly lazy and unoriginal, guess which 3 or 4 same "spokesmen for African Americans" in all their Rolodexes are going to be called for comment. Guess what (and who) is going to be on TV all of December.

-With all this, Obama's soon polling the 80-90% support among blacks he’s now polling anyway. But in the all-important Iowa and NH runs, this means nothing, because 90% of 26 people is, what, like 21? 22? Even better, at this point it becomes a media narrative. "Is Obama's support base too black to win?"

-When it’s time to vote, Hillary wins Hispanics and Obama wins blacks. Now it's all down to the Democratic white working class base. Their choices are "Hillary, unviable Edwards, or ten more months of this sh**."

And she's still golden for the general, because by taking out Obama before Iowa he never gets the chance to become "the first viable black candidate.” It just becomes another loss for a people used to seeing their candidates fall short in the primaries, instead of the epic gut-punch blacks would feel were she to win it now.

Posted by Butters | February 14, 2008 2:49 AM

I don't know if a mere apology for the IWR would do. It is surely the reason Obama is and forever will be above her on my list of preferred candidates. If she had, say, led the fight to end the Iraq war, I might have forgiven her.

It is funny to realize, though, that the 2002 vote, made for political expediency and to cover her ass for 2008, will in the end be her downfall. Obama never would have had the possibility of traction if she hadn't supported the war from the start. As it stands, that vote encapsulates the worst about her in the starkest manner possible.

As for actual campaign management, she obviously should have fired half her staff. Hell, even firing PSD would have won her the nomination. Bare competence trumps loyalty.

Posted by Zephyrus | February 14, 2008 2:56 AM

I agree with most that has been written here. I think the biggest problem she had was that there has been a subtle stream of contempt running through her campaign that has evidenced itself in many ways.

She needed to fire Mark Penn. When your chief strategist is full of contempt for voters and thinks they are stupid, it shows through the campaign. I'm not saying very many voters know who Penn is, but I think most can sense that something just feels off in the way the campaign views them. It's that flavor in a recipe that you can't quite identify, but you know something else is there.

She also needed to fly on the press plane. Chartering that second plane introduces an element of contempt towards the press (who don't get access), her donors (who bear the expense) and the environment (why pollute more than you have to). The press doesn't give Hillary very balanced coverage, but she can be likable in person. Flying on the press plane and talking to reporters on a regular basis could have helped her.

Use volunteers well and make women all across the country feel like part of your campaign. I will never forget standing right next to a 45 year old women at the 1st fairway when Annika Sorenstam played with the men at the Colonial Golf Tournament. Right before Annika teed it up this woman tensed up and muttered/prayed for Annika to hit a good shot. It was as if forty years of discrimination was lifted from this woman's shoulders when the ball landed in the middle of the fairway. Clinton taps into that same pent-up joy women have when a women shows she is as good as a man in a situation where she is the first.

Clinton could have had an ARMY of women volunteering for her and donating money to her campaign, but she and her team decided they could raise enough money from big donors. Clinton has run a good campaign, but she could have built a movement instead of a campaign. Unluckily for her, she ran into a campaign that did create a movement.

Posted by Kineslaw | February 14, 2008 4:40 AM

Fire Penn.

Posted by JC | February 14, 2008 8:39 AM

Barack Obama is a great leader and superb public speaker who will play an important and historic role in US politics.

Lets invite him early and often to be U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations in the Clinton administration because the presidency would just be wasting his time.

Posted by Kim | February 14, 2008 8:45 AM

I walk in with an invite from Howard Wolfson as one of his more cynical pals. I could care less who wins, and don't have a preference in Oct 2007. I'm just a style kinda advisor. I notice Hillary is absent with relief, though the presence of a couple of her lesbian Praetorian Guard who will ruffle up on my criticism of their Goddess likely means this will be my only shot with this group, pick up my 6K for 16 hours work - retain a dim hope in the off-chance that my advice is actually followed.

My main notation to the group is that I have heard Obama speak, I have heard Dubya speak, I have heard Richardson speak, Edwards...and I have heard Hillary. And the two I cannot STAND listening to, are Dubya, and Hillary when she begins her shrill, nasal braying. Or Edwards when he gets into his overproduced, overslick pandering schitck that screams how phony he is. Like that Romney guy on the opposition side.

But as a style consultant, I don't just have my personal views, but focus group and poll reports that others hate hearing Dubya and change the channel, and the only other one that gets that instant turnoff is Hillary when she stops talking like a human being and begins her inevitable braying like a female jackass with a broomstick shoved up her ass. I didn't think it possible, but whe is the first candidate that when she gets to the important stuff begins this smarmy shrill nasal strident monotone I hope I never have to hear again in a politician of either sex. Yeah, a regular litany of promises and programs and pandering that are lost because her message goes down like fingernails on a blackboard.

Yeah, it's early. Yeah, she's got the money, the people. And she is up against 2 jokes - Gravel and Kuchinich, two victims of Kerry-itis (two decades too long in the Senate), a dimbulb governor who flops around like a flummoxed flounder when he is grilled in Q&A, slick Edwards, and Obama.

Look, I thought Obama's keynote speech at the convention was a fluke. It is not. He talks measuredly, naturally, knows when to emphasize and does not break into a whole new voice or regional inflection when he gets excited - and the crowds I examined said "Wow!".

She can't be as good as Obama, but she cannot continue as the person people hate to listen to, and if she keeps within herself, she will match Obama's naturalness, if not his oratory...which should be mildly mocked since it is mostly vapid stuff about hope with no substance. Don't worry about Edwards, he doomed himself with that 4 minute video of him just combing his lucious hair, grinning in the mirror at his beauty..

My recommendation for a strategy change has nothing to do with policy. It is stylistic. Train her out of that shrill braying, make her understand how off-putting it is. Have her speech handlers interrupt her if she lapses back into it as she comes to her usual use of it at the climax of her speech...Beat it out of her.

Also, stylistically, have her knock off that silly clapping for herself at rallies. All the photo ops show her clapping away in admiration at her genius and it basically looks like a blonde verion of N Korea's L'il Kim at a rally cheering the valiant workers who are properly cheering him and his inevitable global dynastic greatness.

Oh, and though Patty Solis Doyle and Maggie Williams have been staring daggers at me for daring to say how stylisticaly unlikable Hillary is, allow me to get into another big problem she has, particularly with Edwards and Obama:

She loses the youth vote as the know-it-all School Marm policy wonk. She surrounds herself with old "cause" bulls and middleage supporters. She needs to have a two-way with younger voters, let them know she does more than tell them how it is, how it is going to be and convince them she is willing to LISTEN to THEIR perspective and be a vessel, then a vehicle to help realize THEIR hopes. Where is Ms. Inevitable on campus? Obama and Edwards are cleaning up there. Just because the donors aren't there is no excuse. And college kids and younger workers don't just fixate on Iraq. They want new directions, CHANGE from the old DC way of business, are concerned about jobs, careers, how America no longer seems to be able to do anything, settle any issue.
So, as a start, for STYLE'S SAKE, get some young people to have higher prominance in her campaign. The young people appreciate the 80-year old civil rights mavens, the 60 year old wanting health care, but they want their place and issues up front too, and Obama and Edwards are doing that symbolically in a way Hillary isn't.

Well, thats it. What, no applause Ms. Williams?

Posted by chris ford | February 14, 2008 9:07 AM

Butters - that is a disgusting strategy... but it just may have worked.

Posted by Phil | February 14, 2008 9:07 AM

He's a better candidate in almost every way, so I'm not sure there ever was anything she could do. But one thing that surely would have helped would have been to clearly and unequivocally admit that her vote for the AUMF on Iraq was a mistake. That would have negated the one glaring policy difference between them. She still would have lost but it would have helped her keep it closer. Instead she has chosen to make lame excuses like she didn't know an AUTHORIZATION TO USE MILITARY FORCE meant Bush would use military force or the Levin amendment would have turned over control to the UN. Failure to clearly repudiate her Iraq vote like Edwards did has created tremendous suspicion that she is secretly wholly on board with the Bush-McCain policy in Iraq and will continue it if elected.

Posted by Ron | February 14, 2008 11:07 AM

1) Hire people who know the ground game in Iowa. Identify volunteers to help you GOTC. Do not talk as an entitled front runner who has no time for the press or people. Do not plant questions. Do not equivocate on every position.

2) Hillary's problem is essentially one of character, she cannot get out of her own way. As Fineman wrote voters don't like an insecure control freak.

3) Do not count on the black vote.

Posted by yiannis | February 14, 2008 12:17 PM

Lonewacko unsurprisingly misses the point of this exercise: figure out how to make Hillary Clinton more attractive to the majority of primary voters and caucus-goers than Obama has been. Immigration isn't going to work as a divisive issue. Despite what their working-class constituents might feel, Democratic leaders have put themselves in the amnesty camp, as have the most activist people in the party's base. Hence Clinton's confusion over how to answer the debate question about giving a driver's license to illegal immigrants: does she drive away the activist base (already suspicious of her pro-war votes), or does she support a measure that Spitzer himself ultimately dropped?

It doesn't work for the later campaign, either -- McCain is barely, if at all, more conservative on immigration than the Democratic leadership. Somehow, despite the concerns about immigration from white conservatives and working-class blacks and whites, immigration will not be an issue in the general election.

The idea that because a lobbying effort has ties to a foreign government, it must be boycotted by U.S. Senators, is completely ludicrous. There are much stronger ties between people within the U.S. who lobby on behalf on Israel and the Israeli government, than there are between people within the U.S. lobbying for immigration reform and the Mexican government. The people lobbying for immigration reform in the U.S. are rather obviously lobbying for their own self-interest first, and Mexico's second.

Posted by PG | February 14, 2008 1:00 PM

October 2007 would have been too late for big changes. Shifting the message would have created more problems than it solved, and you can't buy organization quickly. The only thing that might have worked at that point would have been to go after Obama in debates, finding wedge issues that would have put her on the same side as Edwards against Obama. A good gender wedge-controversy might have helped in IA, as it did in NH.

Posted by c | February 14, 2008 1:54 PM

I stand by my contention about narrative and leadership.

But the shorter argument is this: Character really does count and Hillary lacks sound character.

I suspect the only remedy would be for her to suffer a bitter, bitter, humiliating loss and entirely rebuild her character from a place of humility. For now she exudes entitlement, self-righteous indignation, and self-absorption. Everywhere she goes she leaves behind a path of destruction. Perhaps 35 years ago she worked for children and women, but that self-sacrificing honorable person seems to have been lost along the way.

Frankly, given how her character has developed she'd be better off running as a conservative, corporate Republican. Then her character would align with her beliefs.

Posted by Dan in California | February 14, 2008 3:35 PM

She probably just needed to believe that Obama could beat her. There's not much sign that she ever thought that was even possible. If she had, a lot of other things might have followed (being more careful with money, planning for an extended campaign, trying to build organizations in all states, etc.)

She was over-confident. To be fair, her campaign would have worked just fine if Edwards had been her main competition. And, of course, she could still win.

Posted by NoahB | February 14, 2008 6:03 PM

Advice to Hillary: Kill yourself, America hates you.

Posted by Live Wire | February 14, 2008 9:34 PM

1. Emphasize "women's issues", and don't limit that to abortion. Talk about genital mutilation in Africa, one-baby policies in China. Mention that women (especially women of color) are paid less to the dollar in every speech. Every now and then, decry in generalizations how women are portrayed in the media. In short, make people remember how historic a woman running for president is.

2. Go off the cuff. A huge thing against Hillary has been the idea that no one knows who she really is. "Let the conversation begin" should have been more then a chat room- meet with student leaders in Iowa universities for dinner, in the dorms, with pizza. Video-blog updates from you daily, they don't have to be more then a few minutes.

3. Use Bill only-repeat, only- in pushing a minority GOTV campaign. I'm thinking mainly hispanic here, but have him go to a few black churches to try to pull away a couple delegates.

Posted by Dave G | February 14, 2008 10:43 PM

It's tragic to read through 85 comments in a good faith effort not to retread ground only to see Brad's trans-posting of something from thecrossedpond.com stepping all over your proposed point. I think the 16 years (why not get both, Hillary then Obama) argument there is brilliant, but I want to expand a little on step 4 of that 6 step plan - "STEP FOUR: IT’S THE ECONOMY, STUPID." I'll repost the entirety of that step below, after my take on why the economy should have been the central focus of the Hillary campaign from the beginning.

1) IT FOCUSES ON THE BEST OF THE CLINTON YEARS:

Why argue experience generally, when the central policy proposal of both candidates is universal health care and your experience was principally in failing to get that passed. Steal the best of the Clinton brand skipping the early failure on health care and the later political unpleasantness. Moreover, people probably overvalue experience in this particular field (people both feel at the mercy of and ignorant of economics - as opposed to, for example, assuming health care is just a matter of getting someone to pay for it; people over attribute economic developments to the presidency), and people probably would be less likely to entertain a hope based economic policy (Contrast "Yes we can provide our weakest with health care" with "Yes we can guarantee steady and widely dispersed economic growth.")

2) EVEN IN OCTOBER 2007, HER CAMPAIGN SHOULD HAVE SEEN THAT NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENED IN 2008 THE ECONOMY WOULD BE A RESONANT THEME IN DEMOCRATIC CIRCLES:

It might be tempting to call this hindsight given the rising prominence of bad economic news in early 2008, but the mortgage crisis was entirely predictable and already in progress. Moreover, even without a recession, Democratic primary voters have been polling throughout the last few years as deeply negative about the economy even during periods of relatively high GDP growth (call this Bush-derangement syndrome or an accurate reading of the average workers plight/prospects in an inequal and flawed economy).

3) THE ECONOMY WOULD HAVE GIVEN HILLARY, INSTEAD OF OBAMA, THE META-NARRATIVE ON CHANGE SHE NEEDED TO CAPTURE THE NOMINATION:

Hillary and Obama have so little policy distance between them, that the debate has shifted to who can bring about the agreed upon changes - Hillary though hard work and know how OR Obama through inspiration and coalition broadening/building. In an election season, this has been predictably reduced to "You have to win a general election before you can start your hard work," and every day that Obama doesn't collapse as a promising but not ready for prime time campaigner he wins the meta-argument on who is the more likely vehicle for change. If Hillary raised the economy to the fore of her campaign from the beginning, she could have pushed the meta-narrative to who is going to be able PAY FOR the agreed upon change. Admitting that wildly popular health-care policy proposals might require some attention to the fiscal architecture might have been ceding some general election ground (ground that could be regained by focusing people on the Republican shredding of that architecture and other trade-offs like indefinitely forestalling all out civil war in Iraq or having universal health care), but you have to win the primary to be the nominee.

It should be noted that electability was never Hillary's strongsuit (and it became much more of an Achilles heel with the McCain nomination), but casting the economy rather than the general election as the principle variable as to whether change can take hold would have forced Obama to spend more time arguing "I am going to do what you guys did," rather than "I am going to accomplish all you failed to accomplish."

----------------

Here was step four from the thecrossedpond.com posting:

The sheer nastiness of the current economic situation actually helps to support the argument that the Obama administration would be better served by a later start: “The Republicans are handing us an absolute train wreck; possibly the worst incipient financial crisis since the great depression. Nobody knows just how badly our financial institutions are damaged at the moment; nobody really knows where the bottom is. I frankly don’t anticipate that the first two years of the next administration are going to be any fun at all—it is going to take somebody with a lot of policy experience to dig us out of this hole. Only through some very hard, tedious work on the economy are we going to be able to set things straight in order to build the economic foundation for more broad-based progressive reforms later on. Bear in mind that I was an integral part of the most economically successful administration in recent American history—we dug our way out of one Bush recession, and I know the people and the policies that will help us dig out of another.” Obama might be the ideal President for good economic times, but at the moment, we need a nose-to-the-grindstone technocrat. Obama’s great, but we can wait.

Posted by Jaffer | February 15, 2008 5:05 AM

It's tragic to read through 85 comments in a good faith effort not to retread ground only to see Brad's trans-posting of something from thecrossedpond.com stepping all over your proposed point. I think the 16 years (why not get both, Hillary then Obama) argument there is brilliant, but I want to expand a little on step 4 of that 6 step plan - "STEP FOUR: IT’S THE ECONOMY, STUPID." I'll repost the entirety of that step below, after my take on why the economy should have been the central focus of the Hillary campaign from the beginning.

1) IT FOCUSES ON THE BEST OF THE CLINTON YEARS:

Why argue experience generally, when the central policy proposal of both candidates is universal health care and your experience was principally in failing to get that passed. Steal the best of the Clinton brand skipping the early failure on health care and the later political unpleasantness. Moreover, people probably overvalue experience in this particular field (people both feel at the mercy of and ignorant of economics - as opposed to, for example, assuming health care is just a matter of getting someone to pay for it; people over attribute economic developments to the presidency), and people probably would be less likely to entertain a hope based economic policy (Contrast "Yes we can provide our weakest with health care" with "Yes we can guarantee steady and widely dispersed economic growth.")

2) EVEN IN OCTOBER 2007, HER CAMPAIGN SHOULD HAVE SEEN THAT NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENED IN 2008 THE ECONOMY WOULD BE A RESONANT THEME IN DEMOCRATIC CIRCLES:

It might be tempting to call this hindsight given the rising prominence of bad economic news in early 2008, but the mortgage crisis was entirely predictable and already in progress. Moreover, even without a recession, Democratic primary voters have been polling throughout the last few years as deeply negative about the economy even during periods of relatively high GDP growth (call this Bush-derangement syndrome or an accurate reading of the average workers plight/prospects in an inequal and flawed economy).

3) THE ECONOMY WOULD HAVE GIVEN HILLARY, INSTEAD OF OBAMA, THE META-NARRATIVE ON CHANGE SHE NEEDED TO CAPTURE THE NOMINATION:

Hillary and Obama have so little policy distance between them, that the debate has shifted to who can bring about the agreed upon changes - Hillary though hard work and know how OR Obama through inspiration and coalition broadening/building. In an election season, this has been predictably reduced to "You have to win a general election before you can start your hard work," and every day that Obama doesn't collapse as a promising but not ready for prime time campaigner he wins the meta-argument on who is the more likely vehicle for change. If Hillary raised the economy to the fore of her campaign from the beginning, she could have pushed the meta-narrative to who is going to be able PAY FOR the agreed upon change. Admitting that wildly popular health-care policy proposals might require some attention to the fiscal architecture might have been ceding some general election ground (ground that could be regained by focusing people on the Republican shredding of that architecture and other trade-offs like indefinitely forestalling all out civil war in Iraq or having universal health care), but you have to win the primary to be the nominee.

It should be noted that electability was never Hillary's strongsuit (and it became much more of an Achilles heel with the McCain nomination), but casting the economy rather than the general election as the principle variable as to whether change can take hold would have forced Obama to spend more time arguing "I am going to do what you guys did," rather than "I am going to accomplish all you failed to accomplish."

----------------

Here was step four from the thecrossedpond.com posting:

The sheer nastiness of the current economic situation actually helps to support the argument that the Obama administration would be better served by a later start: “The Republicans are handing us an absolute train wreck; possibly the worst incipient financial crisis since the great depression. Nobody knows just how badly our financial institutions are damaged at the moment; nobody really knows where the bottom is. I frankly don’t anticipate that the first two years of the next administration are going to be any fun at all—it is going to take somebody with a lot of policy experience to dig us out of this hole. Only through some very hard, tedious work on the economy are we going to be able to set things straight in order to build the economic foundation for more broad-based progressive reforms later on. Bear in mind that I was an integral part of the most economically successful administration in recent American history—we dug our way out of one Bush recession, and I know the people and the policies that will help us dig out of another.” Obama might be the ideal President for good economic times, but at the moment, we need a nose-to-the-grindstone technocrat. Obama’s great, but we can wait.

Posted by Jaffer | February 15, 2008 5:05 AM

It's tragic to read through 85 comments in a good faith effort not to retread ground only to see Brad's trans-posting of something from thecrossedpond.com stepping all over your proposed point. I think the 16 years (why not get both, Hillary then Obama) argument there is brilliant, but I want to expand a little on step 4 of that 6 step plan - "STEP FOUR: IT’S THE ECONOMY, STUPID." I'll repost the entirety of that step below, after my take on why the economy should have been the central focus of the Hillary campaign from the beginning.

1) IT FOCUSES ON THE BEST OF THE CLINTON YEARS:

Why argue experience generally, when the central policy proposal of both candidates is universal health care and your experience was principally in failing to get that passed. Steal the best of the Clinton brand skipping the early failure on health care and the later political unpleasantness. Moreover, people probably overvalue experience in this particular field (people both feel at the mercy of and ignorant of economics - as opposed to, for example, assuming health care is just a matter of getting someone to pay for it; people over attribute economic developments to the presidency), and people probably would be less likely to entertain a hope based economic policy (Contrast "Yes we can provide our weakest with health care" with "Yes we can guarantee steady and widely dispersed economic growth.")

2) EVEN IN OCTOBER 2007, HER CAMPAIGN SHOULD HAVE SEEN THAT NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENED IN 2008 THE ECONOMY WOULD BE A RESONANT THEME IN DEMOCRATIC CIRCLES:

It might be tempting to call this hindsight given the rising prominence of bad economic news in early 2008, but the mortgage crisis was entirely predictable and already in progress. Moreover, even without a recession, Democratic primary voters have been polling throughout the last few years as deeply negative about the economy even during periods of relatively high GDP growth (call this Bush-derangement syndrome or an accurate reading of the average workers plight/prospects in an inequal and flawed economy).

3) THE ECONOMY WOULD HAVE GIVEN HILLARY, INSTEAD OF OBAMA, THE META-NARRATIVE ON CHANGE SHE NEEDED TO CAPTURE THE NOMINATION:

Hillary and Obama have so little policy distance between them, that the debate has shifted to who can bring about the agreed upon changes - Hillary though hard work and know how OR Obama through inspiration and coalition broadening/building. In an election season, this has been predictably reduced to "You have to win a general election before you can start your hard work," and every day that Obama doesn't collapse as a promising but not ready for prime time campaigner he wins the meta-argument on who is the more likely vehicle for change. If Hillary raised the economy to the fore of her campaign from the beginning, she could have pushed the meta-narrative to who is going to be able PAY FOR the agreed upon change. Admitting that wildly popular health-care policy proposals might require some attention to the fiscal architecture might have been ceding some general election ground (ground that could be regained by focusing people on the Republican shredding of that architecture and other trade-offs like indefinitely forestalling all out civil war in Iraq or having universal health care), but you have to win the primary to be the nominee.

It should be noted that electability was never Hillary's strongsuit (and it became much more of an Achilles heel with the McCain nomination), but casting the economy rather than the general election as the principle variable as to whether change can take hold would have forced Obama to spend more time arguing "I am going to do what you guys did," rather than "I am going to accomplish all you failed to accomplish."

----------------

Here was step four from the thecrossedpond.com posting:

The sheer nastiness of the current economic situation actually helps to support the argument that the Obama administration would be better served by a later start: “The Republicans are handing us an absolute train wreck; possibly the worst incipient financial crisis since the great depression. Nobody knows just how badly our financial institutions are damaged at the moment; nobody really knows where the bottom is. I frankly don’t anticipate that the first two years of the next administration are going to be any fun at all—it is going to take somebody with a lot of policy experience to dig us out of this hole. Only through some very hard, tedious work on the economy are we going to be able to set things straight in order to build the economic foundation for more broad-based progressive reforms later on. Bear in mind that I was an integral part of the most economically successful administration in recent American history—we dug our way out of one Bush recession, and I know the people and the policies that will help us dig out of another.” Obama might be the ideal President for good economic times, but at the moment, we need a nose-to-the-grindstone technocrat. Obama’s great, but we can wait.

Posted by Jaffer | February 15, 2008 5:06 AM

If dems had a winner take all system instead of the allocation system they use, Hillary would have 1028 pledged delegates and obama would have 1006 pledged delegates. That is without Michigan and Florida.
Hillary's campaign is not fundamentally flawed.
She and her people built a campaign that was ready to fight most problems. It wasn't specifically designed to beat Obama because realistically he was just one of her fellow challengers for the nomination a year and a half ago.
Her campaign designed a way of raising money for every kind of situation except the astonishing situation we have right now. No one could have anticipated needing more than 100 million a year or 18 months ago. Her fundraising situation compared to Dems 4 years ago or eight years ago or 12 years ago is remarkable.
Her ability to raise money swamped edwards, dodd, biden, etc.
They did tiny things wrong and the situation in the public arena right now means that these tiny missteps have cost her tremendously. It could have easily gone another way. Her gaffes could have been bigger, and obama was only a gaffe away from losing stem. The press might still turn on him. Inevitability looks as unattractive on him as it did on Hillary months ago.

Posted by Michael C. | February 15, 2008 8:47 AM

(1) Aim to neutralize his superior historical position on Iraq by becoming a superior expert on today's Iraq. Speak at length and in detail about Iraq's political and security situation so as to display true expertise. Don't worry if some listeners are falling asleep.

(2) Hillary is [was] the default candidate. The less-informed, less-educated voters are not going to switch to Obama before the more-educated ones do. Less-informed people are not early adopters. Develop a posture with greater appeal to the more educated primary and caucus voters. This means more beefy policy analysis and substantive articulateness on healthcare options, Iraq, etc. Obama is wining over the educated voters without such beef, but that's not Hillary's route.

(3) Aim to be a vigorous contestant in all caucus states (not just Iowa). Among other things this again includes aiming to reach or retain the better-educated sorts of voters.

(4) Leave Bill out of her speeches and image-making. Polls show that Democrat voters have a positive view of Bill, alright. But that's not sufficient reason to bring him into her picture any further than he automatically is. She must be clearly positioned as running on her own two feet. Deliberately bringing Bill into her image-making undermines that.

Posted by seanwal111 | February 15, 2008 12:17 PM

Act a lot warmer, but dress a lot colder.

The first means training with a speech coach or something to learn to connect to audiences, and actually caring about people when you meet them in person. Actions are also important -- everybody in the campaign should be instructed on courtesy, tipping, and so forth to keep from giving a sour impression.

As for the dress issue, at least TRY to look like an executive. This means subtle suits with skirts, excellent (and expensive) tailoring, and serious accessories. No pink or red, no tapestry, and no turtlenecks unless the men are wearing them too. And even then maybe not... business casual is a lot harder for women to pull off. The idea is to have men look at her and see a Commander in Chief, not a middle class suburban wife who sells real estate. Women will still see a woman, but it's better in this case if men don't.

And keep Bill out of it. He can only hurt at this point.

Posted by M.C. | February 15, 2008 12:29 PM

I'd like to posit the idea that Hillary hasn't run a horrible campaign. Her campaign wins in almost any situation. If Hillary had run in 2004 we'd be looking at a Hillary re-election campaign. She's simply run into a once in a lifetime storm of events: historical circumstances (7 years of the worst Presidency in 100 years) meeting an intelligent, charismatic new face (Obama) who offers America a chance for historic reconciliation. Sometimes things are beyond control.

Posted by Dan in CA | February 15, 2008 2:24 PM

Move to Chicago in 2000 and run for governor.

Does anyone pay any attention to election schedules? The Ill gov. race was in 2002, not 2000. Was she going to run a 2 year campaign? Was she just going to be campaigning, with nothing else? Does no one understand that Illinois is still a machine politics state on both sides of the aisle? You all may as well have suggested that she move to Mexico and run for president in 2000 as move to Illinois and run for any statewide office.

Posted by zaleriana | February 15, 2008 2:39 PM

Hello, Marc, commenters-

Obviously, this question by Marc has provoked a lot of interest, as we're at well over a hundred responses as of this writing. Here are my two cents on this question:

It's important to remember that in this scenario (October 2007) the "inevitability" aura was very powerful. In fact, HRC's lead would stretch well into November. Look at the numbers for October/November on Pollster:

http://www.pollster.com/08-US-Dem-Pres-Primary.php

As you can see, HRC remained in the high 40s, on the whole, while Obama was mired in the mid 20s. In the latest days of Marc's October scenario, multiple Halloween-time polls reflected a HRC lead of well over 20 points.

So the public and media belief in HRC's invincibility (which I, no more clairvoyant than anyone else, also shared at the time) within the nomination process was completely understandable. It's equally understandable that the HRC high command believed it, especially given the fact that their internal polling was undoubtedly telling them the same thing that the public polls were.

But in Marc's scenario, the high command is coming to us, already realizing that Obama, despite the polls, is a long-term threat, and asking for strategy.

The best answer I could give them would be "there really isn't much you can do about it." Here's why-

Obviously, the HRC high command members have been heavily criticized for how the campaign has been run. However, I believe that HRC's image problems - and the "Clinton fatigue" that by definition come with them - has had a much greater impact on her fate than anything that the high command could have done, or not done.

When there is a candidate as well known as HRC in a presidential cycle.... the campaign is pretty much stuck with that mixture of pluses and minuses...

In contrast, then the candidates aren't as well-known, I think the campaigns per se can make a much greater impact, since the candidate can be introduced to the voters and media. But HRC has been a prominent figure in American politics for 15 years, with an indelible image, and all of the positives and negatives that flow from that...

Posted by ElectionNightHQ.com (McCain site) Publisher | February 15, 2008 5:02 PM

I think the comments about Hillary's clothes are bizarre. Any opinions about Mac Cain's clothes? Obama's? Don't you agree that Lincoln's baggy mortician suits sent the wrong message?
She wears business suits. get used to it. Her and Pelosi wear lots of color. get used to it.
Why should she wear skirts? to show off fat ankles? No thanks, I'd wager.

On another note, I read Timothy Egan's The worst hard Time over the past couple days and Roosevelt's nomination came on the third ballet at the convention after an equally disasterous republican administration. it was a bruising nomination fight according to Egan and Roosevelt was able to unite the country in the general and afterwords even with very high negatives and the burden of a famous dynastic name that tied him to another not so distant administration which also had high negatives. That being true, the press should have played this a lot more evenly.

Posted by Michael C. | February 16, 2008 8:52 PM

Remember that this a DEMOCRATIC primary-run distinctly to Obama's left, which means locking down the key domestic and foreign policy issues:
1) Offer Medicare For All/Single Payer as the model for healthcare reform.
2) Take Richardson's position on Iraq and call for complete withdrawal, no hemming and hawing about residual forces.

Posted by Ice Grilled Cheese | February 18, 2008 2:08 AM

Off The Grid # 2: An Anti-Obama Strategy

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