Redstate

Posted at 8:18pm on Jun. 7, 2008 So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehn, Goodbye . . .

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

Whatever else happens during the course of this election cycle, we have already won one victory. And by "we," I mean "all of us."

Here it is: The Clintons have been sidelined from the fast track to power.

I write this knowing that Barack Obama will make a significantly tougher opponent against John McCain than will Hillary Clinton. Yes, I know of the demographic suppositions that state that Hillary would have been the stronger Democratic nominee given her wider appeal in the Midwest and in some of the southern states. I don't buy it, though. As the primary and caucus season has shown, the Clintons' campaign machine has a propensity to sputter and halt in all of the wrong places. They go through money like most people go through socks. The campaign staff is disorganized and dysfunctional in its intra-staff relations. And the candidate herself is flawed.

She is flawed because she campaigns not for some great cause, but for herself. Just herself. Only herself. Sure, she has her policy interests--health care being the most prominent example--but at the end of the day, Hillary Clinton was, is and always shall be in politics for Hillary Clinton alone. Power is her central organizing principle and always has been. She came into the race as "the inevitable nominee" and was determined to run her campaign as if it was a coronation. She was clearly shocked, outraged and offended that Barack Obama, in his upstart way, elbowed her aside and captured the prize she had lusted after for so long.

Of course, at the end of the day, it should surprise no one that Obama was able to win the Democratic nomination instead of Hillary. He had a far better organization than she did and the people in his organization both understood the rules surrounding the Democratic Presidential nomination process better than Hillary's team did and was filled with fewer prima donnas, thus ensuring that the focus would always remain on Obama rather than on any drama within his staff structure. Meanwhile, the Clinton campaign was subsumed in ignorance surrounding the nomination process, couldn't use the fundraising structure of the Democratic Party or the Internet nearly as well to stay competitive financially and regularly drowned out Clinton's message with stories of fights between Harold Ickes and Mark Penn, Harold Ickes and Patti Solis Doyle, Mark Penn and Patti Solis Doyle, Bill Clinton and everybody on the planet and . . . well, you get the picture.

Obama's "Hope and Change" campaign message is a shallow and empty one when examined closely. But credit where it is due; it is a message. What was Hillary Clinton's message? "Elect me because I was a First Lady and it would be really really cool if a former First Lady could be elected as the first female President of the United States." When it became clear that this approach was . . . er . . . less than optimal, she tried on various different personae; the "Fighter," the "Populist" the "Woman Who Survived Sniper Fire at the Airport in Tuzla." None of these approaches worked because they were so transparently fake and some were even faker than others. Voters, not being stupid, saw through the whole charade. The rest is history.

Read on . . .

Posted in 2008 | Hillary Clinton | Loser — Comments (8)/ Email this page » / Read More »