What Hillary Clinton Should Do To Survive February

Mark Halperin, who remains forever mired in looking at the horse race in politics and ignoring the big picture, gives a list of 10 Things Clinton Can Do to Survive February, complete with the Rambo Hillary picture above. If I were to give Clinton advice, I might start with ignoring Mark Halperin. His advice is so poor I really cannot decide if this is another example of a poorly written piece by Halperin or if he is being sarcastic in suggesting these things. While I’m not sure if Halperin is serious, I see via Memeorandum that the usual Hillary worshipers including Taylor Marsh do take this seriously. The fact that they see these things as desirable tells a lot about the type of people who support Hillary Clinton.

Some of the items may or may not help. We’ve seen changes in campaign managers help John Kerry and Ronald Reagan in the past, and perhaps it will help Clinton. I’m not so sure of this as the major problems that the Clinton campaign faces is the poor judgment and lack of ethics of their candidate. Beyond that, the campaign faces a major problem since the main reason they have given to vote for Clinton was that she is the inevitable winner. Now that she has fallen behind in delegates won in primaries and caucuses, this argument is lost. It may be too late to convince people of any other reason to vote for her.

When desperate, Clinton has resorted to concentrating on women who will vote for her because she is a women, and trying to scare whites away from voting for Obama. Clinton has already gone as far as she can on gender based voting, and her campaign’s race baiting has failed. That knocks out two of Halperin’s suggestions.

Halperin suggests that she “Keep making the case that caucuses are less democratic and more disenfranchising than primaries.” Matthew Yglesias has done a good job of mocking the Clinton spin on this. Clinton’s excuses for why Obama’s victories don’t count matter less and less the more Obama wins.

Halperin suggests fighting for the Florida and Michigan delegates as well as getting more super delegates. This comes down to stealing the election by changing the rules after the fact, or winning it in the back rooms. Winning either way means lots of angry Democrats, including myself, who will not vote for her in November.

Getting John Edwards’ endorsement will help a little, but his delegates remain free to do what they choose. We’ve seen this year, as in 2004, how little endorsements really matter.

Winning Wisconsin will help, but the question remains how to stop Obama’s momentum. None of this advice will bring about actual victories for Clinton. Clinton might be able to pull in more internet contributions than she did before Super Tuesday. Since she made virtually no effort at this earlier, this is anl area where the campaign can improve, even if they can’t compete with Obama.

Ultimately none of this is likely to work because the Clinton campaign is saddled with a candidate who has been wrong on the issues, and has shown herself to lack the character of someone who deserves to be elected president.

4 Comments

  1. 1
    Michael Schaeffer says:

    So why all this “advice” for Hillary, who wants her to win anyway. She and Bill will twist super delagate arms and other body parts to try to steal the election from the obvious popular choice. Take into consideration how disenfranchised the young voters will feel. All the ones that have been excited by Obama, that are voting in record numbers in the primaries – will not bother to vote in the general election if Hillary and Bill pull the shennanigans we al expect them to pull. They only way McCain wins the election is if Bill and Hillary continue to be .. BIll and Hillary.

  2. 2
    gracie taylor says:

    Much has been made of the “Obama’s the caucus guy, not the primary guy” kind-of talk. Some research here, folks, is below. The truth is Obama and Clinton have won the same number of primaries.However, Clinton has one only one caucus. The truth is that Clinton simply is not able to organize a ground campaign good enough to win caucus while Obama is such an outstanding executive that he can win both. So Clinton’s just sour grapes (she certainly hasn’t minimized her one solitary Nevada caucus win):

    Obama Primary Winners (9 altogether):
    South Carolina
    Alabama
    Connecticut
    Illinois
    Missouri
    Utah
    Louisiana
    Delaware
    Georgia

    Clinton’s Primary Winners (9 altogether):
    New Hampshire
    Arizona
    California
    Massachusetts
    New Jersey
    New York
    Oklahoma
    Tennessee
    Arkansas

    Obama’s Caucus Winners (9 altogether):
    Iowa
    Alaska
    Colorado
    Idaho
    Kansas
    Minnesota
    North Dakota
    Nebraska
    Washington

    Clinton’s Caucus Winners (1 altogether):
    Nevada

    Uncontested or Inconclusive at this writing:
    Florida
    Michigan
    Maine
    New Mexico

  3. 3
    Ron Chusid says:

    Also consider that Illinois was a home state win for Obama, but in addition to New York, she had home field advantage in New Jersey, which shares considerable media with New York, and Arkansas. These still count as wins for Clinton, but this helps increase the perception that she does better than Obama in primary states when other factors are at play.

    Obama won Maine decisively. Clinton won the popular vote in Nevada but Obama own the most delegates–which Clinton’s own campaign had previously said was the important thing. In terms of delegates New Hampshire was also a tie.

  4. 4
    Gloria says:

    I fill that Clinton in her speachs explain . That the U.S. was once in bad shape with economy. That was when we was in the great depression . In those years we had the most important president . F.D.R. , got us out of the depression with the C.C.Camps & other govenment groups . He started , to give people jobs .Also got alot of things done !

    Some of these places have never been repaired since they was built ! Clinton should tell voters that she would be like F.D.R . The only president to be voted in 4 terms, was F.D.R.
    when she tells these storys , it will make all the older voters to go her way !

Leave a comment