Once again we see that the whole world revolves around Hillary Clinton. Even the Edwards scandal is about Hillary, at least according to former Clinton Communications Director Howard Wolfson. According to ABC News. Wolfson says that Clinton would have won in Iowa, and therefore won the nomination, if Edwards had been exposed earlier and forced from the race.
Wolfson believes that, “Our voters and Edwards’ voters were the same people.” Maybe, but I don’t think Clinton could have counted on such votes. There was a similarity in terms of both taking a more populist economic tone. While Edwards courted many of the same voters as Clinton, he never really caught on with such groups and many of his actual supporters would have likley prefered Obama.
In making this assessment, Wolfson, as with the rest of the Clinton campaign, fails to realize how strong the anyone but Clinton sentiment was among many voters. As the article points out, after Edwards dropped out, Obama won eleven straight contests in a row. This is ignored by the Clinton campaign and her supporters, who have generally been in denial as to how how Obama actually beat Clinton in the vote, as many remain convinced that somehow Obama stole the nomination or had it handed to him by party insiders.
ABC also notes that Iowa was never a very hospitable state to Clinton, partially due to her support for the war which likely would have caused many Edwards supporters to back Obama over Clinton. They note:
In May 2007, Mike Henry, then Clinton’s deputy campaign manager, thought the terrain so hostile to Clinton he wrote a memo to “propose skipping the Iowa caucuses and dedicating more of Senator Clinton’s time and financial resources on the primary in New Hampshire on January 22, the Nevada caucus on January 19, the primaries in South Carolina and Florida on January 29, and the 20 plus state primaries on February 5th.”
The idea that Clinton could have won in Iowa sounds like yet another Clinton fairytale. This campaign was Clinton’s to lose as she began with all the advantages. They lost due to both a poorly run campaign and due to having a candidate who repeatedly demonstrated that she was unfit to be president. Blaming external factors, as they have thorughout the campaign, does not change this.
