As worries rise, Hillary Clinton camp says stick to the plan (read like a post mortem)
These days, Hillary Rodham Clinton and her senior campaign staff sound like old-school investment advisers when the market has a stomach-lurching drop: Remain calm, they say. Don’t panic. And stick to the plan.
Faced with her worst poll ratings since she was losing badly to Barack Obama in 2008, Clinton is doubling down on a strategy laid out months ago. As drawn up by campaign manager Robby Mook and others when Clinton was seemingly invincible, the prospectus is a detailed month-by-month, state-by-state strategy to roll out serious policy proposals, raise a prohibitive amount of money, lock up Democratic delegates and woo members of her party’s disaffected left.
It was designed to win what had been presumed to be a somewhat dull primary without looking too presumptuous. Now Clinton has a full-on fight on her hands against a surging Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and faces the possibility that Vice President Biden will make a late entrance. Biden sits at roughly 20 percent in recent polls, and most of that support appears to come from erstwhile Clinton voters.
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Top campaign aides have told nervous supporters in recent days that none of the bad news is an argument to veer from the plan or lose heart. Mook does some of the hand-holding himself, telling donors that as the 2016 race gels this fall and winter, the “fundamentals” he has set in place will be a bedrock no other candidate on either side of the race can match.
Press secretary Brian Fallon describes the campaign’s approach as “heads down, marching forward, onward and upward.”
If that does not sound very cheerful, Fallon and other Clinton aides and associates suggest patience and a deep breath.
“There is always going to be second-guessing of any strategy,” and the test is whether the strategy falls apart under that scrutiny, Fallon said, that “when adversity arises, that you not deviate from the plan, that you stick it out, remain confident and ride out whatever turbulence you may encounter.”
The original plan assumed that Clinton would easily dispatch a challenge from her left before moving on to the general-election contest, where her center-left views, long résumé and hawkish national security credentials would have broad appeal.
Advisers did not seriously contemplate that Clinton could lose to the dark-horse Sanders in New Hampshire or Iowa, as current polling suggests she could, or that her perceived weakness would be an invitation to Biden.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/as-worries-rise-hillary-clinton-camp-says-stick-to-the-plan/2015/09/15/8c5ada86-5bde-11e5-8e9e-dce8a2a2a679_story.html
Good read on what is going wrong ans how HIllary's Camp is not fixing it (even if they could).
= new reply since forum marked as read
