Hillary's campaign advisor, Benenson, tells "How to Beat Hillary Clinton"

[GreatGazoo]

8 years ago HRC was assumed to be the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination even as she lost in Iowa (3rd) and other early primaries. One of the people on Obama's team has been hired by team Clinton this year, Joel Benenson. Benenson is the guy who yesterday said that 'Sander is running the most negative campaign' (hard to square that with Sanders' "America" ad but...)

Benenson was instrumental in writing the strategies that defeated Hillary in 2008 and this article explains indirectly why Benenson thinks that labeling Sanders as a "negative" campaigner will hurt him -- it something that worked for Obama when done in a subtle way but if it goes over a certain line it becomes counter-productive:

The next section was headlined, “The Fault Line: Hillary’s the Problem, Not the Answer,” and the strategists laid out the case against Clinton in stark terms, explaining that everything in Obama’s campaign, including his slogan—“Change you can believe in”—was meant to provide a contrast with Hillary, not on policy, but on character:

“Change you can believe in” was intended to frame the argument along the character fault line, and this is where we can and must win this fight. We cannot let Clinton especially blur the lines on who is the genuine agent of change in this election.

• The reason Clinton can’t be trusted or believed when it comes to change is that she represents, to a great degree, the three sources of discontent formulated in our premise.
• She’s driven by political calculation not conviction, regularly backing away and shifting positions on issues ranging from war, to Social Security, to trade, to reform.
• She embodies trench warfare vs. Republicans, and is consumed with beating them rather than unifying the country and building consensus to get things done.
• She prides herself on working the system, not changing it—rebuffing reforms on everything from lobbyist donations to budget earmarks.
...
Attacking Clinton as “driven by politics, not conviction” and arguing that she “puts preserving political power ahead of reliable principles or progress for the American people” was a tricky for Obama. After all, if he represented a new way of doing politics, he couldn’t sound like a traditional politician on the attack.
...
Another former senior Obama adviser argued that the same vulnerabilities that the Obama team seized upon still exist and are just waiting to be exploited by Bernie Sanders or Martin O’Malley or her other opponents. “Her greatest vulnerability in this primary is on shifting positions,” the former senior adviser said, adding that her recent announcement to oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which she previously supported, was a mistake. “Her decision on T.P.P. is a fairly significant error. She is going to get attacked either way, so she might as well get attacked while having a sincere position.”

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-to-beat-hillary-clinton


(In my experience, attempts to analyze strategy on DU always fail. They become a discussion over the messages that make up the strategy rather than the strategy itself, but I try again...)