The Nation: Clinton's Shakeup Indicative of Larger Slump

[marmar]

CLINTON'S SHAKEUP INDICATIVE OF LARGER SLUMP ...Imagine if Barack Obama had lost four contests in a row over the weekend and appeared likely to lose three more on Tuesday. He wouldn't just be replacing his campaign manager. His candidacy would, for all practical purposes, be done.

Such are the perks of being the frontrunner. Hillary Clinton can lose seven states in a row and remain in the race, with a very plausible shot at still capturing the nomination. After all, the Clintons are at their best when faced with adversity. But it will take more than replacing a campaign manager to counter the incredible momentum Barack Obama has begun to accumulate.

After all, Patti Solis Doyle--the exiled campaign manager--"had played a role that was more operational than conceptual," the Politico reported. Axing the campaign manager at this late stage, in a move that was in the works since New Hampshire, is similar to Clinton's argument for what went wrong in Iraq--it wasn't the war itself that was the problem but the way it was executed. A similar "incompetence dodge" narrative has now been spun about her campaign--the problem was how the message was assembled, not the message itself.

If Clinton was serious about fundamentally reorienting the campaign, she would have shown her chief strategist, Mark Penn, the door months ago. After all, it was Penn who packaged Clinton as a corporate-friendly, poll-driven technocrat, long on experience and short on inspiration.


Posted by Ari Berman at 02/11/2008 @ 12:35pm

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/campaignmatters?bid=45&pid=283475

[Hieronymus]

1. I'm in complete agreement, and yes, Mark Penn was a mistake.

[H2O Man]

2. Nominated.

Thank you for posting this.

[Recursion]

3. "They don't like her hair"

For all of their savvy, there's a disturbing blindness to uncomfortable facts from team Clinton, and has been since at least 92