LA Times: How did the Clinton campaign get here? Rival Fiefdoms

[RamboLiberal]

As they mapped out a campaign schedule for Bill Clinton, top aides to Hillary Rodham Clinton kept his time short in South Carolina. They were probably going to lose the state, they figured, and they wanted their most powerful surrogate to move on to Georgia, Alabama and other Southern states.

But the former president shelved the plan, according to campaign aides. Day after day he stayed in South Carolina, getting into angry confrontations with the press and others. In the end, Hillary Clinton lost the Jan. 26 vote there by a 2-to-1 margin and saw her standing with African Americans nationwide become strained.

Hillary Clinton may be one of the most disciplined figures in national politics, but she has presided over a campaign operation riven by feuding, rival fiefdoms and second-guessing of top staff members.

Those tensions partly explain why Clinton today stands where, just a few months ago, few expected she'd be: struggling to catch up to Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination. If she loses either of the crucial contests Tuesday in Texas and Ohio, Clinton may face calls from senior party officials to end her campaign.

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As the campaign faces a make-or-break moment, some high-level officials are trying to play down their role in the campaign. Penn said in an e-mail over the weekend that he had "no direct authority in the campaign," describing himself as merely "an outside message advisor with no campaign staff reporting to me."

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-clintoncamp3mar03,0,5417931.story

How is she going to run the country on Day One when she couldn't even control her own campaign staff & Bill?

And the Rovian jerks in her campaign like Penn and Wolfson have completely turned this Democrat off!

[SoFlaJet]

1. this campaign

is going to be the punchline for a joke for decades to come whenever anybody wants to cite as an example a campaign blowing a lead they should have long ago won-congratulations Hillary-you have become a national joke

[blm]

5. This same team spread the word in the party that blamed Gore and Kerry while they had

been the ones undermining both campaigns.

Now, many Dems who were undercut by this crew for years are showing up to protect Obama's flank.

Now they know who the enemy really is - they were never fighting just BushInc - they were in fact, fighting against Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton Inc.

[SoFlaJet]

6. yea blm

it was never more clear to me as when Hillary came right out with John McCain as the first senators to criticize and demand an apology from John Kerry after he screwed up a punchline to a joke. I never liked her since-she was playing a strategic hand in trying to thin the herd of candidates for her coronation. I will be laughing with John Kerry tomorrow night when it becomes all too clear that it is finally over for her. Karma is a bitch and it's about to smack the Clinton campaign hard in it's lying mouth

[blm]

7. It's just sad that it took another 4 years of BushInc for TeamClinton to be seen for who they are

and I have no doubt that Obama will still experience some of their attempts to undermine him in order for McCain to win that matchup. Except MORE of us know better now. Clintons and their loyalists are increasingly outing themselves as saboteurs of the Dem party.

[snooper2]

2. While reading this...

I was reminded of when reading "Bush at War" by Woodward...

Him sticking his fingers in his ears doing whatever Rummy said, even though Condi, Bremer, others were fighting with him...

[Armstead]

3. She doesn't seem to have very good management skills

Does not play well with others.

That was also the case with her handling of healthcare.

She's an okay Senator. But she's a walking example of the Peter Principle. "Everyone rises to their own level of incompetance."

[snooper2]

4. The last part of the article is telling:

"At that point, Henry asked if the campaign had learned anything from its defeats. It should be clear, he said, that voters want to see a more human side of her.

"This is not bringing out the humanity in her," Henry said, according to people present.

Penn countered that the reason for many of her defeats, particularly in smaller states, had been a lack of organization, not the message -- a swipe at Henry and others in field work.

In the end, Clinton backed Penn. Henry left the campaign. And Clinton has been casting herself as someone in the "solutions business" -- a message she repeats as she makes a stand in Ohio and Texas.

The campaign dubbed her final weekend appearances in Texas and Ohio "Solutions for America" rallies.

" 'Solutions for America,' " one campaign aide said. "It sounds like something you'd buy at the pharmacy.""