Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the Presidency is over: eleven straight electoral losses, a failure to score a home run in last night’s debate, and the polls show she’s running neck-and-neck with Obama in Ohio and Texas.
So, what happened?
For one thing, you can’t escape your past, and I don’t mean Whitewater and Bill Clinton’s peccadillos.
Obama continues to get standing ovations every time he attacks Senator Clinton’s support of NAFTA and the war in Iraq, and he mentions these frequently.
If anything, it’s a mystery to me why her support of offshoring American jobs to India also hasn’t hit the fan (Clinton is the co-chair of the U.S. Senate India Caucus).
A second reason is that based on the performance of her campaign, Hillary Clinton, who has never actually run an organization, is a piss-poor chief executive.
After Gore and Kerry, it’s been almost refreshing to see that a Democrat, Obama, is capable of running a good campaign. On the other hand, Clinton’s staff have generally done a horrible job in all respects, literally snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
Clinton hasn’t been able to cash in on favors from fellow Democrats, control the media or prevent her own staff’s hemorrhaging of cash. In a recent solicitation for funds, she admits herself that Obama outspent her 4:1 in Wisconsin. After 11 consecutive electoral losses, why she hasn’t fired Mark Penn is beyond my simpleminded understanding, unless she’s afraid he’ll turn into another Dick Morris.
A third reason is that Clinton’s legislative achievements are minimal. For all her talk about “experience”, her actual accomplishments are few. On the other hand, I’ve read some pretty good arguments that Obama has more substance than he’s given credit for.
Looking at all this, I’ve come to the conclusion that sexism has less to do with Hillary Clinton’s recent failures than, well, incompetence. Newsweek speculates that she’s prepping already for 2012, and perhaps that’s so. Her final remarks at last night’s debate certainly sounded valedictory (“I’m proud to be here with Barack Obama.”)