Howard Fineman: What the heck happened to Hillary? Reasons for the former front-runner's travails

[Amerigo Vespucci]

What the heck happened to Hillary?
A list of reasons for the former front-runner's travails



By Howard Fineman
MSNBC
updated 12:40 p.m. PT, Mon., Jan. 7, 2008

Much of Hillary’s travail is her fault, but some of it is just bad luck and bad timing – not to mention the presence of two skilled foes in Obama and former Sen. John Edwards. Here is my short list of reasons for her travails:

Hiring the topmost insiders
Hillary underestimated the hunger for change outside the Beltway. Nothing proved that more than the professionals she chose to run her campaign. They were brilliant, but had grown wealthy in their work and perhaps had lost a fingertip feel for the urgency and everyday fear that grips most of middle-class America these days.

Running on experience
The fact is, she doesn’t really have that much experience that is truly hands-on as an official. It was too easy for her opponents to question its validity.

Ignoring Obama
In some ways, Obama isn’t quite the outsider and systematic change agent that he claims to be. Yes he is an African-American who now calls the South Side of Chicago home – and that will always make him an outsider to some extent. In many other ways, however, he is just a new wave of what Bill and Hillary were years ago – an on-the-make, Ivy League-educated, Democratic lawyer eager to seize power in Washington. If Hillary was going to say that, she needed to have done it months ago. She did not.

Waiting too long to get specific
The Clintonistas held a conference call yesterday to point out some relevant things: that Obama’s New Hampshire co-chair was a drug-company lobbyist; that the senator had vehemently opposed the Iraq war but then voted repeatedly to fund it; that he had said he wanted to scrap the Patriot Act and start over, but then voted for it. As I listened to the conference call, I couldn’t for the life of me understand why the Clinton folks didn’t highlight these and other items much earlier. By the time they did so, it was too late. You can’t do things by half in politics; if you are going to go after an opponent you have to do it with gusto.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22539570/

[ursi]

1. I'm not feeling the specifics. Just alot of marketing.

[Tom Rinaldo]

2. "I couldn’t for the life of me understand why the Clinton folks didn’t highlight these...

...and other items earlier".

Obama won the battle of spin early on regarding going negative. That's why he had a domain already picked out "DesperateHillaryAttacks.com". Clinton was coasting toward victory in the early Summer when all of the candidates were still mostly playing nice to each other. I remember the media reports at the time of how much more civil the Democrats were being with each other than Republicans. She got suckered. I wrote a blog piece about this dynamic. It's in my Journal; "The Negative of Being Hillary".