Watching It Slip Away

by Steve Soto

While the center-left blogosphere entertains itself with the virtually irrelevant debate over whether or not Hillary’s campaign wanted MSNBC’s David Shuster fired, the cemented-in-place narrative continues, whereby everything about Obama is fresh and new, and everything about Hillary takes on the appearance of a lumbering machine about to run out of gas. The real stories this weekend are Obama’s latest triumphs in Washington, Louisiana, Nebraska, and now today Maine; and today’s departure of Hillary’s campaign manager. Obama swept all weekend contests, and given that most they were caucuses this was not a surprise. Still, he swept them with a large and motivated turnout.

Hillary for her part has pulled in $10 million online since Super Tuesday, almost exclusively from new and small donors, which sends two signals of significance: Why didn’t the campaign focus on such fundraising like this back in January when it was out raised almost 3-1 by the Obama campaign; and secondly, what does it say about the race that she is pulling in so much “desperation money” with Obama threatening to become the front runner?

The departure of campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle and replacement with former Hillary chief-of-staff Maggie Williams also raises several issues. It may very well be that Solis Doyle had put in her time and was due the opportunity for family’s sake to step aside. But why didn’t she leave after the good news from New Hampshire and on a high note, instead of leaving now after South Carolina and at a time when Obama has seized the narrative and momentum? The conventional wisdom from the media and even know-nothings like me has been that Hillary had an A-List campaign team with Mark Penn, Solis Doyle, and Howard Wolfson. In truth, there wasn’t one decent strategist among them.

To me, this move simply looks too much like the Kerry mistake of 2004, when he changed campaign managers very early in the race but picked the ill-suited Mary Beth Cahill from Ted Kennedy’s team to be the national manager. National campaigns for president are not opportunities to install friends and confidants, but should rather be about installing A-list strategists and people with a track record of winning campaigns and beating opponents. Hillary gets neither of these things with Solis Doyle and now Williams, neither of whom have run a national or even regional campaign. And Hillary has gotten nothing from using Penn as a strategist and pollster, except a campaign on the wrong side of the narrative, and $5 million for Penn so far.

I am not tied into the campaign and haven’t been in the loop with them for months, so I can only write from what I see. Obama's campaign has had a better fundraising strategy than Team Clinton. Her campaign failed to set a narrative that she was a president-in-waiting representing real change from the Republicans and Bush, while holding her Democratic opponents at bay as a pack of lesser challengers. And when the Obama campaign successfully pricked Team Clinton into overreacting, the resulting carnage seemingly bore only Team Clinton's fingerprints, albeit with the media's assistance. It all may sound like Monday morning quarterbacking now, but a decent national strategist and managerial team would have game-planned all likely scenarios months ago and the likely media behavior; run a Tier One/Tier Two effort against opponents while Hillary stayed above it all with a base-pleasing focus on Bush and the GOP record; and had a fundraising machine set up that wouldn’t have been out raised nearly 3-1 by your only remaining opponent weeks before Super Tuesday.

But that's just me talking . . .