E.J. Dionne, Jr. — of all people — traces the ills of Sen. Hillary’s Clinton’s supposedly “inevitable” candidacy to bad organization:
The major flaw in the early story line is that there never was a Clinton machine in the sense of a well-populated organization skilled at turning out votes. Clinton campaigns have always been top-down operations focused on message and media. The Clintons have never lived in a world of precinct captains.
Obama, by contrast, was shaped by his early work as an organizer for the Industrial Areas Foundation and his political life in Chicago, a place where people still talk about ward committeemen and harbor memories of something that was called “The Organization.”
While the Clintonites dispensed large amounts of cash on polling, media and the other accoutrements of a modern campaign, Obama combined postmodern online savvy with old-fashioned organizing.
***
Organizing costs money, and it’s now clear that Obama not only spent his cash more shrewdly, he also adapted better to the new world of political fundraising.
Joshua Green – who had a piece on Hillaryland infighting spiked by GQ magazine under pressure from Bill — notes that the Clinton complacency also blinded them to the fact that “the world of political fund-raising had changed dramatically since Bill Clinton had last run for president, in a way that put a premium on different kinds of fund-raisers than the ones to which the Clintons had ties… With Hillaryland in silent mode, Obama got first crack at those donors.”
Hillary has now thrown her “alter ego,” free-spending manager Patti Solis Doyle under the campaign bus, but (as Green notes) , she was never Hillary’s Karl Rove — that spot is occupied by pollster-strategist Mark Penn. One certainly might ask whether having a pollster in that position resulted in a campaign more focused on message and media than organization.
Penn remains in his chair, fighting ad-maker Mandy Grunwald over whether Hillary’s ads are deficient in their execution or their message.
As it turns out, Dionne weighs in on that topic as well:
You can tell a campaign has difficulty establishing a message when its slogans keep changing. In recent weeks, the Clinton campaign has featured one banner after another: “Big Challenges, Real Solutions,” “Working for Change, Working for You,” “Ready for Change, Ready to Lead” and “Solutions for America.”
Obama has stuck confidently with the slogan “Change We Can Believe In.” Clinton must either get voters to stop believing in the change Obama promises, or make them an alternative Big Offer that they can believe in more.
It would be unfair, however, to lay all of the blame with Mark Penn. A campaign’s theme (or themes, though usually the fewer the better) should reflect the rationale of the campaign. Sen. Barack Obama’s relentless focus on hope, change and the future may be illusory and doomed to fail if he is nominated and elected — but it is is clear and reinforced by the fact that he is a fresh face not tied to the partisan bickering of the past.
In contrast, Bill Clinton — in trying to point out that Obama is selling a mirage – managed to blunder in the execution sufficiently to allow Camp Obama to proclaim:
“It appears that the man who once told us ‘Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow’ has changed his tune and is now singing ‘Yesterday’ everywhere he goes.”
It is the sort of blunder that occurs when the candidate does not have a rationale beyond “inevitability” – the pithy slogan for which is: “it’s my turn.”
Hillary also pissed away her moves to be seen as non-surrendery on Iraq. She went over there and played CIC in training even and still she thinks it’s to her benefit to play down the issue now and make like there’s no space between her and Baracky on the issue. Foreign policy is the best foil for Baracky’s parochial naive platitudey ignorant dumbfuckness and she just let it go except for some garbled thing about not talking to a bunch of dictators like the first week she’s in office.
I really couldn’t tell you one issue on which they are substantially different.
Excellent work as usual, Karl.
I’ll admit up front that the following is a bit simple minded but…The Clintons’ reliance on message and both gladhanding and arm barring the media always had a feel of “I’m the smartest person you know.” Bill pulled that off in the 90’s and, quite frankly, was brilliant at it. Those townhall meetings used to amaze me in his preternatural ability to connect with those questioners, giving them not only a sense of his personal “caring” but the heady blowtorch of his ginormous intellect. Hillary, in her “35 years of service” also made the case for being the other smartest person in race, but without the personal connection.
Unfortunately for her she’s facing a guy who thinks he’s the smartest person in the race and connects personally with his hopeful changyness and has a master’s degree in ward politics and on line cash grabbing. Suddenly, Bill seems a lot dumber when he’s making lame-o cracks about Obama’s “establishment” credentials while trying to tout Hillary as that smartest person because of her “experience.” He and the rest of the campaign have forgotten that Bill’s rise was on the perceptions of brains, caring and hope (with a big assist to Bush’s percieved economic indifference and Ross Perot’s insurgency.) Very few people in either of those elections cared about his experience.
Barack has successfully painted the picture of smarter, personable and hopeful while Hillary continues to beat the tattered drum of experience, toughness and “It’s my turn!!!” I recognise that there are some serious generalizations being thrown out here but, just like Michelle Obama, I feel it!
Picking between those 2 is like picking between Communism and Socialism. Either way, it ends badly.
I think the Hillary folks thought that eventually everyone else would begin to see what they saw in Hill. But in the end, it looks like they finally saw in her what we saw in the Clintons a long time ago.
What Hillary’s campaign is, she is.
I’d also like to add that I think Hillary and Bill have many virtues, namely, all the ones necessary to be described as effing scumbags.
The complimentary gent I am, I’d also like to metaphorically invoke Yo La Tengo’s most famous CD title, “I am not afraid of you and I will beat your ass” to my friend Karl, whom I think is doing a fine of keeping the political debate rolling along. Thank you Karl.
“One certainly might ask whether having a pollster in that position resulted in a campaign more focused on message and media than organization.”
Even in that sense her campaign has had serious missteps in contrast to Obama’s. Their Christmas ads stand out the most in this regard–her obnoxious “universal pre-K” ad versus Obama’s statement that “the things that unite this country are far greater and more significant that the things that divide us.” Yeah, he might be a content-free fluffernutter, but he seems to be tapping into a general frustration with the politics of personal destruction that has defined the Clintons modus operandi for most of their time in the public sphere.
Perhaps had Hillary absorbed the lesson of giving people stuff without being specific as to what the stuff is or how it will be acquired her invitableness would be a juggernaut rather than a joke.
In recent weeks, the Clinton campaign has featured one banner after another
I hope my suggestion’s coming up soon: The Only Difference is the Little Outfits. And the Ears.
thor,
We may disagree on things, but not on Yo La Tengo!
Is Johnny Mac “Mr. Tough?”
Chicago, a place where people… harbor memories of something that was called “The Organization.â€Â
Now the garbage scows are stenciled, “Illinois Combine.”
Not to be sexist.. Well, okay, it is pretty sexist but, for a man being “experienced” carries positive connotations, for a woman not so much. That’s an issue the Clinton’s might better avoid.
That’s great smack right there. Props to Bill Burton for running it.
[…] has forgotten the middle class. For a campaign without a theme, she could do worse than to remember […]
His pimp hand is way calloused.
thor,
YLT is everywhere.
[…] cannot bring himself to suggest that much of Clinton’s failure as a candidate is due to a lack of organization and discipline. Indeed, the “success” the Clinton campaign enjoyed in Texas and Ohio was more […]
[…] Clinton’s campaign has changed its banner slogan frequently as it flailed along the campaign […]