Election 2008: Weekly Scorecard (2/11)

At long last, we had Super Tuesday! The MSM focused on how Super Tuesday led to a draw for Hillary and Obama, but largely missed the back story that Hillary’s campaign was completely unprepared for this result. By the end of the week, Obama swept 5 contests and seized the momentum. For the Republicans, McCain won enough delegates on Super Tuesday to effectively capture the nomination, as unhappy as that made the GOP’s base. Similarly for the GOP, the end of the week presented a shift as Huckabee won at least two of three contests (the third of which, Washington state, was being challenged by Huckabee).

Let’s get right to the grades (in order of most likely to succeed):

THE DEMOCRATS

First, with Super Tuesday and this weekend’s contests behind us, let’s tally the victories and margins of victory:

Obama – 20 Victories

Alabama +14
Alaska +50
Colorado +35
Connecticut +4
Delaware +10
Georgia +36
Idaho +62
Illinois+32
Iowa +9
Kansas +48
Louisiana +21
Maine +20
Minnesota +35
Missouri +1
Nebraska +36
North Dakota +24
South Carolina +32
Utah +18
USVI +83
Washington +37

Hillary – 10 Victories

Arizona +9
Arkansas +43
California +10
Massachusetts +15
Nevada +6
New Hampshire +3
New Jersey +10
New York +17
Oklahoma +24
Tennessee +13

To put Obama’s victories in perspective, it pays to remember where things stood just a few months ago, when he was behind by double digits across most Super Tuesday states. Hillary was the inevitable candidate with all of the advantages: name recognition, money, endorsements, party infrastructure, and Bill Clinton at her side. Under no circumstances did Hillary conceive during her early campaign strategy sessions that she would only fight to a tie on Super Tuesday and have to continue for weeks or months longer. She raised $175 million and expected her machine in the big states would prevail while her name recognition would carry the smaller states.

But tie she did. Obama won upset victories in Connecticut, Missouri, Minnesota, Delaware, and Colorado, and won decisively in states like Kansas and Georgia. Even in New Mexico, where Hillary dispatched Bill to watch the Super Bowl with popular governor Bill Richardson two days before the voting, the outcome is still too close to call a week later. She was completely outmaneuvered in the caucus states by Obama’s campaign. In addition, Obama closed the gap enough in larger states like New York, New Jersey, California and Massachusetts that it was able to hold his own, thanks to the proportionate allocation of delegates. His large victories in large states like Illinois (where Hillary was born) and Georgia also made gave him a significant amount of delegates.

As the results trickled in, Hillary tried to spin their victory in Massachusetts as an upset and used it to take cheap shots at Senator Ted Kennedy. But Massachusetts had always been a strong state for the Clintons, who vacationed there in Martha’s Vineyard during Bill’s presidency. Similarly with California, the Clintons were infamous during their presidency for the attention they lavished on the state. She held a steady double digit lead in most credible polls in both states before Super Tuesday.

The miscalculation was evident when Hillary announced the day after Super Tuesday that she made a personal loan of $5 million to the campaign and would stop paying senior staff (she later resumed payments).  Meanwhile, Obama raised $32 million in January among a much broader number of smaller contributors. On Sunday, Patti Solis Doyle resigned amid reports that the campaign had gambled financially on knocking out Obama on Super Tuesday by spending large sums in big states, too much on consultants and staff, and purchasing an hour on the Hallmark Channel on the eve of Super Tuesday.

As the weekend’s contests approached, Obama’s momentum grew. At the Virginia Democratic Party’s Jefferson Jackson Dinner in Richmond on Saturday night, both Obama and Hillary spoke. But it was Obama that stole the show. When Hillary began her remarks, word began to filter through the room that Obama was on his way to big victories in Louisiana, Nebraska, Washington State and the USVI. When she finished, the crowd chanted, “Obama! … Obama!” When he later arrived for his speech, he entered like the reigning heavy weight champion.

Here are Obama’s remarks that night:

The next day, Hillary announced the resignation of Patti Solis Doyle. Whether it was related to what was happening that day in Maine is not known, but Hillary was expected to do well. After all, she had won in neighboring New Hampshire and Massachusetts. And Maine has more blue collar demographics than those neighbors, which should have made it a stronger state for Hillary. But she lost by a shocking 20% in the end.

Flailing seems to be the best word to describe Hillary’s handling of the losses. Here’s Hillary’s contrived attempt to deliver something “today’s kids” that could counter the inspirational, viral “Yes We Can” music video. The first mistake was having the campaign try to pay staff to make a video — it’s a perfect reflection of the differences between the campaigns. Hillary’s is top-down and artificial. Obama’s is bottom up and inspirational. Interestingly, the video’s storyline involves Hillary abruptly abandoning her bandmates to pursue her goal of becoming president. Anything to get elected, I guess…

Later this week, Hillary likely faces three more significant losses in the Potomac Primary: DC, MD and VA. Victories in these states would give Obama a credible delegate lead as he heads into other favorable states like Wisconsin and Hawaii later in February. Hillary has staked out Ohio and Texas as her firewall on March 4th. The comparison to Giuliani’s disasterous “Florida Firewall” strategy is inescapable. Despite the Clintons feverish spinning of their prospects for nomination, Hillary never wanted to be in the position of sustaining 10 or more consecutive losses before she faces battle in Texas and Ohio. Indeed, there’s no reason to think that Hillary would face the same dismal fate as Guiliani — the relentless negative press surrounding each successive loss will grow and ultimately cause the vultures to circle over her campaign. By the time she gets to Ohio and Texas, her campaign could be a shadow of its former self.

As for the change from Patti Solis Doyle to Maggie Williams, I don’t see this making a huge difference. The real problem with Hillary’s campaign that isn’t fully appreciated in the MSM is that the same people who have been with her since the earliest days in the White House, supporting her through the Health Care Task Force debacle, remain her closest advisers on the campaign. Patti and Maggie were there, but so were Harold Ickes, Doug Sosnick, Steve Richetti and Melanne Verveer. Even Mark Penn goes back to the first term in the White House. Not only did they live through the HCTF war room and political disaster — a disaster that caused the Democrats to lose both houses of Congress and many state governorships and legislatures — but also Travelgate, Whitewater and the various bimbo eruptions. She’s been living in a bunker, surrounded by the same fiercely loyal aides. It’s an echo chamber. They are not going to say a cross word about her or give her honest criticism. Frankly, after all these years, they are incapable of seeing Hillary with the appropriately detached honesty necessary to keep her campaign grounded. She is approaching this campaign in the same way she managed the HCTF — top down, my way or the highway, with a dismissive view of any external challenges. She is obsessed with battling enemies, real and perceived, because that is the lesson she drew from the failed HCTF. It will be her undoing in her challenge from Obama.

By the way, she had a strange reaction to a question in a interview Monday night (2/11) by the local ABC affiliate in DC and the Politico. When asked if there was a risk of another damaging scandal involving Bill Clinton’s extra-marital conduct, Hillary said she was confident that would not happen, but “none of us can predict the future.” If Bill really has been living on the straight and narrow the last 7 years, then shouldn’t she be able to say without equivocation that that there’s no chance of such a scandal? What an odd hedge to make. Based on a rumor currently circulating among insiders, however, this hedge was understandable.

Ironically, the recent turn of events for Hillary, Obama and McCain owe as much to the Bush administration as anything else. After 7 years of Bush and Cheney’s divisive style of governing, the country is hungry for more inclusive and productive approach, both domestically and internationally. McCain, in contrast to Bush, at least presents some track record for working with Democrats to get things done. Obama’s whole campaign is premised on getting past the old politics of partisan battles. For Hillary, unfortunately, I think the voters are increasingly seeing her as a Democratic version of Bush/Cheney — more of the same divisive politics. She can’t see this because she has become a prisoner of her own “arrogant bunker mentality” (as Huckabee once said of Bush) and it’s simply too late for her to change.

Grades:

Obama: A

Hillary: C-

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THE REPUBLICANS

On Super Tuesday, Huckabee once again did McCain a favor by taking a significant portion of the cultural conservative vote from Romney, leaving Romney with only a few scattered wins. Under the GOP’s winner take all delegate awarding formula, this left Romney no choice but to drop out. With McCain picking up the lion’s share of the delegates, thanks to his victories in big states in the delegate rich Northeast, Midwest and California, suddenly the conservative base woke up to the horror that McCain was going to be their nominee.

The CPAC convention, which was going on at this time, afforded right wing Republicans a place to commiserate and and feed on their anger. After Romney dropped out, they held a straw poll in which Romney was victorious, which if nothing else revealed which stage of mourning they were in. By the weekend, the wounds clearly had not healed as Huckabee won contests in Louisiana, Kansas and drew to a controversial close decision in Washington State. The GOP of Washington State stopped counting votes at 83% with McCain and Huckabee within 2% of each other and called the race for McCain. I’m sure such an unprecedented act had nothing to do with the GOP establishment trying to avoid headlines in all the Sunday papers about McCain getting swept in three contests on Saturday in an act of rebellion by the base. In any event, between Ron Paul and Huckabee exceeding 20%, McCain was soundly outvoted in Washington State. As much as the GOP establishment wants to close ranks and focus on November, not all is well among the members of the old Reagan coalition.

But the next issue will be who McCain will select as his VP. With his age contrasting sharply with Obama’s, McCain must pick someone younger. In addition, someone with executive experience would round out his legislative record and further contrast with Obama. Perhaps most importantly, he needs to pick someone to make the core conservative base happy. Huckabee would meet this criteria, but he is completely unacceptable to the Wall Street elites and the fiscal conservative wings of the GOP. Romney might even meet this criteria (or at least did a good job acting like he met it), but it’s hard to see them arm and arm on the same stage, a la Clinton and Gore in ‘92, after all the well documented ill will between the two on the campaign trail. Giuliani has executive experience but his selection would only infuriate the religious right. Who does that leave – -Tim Pawlenty of MN? Haley Barbour of MS? It’s not looking good for the GOP.

John McCain

Grade: B-

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