Barack Obama Elected President!

[Adam]

Regardless what Hillary gets out of this, Barack Obama is still the presidential candidate, so I also don't see why voting for him is based on her status within a potential administration....

I mean she'd have clout, but he'd ultimately be the one making the decisions. Its a real shame what this race has done to the party. Its divided a party that had one united goal, to win back the White House. I still ultimately believe Obama will be the next president, but its not as much of a slam dunk as it was 6 months ago. Which is very, very distressing. 4 more years of the same policies will just continue to put the USA's standing within the world community down even further.

Canada and the world is watching.......

[Ryan]

One thing I can say about myself is I've grown since this entire primary season started. I went from someone who supported Hillary no matter what, to finding an alternative voice for me in Obama. I watched as this primary contest got nasty, and the party became split in many areas, and I refused to support Hillary, even threatening to vote Republican in November. But I realized what a mistake that would be. And realized that no matter my personal feelings in how this played out, I would be able to support either candidate to the White House.

I call that growth.

[Roman]

Posted on: Monday, 2 June 2008, 21:00 CDT

WASHINGTON _ Hillary Clinton's quest for the Democratic presidential nomination began with an air of inevitability and ended with the inevitable reality that she could never make up the ground she lost to Barack Obama through a series of miscalculations and wrong turns by her campaign.

As Clinton bowed out of the presidential sweepstakes, a number of campaign staffers and confidants close to the New York senator offered a postmortem on a campaign that started with $133 million war chest but ended millions in the red, that won the big state primaries but scoffed at delegate-rich caucus contests, that didn't have a Plan B after the Feb. 5 Super Tuesday contests failed to secure her nomination, that misread a country's mood and underestimated her young, upstart rival and his message of change.

"He measured the mood of the country; our message did not resonate, Barack's did," said one Clinton campaign official, who like others interviewed requested anonymity in order to speak frankly about why their candidate lost. "His message was at 30,000 feet; ours was at 5,000 feet. We had a much better candidate than we did a campaign."

Clinton herself had a hand in her loss, however. A candidate who claimed to be ready on Day One committed several gaffes on the stump. Her exaggerated claim of visiting Bosnia under sniper fire and her comment about her appeal to hardworking white people raised eyebrows and reinforced her already high negatives.

Some early decisions seemed to seal Clinton's fate. First was the strategy to run her as an incumbent, a White House insider with a firm grasp of the nuts and bolts of policy.

Several Clinton staffers and associates said, in hindsight, that they should have run a more traditional campaign that introduced the candidate to the public _ personally and politically _ instead of assuming that voters already knew everything about her.

They almost universally blame Mark Penn, Clinton's former chief campaign strategist, for advocating the strategy and misreading voters' desire for a fresh face in the White House.

A longtime Clinton confidant joined the Penn pile-on, saying that Penn ignored Clinton's biography early in the campaign in favor of pushing her as the inevitable Democratic nominee.

"People don't want to be told, `This is your nominee,'" the insider said. "He (Penn) had all these charts and graphs and polls that showed Obama wasn't going anywhere. He was wrong. He (Penn) is not the favorite of many people, and I'm one of them."

Clinton began talking more about her life story midway into the primary season, emphasizing her middle-class upbringing in suburban Chicago and her father's northeastern Pennsylvania roots.

"It was a general election campaign strategy, not a primary campaign strategy," the confidant said. "It's better to run someone who's not in the lead. People are all over the place with him (Penn)."

Several Clinton campaign staffers said they were slow to shift from the incumbent strategy because of what they said was poor management by former campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle.

"Who was really running things? I don't believe it was Bill Clinton, and it wasn't Patti Solis Doyle," a Clinton campaign insider said. "We knew what her role was: She was an administrator, not a political strategist."

Doyle, who served in the White House as Hillary Clinton's scheduler, didn't _ or couldn't _ keep Clinton's strong-willed brain trust in line, according to some campaign staffers.

Some also pointed fingers at Doyle, along with Penn, for not having a campaign strategy that extended beyond the Super Tuesday primaries after the multi-state contests failed to knock out Obama.

Clinton's campaign limped along after Feb. 5, low on money and ill-prepared for many of the states with contests after Super Tuesday

"The campaign manager _ Patti Solis Doyle _ was incapable of organizing the campaign," the staffer said. "There are a lot of strong personalities here: Penn, Harold Ickes, Mandy Grunwald. Patti was MIA (missing in action) in a lot of meetings here."

Maggie Williams, a longtime Clinton friend who served as her chief of staff in the White House, replaced Doyle in February, but some Clinton supporters said the switch might have been too late.

"We'd be in better shape if Maggie were here from the beginning," the Clinton campaign official said. "We would have pulled the trigger on our message earlier. It would have been a difference between night and day."

Williams managed to instill discipline in the campaign quickly, and she infused it with a sense of purpose, staffers said.

She also scrambled to improve the campaign's ground game in the post-Feb. 5 primary states, quickly opening offices and hiring staff members to counter Obama forces that were already there.

The switch in managers, however, was unable to overcome what some Clinton staffers called perhaps the campaign's most egregious blunder: dismissing the caucus states.

The Clinton camp thought that caucuses were attended by an elite few Democrats who didn't reflect the will of regular voters. Obama, on the other hand, had a caucus strategy that helped him rack up delegates.

"They kept pooh-poohing them, Ickes and (Clinton campaign chairman Terry) McAuliffe," the campaign insider said. " `Caucus states don't represent the people.' Hell, they had delegates, didn't they?"

The most damaging caucus state was Iowa, the insider said, because Obama's victory in a predominantly white state convinced African-American voters who were still deciding between Obama and Clinton that he could win the nomination.

Some campaign officials expressed mixed feelings about whether former President Clinton helped or hurt his wife's chances. Bill Clinton, at times, chastised Obama, the news media and younger voters on the campaign trail.

He outraged many African-Americans nationwide with what they viewed as attempts to inject race into the campaign, particularly during the South Carolina primary. Many thought that he tried to minimize Obama's victory in the Palmetto State by noting that Jesse Jackson had won the state when he ran for president.

The campaign eventually started dispatching the former president only to small towns and out-of-the-way venues.

"He made some mistakes sometimes and said things he shouldn't say," said the Clinton campaign official, who still thinks that deploying Bill Clinton was a good move. "He never meant anything malicious against Barack Obama, but he believes his wife would make a better president."

The campaign insider said that, in retrospect, perhaps it was a mistake to have the former president and his wife appear together at some events.

"We felt it would help to show them as a couple _ Bill and Hillary," the insider said. "But some people thought of them as `The Clintons,' and not about her on her own."

In the end, though, Clinton's campaign failed to recognize _ or accept _ Obama's candidacy as something special that was appealing to younger voters and increasing African-American voter participation in record numbers.

"As the campaign progressed, several people called it (Obama's campaign) a movement, a phenomenon," the Clinton campaign official said. "We just underestimated that sort of phenomenon."

"When he talked, there was no there there as it relates to traditional politics. But that's not what people wanted to hear," the official continued, still unconvinced that Obama was the better candidate. "We were talking specifics and experience, but people didn't want to hear it: They wanted to hear change."

___

© 2008, McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

Now, the way I see it, Hillary and Bill have alot of fence mending to do. Being VP is not subserviant, and many who felt that BO should have step aside and just let HRC have the nom......I hope they can see that. But I do feel that she should come to him and the four of them need to sit down and work things out........

Because Barack doesn't owe Hillary one thing, IMO.

And, I was one of these people who would stay at homeand not vote if she had goten the nom. Now, you have those who will write her name in, not vote or vote for McCain.

They have to ask themselves one question.......do you honestly want 4 more years of Bushanomics and Bush Cowboy Diplomacy?

If you do, right on to ya. But I know Barack will one hell of a president.

[DevotedToAMC]

Of course it will help win Democrats the White House...she attracts many groups and they are unstoppable. She said today (and I saw where you saw) that she is fine being his VP. On top of Obama saying they will work together to win in November just is basically being set in stone that they are working as a team together on the ticket.

Well she must have kept in line early on because you saw how quiet he got

[Adam]

The fighting and nasty tone this campain took on has clouded the judgment of some I think. I mean that's just an observation. People who feel this way please speak up and explain your motivations. But as I see it right now, if you are willing to help McCain get in just to spite Obama, that is very, very disheartening.

This election is the most important the world has seen in a long time.

[Jess]

I do wonder if they have already worked out an Obama-Clinton ticket. It just seems that is where all the signs are pointing.

I vote Democrat. That is what I am. In this election there is a clear choice, the Democrat or the Republican. No independent candidate is going to win the presidency unless we change the way we elect presidents. The electoral college system and our winner take all system of elections guarantees a two-party system.

I think John McCain is a nice man who would be a disaster for president. There is not one of the major Democratic candidates that I would have had any problem at all supporting for president or having on the ticket. Obama was my first choice, but that was late in the game. I look at it as there is a vote for the Democrat and all other votes -- no matter who - are for McCain.

As far as blind devotion, I think there is a whole lot of that going around.

[Roman]

I completely agree. Excellent post, Adam.

And history is made.

[Wales2004]

John Kerry wasn't even on my list of choices but there he was on the ballot. It's unfortunate that we don't always have the greatest options when it comes to choosing presidents and I wish that were different and the parties would run stronger candidates (not to say that any of these aren't strong) in general but that's not the case more often than not.

Vote your conscience. If none of the choices work for you then do the write in thing if that works for you or abstain if that works.

[DevotedToAMC]

Well I am glad you would support Hillary, Ryan. I think people who are not on good terms with her will be really surprised at how great of a leader she will be as either VP or someone in the Cabinet

[Ryan]

I agree. I never wanted Kerry to be nominated. I loved Howard Dean, supported him in every way and was pissed when the media turned him into some kind of crazy nutjob, and screwed his chances to be President.

[DevotedToAMC]

That is what it seems to be pointing to as well, Jess. She said she is fine with the VP slot and he said they will work together to win in November. Something tells me the writing is on the wall that we are getting our dream ticket.

[Roman]

Obama just won the nom.

Now it's time to put the Bullshit aside, get behind him, and take back the damn country from the assholes who helped !@#$%^&*] it!

[DevotedToAMC]

I honestly believe that, had Howard Dean or John Edwards been the nominee in 2004, we would have a Democrat in The White House. Especially Howard Dean. His 50 state strategy was just too damn good to lose on and would have gotten us many swing states and possible red states from 2000

Here here!

[Southofnowhere]

BC is clearly unwell and before Obama even considered making Hillary his runningmate she would have to agree to leave Bill at home along with most of the peeps who helped her with this race.

I think Obama should offer Hillary the highcourt (Something she's interested in) and make Bill Richardson his VP.

[Soapsuds]

Thank You Wales for the heartfelt post. That was well said.