Clinton thread
Out of context: Reply #245
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"Politico has an article today about how Obama's campaign will now be capitalizing on this horrible mismanagement by merely pointing it out to undecided voters and superdelegates.
In the days and weeks ahead, the Barack Obama campaign is going to pose a simple question to the undecided voters and undeclared superdelegates who will decide the Democratic nomination for president: If Hillary Clinton can’t run a good primary campaign, how is she ever going to run a good campaign against the Republicans?
In fact, I think more and more her campaign is becoming the butt of many jokes.
Mark Penn, who just got booted as her chief strategist, is only the latest problem in a campaign that has been heavy on drama and light on results.
"None of these folks have ever run anything, other than Hillary running a health care task force," David Axelrod, Obama’s chief strategist, told me Monday. "But these campaigns are big, complicated, pressure-filled enterprises, and it is an important proving ground."
Like someone pointed out in an earlier diary, Obama was supposed to be the one that couldn't handle the national campaign. He had no organization to begin with, and hadn't appeared to manage anything like this other than his failed Congressional campaign and successful Senate campaign.
Axelrod told me that at a meeting in January 2007, a few weeks before Obama announced his candidacy, Obama assembled his top staff and laid down three "predicates" for the campaign.
"First, it was to be a campaign based on grass-roots politics," Axelrod said. "Second, there was to be no drama, that we were all on the same team. And third, the campaign should be joyful. That has really happened."
Axelrod is not, to put it mildly, a neutral observer. And I imagine the Obama campaign has not been all that joyful during the Jeremiah Wright controversy. (A controversy that, I believe, we have not heard the last of.)
But I remember the Time piece about the HRC not wanting to admit that Obama's campaign was having more "fun." After reading that I started paying attention, and on the whole they do seem to be enjoying themselves a lot more than her campaign, even with the Wright mess. For someone that considers the last month the "fun" part of politics, you'd think her campaign would be more joyful.
And finally they just put it out there:
"Hillary is a bad manager," a senior Obama aide told me. "Does it really look like she could deal with the Republicans?"
This is a completely legitimate question to raise seeing as how she has been touting herself as "Ready on Day One." I suppose another question would be "Ready for WHAT on Day One?"
- Amen. Clinton couldn't manage her way out of a paper box.ukit