Why did Clinton lose?

georgeob1 wrote:

I also believe Occam Bill's remark about Clinton's error in letting Obama make the keynote speech at the 2004 convention was particularly insightful. I think he agrees that none of us really knows how or by whom that decision was made, or how much influence the Clintons had over it. However I suspect historians will cite it as a key event.

It was John Kerry who made the decision.

sozobe wrote:

georgeob1 wrote:

I also believe Occam Bill's remark about Clinton's error in letting Obama make the keynote speech at the 2004 convention was particularly insightful. I think he agrees that none of us really knows how or by whom that decision was made, or how much influence the Clintons had over it. However I suspect historians will cite it as a key event.

It was John Kerry who made the decision.

That's correct. The nominee makes most of the major decisions regarding the convention, so Clinton can't be blamed for letting Obama give the keynote address at the 2004 convention. Furthermore, people at the time certainly understood the significance of shining the spotlight on Obama: after all, few could forget that Bill Clinton gave the keynote address at the 1988 Democratic Convention, and used that as a springboard for his presidential campaign four years later.

OCCOM BILL wrote:

Chumly wrote:

put up or shut up


$100.00 cash each held by a third party A2K member as discussed.

Dude. Are you completely retarded? McCain is trading at $37.80. This is what it costs to get $100- trading fees if he wins. That means; anyone who wants your fool's bet will either pay $37.80 or profit $62.20-fees on the transaction. Put your $100 up there; and it will return over $250 if you're correct. As a rule; I don't take money from fools.

Poor Chumley -- doesn't understand what it means to hedge a bet. Oh well, O'BILL, you tried.

Chumley wrote:

The agreed upon wager is specifically and to the point that the upcoming election will not see Obama as president. The wager is not who will be the next president of the US per se.

Depends upon what you mean by "see." Of course, technically the only person who will be "seen" as president on election day is George W. Bush, but that couldn't be what you meant. I'm certain that you wouldn't play such puerile word games when we are all, in a sense, witnesses to this transaction. It would be beneath contempt if you were to do so, and would subject you to the justifiable scorn of everyone here, regardless of partisan persuasion. Republicans or Democrats, conservatives or liberals, we may differ in our politics, but we are as one in insisting upon an honest wager.

The corpse isn't quite cold yet, but the post-mortems are already starting for the Clinton campaign. Karen Tumulty in Time magazine listed the five major mistakes made by Clinton, including: (1)she misjudged the mood of the country; (2) she didn't master the rules of the Democratic Party; (3) she underestimated the caucus states; (4) she relied on old money and didn't exploit the potential of internet fundraising; and (5) she never counted on a long haul after the Feb. 5 "super Tuesday" contests.

Those are what historians might term "immediate" causes of Clinton's defeat. But there are also "remote" causes that should be taken into account. Ari Berman in The Nation identifies one cause that scuttled Clinton's campaign even before it began:

The biggest factor that doomed Clinton, from day one, was Iraq. Her vote for the war and subsequent lack of apology cost her the support of a huge segment of the party that flocked to Obama (and, early on, Edwards) and tarnished her brand from the very beginning. That vote, more than any other, reflected the hawkishness, caution and calculation that soured many Democrats on Clinton and hurt her with young voters, new voters, independent voters, etc.

That makes a lot of sense to me. Without the Iraq vote issue, Obama wouldn't have even entered the race. All of the other major contenders for the Democratic nomination, with the diminutive exception of Dennis Kucinich, voted in favor of the Iraq war resolution. Even progressive favorite Chris Dodd, everybody's third choice, voted for the war. True, most of those who voted in favor of the war resolution later recanted -- most notably John Edwards, whose mea culpas were a standard part of his stump speech. But Obama was the only viable candidate who could honestly say that he was against the war from the start. That gave him an opening wedge into the Democratic field that he, as a relative neophyte on the national political scene, would otherwise not have had. And Clinton's obstinate refusal to apologize for her vote, or even to explain it in some sort of forthright or comprehensible manner, left her vulnerable to an insurgency from the left -- something that she never counted on.

Clinton made a lot of mistakes in 2008. But her biggest mistake was made in 2002. That's when she lost the election.

* Five big turning points: For the rest of this week, we're going to focus on what we think are the five big turning points of this campaign, which put Clinton in the position she's currently in: on the brink of elimination. Some will be obvious, and some will be points we think were under-appreciated at the time. We'll start with an under-appreciated one: Obama's Illinois residency. From his blowout win in Wisconsin and his initial launch in Iowa to the Super Tuesday squeaker in Missouri, Obama's candidacy was propelled as much by geography -- states touching Illinois -- as it was by race. Take Missouri, for example. Had Obama not won a single swing-state primary (not caucus) on Super Tuesday, Clinton would have had a VERY powerful talking point that night, because she would have won every state primary (not caucus) that matters. But Obama's Missouri squeaker (which probably was only possible because of the shared media market of St. Louis and because of McCaskill's endorsement) made the focus on the delegate fight, rather than states won. This also brings us to a fact that could have Dems a tad nervous: Obama might be the first Midwesterner as the Dem nominee since Humphrey and Stevenson before him. Neither won. Then again, considering how important the Midwest battleground is this time, Dems may have stumbled into a geographically strong nominee.

Joe made two points there Chumly.

The second was a simple concern about the integrity of the wager. Appreciated, but I'm quite comfortable with Dys as the arbiter.

The first was in regards to your foolish decision to wager with me as opposed to taking the better odds that are available. If you are correct about McCain; you are essentially forfeiting an extra $50 you could have won. Alternately, were I simply trying to be shrewd, I could simultaneously wager say $80 on McCain at Intrade myself. This would result in my either profiting $20 from you, or $20 from Intrade, regardless of who wins the election (so long as it's Hillary or McCain... which it will be). I won't be doing that, however, because I personally think Obama is about a 2 to 1 favorite so I'm more than satisfied with an even wager.

Were I to choose Intrade over you; it would cost me about $125 + trading fees to win $100... right now. These calculations are, of course, subject to change.

Decency and personal integrity demands that I offer you one last opportunity to renege without shame and place your wager at Intrade where the numbers make more sense for you. Otherwise; I'll be more than happy to take your money, fair and square (not that it's a sure thing, by any stretch of the imagination).

Today, it's Chris Dodd and the October 2007 Philly debate. While many remember that debate -- which set off a two-week media firestorm over Clinton's answer to a question over driver's licenses for illegal immigrants -- few remember the role Dodd played in it. In the lightning round portion at the end of the debate, Clinton was asked about her statement that Eliot Spitzer's plan to allow illegal immigrants to have driver's licenses made a lot of sense. Following that, Dodd disagreed with the plan, and when Clinton said that she, too, didn't agree with the plan, Dodd interjected, "No, no, no … you thought it made sense to do it." That exchange then allowed Edwards jump in: "Unless I missed something, Sen. Clinton said two different things in the course of about two minutes just a few minutes ago." Then came Obama: "I was confused on Senator Clinton's answer. I can't tell whether she was for it or against it." And, voila, the aftermath paved the way for Iowa to be competitive two months later. Remember, this wasn't a point in the debate that the media jumped on Clinton; it was her fellow candidates doing it, and that might be why it resonated.

April 29: On CNN, Obama states America doesn't have
any problems that can't solved "by opening a can of whoop-ass". In the
same interview, he also threatens to 'kick the hummus' out of Iranian
leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and breaks several chairs.

Continuing our look at how Clinton got to this point… John Edwards hasn't endorsed Obama. In fact, for a while, the thinking was that if he'd endorse anyone, it would be Clinton. But in our latest installment of some of the big -- yet underappreciated -- turning points in the Democratic nominating race, we look at how Edwards ended up greatly helping Obama, by deciding to stay in the race after New Hampshire and then exit it before Super Tuesday. Throughout the Dem contest, this fact often was overlooked: Edwards won South Carolina in 2004. And four years later, per the exit polls, he narrowly beat Clinton among whites, 40%-36%, with Obama getting 24%. Obama ended up getting 78% of the African-American vote, which fueled his victory. But with Edwards and Clinton essentially splitting the white vote, that resulted in Obama's overwhelming 55%-27% win over Clinton -- which was the biggest victory of the first four Dem contests. Had Edwards withdrawn beforehand, the results might have more mirrored the 55%-43% black-white split in the race, which wouldn't have been as impressive a win for Obama and may have led others to echo Bill Clinton's inarticulate attempt at marginalizing Obama's South Carolina victory.

In today's installment of our look at the big -- yet underappreciated -- turning points in the Obama-Clinton race, we take a look back at the very beginning of this contest. While in some eyes, the race began in earnest on January 20, 2007 -- the day Clinton announced her exploratory committee online ("So let the conversation begin") -- Obama had actually unveiled his exploratory announcement four days earlier. "For the next several weeks, I am going to talk with people from around the country, listening and learning more about the challenges we face as a nation," he said in a taped message on his Web site. "And on February 10th, at the end of these decisions and in my home state of Illinois, I'll share my plans with my friends, neighbors and fellow Americans." While that moment might not have been a turning point, per se, since it happened at the very outset, it signaled that it would be Obama -- and not Clinton -- dictating the pace of the race. "It sort of forced their hand," an Obama source tells First Read. "We did it on our own terms. It caught everyone by surprise."