clinton will be unleashing her claws

SaintsFan11 said

I strongly disagree. Even supposing that you credit Obama's rise totally and completely to his political acumen, her campaign had no strategy to deal with a serious challenger and even when all signs pointed to a long and protracted battle, her campaign still believed it would be over by February 5th.

The fact that they didn't even challenge Obama in 9 out of the past 10 states is proof that her campaign has been poorly run. The win in Wisconsin last night was Obama's closest win since Super Tuesday and it was over 15 points. It wouldn't have taken a whole lot just to hold him to a ten point victory in many of these states and that would have significantly reduced his delegate lead.

And then you have her campaign only recently discovering the rules of the Texas primary which put her at a serious disadvantage.

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Her strategy made plenty of sense when it was put into place. Her strength was her entrenchment in the party hierarchy and her organization. She decided to only put modest effort in the smaller primaries and let the field shake itself out and then win Super Tuesday on the strength of her organization/recognition as front runner.

It wasn't a "bad" plan. Super Tuesday overwhelms every candidate. She had a clear, clear advantage over the rest of the field by virtue of her connections to party operators in all of the States. She knew no one could cover the entire Super Tuesday field and banked on her entrenchment and front-runner status to win.


So how did it fail? Well for one Obama and Edwards tag-teamed her pretty good leading up to it chipping away at her front-runner status. Then Edwards pulled out prior to Super Tuesday which kept it from a 3-way split to a 2-way split. It nullified a lot of her advantages. Combined with Obama's building momentum and Obama had enough grass roots "umph" to get through Super Tuesday. He's rolled since then.


It didn't work but it wasn't an inherently bad strategy.