
If Hillary Clinton does not win Wisconsin today, I strongly believe the race is over. There is absolutely no way to recover from so many losses, especially when the opposition has by far run a better campaign. Sure she can win in Texas, but one or two wins won’t be able to slow down the momentum Obama has on his side.
How did Hillary Clinton get here in the first place? Her campaign thought she was gonna be the nominee by February 5th. I think that was the problem. They took many states for granted, they thought this was going to be easy. Nobody knew Obama was going to be as tough an opponent as he turned out to be. But a large amount of blame lies solely on the Clinton campaign itself.
On Monday, allegations of plagiarism were brought up by a blog, claiming Obama reused a segment of a speech originally made by Massachusetts Governor Patrick Deval in 2006. Deval and Obama each have had the same campaign manager, now the Obama for America campaign manager, David Axelrod. Now, instead of letting the media find this on their own, the Clinton campaign made the dire mistake of passing this onto the media themselves. So instead, the story was spun as “Clinton Camp Accuses Obama of Plagiarism” instead of “Obama Accused of Plagiarism” (the latter obviously leaving no blame to the Clinton campaign.) Not only did this make the Clinton campaign look bad, because now the story was passed over as another Clinton attack, another story took it’s place. Bill Clinton’s red faced finger wagging at an Obama supporter ended up getting more or equal time as the serious plagiarism accusation. It turned out to be a bad day for both campaigns, when it should have only been a bad day for the Obama campaign.
Hillary Clinton should have run her campaign a whole lot better. Barack Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s campaign websites are just a small example of this. Obama’s website seems so active and helpful, and you can feel the inspiration coming from supporters. Each state has their own page, their own blog, their own groups, their store has a wide variety of merchandise, they are motivated and ready to go. And when each state has an upcoming caucus or primary, they set up a page called “Wisconsin & Hawai’i: Your Moment is Now” complete with easy to find directions to caucus times and locations. It’s easy, it’s motivational, it’s exciting.
Now, when we look at the Hillary Clinton campaign, there’s not much to be said. They do have a blog, and it’s barely updated, maybe one or two posts a day, only by Clinton approved staff. And believe it or not, there are supporter blogs. But in order to view those blogs, you must be signed up and logged in, not to mention the fact that they are extremely hard to find and navigate. When we look at the state pages, instead of being an active online headquarters like the Obama campaign has set up, instead we find static, unenthusiastic pages, with no supporter created content, no fun blogs. When wanting to find your caucus or primary location, instead of finding enthusiastic supporter created directions in a blog post, there is “To find your primary location, please visit the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board website.” It doesn’t get anymore dull than that. Just a link, and maybe a telephone number.
Can the Clinton campaign still pull off a win? Sure they can. Is Obama in a better position to win? For right now, he is.