Over take-out meals and late-night drinks, some regrets and recriminations have set in, and top aides have begun to face up to the campaign’s possible end after the Texas and Ohio primaries on March 4. Engaging in hindsight, several advisers have now concluded that they were not smart to use former President Bill Clinton as much as they did, that “his presence, aura and legacy caused national fatigue with the Clintons,” in the words of one senior adviser who spoke on condition of anonymity to assess the campaign candidly.
The campaign’s chief strategist, Mark Penn, and its communications director, Howard Wolfson, have expressed frustration with the difficulty of “running against a phenomenon” in Senator Barack Obama; their attacks have not stopped Mr. Obama from winning the last 11 contests. Some aides said Mr. Penn and the former campaign manager, Patti Solis Doyle, had conceived and executed a terribly flawed campaign, something Ms. Solis Doyle disputes. Both she and Mr. Penn have been especially criticized as not planning a political strategy to compete in the primaries after Feb. 5.
“I do believe we built a good organization — 700 people, $100 million, nationwide offices, and a strong base of support and endorsements that helped us win big states like California and New Jersey,” Ms. Solis Doyle said in an interview. “Every time people have written us off, like after Iowa, we’ve come back.”
There is a widespread feeling among donors and some advisers, though, that a comeback this time may be improbable. Her advisers said internal polls showed a very tough race to win the Texas primary — a contest that no less than Mr. Clinton has said is a “must win.” And while advisers are drawing some hope from Mrs. Clinton’s indefatigable nature, some are burning out.
Morale is low. After 13 months of dawn-to-dark seven-day weeks, the staff is exhausted. Some have taken to going home early — 9 p.m. — turning off their BlackBerrys, and polishing off bottles of wine, several senior staff members said.
Some advisers have been heard yelling at close friends and colleagues. In a much-reported incident, Mr. Penn and the campaign advertising chief, Mandy Grunwald, had a screaming match over strategy recently that prompted another senior aide, Guy Cecil, to leave the room. “I have work to do — you’re acting like kids,” Mr. Cecil said, according to three people in the room.
Others have taken several days off, despite it being crunch time. Some have grown depressed, be it over Mr. Obama’s momentum, the attacks on the campaign’s management from outside critics or their view that the news media has been much rougher on Mrs. Clinton than on Mr. Obama.
I'm not sure if this is a hit piece against the Clinton campaign by the NY Times, but I still find it rather interesting. If what the Times is reporting is true, then we could be starting to see a reality spreading within the campaign that Hillary Clinton could lose the nomination. And that is not good for the campaign--you have to consistently believe that your candidate will win. Otherwise, why bother going in to volunteer your time and work for the campaign? It is almost a self-defeating process that, once the thought is embedded into the campaign, will propagate itself and become true.
Will Hillary Clinton lose the nomination? I still can't say. This Democratic nomination is going down the wire with around half the Democrats supporting Clinton and the other half supporting Obama. I believe that Tuesday's vote in Texas and Ohio will be split down the middle (Take your pick who is going to win) with no blow-outs from either candidates. We are coming into the Democratic convention with both candidates splitting the delegates. Obama may end up with a slight lead in the delegate count, perhaps a couple of hundred delegates, but it will not be enough to win the nomination. We are going to have a situation where this nomination will either be decided by a A) a brokered convention, B) the super-delegates deciding who the nomination will be, or C) one of the candidates will have to drop out. This is a tough call to make.
I'm not going to say that Hillary Clinton is out of the race. But I do believe that the Clinton campaign seriously miscalculated both the Obama phenomena and the American peoples' desire for change. That has always been the key factor in this race. The American people have wanted a major change in the direction of this country, after enduring seven years of this Bush administration. Barack Obama recognized this message and incorporated it into his campaign. Hillary Clinton, however, failed to understand this message. Instead, the Clinton campaign attempted to sell experience to the American people, not realizing that is was change that Americans preferred over experience. It has taken an eleven-straight state Obama wins for the Clinton campaign to realize their mistake. And a somber mood of a potential defeat is starting to sink into the Clinton campaign.
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